AMERICA'S SURVIVAL URGES PROSECUTION OF BILL CLINTON FOR CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
To the Editor of the Washington Times
The David Keene column (February 14 - see below) on foreign courts was flawed and inaccurate. Keene, a self-proclaimed conservative, says that "die-hard Clinton haters" should not welcome the prospect of former President Clinton being prosecuted by a U.N. tribunal he helped set up, even though Clinton supported the Croatian Army when it drove hundreds of thousands of Serbs from Krajina, "ethnically cleansing" an area dominated by Serbs for hundreds of years. Keene then jumps to the issue of the International Criminal Court (ICC), suggesting it may cause other former presidents not to sleep well at night.
It is a shameful and arrogant double standard to contend that Clinton should not be prosecuted for the same things former Serbian leader Milosevic is on trial for. Keene should insist that Clinton be held accountable by the U.S. Congress and U.S. courts. You don't have to be a Clinton-hater to believe that Clinton should be held accountable for this atrocity. In this case, Clinton may have created something that may devour him. This would be sweet justice - a global court getting the globalist Clinton. Perhaps high-priced lawyer Bob Bennett can split his time between Enron and Bill Clinton and handle two high-profile cases at once. That would be something to watch.
As for the ICC, Keene's information is wrong and out-dated. The ICC cannot legally prosecute former presidents because it will not be retroactive when it comes into existence. Keene says the Senate addressed the ICC problem by passing the American Servicemember's Protection Act. He neglects to mention that the legislation was dropped by a House-Senate conference committee from the final Defense Appropriations bill. The conference committee met in secret, but sources said that Senator Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, removed the anti-ICC legislation.
Sincerely Yours,
Cliff Kincaid, president, America's Survival, Inc. www.usasurvival.org
Yesterday and today
David A. Keene
Many Americans can hardly wait for the upcoming trial of former Serbian
Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevich. The new Serb regime extradited him to
The Hague to be tried before an international tribunal there for crimes
committed by his troops during the conflicts that tore through the Balkans in
the 1990s. The trial is expected to be great theater.
A few skeptics wonder whether such trials by international bodies
responsible to no one nation make much sense, but the politically correct
view is that they do. That's no doubt why former President Clinton signed a
treaty which, had it been ratified by the Senate, would have accepted the
idea of a permanent international criminal court with jurisdiction over acts
committed by U.S. citizens and soldiers.
The Senate hasn't ratified what Mr. Clinton sought, but the
international community insists that once sixty nations sign on, this court
will be able to assert jurisdiction regardless of what the Senate does or
doesn't do. The Senate's response late last year was to pass something called
the "American Service Member's Protection Act" to shield members of our armed
services from the reach of the new court when it opens for business.
The problem is that the act doesn't go far enough. It may give U.S.
citizens some protection from the reach of the new court, but doesn't shield
them from being hauled before the court that is about to try Milosevic. So
it's possible and perhaps even likely that a U.S. citizen or even a former
president like, say, Bill Clinton, might be hauled in to answer for what
happened in the Balkans nearly a decade ago.
Sound far-fetched? It isn't. And the fact that we thought we were the
"good guys" in the Balkans is irrelevant. Even now, there are those who are
demanding that Mr. Clinton, Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and others be
targeted for investigation by Yugoslavian war crimes Prosecutor Carla Del
Ponte for acts committed in the mid-1990s.
At the time, Bosnia was this country's biggest foreign policy problem.
To avoid committing U.S. ground forces to the region, the Clinton
administration in August 1995 got the Croatian army to launch a massive
ground offensive known as Operation Storm against Serb positions in Croatia
and Bosnia. Croat forces routed the Serbs, but the evidence suggests that
Washington dreamed up and controlled the whole operation.
The Observer of London claims that Mr. Clinton gave the Croats the green
light for the attack, and Mr. Holbrooke reveals in his memoirs that we
controlled the entire operation. We apparently told the Croats when to launch
their attack, which towns to take and where to stop. Mr. Holbrooke makes
clear that they did just what we wanted. He even quotes then-U.S. Ambassador
Robert Frasure as to our motive, "We hired these guys [the Croats] to be our
junkyard dogs because we were desperate."
And therein lies the problem. We may well be held responsible for the acts
of our "junkyard dogs." Mrs. Del Ponte has described the operation as an
ethnic cleansing campaign designed to drive hundreds of thousands of Serbs
from their homes, and recently indicted a Croat general, Ante Gotovina, for
his role in it. Gotovina isn't accused of personally committing or even
ordering any crimes, but of bearing "command responsibility" for crimes
committed by others.
This could prove to be very bad news for former President Clinton. After
all, the ultimate "command responsibility" for Operation Storm may well have
rested with him, and the Gotovina precedent may make it possible to bring
similar charges against him.
Mr. Clinton would, of course, be expected to deny everything, but
denials won't wash in light of what those close to him have said in the years
since. Based on Mr. Holbrooke's admissions alone, a prima facie case might be
made against Mr. Clinton and others in his administration. After all, they
ordered the operation launched, knew how the Croats were acting during the
operation, directed their forces to specific targets and had the ability to
call them off.
Some argue that if Gotovina is to be tried because he had "command
responsibility" for what happened, Mr. Clinton should be forced to face the
same charges. The politically correct in Europe seem to agree, and therefore
expect Mr. Del Ponte to launch an investigation that could ultimately lead to
the former president's indictment. If one accepts the logic behind the
Gotovina indictment and finds Mr. Holbrooke credible, one would be forced to
the conclusion that she may have no choice but to go after Mr. Clinton.
The real question is whether such tribunals ought to be able to roam
around punishing world leaders who authorize the use of armed force when
anyone who carries out their orders misbehaves.
It's tempting for a salivating, die-hard Clinton hater to skip over that
question, but even if such a trial would make for good theater, it ought to
be avoided. If it isn't, no future president will be able to go to sleep at
night without worrying about what some corporal somewhere might be
contemplating.
David A. Keene is chairman of the American Conservative Union.
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