December 15, 2003 October is Koufax Pledge Drive month
Principal Off-Rez, call handlers (pt 1)
Earlier in this cycle Al Sharpton went off-reservation, and spent a week in West Africa working a set of issues that is more important than ... well, who sits in the Oval Office for a term or two. I tried to get him to guest blog that week, which allowed me to chat with Frank Watkins, who was his campaign manager at the time, but I missed the window of opportunity. I thought then that what he was doing was simply more interesting than what Howard Dean had done a week or so earlier on Lawrence Lessig's blog.
I mention this because this week another candidate has gone off-reservation. Wes Clark is in the Hague, which isn't holding a Democratic primary or caucus before, during, or after, Super Tuesday. While Wes Clark does not suffer the same degree of white-out that Al Sharpton endures in the media, all the news cycles this week belong to the incumbant. If he could blog from the Hague, it could be interesting. Profoundly interesting in fact, because we could put the thumbnail sketch of the process that puts Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in UN custody and facing indictments at the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the process that puts Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in US custody and facing ... something that no one has bothered to give much thought to until today. A pair of thumbnail sketches should be revealing.
Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic of committing the following offences in Bosnia between 1992 and 1995:
See Florence Hartmann's contribution on Bosnia in The Crimes of War for a summary.
Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic of committing the following offences in Croatia between 1991 and 1992:
Prosecutors at the war crimes tribunal accuse Slobodan Milosevic and four of his colleagues of committing the following offences in province of Kosovo between January and June 2001:
For the full text of each of the indictments and accompanying documents at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, click on the respective links: Bosnia, Croatia, Kosovo. In a nutshell these are: that after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995, almost all captured Bosnian Muslim men and boys, altogether several thousands, were executed (Bosnian indictement); Milosevic planned, instigated, ordered, committed or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation or execution of the persecution of the Croat and other non-Serb civilian populations (Croatian indictement); the killings occurred in a widespread or systematic manner throughout the province of Kosovo and resulted in the deaths of numerous men, women, and children (Kosovo indictement).
What Wes Clark is doing this week is important. Important like working to improve the human condition in West Africa. He's working to improve the human condition in that part of the world that is subject to, or perhaps celebrates in is a better turn of phrase, the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal(s) of the United Nations. It is worth recalling that in May 2002 the US formally renounced participation in the new International Criminal Court.
Credits: The BBC (London), The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The RTBF (Bruxelles). Photo AFP.
Oblig personal note on the capture, not arrest of Saddam Hussein :: a distraction from policy to personality. I'll continue to blog on Le Procès Milosevic.
Posted by at December 15, 2003 09:52 AM | TrackBackGreat post. I suspect that the trial is not even on most people's radar screen. As great as it would be for Clark to be blogging his appearance, his testimony really should be on television where it would reach a broader audience.
The reason it is not going to be on television is that the Bush administration does not want the poublic to get a good look at Wes Clark and learn about his role in winning the war in Kosovo. See http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/wesley_clark_/2003/12/playing_politics_with_national_security_at_the_hague.php here. That really stinks.