Justice in One of its Many Forms

How people can say that former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic escaped justice by dying in a jail cell in The Hague on Saturday is a bit beyond me.

So, he wasn’t convicted. But instead of dying in a hospital in Moscow with his family by his side, where his doctors wanted to treat him, the architect of four Balkan wars and hundreds of thousands of deaths died in a jail cell, far away from home or friendly soil, on trial for, among other things, genocide and war crimes.

You ask me, when an evil man dies in a jail cell – whether he was convicted or not, I am utterly convinced (as I have been since we went to war to help out the Kosovar Albanians in '99) that Slobodan Milosevic was an evil, despotic human being – that doesn’t tell me that he escaped punishment.

It tells me that Justice is not always dispensed uniformly, and that sometimes Justice, far from being blind, has 20/20 vision - he had a fair enough trial, for a Yugoslav war criminal . I understand such an idea comes as no comfort, or cold comfort, to the families of those whose deaths he either ordered or orchestrated, but the man died in prison. I remember when he was forced to surrender after a standoff so many years ago – and now, he’s dead.

He was a poor leader, who reflected poorly on Serbia and all Serbians who supported him. He’s a man that started and lost four wars – let the idiots in Serbia who loved him mourn him. He didn’t escape Justice by dying. He was served Justice by not escaping from those who sought to put him on trial.

And yes, the trials of those who helped him to start wars and murder innocent people might be complicated by his death. Still, if they are in jail, some semblance of Justice remains.

Slobodan Milosevic was a bad man. He died in a jail cell – so what if it was by natural causes. His death wasn’t a bad thing. If his is not to be celebrated, then at least let us not mourn him either.

Good riddance to Milosevic. Let him burn in Hell.