Tag Archive for ‘Bill Clinton’

Croatian Generals Sentenced at The Hague

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Zagreb and other Croatian cities over the past week to protest the conviction of two Croatian generals by the UN war-crimes tribunal in The Hague. The ICTY sentenced Ante Gotovina to 24 years in jail and Mladen Markač to 18 years for their role in the August 1995 Operation Storm, which resulted in the exodus of up to a quarter of a million Krajina Serbs.

Bill Clinton and the Ground Zero Mosque: A Perfect Fit

Former President Bill Clinton declared his strong support for the Ground Zero mosque in an interview broadcast on September 12. He also suggested a clever new spin to the promoters of the project. Much or even most of the controversy, he said, “could have been avoided, and perhaps still can be, if the people who want to build the center were to simply say, We are dedicating this center to all the Muslims who were killed on 9/11.”

Heading Back into Clinton-time

What lies ahead politically? Look for an answer back in the ’90s. Even if the Republicans don’t take over after the midterm elections, the Democratic Party now in Congress is dominated by politicians fashioned in the Clinton era, nourished by such heirs of Aristotle as Rahm Emanuel and, before him, Tony Coelho.

Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed

The spirit of the media frenzy surrounding the arrest of the former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on July 21 is based entirely on the doctrine of non-equivalence inaugurated in 1992: Serbs willed the war, Muslims wanted peace; Serb crimes are bad and justly exaggerated, Muslim crimes are understandable.

This doctrine was spectacularly reiterated a month before Karadzic’s capture, when the Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, was found not guilty by The Hague Tribunal of any responsibility for the killing of thousands of Serb civilians by the forces under his command in the three years before the fall of the enclave in July 1995. It is also apparent today, in the endless media repetition of Karadzic’s alleged bellicose intransigence before and during the Bosnian war.

The Big Bore of Arkansas

Now, the first book I want to mention, which is also the best book I scanned, has merits beyond its own intrinsic and immediate appeal. Ric Flair’s To Be the Man tells the story of a boy from Memphis (just across the Big Muddy from Arkansas) who will never find out with certainty who his biological parents were. He was adopted in corrupt circumstances by kind and cultured Minnesotans but could not relate to the demands of conventional life, and his parents had the wisdom to let him go his own way.

The Justification for War: It’s the Oil (and the Power, and Israel), Stupid

We are being driven into a potential quagmire, and no real questions are being asked. What started, in October 2001, as a legitimate military response to terrorist attacks has degenerated into an hubristic powerplay that may engage the United States in an open-ended war against a large segment of the Muslim world.