Watching on TV pictures of Milosevic with hands on his back, I recalled Dubrovnik, Vukovar and Srebrenica, but also the great theoretician of crime, Hannah Arendt, who, following the trial of Eichman in Jerusalem, saw that Nazi "angel of death" merely as a meticulous bureaucrat, whose trial, just like the trials of other Nazi leaders, could not erase the crimen of collective responsibility off the German nation.
The Serb nation will also need time to face on its own crimes committed in its name, but also its own responsibility for the crime in which there were so few innocents. But the extradition of their political leader and mastermind of crimes to the Hague is definitely a start of a catharsis, which, despite Racan's nurturing of Tudman's cult, or perhaps exactly because of that, is so needed by the Croats as well, if for no other reason than because of the Bosnian sin.
Therefore, it is that much more horrible that the act of moral liberation of a nation, through punishment inflicted on the supreme criminal, was greeted here with deafening silence of the political elite, which, with the honorable exception of president Mesic, clenched its teeth, frozen by the very thought that after the arrest of Milosevic nothing is the same as before; that now demagogical tricks about the violation of the dignity of the Homeland War, if "our boys" who also committed war crimes are punished, are useless.
The extreme right, which includes many individuals with indictments in the Hague, as well as their media outposts, are fearfully minimizing the importance of Milosevic's arrest as supposedly only an ignominious trade of the type - we give you Sloba, you give us money - and they consequently feel closer than ever to their Serbian counterparts, the sad handful of worn out Chetniks crying for their Leader in Belgrade. Namely, they are extremely concerned by the fact that "now pressures of the Hague Tribunal on Croatia will increase, including demands for extradition of Croat generals". "The situation for Croatia is extremely dangerous," the protectors of dignity tell us, nostalgically recalling the years when Slobo and Franjo together tailored Greater Serbia and Greater Croatia, causes that justified every crime. Furthermore, these causes meant that every crime was actually an act of patriotism.
Numerous newspaper commentaries, as expressions of Racan's horrified silence, are lecturing the Serb nation, saying that all Serbs should have been delivered to the Hague, are horrified by Kostunica's nationalism, and are scorning the extradition of Milosevic as a "good show". Former promoters of Tudman's monstrous ideas, on the other hand, those who are "embittered" by the charges against Norac, are warming up the horrendous theory of street troublemakers about different sorts of crime; consequently even a "Catholic intellectual" reasons in this way: "Is it possible that we have agreed to treat in the same manner a pathological criminal such as Martic and a Croat general who defended his country?" Unfortunately, exactly that pathological theory about different sorts of crimes, the murder of Croats, for which Martic bears responsibility, and murder of Serb civilians, with which Norac is charged (and soon probably also Gotovina) was accepted by the current authorities in Croatia.
Precisely these hypocritical double standards with respect to crime explain the new silence of the political elite, same as their silence in the eighties, when the same elite, at the time also in power, refused to face and deal with the expeditions of Milosevic's emissaries to Krajina and the beginning of the Kosovization of Croatia. Finally, they are the reason why the Serb authorities did what Croatian authorities should have done a year ago, instead of embracing all of Tudman's legacy, including the fateful platitude about the purported protection of perpetually endangered national sovereignty, which, however, both here and there, always also implied crime without guilt, and naturally also without punishment.
Thus, I recall terrible words of Franjo Tudman from one encounter with him: "Slobodan Milosevic is a reasonable politician, with whom one can talk". And that's how it was. But the gentle relationship of these two ambitious wartime vultures, whose nationalism was merely a mask for the true Stalinist Bolshevism, resulted later in common crime without punishment. Under the new authorities this is expressed by the message: "All of us are Mirko Norac".
Tudman successfully escaped the Hague by dying. Now, if only we were so lucky that Slobo listened to his daughter who told him at the time of arrest to kill himself. Dear Milosevic would enter the Serb myth, but would also come handy to the Croat rightist underground to defend until the last howl, if necessary by revolution, all our Noracs, Gotovinas, Oreskovics... Dead, Milosevic would also come handy to Racan who could thereby again sweep under the rug the Hague indictments that, it seems, had already arrived to his desk. And that cannot disappear anymore, even by calls for the national unity, calls to the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of Franjo Tudman.
Thus, the following conclusion may be cynical, but it is definitely true: arrested Milosevic did a service not only to the Serb, but also the Croat people. It is a fortunate happenstance, and many Croats, we hope, will realize that one day.