We Just Don’t Get It! Would the Judges at Nuremberg Have Critiqued Hitler’s Artwork?

Why now, all of a sudden, are so many people upset about the fact that Bill Clinton has pardoned Marc Rich? Help us understand this one.

Don’t get us wrong, we condemn Bill Clinton and all of the corruption and evil that he and his administration have committed. He has been convicted of lying to a civil court of justice; his law license is on hold for five years due to his perjury and obstruction of justice. What’s more, his impeachment and so-called “trial” in the Senate were based upon only a tiny subset of the allegations that could, and should, have been leveled against him-allegations that were backed by a superabundance of facts and evidence. The sheer number of mysterious deaths that surrounded Governor Clinton and President Clinton, would be material for the “X Files” television show-and, arguably, would suffice as statistical evidence of wrongdoing. The fact that so many of the dead were individuals whose continued existence could have been hazardous to the Clintons’ “legal health,” coupled with the refusal of the “mainstream” U.S. news media to seek an explanation for those deaths, suggests at least two possible scenarios.

Had this happened anywhere but in the U.S., what do you suppose world opinion would have been? The refusal of that nation’s “news” media to investigate that story would be seen as evidence that the media were under government censorship or control, either overtly or covertly.

Given that it did take place in the U.S., there is another possibility. Many complaints have been voiced in recent years about the lack of professional and ethical standards within the mainstream American “news” media. Perhaps these media people lack the intellectual ability to comprehend the true situation and to do effective research, and/or the moral fortitude to expose the laundry list of convenient deaths that surround the former governor and president. We wonder how many individuals who own, run, and work for the mainstream “news” media in the U.S. are all too ready to sympathize with Bill Clinton, simply because they are as amoral and corrupt as he is!

You don’t agree? Then why did the media consider the entire “Wag the Dog” scenario to be “cute,” rather than simply heinous?

Clinton is, by any standards, a war criminal. He waged a savage war against the Serbian people. He, and his supporters, told lies to start the war, told lies to keep it going, and told even more lies as a cover-up whenever any of the previous lies began to unravel. He, and his supporters, lied to the U.S. Congress, to foreign governments, to the American people, and to the world. He, and his supporters, waged a Hitlerian media propaganda campaign that unleashed a massive wave of racially charged hatred not only against the Serbs still in their homeland in Europe, but also against Serbian-Americans. And all of it was to draw attention away from his domestic scandals and, perhaps, to reward those who contributed to his campaigns or to the Democratic Party.

 Don’t assume that the war against the Serbs is over, or even that it is winding down, just because Bill and Hillary have left the White House. Not at all! The massive flood of lies that set those evils in motion has taken on a life of its own, and continues to work mischief even now, as seen in the continued efforts of the U.S. Congress to blackmail the new Yugoslav government. (See “Congress’ Influence May Have Been a Key Factor in Arrest,” LA Times, 4/1/01, “U.S. Congressmen Urge Withholding Aid to Yugoslavia,” by K.P. Foley (RFE/RL), 3/30/0, and “Milosevic’s arrest occasion for more Nato lies and hypocrisy,” by Stephen Gowans. By threatening the loss of the pittance of promised U.S. aid, and possibly the renewal of sanctions, the U.S. Congress has already managed to force the Yugoslav government to arrest and incarcerate their former President, Slobodan Milosevic. Clearly, the U.S. Congress has no right to concern itself with whether the Yugoslav government should arrest or charge Mr. Milosevic, or anyone else, with violating any Yugoslav laws.

But the U.S. Congress is still pressuring the Yugoslav government to sell out Mr. Milosevic, and other indictees, to face war crimes charges at the ICTY kangaroo court in The Hague-a “court” which lacks even the most rudimentary guarantees of due process of law. Here again, neither the U.S. Congress, nor NATO, nor any international organization has any grounds for demanding the arrest and prosecution of Mr. Milosevic. There is not, and never has been, any credible evidence that Mr. Milosevic has committed or been involved with any war crimes. Every single piece of the purported evidence to that effect, which was eagerly presented on CNN to justify the bombing, has been refuted.

Don’t expect the news media to acknowledge that all of these accusations were a sham to justify the war, because they were the ones who spread the defamation and war propaganda in the first place. The corrupt U.S. news media-and its even more corrupt British equivalent-have too much at stake to admit that they have done wrong, just as the U.S. Congress cannot admit that it did wrong in allowing Bill Clinton to bomb the Serbs. Instead, they take the easy way out by repeating the same racist remarks, the same blustering threats, and the same stale accusations against Mr. Milosevic, the Serbian people, and the Yugoslav nation, again and again, no matter how often, and no matter how thoroughly, those accusations have been refuted!

