Ratko Mladic extradition

[Phil H]

An old and ailing man is arrested, charged and moves put in hand to extradite him for trial - and appeal is entered and dismissed in what seems like minutes.

I have no sympathy for Mladic and believe he is probably guilty of mass murder several times over, but that said, the process of getting vengeance is pretty unpalatable. People on Casebook will criticise the US's foreign policy as being oil-based. But isn't this case all about Bosnia gaining admittance to the EU?

How would we regard such a rush to judgement if we were talking of a frail elderly person accused of some more ordinary crime?

And what of Demjanjuk (spelling?) the ex-extermination camp guard still undergoing prosecution at 95 even though charges have been thrown out once.

I have no truck with war crimes trials in any case - they strike me as being the victors writing the story big time, but implacable forces pusuing aged and frail men like the greek "Furies" I find out of kilter with "liberal" values and inconsistent with any appreciation of "human rights" and in a word cruel.

Phil

[Ben]

Hi Phil,

Anyone who orders the massacre of 8,000 men and boys utterly abdicates their own "human rights". His age at the time of capture has nothing to do with it. It certainly doesn't lessen the extent of his guilt. Bear in mind that he denied his victims the right to achieve old age themselves. No, I'm afraid he deserves to die in searing, screaming pain, and indeed I hope he will.

All the best,
Ben

[Sally]

Yes, but..

How would we regard such a rush to judgement if we were talking of a frail elderly person accused of some more ordinary crime?

We're not talking about an 'ordinary' crime, though, are we? We're talking about massacre. Every one of those 8000 people had families, had lives. I realise it is difficult to imagine loss on that sort of scale (with no intention to sound patronising) but we should try, however difficult.

I agree with Ben here.

[jason_c]

It would have been better all round if someone had just shot him. Quick and clean.

Still, his capture has to be welcomed. No matter how farcical his trial may become.

[Carol]

As far as I'm concerned Ratko Mladic is fit to go to the Hague and stand trial on the one condition that he is still breathing - on his own or with the help of a machine.

Carol

[Phil H]

You'd all make a great lynch mob? One wonders why he needs a trial at all? And why not bring back hanging if you feel as strongly as you do - or even hanging drawing and quartering? (I'm not being serious, just trying to make a comment.)

In history, justice and mercy went together as the hallmarks of a civilised society - mercy seems to have got lost somewhere doesn't it? Vengeance seems to have taken its place - an unpleasant emotion.

Phil

[jason_c]

You'd all make a great lynch mob? One wonders why he needs a trial at all? And why not bring back hanging if you feel as strongly as you do - or even hanging drawing and quartering? (I'm not being serious, just trying to make a comment.)

In history, justice and mercy went together as the hallmarks of a civilised society - mercy seems to have got lost somewhere doesn't it? Vengeance seems to have taken its place - an unpleasant emotion.

Phil

Im sure the trial has a predetermined outcome. I wont pretend it will fair and balanced.

However, his capture does send a signal to other potential mass killers that they will be hunted down. Judicial systems have to make an example of some in order for the system to work. In this case mercy is rightly of secondary importance.

My only qualm is the lawyers who will make a killing from all this. A bullet to the head years ago by one of his own would have been just as welcome.

[Sally]

You'd all make a great lynch mob? One wonders why he needs a trial at all? And why not bring back hanging if you feel as strongly as you do - or even hanging drawing and quartering? (I'm not being serious, just trying to make a comment.)

In history, justice and mercy went together as the hallmarks of a civilised society - mercy seems to have got lost somewhere doesn't it? Vengeance seems to have taken its place - an unpleasant emotion.

Phil

Hi Phil - Whilst I agree that justice and mercy should go together as the hallmarks of a civilised society, I'm not sure when this happened?! When and where were you thinking of?

I don't really believe in vengeance, personally. As for justice - can there be any in this case? The best that can be hoped for is perhaps some kind of closure?

[Phil H]

However, his capture does send a signal to other potential mass killers that they will be hunted down.

But only if they come from relatively small countries it seems - Saddam and his minions, Mubarak is to go on trial, Gaddafi watch out... Osama we didn't even bother with the trial.

I am all for real politique, and I have no criticism of Obama for ridding us of Bin Laden, but I suspect we'll never see a Bush, Blair, Putin, a Chinese leader (for Tien an min) or their like made to stand trial. (Not that I would want to in the case of the first two even three), but for all our modern feelings we still label a few leaders as the villains, when actually they may have had little choice.

One of the great "crimes" in my view was the invention of the principle that says that obeying orders is no defence.

It's a philosophy born of minds who never had to live under tyrannt, in Hitler's Germany or Saddam's Iraq, for instance.

