|
Mitar
Vasiljevic walked from the dock in the Hague last
week in the direction which he ought rather than sought.
And for company he had prison guards in place of family
and friends. He had just heard the thump of a judge’s
gavel confirming his sentence of twenty years for
the 1992 killing of five Muslims who had pleaded to
be spared his murderous intent. The Serb was fortunate
in so far as he evaded conviction on another more
serious count of burning alive 65 Muslim civilians
including children, some of them babies.
Vasiljevic
was viewed by the court as having played no great
part in the wider Balkans conflict. He functioned
as a foot soldier in the White Eagles death squad
who had, according to one judge, committed murder
out of ‘sheer ethnic hatred.’ The judge
went on:
The
fact he was a low-level offender in terms of the
overall conflict in the former Yugoslavia cannot
alter the seriousness of the offences for which
he has been convicted, or the circumstances in which
he committed them.
All
very well: the paupers as well as the princes among
war criminals should both share whatever dubious splendour
the cells of the Hague provide them. Vasiljevic should
hardly go free in a manner that Eichmann did not.
Serbian war criminals are little different from the
Nazis who preceded them.
So
it was perplexing to find on the day that Vasiljevic
went down for his score of years that elsewhere another
war criminal was being brought in to the heart of
the political establishment with the presidential
words ‘Mr. Secretary, thank you for returning
to the service of your nation' ringing in his ears.
And this time the criminal concerned was not a mere
foot soldier in the death squads but a senior official
who set the strategic context in which perhaps hundreds
of thousands were murdered, a man more akin to Goering
than Vasiljevic. His war criminal writ ran from Vietnam
through Bangladesh, Cambodia, East Timor, Chile and
Argentina. The irony was not lost on John Nichols
writing in the Nation:
If
President Bush had set out to undermine the credibility
of the commission charged with probing the intelligence
and security flaws that allowed the September 11,
2001, terrorist attacks to succeed, he would have
begun by naming as the chair someone with a track
record of secrecy, double-dealing and bartering
himself off to the highest bidder. And so the president,
who has resisted the investigation for more than
a year, did just that. With the selection of former
Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to head the 10-member
commission, Bush has signalled that he is more interested
in covering for the intelligence establishment -
and the administration's allies in corrupt oil-producing
nations such as Saudi Arabia - than in getting to
the truth.
And
as Julian Borger contended in the Guardian:
Those
Europeans who were aware that the old cold warrior
was still alive could be forgiven for assuming he
was in a cell somewhere awaiting war crimes charges,
or living the life of a fugitive, never sleeping
in the same bed twice lest human rights investigators
track him down.
Even
establishment notables such as National Security Archive
founder Scott Anderson, a former staff member of the Senate
Watergate Committee protested, ‘the minute you
start talking about clerics in Saudi Arabia, it's
in no way in the interests of his clients for the
whole truth to be told.’
Conor
O’Clery writing in the Irish Times described
the appointment as almost a two-fingered response
by the Republican Party to Christopher Hitchens's
book The Trial of Henry Kissinger. O’Clery
reported Hitchens as being furious. In the view of
the author who has also launched polemical broadsides
against Mother Teresa and Bill Clinton:
Everyone
knows the Bush administration does not want a full
and objective inquiry and appointing Henry Kissinger
… a proven cover-up artist, a discredited historian,
a busted liar and a man who is wanted in many jurisdictions
for the vilest of offences ... is the next best
thing to not having such an inquiry.
Kissinger
and his commission - on which George Mitchell shall
also serve without any insistence by him on Kissinger
abiding by the same Mitchell Principles he imposed on
the Irish - is ostensibly tasked with investigating
any financial link between the Saudi royal family
and those who blasted the World Trade Centre last
year. Money from the wife of the Saudi ambassador
to Washington is suspected of having made its way
to al Qaida. But the ambassador, Prince Bandar bin
Sultan, is a friend of Kissinger. And given the American’s
track record for covering up for the vilest human
rights abusers what are the prospects for him breaking
with a well established tradition on this occasion?
During
the summer Saudi Arabia was described by the Rand
Corporation in a briefing to the Pentagon, as ‘active
at every level of the terror chain, from planners
to financiers, from cadre to foot-soldier, from ideologist
to cheer-leader.’ But that will hardly matter.
As it stands the Saudi government is a strategic ally
of the US and considered indispensable for any war
on Iraq and essential to long term US hegemonic designs
in the region. And just as an afterthought, its leaders
are close friends of the Bush dynasty.
Of
severe disappointment is the warm reception the American
public have given the Kissinger appointment. Because
they more than anybody else are the target of the
intended deception. The very national mood which swelled
as a result of last year’s attacks is being exploited
in order to deny the American public insight into
those behind the attacks. For this reason David Corn
in the Nation opined, ‘the public would
be better served and the victims of 9/11 better honoured
by no commission rather than one headed by Kissinger
… he should be subpoenaed, not handed the right
to subpoena. He is a target, not an investigator.
Talk
of human rights, humanitarian interventionist wars,
freedom and democracy is all nonsense when judged
against the sort of actions that promote a serial
war criminal such as Henry Kissinger. It will both
undermine human rights activists and further enrage
those already hostile to America and its citizenry.
The cynicism of the move, despite being purposefully
crafted to provide cover for the Saudis, will most
certainly fuel a militant and fundamentalist ideological
conflagration which has American citizens firmly in
its sights.
Index: Current Articles + Latest News and Views + Book Reviews +
Letters + Archives
|