These lies are not the only evils that persist beyond the end of the Clinton regime. There’s something even worse: Bill Clinton knowingly used illegal weapons, such as cluster bombs and depleted uranium ordnance, which will continue to threaten the lives of Serbs and others in the Balkans for decades, if not generations. (Given that the half-life of depleted uranium is 4.5 billion years, and given that there has been no effort thus far to clean it up, feel free to arrive at your own estimate of the time frame.)

We are aware that a few people are offended by the English-language word that accurately characterizes Clinton’s war against the Serbian people: namely, “genocide.” We will say it again: Clinton’s policies were deliberate acts of genocide. Let us remind you that even the Nazis never went so far as to use bombs or ordnance containing radioactive toxins in warfare. Scientists who had fled the Third Reich for safety in the U.S. warned that the Nazis had radioactive materials at their disposal and were capable of making and using such weapons, had they chosen to do so. Clinton and his NATO allies were willing to commit an atrocity that even Hitler and his Nazis were not willing to do.

To illustrate our concerns, we ask you to imagine a hypothetical scenario. Let your mind drift back into history, to the Allied liberation of Nazi Germany. But this time, let’s suppose that Allied forces have succeeded in capturing Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels alive and well. The tribunal has already assembled at Nuremberg. While in custody awaiting trial, Hitler, like other prisoners, returns to his artwork, as the world debates and debates the fate of the Nazi defendants and the scope of their crimes. Finally, Hitler, his mistress/new-wife Eva Braun, and his architect, Albert Speer, are brought before the tribunal. But what are the charges? It turns out that the tribunal’s first order of business is to judge the quality of the defendants’ artistic contribution, both as demonstrated in their personal lives and by whatever artwork that they have produced. Albert Speer, after a long debate, is acquitted of any wrongdoing. Eva Braun is convicted of having poor taste in men and of having encouraged an untalented artist. Hitler, after being convicted of being a substandard artist, and of having a bad haircut and a clownish mustache, is censured by the world’s artistic community.

Does the tale sound like a ridiculous fantasy, having no more to do with justice than does the trial in “Alice in Wonderland?” Would you be outraged, flabbergasted, disgusted? Well, that is our own reaction to the ineptly focused, belated and ineffectual complaints being leveled against the Clintons these days.

“Now just a minute,” you may be saying. “What on earth are you talking about? Marc Rich has been accused of trading with enemies of the United States. He has been accused of violating an international arms embargo by smuggling weapons to Muslim forces that had been attacking the Bosnian Serbs. These are serious allegations. Since Marc Rich won’t be put on trial, we won’t know what evidence actually exists, or how many other people might be involved. How can you possibly call the Marc Rich pardon a trivial matter?”

Please don’t misunderstand us. Our purpose is not to defend Marc Rich. We offer no opinion either about Marc Rich himself, or about his guilt or innocence regarding any allegations that had been leveled against him. We do not claim that those allegations were trivial, nor do we deny that Bill Clinton’s last-minute pardons were engineered in a manner that smacks of corruption.

Our objection is that all of the idle conjecture about the Marc Rich pardon serves only to draw attention away from far more important matters of Bill Clinton’s guilt. We don’t know whether Marc Rich actually was involved with the clandestine support of Muslim extremists in Bosnia, but it is all too clear that Bill Clinton was involved. The arrival of large shipments of weapons into the hands of the Muslim extremists, and the refusal of the Clinton Administration to make any real effort to stop this smuggling, shows that the Clinton Administration wanted it to continue. To put it bluntly, this smuggling assured an ample supply of weaponry to the Muslim extremists to use in slaughtering the Serbian people, without the U.S. government appearing to be involved.

The arms smugglers themselves were comparatively minor players in the vast pandemonium of Clinton Administration wrongdoing. Smugglers simply exploit situations that already exist. Smugglers have no authority to negotiate an arms embargo in the first place, or to form a coalition to start a war. Smugglers have no authority to make policy decisions about how a war is to be fought. Thus, no matter how much damage an arms smuggler manages to do, he is still only a bit player compared to the Commander-in-Chief.

Our opinion leaders would have us chase shadows and reflections, instead of focusing on the real causes of American foreign policy disasters. That is why the current round of complaints about the Marc Rich pardon are doing nothing to help us get to the bottom of the recent Clinton Administration scandals. Bill Clinton has not been held accountable for all of the serious crimes that he has committed, including his unprovoked war on the Serbian people and the Yugoslav nation. Nor have Bill Clinton’s supporters and defenders been held accountable for allowing him the opportunity to commit those crimes. And until Bill Clinton and his supporters are locked away forever, it is shamefully unjust for the U.S. government and the Western news media to clamor for the arrest and trial of Slobodan Milosevic.

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