We don't have to face the choice between defiance or torture and death or that of our families, the gas chamber and the piano wire. But even in Britain, I suspect that there are many who not defy those in authority who have power over salary, promotion, perks and even career. people do what they are told, go with the conventional wisdom.

Even politicians can be caught in the same trap - a country in the grip of fear, or nationalism or vengeance.

And in history, countries have been forged in war - the American revolutionaries were not gentle to the loyalists, was Sherman a war criminal for his march through Georgia? England, France, Germany and Spain have all reached nationhood and defensible border by means of war - often bloody and ruthless. was Bismark a war crimnal because he used deceit to make France declare war on Prussia? Where is the criticism of US presidents and lawmakers who pursued "manifest destiny" and practiced genocide on the native Americans? That was then, Mladic is now?

OK, some wouild say, but things changed after WWII. So does that mean that African nations are frozen within their artificial colonial borders and can never do what most European countries did after the fall of Rome and forge themselves workable boundaries, often natural ones? if Africa is ever to "work" as a continent then I believe nation-building will have to take place and blood be spilled, to reunite split tribes, or we will have Zimbabwe's and Rwanda's without number.

You'll all want to tear me to pieces, so come on!!

Phil

[Phil H]

...some kind of closure...

But for whom?

For those Bosnian muslims who lost family members - maybe. but like most victims, I suspect they don't care who pays so long as someone does.

For the Serbs, in Bosnia or Serbia itself? i don't think so, and this could keep tensions boiling in the balkans for another generation or two.

What about a peace and reconciliation commission rather than trials, if you want closure?

I don't mean to sound angry, I just don't have much time to express my view tonight. So "peace "all.

Phil

[Errata]

And this is where I get thrown out of Judaism

I believe in War Crimes trials. I believe that there are people who took actions so dreadful and in utter opposition to any value for human life that they are serial killers. Whether they actually ever took a life or not.

However the point of these trials should be justice, and it should be illuminating. If it is about revenge, then there is no point. Just send a guy into the offenders apartment to beat him to death. Don't even bother with a trial.

With Nuremberg, it vindicated what Jews had been saying during the war. That these things were happening, and other governments simply didn't believe them. Justice was done for millions of victims. And it exposed a genuine flaw in the average command structure. That people who didn't particularly feel one way or the other about Jews were murdering them because they had been ordered to. That they genuinely felt that they should not be responsible because they were following orders. And that made a great many militaries take a step back and examine their own structure. And importantly, some were found not guilty.

It's also where Milgram got his ideas for his famous obedience experiment that should make everyone question their own values.

And then we have Simon Wiesenthal. Who I believe had a noble purpose. There were a couple of Nazi's who had escaped that should have been tried (or were tried in absentia). Certainly Eichmann, Mengele, Bormann (if he escaped). Despite having been a victim of Nazi atrocities and being a Jew, he pursued justice fro ALL victims of the Holocaust. But I believe that despite his pursuit of justice, he was also pursuing revenge. And it is hard to criticize a man who spent four years in the camps for wanting revenge. But whatever his motives, he was no longer working for any official institution. And I think that is an important distinction.

However, despite my belief that people deserve justice, that they deserve to have their stories told. Despite the fact that the architects of genocide absolutely have to be exposed, I'm not sure thats the most important thing anymore. I think the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa was brilliant. And I think in the end, it is efforts like this that are going to have the most lasting and positive impact on victims lives. Trials are a good thing. But they don't heal. At best they stop the hemorrhaging. Forgiveness, confession, understanding, reconciliation, and hopefully in the end a genuine change of heart about the group that the victims and the perpetrators represent should be the goal. A combination of the Nuremberg method and the TRC method is absolutely vital for healing.

Because we Jews got justice, but I am afraid that is all we got. The healing we had to struggle through on our own, and I don't think we've achieved it yet.

[Phil H]

Errata

A deeply felt, powerful and thought-provoking post - thank you.

But I think there is something that distorted the whole post war attitude to the Jews - guilt.

After 1944/45 and the discovery of the extermination camps and the revelation of the Holocaust, western Europe and America felt gyuilty for not having done more, sooner; because "Christendom" (ie western culture) had failed so signally. That guilt lasted for 50 years.

But to my amazement (like the Berlin Wall, I thought it would last forever) a new generation is beginning to see Israel as not far different from the Germans of 1933-45 in their treatment of the Palestinians, their attitude to conquered territories, their unrelenting intransigence. That change of attitude in the world is very dangerous in my opinion - but how would Israelis feel if some of their leaders and officers were hauled off to The Hague to answer for what had been done in Gaza or Lebanon?

This post and the questions in it, are not aimed at you, Errata - it is me musing aloud in response to what you wrote.

Thank you again,

Phil

[Errata]

Errata

A deeply felt, powerful and thought-provoking post - thank you.

