Karadzic trial a victory … for hypocracy

The arrest of former Serbian president Radovan Karadzic on charges of war crimes has sent… The arrest of former Serbian president Radovan Karadzic on charges of war crimes has sent orgasmic shivers through the liberal community.

The editorial board of The New York Times was gushing with bleeding-heart optimism when it wrote, ‘Mr. Karadzic’s capture ‘hellip; should serve as a warning to other leaders who incite and abet genocide and believe they can rely on their neighbors’ complicity and the world’s inattention to escape justice.’

Yes, the arrest of a former president of an Eastern European nation on charges of war crimes has sent a message to leaders in Britain, the United States, Russia and China that human rights abuses, war crimes and genocide will no longer be tolerated by the international community.

Or maybe the arrest of Karadzic will change absolutely nothing.

To give Karadzic’s case some international context let’s consider the fact that George W. Bush has directed a campaign of torture for the last seven years, killed hundreds of thousands of civilians in two wars and will never have to face international justice. He doesn’t need his neighbors’ complicity or the world’s inattention as long as he lives in a country with a nuclear arsenal.

The War in Iraq has led to more civilian deaths than Karadzic’s campaign of ethnic cleansing or Omar al-Bashir’s campaign in Darfur, but you’ll never see the ICC indict members of the Bush administration for their role in the deaths of Iraqis.

So why is The New York Times so excited about the arrest of Karadzic? Probably because American liberals enjoy little more than seeing the defunct leaders of second and third world countries go on trial for crimes against their own people.

Of course, such justice doesn’t extend to the leaders of industrialized nations. When leaders of industrialized nations murder civilians it’s called a humanitarian intervention or a peace keeping mission, because civilized leaders just don’t kill thousands of civilians out of ethnic prejudice ‘hellip; they kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in the name of national interest.

See the difference?

Unlike The Times, I won’t be celebrating the capture and extradition of Karadzic, because until the leaders of first-world nations are held accountable for their crimes, the ICC is simply a manifestation of an international double standard rather than international justice.

I understand that the world will feel better when Karadzic is safely ensconced in his Dutch cell. After all, the world stood by and watched thousands of Bosnians sacrificed at the altar of Serb nationalism and did nothing.

That has to inspire some sort of guilt.

But this sort of international ‘justice,’ whereby leaders are indicted for their genocidal crimes only after they’ve unfolded live on CNN, constitutes more of an exercise in international theater than an exercise in criminal procedure.

The difference between the two is that theater is entertaining to the American left, whereas exercising justice tends to reveal ugly skeletons in our liberal closets. I mean didn’t we liberals support Mugabe as a paragon of anti-colonial virtue? Haven’t we supported the very ethnic nationalism that’s caused such misery in the Balkans and around the world? We even supported Bill Clinton in his sanctions regime against Iraq that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children in the 1990s.

These are things that we’d most likely not want to see aired in some courtroom in the Netherlands. But until we own up to these past crimes and put our criminal leaders on trial right next to Serbia’s, we might as well let Karadzic go, because to prosecute him while refusing to confront world leaders of nations that actually matter is shameful.

Anyway, this is why I no longer read The New York Times editorials.

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E-mail Giles at gbh4@pitt.edu.