The Arrest of Slobodan Milosevic: Vindictive Triumph and Sadomasochism

An essential element of all war propaganda is to designate the “enemy” as a criminal, outlaw, terrorist, or rogue. The enemy violates all international laws, mores, or conduct of civilized mankind. On November 5, 1998, the US judge on the ICTY, Gabrielle McDonald, stated that Yugoslavia was “a rogue state, one that holds the international rule of law in contempt.” On June 30, 1999, the US Senate adopted a bill that branded Yugoslavia “a terrorist State.” This process necessarily results because of the nature of enmity, of war, and of propaganda.

Enmity is created when we project what Carl Jung termed the shadow, our denied, repressed, subconscious guilt, sadism, hatred, onto a convenient “enemy” or other scapegoat. It results from a self-delusional and paranoid psychological orientation, one rooted in arrested psychological development. It is an infantile disorder. We have a psychological need to focus out shadow, our hatred, and our denied or repressed guilt, onto an individual or person. There is a need to focus our rage and irrational emotion onto a figurehead: “the butcher” Valeriano Weyler, Adolf Hitler, Tojo, Joseph Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung, Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, the “butcher of Baghdad, Slobodan Milosevic, the “butcher of the Balkans”. A corollary of the requisite for finding the enemy guilty of crimes is that we create an illusory and self-delusional dichotomy between the enemy people and the enemy leaders or government. The people are innocent, but the leaders are guilty. When dichotomy fails to weaken the “enemy”, then “collective guilt” is imposed on an entire nation, state, people, religious group, or social group. The CIA Guerrilla War Manual (1984), illustrated this technique in advocating the following strategy in overthrowing the Sandinista government:

The basic objective of a preconditioning campaign is to create a negative “image” of the common enemy; e.g., describe the managers of collective government entities as trying to treat the staff the way “slave” foremen do. The police mistreat the people like the communist “Gestapo” doesé. Through local and national history, make it clear that the Sandinista regime is “foreignizing,” “repressive,” and “imperialistic,” and that even though there are some Nicaraguans within the government, point out that they are “puppets” of the power of the Soviets and Cubans, i.e., of foreign power.

The propagandist or information technologist creates a dichotomy between the Nicaraguan people and their leaders. The people are “innocent”; the leader or government is “guilty”. Here there is an example of propaganda projection or transference. The propagandist projects his or her own history of racism and slavery, Negro slavery, onto the “enemy”, i.e., slave foremen. The recent release of classified documents from World War II in the national archives in Washington, DC has raised the question of whether the German chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Muller, had worked for the parent organization of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Command (CIC) during the Cold War. The information technician merely projects his own repressed self, his own crimes, his own guilt, his own denied motives, his Jungian “shadow”, onto the enemy. The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic must be seen in this perspective.

But why is Milosevic being arrested? What is he charged with? On May 27, 1999, the ICTY indicted Milosevic for “crimes against humanity”, a vague term, during the illegal 19-nation NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. He was indicted by the ICTY during the NATO bombing campaign, an indictment by a NATO court. The Kosovo war was not sanctioned by the UN, but in fact, violated the UN Charter and all international laws and agreements. A glaring fact emerges. Such an indictment is self-serving and tautological. To rationalize and justify the illegal NATO war, such an indictment is essential. But Milosevic was once labeled the “guarantor of peace in the Balkans”, essential for maintaining peace in the Balkans, and the only person the US could work with. He was invited to Dayton, Ohio and was transformed into a diplomat by US negotiator Richard Holbrooke. The only thing missing was a Nobel Peace Prize. Why and how the sudden transformation?

The arrest of Milosevic as a wanted war criminal stems from the Kosovo conflict of 1999. But why did that conflict occur?

Former President Bill Clinton explained what “this thing in Kosovo is all about” in a speech quoted in The Nation, April 19, 1999:

If we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes our ability to sell around the world, Europe has got to be a keyé That’s what this Kosovo thing is all about.

