Why don't you people seem to care about Radovan Karadzic?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080722.wkaradzic0722/BNStory/International/home

Guy who is responsible for some of the worst things of our time is arrested and there's only 25 responses to the thread in LBN? Forgive me if I missed a more lively one.
And lots of the responses in that thread were about Bush... who has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's true what they say about Americans being too internalist to even know what is happening elsewhere.

It is a disgrace.

:shrug:

The girlfriend and I bought some top-level salmon and a bottle of wine to celebrate a special dinner with the news.

On DU, mostly it has given people a chance to show off their level of BDS, and that's about it.

This guy was one of the most gruesome butchers of our time. Not just Srebrenica, but the 3-year siege of Sarajevo, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. And the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in northern Bosnia. He is directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of up to 100,000 people. And that was the plan all along.

I'm not a death penalty believer, but in this case, I would make an exception.

I make the same argument when I'm ignored when I bring up the genocide in Darfur, or African AIDS.

It is incredulous!

:shrug:

Seriously, I'm glad the guy got caught, but the Bosnian war wasn't covered much in the U.S. and most Americans don't have any real connections to it. The Europeans dealt with refugees and stories about the war on their nightly news for years. We were lucky to see a 30 second sound bite on it once a week.

I've discussed Yugoslavia with people in the past, and you'd be shocked at the number of Americans who assume that the Yugoslav wars started and ended in Kosovo. Why? Because that's the only part that we were extensively involved in, and the only part that the American press covered.

Not the emotional investing... the lack of media coverage.

It's all about perspective. While the crimes against humanity of the Bosnian Serbs were egregious, they are not the most serious of the last 20 years. In fact, they barely make the top 20 in terms of horrendousness. And most of the rest of the list get virtually no coverage at all. Bosnia gets coverage because it is one of the places the US chose to intervene.

Fortunately for the Bosnian Muslims, we had (and still have) geo-political/economic interests in the region that prompted our involvement (despite our claims of altruism). Unfortunately for many many other victims of oppression and genocide, we have no economic or anti-Russian horses in their races, so they have been left to suffer without our intervention. In fact, often we tacitly support similar regimes around the world with nary a peep from our media.

Bosnia gets plenty of Western MSM play because it was a politically correct killing operation by the West. Maybe it gets a bit less play on DU because many DUers are able to see it in a broader perspective

I know refugees from that war; most Americans probably don't.

But even if one isn't directly connected - surely the escape and eventual recapture and indeed very existence of an evil tyrant and war criminal is important to everyone?

I'm happy that the guy got caught. Genocidal monsters SHOULD be locked away for their crimes, and it's important that he is no longer flaunting justice. But, as an American, I can't say that I have really strong opinions about it. I was only vaguely aware of the war while it was going on, and I've never met a Bosnian in my life, so I didn't have any real investment in it. I wasn't waiting or hoping for his capture (because I didn't know who he was), so it doesn't bring any sort of closure to me. I suspect I'm like most Americans in that regard.

It's a good thing when ANY war criminal is brought to justice.

I'm glad they got Radovan but as an American my concern is more about the genocide we are currently committing directly and by proxy.

Can't post everywhere all the time.

Do you have a list of these "100,000" war criminals from the recent Balkan War?

Which is kind of why I don't get so fired up about Serbian war crminals because I put it into the perspective that they are just a few of many heinous beasts still walking the earth today.

Even some of those the Serbs fought against committed their own war crimes. There are some 20th century genocides that are barely a blip on the historical record.

I'm always pleased when a true criminal is captured.

Anything that brings justice for innocent victims and adds to the historical record & awareness of government organized mass killings is good.

he will be put on trial and made to answer for, with the right to defend himself vigorously, the charges against him.

At this point, I'm glad he's been captured and I await future developments in this case.

in the case of this monster, but at the same time, wondering at the total disconnect with the crimes of Bush* Cheney, who, it seems will forever be unconsionably lauded as the "statesmen" they are NOT. They may not be guilty of genocide, so there is a difference in degrees of outrage, but these are war criminals, nonetheless. I can not think about the Karadzic issue without think that justice is highly unequal in this US-dominated world.

genocide to happen, just like this beast. I think they are culpable.

Seriously, no shit. Miserable rat bastard, NOW let's see about getting that butcher Ratko Mladic who carried out Karadzic's orders.

Just ANOTHER little "brush war" we couldn't seem to get "right," or follow through on (which would have forgiven a million sins).

Mladic: the Butcher of Srebrenica.

yay!

PS there's some excellent you tube stuff on this.

As the prime movers of the Nuremberg Trials we have a reputation to uphold that sadly we have tarnished ourselves and rather badly.

Canada used to be an international beacon of peacekeeping. Now, we don't seem to care about anything.

We aren't doing our best friends any favors with the shit we send over the border in our pseudo-culture, our drifting air pollution etc.

On behalf of the few remaining true friends of Canada here, I'm really sorry.

Our war criminals have tortured thousands and murdered hundreds of thousands in OUR NAMES.