But I think there is something that distorted the whole post war attitude to the Jews - guilt.

After 1944/45 and the discovery of the extermination camps and the revelation of the Holocaust, western Europe and America felt gyuilty for not having done more, sooner; because "Christendom" (ie western culture) had failed so signally. That guilt lasted for 50 years.

But to my amazement (like the Berlin Wall, I thought it would last forever) a new generation is beginning to see Israel as not far different from the Germans of 1933-45 in their treatment of the Palestinians, their attitude to conquered territories, their unrelenting intransigence. That change of attitude in the world is very dangerous in my opinion - but how would Israelis feel if some of their leaders and officers were hauled off to The Hague to answer for what had been done in Gaza or Lebanon?

This post and the questions in it, are not aimed at you, Errata - it is me musing aloud in response to what you wrote.

Thank you again,

Phil

Actually, you are absolutely right. And it is something the Jewish community knows about and struggles with. There is little doubt that certain Jewish leaders absolutely capitalized on Western guilt in order to secure the formation of the State of Israel. At the time it was justified through the fact that despite the western guilt, they still would not let Jews into their countries. But there is a massive generational gap within the Jewish community about how to feel about the Holocaust, and how to feel about Israel.

When I was about 12, my grandmother was visiting. I came home from school and she was furious and crying about a news story about how "Arabs" (She never acknowledged the existence of Palestinians) were throwing rocks at Jews praying at the Wailing Wall, and how nowhere on earth or in time has there ever been such evil outside of the Nazis. Which is clearly crap. I made the fundamental mistake of pointing out to her that it was crap, including several examples perpetrated by both Americans and Israelis. I had absolutely forgotten that she was crazy. She called me "the spawn of a nazi cow" slapped me, threw a dish at my mother (the nazi cow) and started shrieking about how my mother and me and my sister should be killed and let my father marry a real Jew... etc. And my mom had to lock us all in a back bedroom until my dad came home from work to deal with her.

Now the crazy is what made my grandmother think we should all die. But in conversations with others of her generation, it was clear that they felt I deserved the slap, and what on earth was I thinking defending those animals? Which I wasn't but no one her age could see that.

My grandmother's generation sees Israel as a birthright, that we earned through sweat and blood. My father's generation sees it a complicated birthright, where we have not always lived up to our potential. My generation changes it's mind every other month. It's a birthright, but the acquisition was botched, or we think everyone would get along much better if the Arabs would stop interfering, or that everyone has a right to be there, that there should be a separate Palestinian state, that there already IS a separate Palestinian state called Jordan...

Jews in their 20s, even Jewish soldiers I think are the ones with the best handle on the truth. That it doesn't matter if we have a birthright, we lost that right the minute we thought "Never Again" didn't apply to us.

If you look at Henry VII's coronation, he says that he has the right to rule England through right of conquest, and through his Lancastrian blood. But he was smart enough to put right of conquest first, as it was the incontestable claim.

Whatever guilt or mysterious deals or politics that gave Israel to the Jews, it doesn't matter. We successfully defended it against other claimants about 5 times. Israel is ours through right of conquest. My opinion is that if we accept that conquest is the only reason we have a right to Israel, then we can take the antisemitism out of the equation with Palestinians. And if we see the Palestinians as a conquered populace rather than a blood enemy, then we can deal with them on a level that discourages outside interference, and we can come to some sort of agreement. Full integration, a client state, a separate state, whatever. But as long as we see Israel as birthright from G-d, we won't negotiate, we won't compromise, and we won't change.

[Phil H]

Whatever guilt or mysterious deals or politics that gave Israel to the Jews, it doesn't matter. We successfully defended it against other claimants about 5 times. Israel is ours through right of conquest. My opinion is that if we accept that conquest is the only reason we have a right to Israel, then we can take the antisemitism out of the equation with Palestinians. And if we see the Palestinians as a conquered populace rather than a blood enemy, then we can deal with them on a level that discourages outside interference, and we can come to some sort of agreement. Full integration, a client state, a separate state, whatever. But as long as we see Israel as birthright from G-d, we won't negotiate, we won't compromise, and we won't change.

Another moving post Errata.

I entirely agree with the paragraph I have extracted.

BUT - if you take your Henry VII analogy - he had to exterminate every other claimant to his throne, and in the end his dynasty last only a little over 100 years and three generations. Israel will never know security until it begins to learn to deal with its neighbours.

Ironically, the Muslim reviolution in Egypt and Syria increases the problems for israel - they have learned to deal with the "tyrants", democtaric states or fundamentalist ones will make uneasy neighbours!

Thanks again

Phil

[Stephen Thomas]

Not that it's got anything to do with me as I'm a Church of England atheist but doesn't Israel have enough nuclear weapons to wipe out the entire Middle East if push comes to shove?