The Kosovo conflict was thus induced by the US to advance economic, military, and strategic geo-political interests. It’s the economy, stupid. The goal of the Kosovo military intervention was to open up markets and advance trade and develop the “open society” advocated by philanthropist George Soros. It’s globalism, stupid. But what about all the media images of refugees, war crimes, genocide, humanitarian disaster/catastrophe, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, humanitarian intervention? This is where propaganda or information technology comes in.

 We live in the Information Age, an informational global village. As Marshall McLuhan has noted, war is now information war, infowar. War is now about information. Modern technology has rendered war obsolete and meaningless. President Clinton could not justify or rationalize an illegal war, violating international laws, agreements, the UN Charter, the NATO Charter, the US Constitution, against a sovereign nation on the basis of advancing US economic and strategic interests, “our ability to sell around the world”. To overcome the blatantly and flagrantly illegal and criminal nature of the US military aggression—a dictionary definition of aggression here— against Yugoslavia, a propaganda rationale needed to be devised. The Kosovo propaganda rationale was a carbon copy of the Bosnia propaganda paradigm. The Yugoslav government and leaders were engaged in genocide and ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. This is a no brainer. What do you do?  Susan Sontag, Madeleine Albright, Caspar Weinberger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Morton Abramowitz, Christianne Amanpour, James Rubin had the answer. Why, you militarily intervene, wage “humanitarian warfare”, to prevent genocide, stupid. You do a humanitarian intervention, humanitarian warfare, a classic oxymoron of the New World Order; it could come almost verbatim out of George Orwell’s political satire 1984 (1949). That is what you do. It is simplicity itself. You do “humanitarian warfare”, you do “military humanism”. Needless to say, you do not do humanitarian warfare to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, or the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, or the Basque-Spanish conflict. Why? Because those are the wrong kinds of “liberation” movements. The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is not applicable under humanitarian warfare or intervention, but the Kosovo Liberation Army is applicable. Why is this so? Humanitarian intervention or military humanism does not apply to US client states. Orwell would turn over in his grave. The propaganda analogy is to the Holocaust, the extermination of European Jewry by Germany and German allies, such as Kosovo Albanians, Croats, and Bosnian Muslims. We have seen the Bosnian Muslim Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, and the Albanian Anne Frank of Kosovo, Adona, used by the US information technologist. Logically, if we assume war crimes and genocide, then war criminals and war crimes trials must follow.

Having embarked on this genocide propaganda paradigm, guilt presupposed punishment. If the enemy is guilty of war crimes, there must be trials, there must be punishment. So the War Crimes Tribunal is an essential tool and ingredient of the genocide propaganda. But didn’t the US expose the propaganda use of the tribunal in 1995 when it flip-flopped on Milosevic, when he was changed from “war criminal” and “butcher of the Balkans” to diplomat and peacemaker? Moreover, the ethnic cleansing and war crimes committed against the Orthodox Serbian populations of the former Yugoslavia is of no concern to the tribunal? Since NATO/UN occupied Kosovo, 230,000 Serbian Orthodox were driven out, hundreds murdered, kidnapped, tortured, over 100 Orthodox Churches destroyed. What about the reports that Kosovo Serbs are being hunted down and murdered like wild animals by the KLA? What about the systematic, planned, and premeditated murder of the Serbian Orthodox population of Kosovo by the KLA since NATO occupied the province? In 1995, up to a quarter of a million Krajina Serbs were driven out from the Krajina. Those Serbs that chose to remain were systematically hunted down and brutally murdered and their bodies mutilated. Is that justice? Do we need to look that up in the dictionary? Who is kidding whom here? Of course, this is all infantile self-delusion. It is kid stuff and makes our analysis easy.

The War Crimes Tribunal is modeled on the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal of 1946-49, which tried the major German war criminals. A war crimes tribunal is logically necessary for the US propaganda paradigm or model. If there are war crimes and genocide, then there must be responsible or guilty leaders who must be tried. The Nuremberg propaganda model is used by the US infotech and psyop specialist, but what about the REAL Nuremberg Trials? What do those who actually participated at the Nuremberg Trials think of the ICTY and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia? Walter J. Rockler, a REAL former Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials, wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune, in which he explained the Kosovo conflict this way:

The attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent Polish atrocities against Germans.

