Clark the multilateralist fails to capture war criminals
Jeff Jacoby:
"...Clark has had extensive experience in the Balkans and ought to know something about capturing international war criminals. After all, the two most-wanted men in the world before Sept. 11, 2001, were Radovan Karadzic, the former president of the Bosnian Serbs, and Ratko Mladic, the head of the Bosnian Serb army. They are widely considered responsible for the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, including the bloody 'ethnic cleansing' of Bosnia and Croatia, the murderous siege of Sarajevo, the slaughter of 7,000 unarmed boys and men in what was supposed to be the safe haven of Srebrenica, and the systematic rape of thousands of Bosnian women and girls.
"Karadzic and Mladic were indicted in 1995 by the UN war-crimes tribunal, but their barbarity was common knowledge well before that. As far back as 1992 they were publicly identified by then-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger as key war-crimes suspects. So how did Clark, who claims he would have 'had Osama bin Laden dead or alive two years ago,' collar the two Serb butchers?
"Well, actually -- he didn't. Karadzic and Mladic are still at large.
...
"...He says that after Mladic and Karadzic were indicted, 'I did try' to apprehend them. But having to work with allies -- the stabilization of Bosnia was a NATO operation -- made it impossibly difficult. 'Karadzic was in the French sector,' Clark explains, and seizing him would have 'required a degree of cooperation with other powers that proved difficult for some in the US government to accept. There remained rumors of some kind of French connection,' he adds darkly, 'rumors that have been denied vigorously by Paris.'
"Whatever the French may or may not have done, the failure to catch Mladic and Karadzic underscores some of the drawbacks to internationalizing US foreign policy."
Jeff Jacoby:
"...Clark has had extensive experience in the Balkans and ought to know something about capturing international war criminals. After all, the two most-wanted men in the world before Sept. 11, 2001, were Radovan Karadzic, the former president of the Bosnian Serbs, and Ratko Mladic, the head of the Bosnian Serb army. They are widely considered responsible for the worst atrocities in Europe since World War II, including the bloody 'ethnic cleansing' of Bosnia and Croatia, the murderous siege of Sarajevo, the slaughter of 7,000 unarmed boys and men in what was supposed to be the safe haven of Srebrenica, and the systematic rape of thousands of Bosnian women and girls.
"Karadzic and Mladic were indicted in 1995 by the UN war-crimes tribunal, but their barbarity was common knowledge well before that. As far back as 1992 they were publicly identified by then-Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger as key war-crimes suspects. So how did Clark, who claims he would have 'had Osama bin Laden dead or alive two years ago,' collar the two Serb butchers?
"Well, actually -- he didn't. Karadzic and Mladic are still at large.
...
"...He says that after Mladic and Karadzic were indicted, 'I did try' to apprehend them. But having to work with allies -- the stabilization of Bosnia was a NATO operation -- made it impossibly difficult. 'Karadzic was in the French sector,' Clark explains, and seizing him would have 'required a degree of cooperation with other powers that proved difficult for some in the US government to accept. There remained rumors of some kind of French connection,' he adds darkly, 'rumors that have been denied vigorously by Paris.'
"Whatever the French may or may not have done, the failure to catch Mladic and Karadzic underscores some of the drawbacks to internationalizing US foreign policy."
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