Croat soldiers have no place in front of foreign courts, and their possible guilt (because even in self-defense, of course, there may be excesses and outbursts) should have been either prevented with strict regulations during the military operations, or after victory erased by a general amnesty, as has been the custom of all healthy nations from time immemorial. If, however, the Hague Tribunal is in principle considered as the illegitimate instrument of supra-national hegemonistic interests, then it will be just that even if it tries Serbs, including Karadzic, Mladic, or Slobodan Milosevic.
Milosevic's extradition is related to a series of specific circumstances, which can result in ultimately unfavorable results for Croats. Serb bad conscience, in full accordance with the Croat national-masochism portrays Milosevic as an uber-criminal, who carries on his back all sins of the Serb conquest expedition, in order to cleanse the Serb people of all guilt and portray them as a normal, good-intentioned and peaceful nation, no worse or more dangerous for Croats than any other nation.
The phantom "international community" not only wants to tell Croats, with the abduction of the Serb fuhrer, that it believes that one or two Serbs are also guilty but also that it is just and allocates guilt in a just manner, as if the just allocation of guilt can be an acceptable framework for the interpretation of the Homeland War! They also want to convince us that with the departure of Milosevic, as the biggest, the only culprit, to face the purported Hague "justice" we should not see in Serbia an enemy and therefore do not need an army, self-defense or caution and that we can slowly dedicate ourselves, together with our eastern neighbor, to renewing all those dear brotherly links that the mad warlords "savagely destroyed", as Milosevic's namesake Schneider [Croat playwright] said not long ago.
But in history, unlike in banal daily life, there is no individual guilt. Unbearable ritual calls for "individualization" of guilt for the past war that are, among other, so persistently assisted by the president of Croatia are only a trick which, when the individual "crimes" by accumulation reach the critical mass, will again serve for the renewal of the myth about the collective guilt of the Croatian people, the people that should be denied its own state because it has been proven that it cannot create and maintain it without mass "crimes".
But the Croat people in its defensive-liberation war did not do anything wrong. On the other hand, the Serb guilt, the guilt of the aggressor, the hegemon, mini-imperialist, has its historical, traditional, collective dimension, it is lodged deep in the national character. Recently even a leftist observer, such as Dr. Ivan Siber, dared to utter a self-evident declaration that Milosevic "did not fall from the moon".
And indeed, he did not seduce the Serbs. The truth is exactly the opposite. They, with their centuries-old greater Serbian ideology, seduced him, at first only one of typical Yugoslav and communist officials. After all, nations exist as organic communities. There is such a thing as the national soul, and nation is not only a simple collection of individuals who make it up, guilty or innocent. There is collective guilt (although there may always be individual exceptions within it).
Of course the non-existent Croat guilt will always be collective, and the true Serb guilt will be individual. Milosevic serves that process as a scapegoat.
Finally the forced transport of Milosevic to Scheveningen is also a message for us. It indicates that now nothing stands in the way of mass extradition of Croat "war criminals", because with Milosevic the Tribunal confirmed that it is unbiased, and one fuhrer, at least in the Hague, is worth at least a few dozen Croat generals. Indeed, only a day or two after the extradition of Sloba one can feel a scepter making rounds of Croat media, announcing forthcoming departure of Croat warriors to their last journey. Soldiers, but also civilians and even journalists are already being prepared for the Hague. President Mesic warned in a threatening tone that the next delivery to the Hague will not consist only of Serbs.
The trick with Milosevic made that totally possible and normal. The leader of the Croatian Party of Rights (HSP), Anto Djapic, was right to say that airplanes will not be enough to take all the Croat "war criminals" to the Hague - whole trains will be needed! Will those who rejoiced over extradition of Milosevic to the Hague "justice" then equally rejoice over consequences? Will they celebrate when tomorrow a hero of the Homeland War, General Mirko Norac, goes to the Hague?
The Hague today accepted politically dead Slobodan Milosevic, who is now useless for various international political games, so that it could, under the mask of justice, morality and lack of bias, finally inflict long awaited blow on Croatia, to finish off the remains of her army, and finally destroy the honor and self-respect of Croats. Sloba's extradition was not worth that.
Regarding Milosevic, who is a big enemy of Croats, and who, the way he was, was the last one in this region to persistently resist American imperialism, his guilt is of such nature that a trivial trial in front of an earthly court cannot begin to address it. State leaders and popular tribunes have always been marked by specific (natural and acquired) charisma, mystical aura, which at the same time insulated them from ordinary human guilt. They are judged by God, history and nations. And Serb war criminals should be tried by Croat courts (including the application of death penalty) and at the front, by the true victory of Croat arms. Everything else is a grotesque farce and a swindle. On the other hand, with the departure of Milosevic to a foreign prison, Serbia will not experience a catharsis. Milosevic's departure will create preconditions for a coup or a civil war. Provocative extradition of their fuhrer on their holy day Vidovdan [St. Vitus day] will turn Slobodan, according to traditional Serb spiteful custom, into a new saint in the pantheon of the greater Serbian ideology and calendar of the Serb Orthodox religion. And Djindjic, and even Kostunica, can in the national memory only count on the place of modern Vuk Brankovic's [traitors].
The author is the president of the New Croatian Right