This is what Walter J. Rockler wrote, a REAL War Crimes Prosecutor at Nuremberg. So Madeleine Albright, Morton Abramowitz, Bill Clinton, James Rubin, Susan Sontag, Anthony Lewis, Zbigniew Brzezinski did not invent or create this so-called humanitarian intervention paradigm, or Orwellian humanitarian warfare model of advancing US economic/military interests. Such is the conceit and arrogance and even utter stupidity of the so-called intellectual elites, Walter Lippmann’s “enlightened elites”. In fact, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, leader of the SS, and Reinhard Heydrich, leader of the SD, developed the modern concept of military intervention based on human rights and preventing atrocities against an ethnic group, humanitarian warfare. Does anyone remember what Munich was actually about? Adolf Hitler was protecting the human rights of the German minority in Czechoslovakia. Like Kosovo Albanians, the Sudetenland German population was motivated by separatism and secession, not human rights. The German government even engaged in staging propaganda events, known as propaganda of the deed. Before the September 1, 1939 invasion of Poland, Germany needed a humanitarian or human or civil rights rationale to justify or rationalize the naked aggression of Poland. Operation Himmler provided the humanitarian rationale. Himmler and Heydrich staged an attack on the German radio station at Gleiwitz using German troops dressed in Polish Army uniforms. Known under the code name Operation Canned Goods, inmates from Himmler’s concentration camps were then executed, and trotted out and paraded before the German press and media as “victims” of Polish aggression. Before the war, Joseph Goebbels had relied on the propaganda theme of the repression/oppression of the German minority in Danzig, the Corridor, and in Poland. If the term “genocide” had been coined in 1939, Adolf Hitler would have surely used it to justify or rationalize the German invasion. Polish jurist Raphael Lemkin would not coin the term “genocide” until 1944.

Wars come and go, but propaganda techniques remain constant. The Clinton Doctrine of the New World Order looks a lot like what we can call the Hitler Doctrine of the New Order in Europe. Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton used the identical propaganda paradigm as Adolf Hitler, indeed, they plagiarized Hitler, a propaganda paradigm parroted ad nauseam by the free world media or Western media, Pentagon, CIA, NATO personnel, Jamie Shea, James Rubin, and the Lippmannesque “enlightened elites”. The humanitarian propaganda paradigm did not originate with Adolf Hitler, or Morton Abramowitz or Zbigniew Brzezinski or Bill Clinton. William Randolph Hearst had used the exact same propaganda model in engineering the war with Spain in 1898, the “splendid little war”. Hearst focused on “Spanish atrocities” allegedly committed against Cuban insurgents or “freedom fighters”, insurgents, like the KLA, NLA, armed, trained, and supplied by the US. How can the US be neutral, unbiased, arbiter of the Kosovo conflict when it has armed, trained, and supplied the KLA “terrorists”, has in fact taken sides in an ethnic conflict? It is remarkable how little propaganda methods change. Hearst would feel right at home in our Information Age, an age he did much to create. But, of course, this propaganda paradigm does not originate with Hearst either. The 1845 US war against Mexico was launched on the premise that the US was protecting the American settlers there. Journalist John O’Sullivan coined the term “manifest destiny”, “the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent” to describe the American invasion, occupation, and annexation of Mexican territory, Texas. The propaganda rationale was that American human and civil rights were being protected by the humanitarian intervention. Humanitarian warfare or intervention has a long history. Adolf Hitler developed the modern usage of this propaganda paradigm.

But if the Kosovo conflict was to advance US geopolitical goals and find a purpose for the defunct Cold War relic and anachronistic dinosaur, NATO, why is Slobodan Milosevic being sought for war crimes at the Hague? This is a good question. What crimes has Milosevic committed?

In propaganda and war terminology, the concept is known as “vindictive triumph”, a need to utterly destroy the enemy or a symbol of the detested enemy, the Serbian Orthodox people, here in the form of Slobodan Milosevic, the former President, rooted in an infantile sadism, an obsession with power. Vindictive triumph is an obsession with total defeat and annihilation of the enemy, the humiliation of the enemy. The enemy must be guilty for the conflict, solely responsible for the war. The symbolic leader of the enemy must be found guilty and executed. Vindictive triumph is necessary to perpetuate enmity, to perpetuate war by other means even after the shooting has stopped. The maintenance of the enemy and of a bipolarity, an us versus them dichotomy, is needed. An adversarial symbiosis, or love/hate bond is created. US policy needs Milosevic as a focal point to maintain enmity, to preclude a return to normalcy or reconciliation.

Why is enmity being maintained? The US seeks to exert power and control and domination over Yugoslavia. The US, moreover, seeks to justify and rationalize US policies over the past ten years that have targeted Serbia and the Serbian Orthodox populations as the “enemy” in the Balkans. US policy needs a scapegoat, a Hitler figure, a “villain” upon whom it can project and transfer its shadow, it repressed and denied guilt. US concerns about “justice” and war crimes trials are actually rooted in a paranoid delusion. According to this paranoid view, Milosevic is responsible and guilty for the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, he is a “serpent in the bosom” in the words of Lenard Cohen, he is a “thug”, a “Hitler”, a “butcher”, a “war criminal”, a “dictator”, a “tyrant”. Milosevic is responsible for anything and everything that has happened in the Balkans. Of course, he is being scapegoated much like Adolf Hitler scapegoated Jews for the defeat of Germany in World War I. Why did Hitler do this? For the same reasons the US is scapegoating Milosevic. Hitler sought to conceal poor policy decisions and erroneous judgments by the German political and military leadership by projecting this denied guilt, doubt, and self-hatred, outward, at a convenient scapegoat. Scapegoating serves a psychological function or fulfills a psychological need. In propaganda, it is part of the archetypes of the collective subconscious as theorized by Carl Jung. Scapegoating or propaganda projection is routine and standard in war propaganda, part of an irrational vindictive triumph mentality. Even though the separatist/secessionist and racist Greater Albania ideology has existed at least since 1878, long before Milosevic came on the scene, nevertheless, US intellectual elites trace its origin to Milosevic’s “nationalist” speech in Kosovo in 1987 and 1989. Factually, Milosevic did very little to prevent the dismemberment and break-up of Yugoslavia, sanctioned by Germany, the US, and the Vatican beginning in 1991. What resulted were civil wars that Milosevic did everything to prevent and which Germany, the US, and the Vatican did everything to encourage, violating the Helsinki Accords in the process. Who is guilty of violating international law? Is unilateral and un-negotiated secession a diplomatic way to achieve peace? So Milosevic is needed as a scapegoat to legitimize the illegal NATO war against Yugoslavia. His guilt is needed to legitimize the criminal actions of the NATO powers. What results is a sadomasochistic approach to diplomatic and political relations between the US and Yugoslavia.

Sadomasochism is an essential element of war and propaganda. A top to bottom hierarchical system of command/obedience is created with a top or dominant actor, the sadist, who controls and directs the actions of the bottom or subservient actor, the masochist, who is passive and responsive. This is the classic sadomasochistic relationship. The sadist controls the behavior of the servant to show his power or dominance. The masochist shows his willingness to be submissive by following the orders. In this model, the US is the dominant, sadistic actor, while the Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic government of Yugoslavia is the subservient, masochistic actor. Initially, the Bill Clinton Administration placed a reward of $5 million for the arrest of Milosevic, although he is a democratically elected leader of a sovereign nation. Under the Rambouillet Agreement, Milosevic had to agree to the NATO occupation of Kosovo and Yugoslavia, and to grant the KLA demand to allow Kosovo to become an “independent” state in three years, i.e., establishing Greater Albania, the precedent for which was established by Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in 1941. Again, with regard to the creation of a Greater Albania, Adolf Hitler had gotten there first. Clinton and Albright and Abramowitz forgot their history. This policy too derives from Adolf Hitler. Clinton, Albright, and Abramowitz were merely parroting Hitler, who actually first devised the strategy.

