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Jun 9, 2011
Lessons From the Hunt For Ratko Mladic
A Guest Post By Dr. Harold Goldmeier
LESSONS FROM THE HUNT
I tell my kids when they leave the cocoon of home and school, if you want gratitude buy a dog; if you want justice buy a gun. Don’t expect anything, and you won’t be disappointed; just be surprised when people follow the rules.
The world’s most notorious, living mass murderer on the European continent, Ratko Mladic, was recently captured after a 16 year hunt. As Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republic he commanded 32,000 Bosnian Serbian soldiers and volunteers in the early 1990’s. He is accused of ordering 8,000 Croatian and mostly Muslim men and boys separated from their families and slaughtered in fields by gunfire and having their throats slit. Another 700 were killed in a Bosnian enclave Mladic’s troops attacked, and thousands more died during the four years long siege of Sarajevo when 39,000 buildings were destroyed. His capture raises serious questions for the West who pursued him and pressured the government of Serbia to turn Mladic over to an international tribunal.
Mladic’s capture parallels the hide and seek of Bin Laden. Serbian and Pakistani government officials had to know, it is assumed, where these two hid from international police and Western spooks and sleuths. A complex web of official and ideological helpers shielded them from arrest, fed and clothed them, moved them, set family visits, arranged medical care, and moved their money around. The press seems amazed that Mladic and Bin Laden could hide so long from their victims and pursuers; they only need to follow the money trail in both cases for answers to the question, “Who hid them and why?” More poignantly, why is the capture of some war criminals more justified than the targeted assassinations of others?
After World War II, some former Nazis hid and disappeared, while some went to work for the new German Republic hiding in public view. Satan’s disciples Mengele and Eichmann found refuge in South America aided and protected by members of the Catholic church and Nazi sympathizers. Werner von Braun went to work for the U.S. government after his reign of rocket terror on England during the war. Unlike Bin Laden who was targeted for death, General Mladic was arrested, did the perp walk into UN hands, and now sits in the U.N. cell block in The Hague where three Croatian political and military leaders on trial for their war crimes during the same conflict. Before Mladic committed his sins, the Croatians began a civil war for independence, and drove 200,000 Serbians out of their ancestral homes killing hundreds of civilians in an ethnic cleansing rout. That war began in 1991. It came on the heels of World War II when the Muslims and Croats befriended the German invaders and helped the Nazi’s round up and execute Jews and Serbs from the same hamlets, villages and towns Mladic and his people were born and raised.
Just as Serbians are demonstrating for Mladic’s release, Croatians are rallying for the release from The Hague of Generals Gotovina, Cermack, and Markac. They are threatening riots if their Croatian nationals are found guilty of murder, persecution, and destruction of property. They are legal euphemisms for crimes against humanity, i.e., the Serbian population. Many, if not most, of the dislocated Serbs are still living in refugee camps nearly 20 years after the Croatian War. However, trials for these people are deemed appropriate when they committed crimes against humanity of numbers more than 100 or one million times than Bin Laden. But he was a targeted kill maybe from the beginning people with the President of the United States declaring that anyone who thinks Bin Ladden’s assassination was wrong ought to have their head examined.
Henry Kissinger profoundly observed in a TIME interview recently, “…(American) history has been short and very successful.” Other people have histories going back hundreds and thousands of years; they have long memories and know that “no problem has a final solution; every solution is an admission ticket to another problem.” That’s why the memories of cowboys dominate the American psyche. Shoot first, ask questions later, or better yet, hold the trial after he’s dead.
General Mladic was born during the Nazi occupation and collaboration of his neighbors with them. Read the new book by Timothy Snyder, BLOODLANDS, and you might begin to understand how long and hot these fires of hatred can burn in the souls of people who have suffered torture and genocide. No one has ever made more of a case for trials of the human satans than Simon Wiesenthal and Eliezer Wiesel. That’s not in our nation’s DNA. Our history predicted if not ordained our killing Bin Laden. Again Kissinger, “Americans, based on our history, have found most problems soluble. When an issue arises, we think it can be solved, and then it goes away.”
The other part of the story lost in the Mladic capture not being reported is the sorrowful role of the U.N. and her soldiers in the conflicts. The U. N. sent not a peacekeeping force into the areas of the Yugoslav Wars, but a Protection Force of 39,000 people to establish and maintain secure areas. Beginning in 1992, they were to protect civilian populations and provide aid and refuge to displaced persons. Over the next four years, nearly 400 personnel lost their lives in the service of their mission.
In July, 1995, with the U.N. in the face of the UNPROFOR personnel, Serbian soldiers captured the town of Srebrenica and massacred the men and boys. Secretary General Annan at the time criticized all U.N. personnel involved in the effort for not having credible means of defense for the defenseless thus allowing the massacre to occur. Mr. Annan’s declarations during that time have become the U.N. doctrine for their military, “'Peacekeepers must never again be deployed into an environment in which there is no ceasefire or peace agreement.''
Why then should any nation depend on international guarantees backed by the promise of U.N. troops to keep the peace at hostile borders? This has been Israel’s experience on her borders with Syria, Lebanon and Egypt; when hostilities broke out, the U.N. forces stepped aside leaving Israel to mobilize her own defenses. Where are the U.N. troops stationed between Israel and Syria, as Syria pushes unarmed civilians to the borders with Israel to cross into Israel in violation of their cease fire agreements? Israel is made to look like monsters through simply protecting her borders like any sovereign state is required to do, and the civilians are being shot and killed.
When the Dutch Commander of the U.N. forces realized Mladic’s intentions, he called for air strikes to protect the people of Srebrenica; no air strikes ever came, but the massacre came in full force. The U.N. soldiers may have been outnumbered and outgunned by Mladic’s forces, but so were the American G.I.’s on Iwo Jima.
International guarantees of safety and security are the cornerstone of Western governments’ plans for peace in the Middle East. The track record of the guarantors is so poor that no nation should seriously consider this option. Powerful nations like the United States believe it is in their best interests to take matters into its own hands, rather than rely on established international institutions like courts of justice. Look to the skies for drones.
Dr. Harold Goldmeier Chicago, Ill. hgoldmeier@aol.com Dr. Goldmeier was a Chicago Public School teacher, a Research and Teaching Fellow at Harvard University earning a Doctorate in Education, and taught as an Assistant Professor at Tufts Medical School. He worked in government for three Governors, the U. S. Surgeon General, and in children and youth advocacy for nearly two decades. He recently sold his business after nearly three decades. He has been married more than forty years with children living in America and Israel, and a son who recently served with the Israel Defense Forces. He has published more than two-dozen articles in professional journals and popular magazines and newspapers.
Dr. Goldmeier is currently a writer, consultant to government agencies, and to small businesses on economic growth and marketing. His most recent articles appeared in The Jewish Press on terrorism, and in Haaretz of Israel and he writes a guest post for LifeinIsrael.blogspot.com., Open.Salon.com., and more.
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