Imperial Justice 101: The Lesson of Adis and Ante

source: press.rs

Adis Medunjanin, a Bosnian Muslim kid from Queens, New York, who allegedly plotted to blow up New York City subway system, aiming to kill numerous Americans, was sentenced to life in prison on November 16. The same day, Ante Gotovina, the Croat general who commanded over the most horrific ethnic cleansing operation in Europe since the World War II, namely, the expulsion of more than 220,000 and murder of more than 2,000 Serbs in the Serb Republic of Krajina, in early August of 1995, was freed by the Hague Tribunal together with his partner in crime, Mladen Markač. (Another perpetrator, general Ivan Čermak, was freed last year.) These two verdicts go to show how one fares as an enemy of the North Atlantic imperial system in comparison to its friends and allies. They are a message to other potential political criminals that it is ok to kill people selected as enemies of the North Atlantic imperialism, while it is wrong and punishable to be against it.

Now, I am a New Yorker and a Serb. I condemn anyone who plotted to kill innocent civilians, not only in the city I live in, but anywhere on the planet. I know this is a moot point and a little hypocritical one at that, if you are paying taxes and buying bullets that strike innocent hearts, but, unfortunately, for billions of people, including yours truly, the only way to fight injustice is to yell "Injustice!"

Anyway, if the Medunjanin kid really was plotting to bomb New York City's subway,* I applaud the U.S. courts for dishing out the harshest punishment, thus protecting the American civilians from the enemy that its government created and let in. Yes, the Bosnian Muslims are reputed allies and, I'd say, friends of the U.S. government, whose military fought alongside them against the Bosnian Serbs. The war brought a lot of them to America, and many of them are Muslim first, Americans probably never. Some decide to act upon that difference, like Medunjanin or Sulejman Talović, the Bosnian Muslim terrorist who killed five people in Utah in 2007. While I understand when a Palestinian wants to kill Americans, I feel a special kind of contempt towards Bosnian Muslims who kill Americans. As a man of high moral standards, I condemn ingrates who stab their friends in the back, which is how these Bosnian terror cells and individuals - and Albanian ones for that matter - repay for the Americans aiding their war against Serbs.

source: telegraf.rs

Croats, on the other hand, knew better. When Franjo Tuđman undertook the Operation Storm, the final solution for the Serb-inhabited, UN-protected Serb Republic of Krajina, in August of 1995, he did it with American blessing and, reportedly, aid. Testimonies from the fleeing Serbs of NATO planes bombarding their convoys while the Croats were shelling and chasing them are numerous and undisputed. Ante Gotovina was the Croat hero who succeeded in liberating and cleansing this UN-protected entity of its population. He fought on the side of the North Atlantic Empire and he received a recognition for it from the legal arm of the Empire, the Hague Tribunal, which doesn't even have any legal ground for being around. Anyway, Gotovina did the imperial bidding, he wasn't trying to kill Americans but actually succeeded in killing Serbs, and that is, apparently, fine under the international law.

Oh, how convenient this rogue term "international" is... When it comes to killing Serbs, in the Operation Storm or in the NATO butchering of Serbia in 1999, the international law doesn't apply. Hell, even the U.S. Constitution goes out the window (which shows that the American nation does not hire the American military anymore, but that's a different issue), since the U.S. Congress did not approve going into war against Serbia in 1999 either.

So now we have these two simple situations: one, an alleged plot to kill Americans worthy of a life-in-prison sentence, and the other, an imperial military operation that successfully drove 220,000 Serbs out of their ancestral homes and killed more than 2,000 of those unable to run for their lives or unwilling to abandon their land. Now, under what kind of international justice system - let's pretend this is a non-imperialist category that can indeed exist - the first situation warrants a life in prison in the country that is a standard-bearer of the international rule of law agenda, while no one is held accountable for the mass murder and the expulsion of a quarter million people, a crime way more horrific than mere plotting to kill? I stand corrected: a crime way more horrific if one applies moral standards and common sense, not if one holds "the international law" principles over it.

source: glas-javnosti.rs

The fact that the entire Croat nation went into ecstasy over the Hague decision to free the mass murderers and that the Serbs were astonished by the verdict, despite the court's anti-Serb history, are both effects of these two nations' understanding of their respective positions in international relations. Croats showed a continued high understanding and zealous reverence for the nationalist agenda of their leadership, irrespective of heinous crimes committed in the name of it, while Serbs were puzzled by both the fact that the Western Europe and the United States - whom they call "international community" instead of the North Atlantic Empire - would insult them like that and that Croats would show such a disregard for Serbian sensibilities. The Serbian public showed a continued and alarming lack of understanding of international politics and, what's more surprising, an astounding, even stupefying, shortage of historical memory by which this disappointment in Croats was made possible, despite early warnings of this particular outcome to this particular case.

The most important message here is the imperial one and it is clear and terrifying; to all those that didn't get it in the past two decades: killing Serbs is fine by us and if you do it, make sure you consult us, so it's done right.

*considering the numerous cases where FBI agents were reportedly initiating and fomenting potential terror cells for career gains and budgetary purposes, i.e. fabrication of a reason to operate, it is hard to believe anything that mainstream media report on these terror plots