And they are still running free. Karadzic is already in custody. Which is the more urgent concern?

Most Americans don't even know who Karadzic is, yet they caught him and he'll pay for what he did. Everyone knows who Bush is, yet there's a very good chance he'll get away with the crimes he committed. I pay attention to him because I want him to pay for what he's done. Hopefully that will happen and shrub and Karadzic can share a cell.

It's been too long. The war of choice against Iraq has made the atrocities in the Balkans fade from the collective unconsciousness. Plus, there's a presidential race going on.

Those are reasons, not excuses.

Your special response here might get it some attention.

It's after the fact.

Sure, we can torture him to death, but what real good does it do?

Meanwhile, as others have stated, Bush will be allowed to continue to commit war crimes, and perhaps our next president will follow in his footsteps.

This sort of thing only works as a deterrent if you nail the person as he is doing it, not after he has killed countless people and disappeared off the radar.

IMO, by allowing Bush to do what he's done, we've devalued the concept of "war criminal." Think about it:

Bush is a war criminal
Most of his people are
Putin is
Tony Blair is a good candidate
The people running China are

Basically, the top world powers are crawling with war crimes and war criminals...and our actions have devalued the Nuremberg trials, which were supposed to be a neutral venue in this area.

War criminals are apparently a dime a dozen these days...and quite respectable, if they're yours.

SO, it'd be nice if people would stop hi-jacking the thread in LBN and talk about the issue at hand.

You apparently have an agenda if you don't like my point- People don't care because war crimes and war criminals are becoming tolerated.

It's not unusual. It's human nature.

Why people are talking about Bush here, that's fine. I mean in the LBN thread.
The only reason war criminals are being tolerated is because of the apathetic attitude examplified here on DU.

You certainly won't lack for material.

but BOOSH!!!


Yes, WE GET BUSH is a SHIT, but when we're not flaming each other on who can be the biggest uptight crank, we can talk about other things as well.

quaint and outdated..just ask our prez..:puke:

Actually that we even HAVE rules of war, has always made me wonder..

War is the ULTIMATE act of evil ...on all sides..

To "win" a war, many people must die.. To exempt citizens, and to only include soldiers, is a simple-minded way to think..

Dropping bombs on towns kills citizens/innocents.. They are dead, whether they are executed by an adrenaline/testosterone overloaded soldier, or from a bomb blast dropped by a bored bomber-pilot listening to his music..

Pillage-Plunder-Execution-Rape has always been in the war arsenal. Being "civilized" has not changed that.

It happens in every war.. we are just more able to document it now. The vanquished always harbors long-term resentment & hatred, and the victors see it as "the way they won".. If winning requires killing, all bets are off.. If killing is objected to, why even HAVE a war?

I'll bet there aren't that many folks here that remember the Bosnian war...and for good reason...it was all but ignored by our corporate media. There were few reporters in Sarajavo (Christine Armanpour being a noted exception) and even fewer in the Serbian held areas. We heard bits and pieces...and usually sourced to a foreign news agency. Our media was too busy trying to find out what latest Clinton scandal they could dig into...Serbia and Bosnia were the European's problem.

Also, look at how little coverage this story has gotten. Most the cables have been wall-to-wall on either the Obama trip or the Gramps temper tantrum. As usual, American myopia reigns supreme as the Balkans were soooooo yesterday.

I work with a guy who was a correspondent during the war. I really would like to talk to him about all this.

Late at night, NPR now feeds the BBC World Service and that's where I tuned in to get a better feel for what was happening. It's interesting how quickly he was turned over after a new government was installed in Serbia. Looks like the final poisons of the 80's Milosevich reign of terror is finally coming to an end. Here's hoping they get Ratso as well in the weeks ahead and we don't see a long delay in a trial in the Hague. It'll be a good education for many of us here on how the court works and what a war crimes trial is all about. We got shortchanged with Milosevich.

In the 70's and 80's, I worked with ethnic radio and learned back then about the differences between Serbs, Croats and Kosovars. One show was called the "Serbian Defense Fund Hour"...and I kept wondering who they were defending against. It ended up this show was a front for getting donations that ended up in Milosevich's coffers. This wasn't unique...there was an Irish show in those days that ended up being busted for funneling money to the IRA. It was quite an education...and I didn't have to go abroad to experience it.

Cheers...

Genocide just isn't sexy. I'm sure the average person hears about this and trying to sound intelligent says, "Didn't we already try that Milosovich guy?"

I've read three posts re: his capture (in addition to stories about it from other sources). That I didn't make any responses in those particular threads doesn't lessen my sense of satisfaction at his capture, or my sense of outrage over his past actions. :shrug:

you would think a website with so many members would manage more than 30 responses.

Something like 20,000 females. This case makes the Gitmo trials look like
a hypocritical joke.

that line, my take anyway.

Just some pf the tactics used..
How do large groups of people behave in such a sociopathic manner? Some of the stories are so terrifying in the depths of depravity they depict. It is so much more disturbing when it is such an organized thing that so many people participated in-I can always get how an individual Ted Bundy or Ed Gein was so fucked up, but on such a large scale and so organized-how does this happen :shrug:? How do we do this to one another :shrug:?