A sadomasochistic relationship entails top to bottom domination and submission. The sadistic actor, the US, induces the masochistic actor, Yugoslavia, to follow its diktat, its directions, instructions, or orders. To induce his arrest since the October 2000 coup, the US has pledged $50 million in aid if the Yugoslav government would arrest him by March 31, 2001. This the Yugoslav regime dutifully accomplished waiting until the last minute to make the arrest. Milosevic was taken into custody on April 1. US/Yugoslav diplomatic relations can be characterized by this sadomasochistic, superior/inferior relationship. Psychologically, it is like a relationship between parent and child, with the child now obedient to the vengeful parent. Through submission, obedience, compliance, the defiant child becomes accepted by the angry parent and obtains the love or aid of that parent. The sadomasochistic relationship is a continuation of the NATO war by other means. Moreover, that relationship is necessary to maintain the adversarial symbiosis, or adversarial relationship. This is why the US seeks to maintain this relationship. If it is abandoned, the US loses control, loses power, over the “enemy” and cannot modify or control the behavior or actions of the “enemy”. A sadomasochistic relationship is one where both parties obtain benefits. The Kostunica/Djindjic regime receives economic aid, an easing of sanctions, some concessions on sovereignty, such as the return of Yugoslav troops to the Ground Safety Zone, and a relaxation of the propaganda or information war. The US State Department will issue less negative “handouts” for the media. In return, the Kostunica/Djindjic government must be seen as legitimizing NATO policies and the NATO bombing. In short, the Serbian government must act like dutiful and obedient servants or satellites of the US. The disputed news releases that the Kostunica government had helped NATO plan the bombing of Baghdad fit into the sadomasochistic paradigm. Vojislav Kostunica and Zoran Djindjic was now the Vidkun Quisling of the new millennium, a pliant and obedient leadership, NATO quislings and puppets. Kostunica, however, denied the allegation, condemning the US/British bombing of Baghdad. But in politics and diplomacy, appearances are all that matter anyway. The truth and objective reality are left to philosophy. The reports told us everything we needed to know of what role NATO envisioned for Yugoslavia in the New World Order.

The sadomasochist relationship can be consensual or non-consensual. In nonconsensual cases, the sadist can seize, torture, and kill an innocent bystander upon whom he acts out this urge. Sadism may result in rape. We saw a startling example of this during the Kosovo conflict. A US peacekeeper, Staff Sgt. Frank Ronghi, part of the KFOR team, the Orwellian “peace forces”, seized, tortured, and brutally raped and murdered an 11 year-old  ethnic Albanian girl in Kosovo. He rationalized the murder on the grounds that he would blame the Serbs for it. He told other KFOR peacekeepers that he wanted to “grab a little girl and rape her, but he would have to kill her to get away with it and blame the Serbs.” During the NATO bombing, hundreds of Albanian and Serbian civilians were killed by NATO bombs in a callous and brutal campaign, termed strategic bombing. NATO initially too blamed the Serbs, then, applied the technique of “plausible denial”, then, finally, explained it as “collateral damage”, i.e., a NATO planned mistake. There is a reason why so-called military intelligence is a contradiction in terms and an oxymoron. Under the aerial strategy called “strategic bombing”, developed during World War II, civilian infrastructure is deliberately targeted. Hospitals, nursery homes, schools, buses, trains, automobiles, residential districts, power plants, and bridges were targeted. Strategic bombing targets the civilian population. On one unexploded projectile, the US bombing crew had written the following in English: ” Do you still wanna be a Serb now!” This statement really gets into the mind of the American “humanitarian” strategic bomber. It is pure sadism. This is hardly a humanitarian or human rights rationale. The sadomasochistic model demonstrates the actual motivations for the bombing. Mark Baker, in Nam (1983), recounted his experiences during the Vietnam War as follows:

I enjoyed the shooting and the killing. I was literally turned on when I saw a gook get shot. When a GI got shot, even if I didn’t know him é that would bother me. A GI was real. But if a gook got killed, it was like me going out here and stepping on a roach.

