The Kangaroos Cometh

The capture of Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb "mastermind" behind the Srebrenica massacre, among others, has bolstered Western liberal opinion -- at least those Western libs still paying attention to this story. Karadzic's arrest and upcoming trial, the verdict of which has already been reached, brings back those heady days when "humanitarian" violence and NATO expansion (one complemented the other) were all the liberal rage; when Bill Clinton and Wesley Clark were cast as anti-fascist crusaders, allowing liberals to pound their chests and crow about the "correct" uses of state power. The Bush/Cheney madness of the past eight years obscured this holy period, and now that their cabal is fading away, with Obama poised to take their place, Karadzic should serve as a symbol for the kind of liberal interventionism that may define the next four years.

In other words, liberals might very well get a chance to be pro-war all over again. Ain't democracy sweet?

As far as Karadzic goes, I pretty much concur with Richard Seymour, a Verso stable-mate whose latest book, "The Liberal Defense of Murder," is an English bookend of sorts to "Savage Mules." One needn't condone nor attempt to explain away Serbian state violence in order to see the larger imperial picture. In a world run by mass murderers and war criminals of impeccable stature, Karadzic is small potatoes, an easy way to excuse or even deny far worse violence committed by those who'll never face a "human rights" tribunal. If the man is truly guilty, then an open, unbiased court should have no trouble convicting him. But then, that's not how "humanitarian" justice operates, not on the world stage, anyway. Perhaps soon Karadzic will dangle from the end of a noose, a la Saddam, with self-satisfied liberals dancing around his feet, tossing dead flowers at his stiffening corpse. And you thought the Sixties were over!

Meanwhile, here in the States, we have a different way of remembering our ethnic cleansers and war criminals. JFK and Ronald Reagan have had major airports and aircraft carriers named after them, as has Harry Truman, whose vessel features the MK 41 Vertical Launching System, its Sea Sparrow missiles boasting annular blast fragmentation warheads, 90 pounds Proximity fuzed, continuous expanding rod, with a 27 ft. kill radius. Not quite Hiroshima-Nagasaki force, but it'll get the towelheads' attention. Woodrow Wilson has an International Center for Scholars that celebrates his legacy. But for me, the best and most democratic example of war criminal remembrance is perhaps in your pocket this very moment.




Our very own Milosevic, Andrew Jackson. He doesn't go as far as he used to, but you can still get a filling meal at Taco Bell and receive plenty of change. I think the old Indian killer would appreciate that.