Monday, August 04, 2008
Why do Republicans fear the war tribunal?
From the RoundTable blog
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R. Brooks McGhee
McGhee is a farmer, living in Goodview.
You reported that former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic, accused architect of massacres and the politician considered most responsible for the deadly siege of Sarajevo, was arrested in a Serbian police raid, ending his 13 years as the world's most wanted war crimes fugitive, ("Top war crimes suspect arrested after 13 years," July 22 news brief).
His alleged partner in the persecution and "cleansing" of tens of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Croats, former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Miadic, remains at large.
Karadzic is the suspected mastermind of mass killings that the U.N. war crimes tribunal described as "scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of human history." They include the 1995 massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst slaughter since World War II. Karadzic was taken before Serbia's war crimes court. The move indicated he would soon be extradited to the U.N. court at The Hague, Netherlands.
You also reported that the U.S. administration is reluctant to take steps that lend legitimacy to a court whose jurisdiction it has questioned and whose treaty it refuses to sign, ("Bush administration quiet as genocide charges filed," July 16 news brief).
The Bush administration opposes the court because of suspicions that its jurisdictions are too broad and fears that some Americans might not be safe from prosecutions from this same court.
I am aware that people will differ on the lessons of history, but didn't Henry Kissinger in the Nixon administration secretly and illegally start bombing Cambodia, which led to the Khmer Rouge overthrowing that government and causing scenes from hell, written on the darkest pages of Asian history? They include the massacre of tens of thousands in the killing fields of Cambodia.
Didn't his actions result in the death and overthrow of the democratically elected president of Chile? Didn't this result in many years of death and disappearance at the hands of Augusto Pinochet, the dictator of thousands of people? His own people also found him guilty in a court of law.
Didn't the Reagan administration allow its people to trade arms for hostages, which resulted in deaths of thousands in South America?
Why have so many conservatives made us so afraid of the U.N. war crimes tribunal? Even with its faults, doesn't the United Nations do a lot of good in the world? Where else can anyone look for peace and justice? Certainly not in the White House.
If these other nations can hold their own people accountable for crimes against humanity, why can't we?
I still think waterboarding in Cuba is unjustified and extreme torture. We should stop paying rent on that place and move out.
May God bless America. We sure need it.