Like Frank Ronghi, Mark Baker, Lt. William L. Calley, Jr. would engage in a similar sadistic ritual. In March, 1968, Calley and Charlie Company would brutally massacre 128 South Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, at My Lai. There was a “massive cover-up” after the massacre and egregious war crime. The massacre was eventually exposed and a trial resulted. One of the US soldiers of Charlie Company could not contain his pride and bravado, admitting to a reporter the following:

Hey man, did you hear what we did é We went in there and lined up all these people and massacred them—massacred a whole village.

The war crime was justified as a revenge attack or killing for the deaths of US troops in the area, three of whom had died in a minefield. Moreover, the Pentagon demanded high “body counts” so Charlie Company had to kill “gooks”, whether men, women, or children. This is how the Pentagon judged military success in the Vietnam War, by the number of dead gooks, by the body count.

There is a misconception about war, that war is motivated by “humanitarian” concerns, by a concern for human and civil rights, that there is a distinction between civilian and military targets, that there are “just wars”. Factually, war is motivated by power, by a sadomasochistic orientation.

The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was created in May 1993 primarily through the intense efforts of then US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright. Madeleine Albright created the  Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Albright is known as the “mother of the Tribunal” because she was instrumental in its creation. The ICTY was created during the Bosnian Civil War for one purpose: To condemn the Bosnian Serb insurgency and the efforts by Yugoslavia to safeguard the rights and interests of the Serbian Orthodox populations. The Hague Tribunal from the start was anti-Orthodox, anti-Serbian. The Court was another weapon in Albright’s arsenal against the Serbian Orthodox populations of the former Yugoslavia. The Court was part of the information or propaganda war, the infowar, being waged against Serbia and the Serbian populations. The court was a lever, a weapon, an additional instrument of coercion and pressure against the Serbian Orthodox. Justice had nothing to do with it.

The glaring flaw of the Hague Court is that there is a conflict of interest. Any first year law student will perceive this fatal flaw. Indeed, common sense will tell us that you cannot have a fair trial or justice when there is a conflict of interest. Fairness and justice demand a neutral, unbiased, independent legal process. But the Hague Tribunal is biased, anti-Serbian, and created, established, controlled, staffed, funded, and organized by the United States, the actor at war with Serbia, waging a ruthless, vicious, sadistic war against the Serbian Orthodox population and against the Serbian government and leaders. The US, moreover, is engaged in a massive and unprecedented propaganda war, or infowar, against the Serbian people and Serbia. The Hague Court is a political court, a show trial court. Here too, this is nothing new. This concept of vindictive justice, of a political court, was not invented by Madeleine Albright, but was made famous by Joseph Stalin during the Moscow show trials of the 1930s. During the 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy initiated a series of anti-Communist show trials during the Communist witch-hunt era. In modern Western history, the models are the Medieval, the Spanish, and the Roman Inquisitions. The Spanish Inquisition was instituted by a papal bull issued in 1478 by Pope Sixtus IV. Sixtus appointed the Dominican Monk Thomas Torquemada, the Grand Inquisitor, who in his 14-year judicial tenure burned over 10,000 victims at the stake and over 100,000 died from hunger and torture in Inquisition prisons. Using the legal system or courts in the pursuit of vindictive triumph is well established in Western history.

Is the ICTY an independent, unbiased, and neutral tribunal? Let us examine the facts. The ICTY was established primarily through the untiring efforts of Madeleine Albright, the “mother of the Tribunal”. The initiative for the Tribunal comes solely from the US, Albright in particular, who created an ambassador at large for war crimes once she became Secretary of State. The US government has provided 23 officials for the tribunal. The FBI provided investigators for war crimes in Kosovo. The ICTY is financed and funded primarily by the US government, US corporations, globalist organizations, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Open Society Foundation of George Soros. The US government has donated $500,000 to the tribunal while a major US corporation donated $3 million worth of computer equipment. Obviously, these globalist interests and investors in the ICTY wanted to see a return on their investment. The conclusion is obvious: The destruction of the communist/socialist status quo would entail the opening of new markets and an increase in US trade. An economic bonanza would follow for the globalist “humanitarians”. Follow the money trail.

During the Kosovo conflict, President Clinton was able to obtain an additional $27 million for the ICTY from the US, to engage in propaganda and other activities to support the illegal NATO bombing. Some of the money was spent preparing the testimonies of Albanian “refugees” before the US Congress, documenting the humanitarian catastrophe and war crimes. Finally, to aid the ICTY, Clinton placed a $5 million bounty on the head of Milosevic, the indicted war criminal. To induce the arrest of Milosevic, the President Bush Administration placed a March 31 deadline on the Yugoslav government to make an arrest. The US Congress offered $50 million in aid if the arrest were made. Moreover, the sanctions regime could be modified and changes in the Ground Safety Zone would continue if the Yugoslav government followed the US diktat.

The make-up of the court is suspect as well. Of the 14 judges, 5 are NATO members, 3 are from former British Empire colonies, now the British Commonwealth, 3 are from Muslim states, and one judge is from Columbia, a banana republic client state of the US. There are no judges from an Orthodox nation. The court is like a lynch mob. The defendants are presumed guilty unless found innocent. There is a presumption of guilt. Long-standing criminal law procedures and international criminal law guidelines are abandoned. There is no neutrality in the judicial make-up. The ICTY is a NATO court, a court set up to try the “enemy” of NATO.

The ICTY was established by the UN Security Council in May, 1993 under its powers to provide peacekeeping in conflicts. Many jurists regard this as a usurpation of the powers granted to the Security Council. There already exists an International Court of Justice in the Hague. But the US finds it difficult to control and manipulate that court so it created its own. Factually, the US ignores the International Court of Justice when in conflict with US policies. For example, the Court found the US guilty of violating international law in the US mining of Nicaraguan ports by CIA-backed contras, but the US glibly and contemptuously ignored the decision of the Court. For the ICTY to be binding on sovereign states, those states must have voluntarily consented to the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. There has been no consent to relinquish sovereignty.  This has not been done by Yugoslavia. The members of the Tribunal are not democratically elected, but appointed by states that have an interest in pursuing war crimes. Moreover, Yugoslavia is a nation not at war, a nation whose Constitution prohibits the transfer of a political leader to a foreign country to stand trial. Milosevic is not a dictator but a political leader who was elected three times in a democratic process. The ICTY is then a continuation of the negation of national sovereignty initiated by US policies targeting Yugoslavia.

The arrest of Slobodan Milosevic under coercion and economic blackmail by the US reflects a vindictive triumph, and the continuation of a sadomasochistic diplomatic and political relationship between the US and Yugoslavia. Instead of reconciliation and reintegration, the US seeks to pursue the war against Yugoslavia by other means, coercion, economic sanctions, financial blackmail, military pressure, such as arming training, and supplying KLA veterans in the Liberation Army of Medvedja, Bujanovac, and Presevo, who have infiltrated the Ground Safety Zone, killing and mutilating the corpses of Serbian policemen and soldiers. Reconciliation and reintegration of Kosovo-Metohija into Yugoslavia are not options. Instead, vindictive triumph and sadomasochism are policies being pursued. The arrest of Milosevic must be seen within this context or framework. The NATO nations want Milosevic tried at the ICTY for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” not because they are motivated by concerns for justice, but because they want to justify and rationalize their illegal bombing campaign, their illegal war against Yugoslavia, a war which has not resulted in a multi-ethnic and tolerant Kosovo, but a 100% ethnically pure Albanian “gangster state”, made up of mafia-style fiefdoms ruled by drug lords engaged in a drug smuggling and prostitution ring, whose population “demands independence”, demands Greater Albania. The illegal NATO bombing has exacerbated the Kosovo crisis and threatens to destabilize the entire region and engulf Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, Greece, and Yugoslavia into a war. The Milosevic arrest is motivated by vindictive triumph, the trial of a leader by a court established and maintained by the nation with the most to gain from such a trial. There is a glaring conflict of interest. The ICTY is a propaganda and political tool of NATO and the US. The ICTY is not a neutral and independent body. The ICTY has nothing to do with criminal justice, the rule of law, or international law. The ICTY is war by other means, merely a continuation of the war against the Serbian Orthodox by other means. The ICTY represents the opposite of justice.

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