It's part of the reason we're Clark fans.

Happy to kick this for.

I seen an article in this morning paper about his being arrested but I don't have the paper handy now.

;-)

The protests, the celebrations, the various participants weighing in...the follow-ups...the hiding in plain sight stories....the EU integration stories...

Sometimes I like to mull the news over before I discuss it with people

what can i say? i was in high school during that time, and i confess a lot of the events at that time went right down the memory hole -- I remember the fighting on the news, of course, but didn't really understand who was fighting each other and why; much less the people in power behind it...

but i know now that justice is served, and i can appreciate that...

...now all we need is a first class trial followed by a first class hanging...

The Magistrate did an excellent job at hacking them to shreds.

I hope someone takes a cell phone video of this fucker getting hanged after his trial.

However, objecting to the specific demonization of Serbs like Milosevic but leaving out Nazi creeps like Tudjman and Itzbegovic is another matter entirely.

Mr Magistrate never came up for an explanation of why NATO demands on Serbia re Kosovo included a demand that they sell off worker-owned and state-owned industries, or why the attack on Serbia had few military targets, and lots of infrastructure targets, including said worker-owned and state-owned industries but not their foreign-owned equivalents.

That said, I hope Karadzic gets put up against a wall and shot. I just think it's too damned bad that the DynCorp sociopathic thugs who helped Tudjman murder a lot of the Serbs of the Krajina and ethnically cleanse the rest won't be joining him.

And those imperial apologists who think of US military domination of the rest of the world as just social work conducted with JDAMs, who are horrified at the notion of what the Serbs wanted to do to Kosovo, but either cheered or ignored what the Croatians actually did to the Krajina (the exact same thing, actually) can just go fuck themselves.

If the US Embassy in Baghdad = Barad Dur, then Camp Bondsteel = Isengard.

They weren't. But, then again, neither were the Allies in WWII.

It is wrong and bad by definition, and the wars in the Balkans were no exception. Howz about we just quit fucking with the rest of the world to impose corporate dictatorship on them? Had we done that, the Balkan conflicts might not even have started.

I watched the former Yugoslavia from the time it started -- when the Yugoslavian army went to the local police and disarmed them, clearing the way for the bloodbath to follow.

Alas, they are unlikely to ever come to justice.

How many ways can you think of to tell as many people here as you can, "Fuck you"?

You're fuckin' amazing.

And you're a fucking twat

As a person who spent his childhood watching the Bosnian war on TV, I have long waited for these men (and I use the term loosely) to be dragged to justice. Milosevic died as he ought to have, not a martyr, but a pathetic railer confined to a cell. May Karadzic rot in prison and may the souls of all those who his followers raped, tortured and slaughtered never give him peace.

Kicking for justice.

did you have to put that image in my head? Damn you! >_<

May he rot in prison and be forgotten.

Mladic is next.

Glad they caught this scumbag. Absolutely unbelievable that he was posing as a doctor of alternative medicine. Creepy. :scared:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL22936908

I don't really remember the war in Yugoslavia; I was a pretty young kid at the time. In history class we only got up to 1980, and I only started paying attention to politics around 2002 or so, so there's kind of a gap in my knowledge of world events that I've been trying to fill in for a few years...

:shrug:

Hard to say if it was apathy or conspiracy.... some think they were scared of inflaming the situation again by arresting and trying him.

Hard to get excited about it when we still have our own war criminals running free.

125 to be exact.

You need to look into counseling.

And the 10,000+ dead Americans he's responsible for.

we suck cause nobody posted in your thread.

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

attacking entire nationalities and making crude generalizations.

has the death penalty and is not afraid to use it.

mark

That involve places other than your nation, you'd know that.

and live coverage of that set of goons on their way to the hague.

I wasn't old enough to drive when these war crimes were occuring and being covered in the news (we didn't have cable news or an internet to research these things back then either), so I do not have any perspective on them.

When the ICC obtained 60 ratifications and went online in 2002 I celebrated, and if in 10 years somebody captures Joseph Kony and puts him in the Hague I will celebrate. But i will not get upset if someone who is only 12 or 13 right now has no idea who Joseph Kony is or why it is good he was arrested.

Personally I love this march towards international justice the world is undertaking. I want to see generals and politicians running for their lives in fear of the law far more than street criminals doing the same.

LOL! I am absolutely just kidding. And, I'm kicking your thread.

In a novella I wrote that all the physical therapists who are presumptively helping my main character but who are in fact debilitating him have names that rhyme with "Radovan."

(A writer's small contribution.)

I usually look to DU for US-related stuff, but not international stuff as much. I think it is a great thing he has been caught, but it is sad how hellish life was and still is for people in that part of the world. This is certainly a man responsible for some of the worst atrocities of our time.

Thank you for bringing it up-we do sometimes need to be shaken out of our lethargy with regard to discussing international affairs here.. of course these days it is getting harder to focus on stuff outside as we descend into shittier and shittier times, but you have a point.

:bounce: