their strength and superiority gave them the right to treat otherrnnations as slaves and cattle. There were no such leaders amongrnthe Serbs, and the so-called criminals who have been put on trialrnare so insignificant that, so far from enjoying the glory of a trial,rnthey would not have been allowed even to testify at Nuremberg.rnLike the Nuremberg proceedings, The Hague Tribunal is anrnirregular and illegal court. The established venue for adjudicatingrninternational disputes is the International Court of Justice,rnnot the U.N. Security Council, which has no business involvingrnitself in what was, after all, a civil war. The pretext wasrninternational security, but no one has ever taken the trouble tornprove that there was a real danger of international conflict. AsrnProfessor Alfred Rubin has written recently in the National Interest:rn”If the Security Council, by its own vote, can categorizernevents in such ways as to avoid limits on its own authority . . . arnradical change in the structure of the United Nations will havernbeen achieved.”rnRubin also points out that the United States and its partnersrnin the Security Council have been careful to limit the investigationrnto crimes committed by the three parties to the civil war.rnJust as at Nuremberg, where the Germans were not allowed tornuse any tu quoque arguments in their own defense, the activitiesrnof the peacekeepers themselves—including the use of Americanrnairpower against civilians—is not to be investigated. Atrnleast at Nuremberg, some of the judges did their best to insurerna fair trial for the defendants, but this tribunal has been set uprnon the assumption that Serbs are Nazis, and that their leadersrndeserve to be hanged. As Srdja Trifkovic put it in the Augustrn1996 Chronicles, “The model for The Hague Tribunal is notrnNuremberg 1946, but Moscow 1938.”rnWere crimes committed by Serbs during the BosnianrnCivil War? Undoubtedly. These things occur in allrnwars, civil wars in particular, but no impartial examination ofrnthe evidence has been able to attribute a criminal intention tornSerb military commanders. The most frequently heard chargernis that the Serbs launched military attacks on civilian populationrncenters like Sarajevo. There is a word for this—war. Evenrnif the Serbs were responsible for all the faked explosions in Sarajevo,rnthey would be guilty of nothing that the United Statesrndoes not routinely do. In the Culf War, before we ever committedrnground troops, we subjected Iraqi cities to a murderousrnbarrage of missiles and heavy bombardment. We completelyrndestroyed their infrastructure—plumbing, water supplies, electricity,rnall gone. Nobody really knows how many hundreds ofrnthousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the bombingrnand the subsequent embargo.rnIf we are going to talk about military terrorism against a people,rnthen the United States should be accused of war crimesrnagainst the Serbs, not only for bombing the Bosnian Serbs intornsubmission but also for the airstrikes that prepared the way forrnthe Croatian massacres of Serbs in the Krajina—massacresrnwhich shocked even the normally anti-Serb press. It was thernmost brutal episode in a brutal war, and the blood is on ourrnhands.rnWar against civilians is as old as mankind, although therernhave been periods of history in which brutality was avoided.rnDuring the American Revolution, British and Cerman troopsrnlooted the houses of patriots, destroyed churches, and bayonetedrnunarmed civilians. The doctrine of total war has been U.S.rnpolicy since the American Civil War. Sherman’s famous marchrnto the sea, authorized by President Lincoln, was a campaign tornbreak the Southern will to resist by reducing women and childrenrnto starvation, and similar plans were carried out in thernShenandoah Valley and along the Missouri-Kansas border.rnThese were not isolated incidents in a single war. The terrorrnbombings of German cities in Worid War 11 had no militaryrnvalue: the death of so many civilians was meant to cause disaffectionrnin the German people, although it had the opposite effect.rnThe same can be said of the brutal suppression of the Filipinornindependence movement in the Spanish-American Warrnand of the war of attrition waged in Vietnam.rnIn Vietnam, everyone knows of the My Lai massacre, butrnthat incident was apparently far from unique. According to ex-rnNavy SEAL Mike Bcamon, there were even special groups ofrnSEALS whose job was to sneak into Vietnamese villages tornmurder civilians and make it look like the work of the Vietcong.rnWe used massive airstrikes against population centers, defoliatedrnthe forests, and used flesh-burning Napalm indiscriminately.rnThe United States was denounced around the world, but inrnthose days there was general contempt in America for the sentimentalityrnof human rights.rnThe nations responsible for the fire-bombing of undefendedrnGerman cities are in no position to point the finger at war criminals.rnSay it was justified, say that it saved lives—the Germansrnthought they had a noble purpose in killing Jews. As one Britishrnforeign officer put it in 1945, “Bomber Harris must have gotrnmore victims on his conscience than any individual GermanrnGeneral or Air Marshall.”rnThe United States collaborated with the British in the firebombings,rnbut we bear sole responsibility for the use of atomicrnweapons against civilian population centers. Hiroshima andrnNagasaki are an ineradicable black mark on this nation’s character,rnon the President who made the decision, on the peoplernwho reelected Harry Truman in 1948 and who to this day refusernto look at themselves in the mirror.rnMurder is not the only crime against civilians. During thernBosnian Civil War, the European and American press dweltrnlovingly on rumors of rape camps. Upon closer inspection,rnmost of the horror stories of Serbian rape camps turned out tornbe either gross exaggerations or even outright fabrications.rnWere any Muslim women raped by Serbs? Probably, undoubtedly.rnShould they be punished? Of course, either by the Muslimsrnor by their own government. Is rape something unusual inrna war? Hardly. The American Army, it is said, raped its wayrnthrough Germany, and the only soldiers punished were the unluckyrnfew who refused to stop when the war was over. In fact,rnour record on this is still very bad. The German governmentrnhas repeatedly complained about the misconduct of AmericanrnGI’s stationed in Germany, and the recent horror stories fromrnOkinawa and Korea reveal that rape is still regarded as a venialrnsin by the U.S. military. More recently, American soldiers havernbeen accused of raping their female comrades, and the most recentrncharges are coming from women stationed in Germany.rnIn the Civil War, Sherman’s men, when they were not burningrnand looting, spent their time raping the black slave womenrn—a subject that few historians arc willing to touch, becausernthe unspoken assumption is that the victims were, after all, onlyrnblack. These soldiers were, not comcidentally, serving underrnthe very government that established the first American codernof military ethics.rnDrawn up by a German immigrant, Francis Lieber, this codernwas promulgated as General Order No. 100. General Halleck,rnJUNE 1997/11rnrnrn