I woke up this morning to this breaking news on CNN:
U.N.: Milosevic dies in prison
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has been found dead in his prison cell in The Hague, Netherlands, according to the United Nations. He was 64.
Milosevic was on trial, charged with genocide and crimes against humanity in last decade’s bloody Balkans conflict, and for four years, he dragged out judicial proceedings with political grandstanding and health-related absences
Did he die of natural causes…or did he pull a Hermann Goering?
With his death, hundreds of questions will remain unanswered. Thousands of dead men, women and children throughout the Balkans will not see posthumous justice done in their names.
Does this man deserve any compassion? By all accounts, he was a war criminal — a parasite of a human being. He led his once peaceful nation down a path of bloodshed that took almost ten years to flame out.
Should we mourn him? Should we feel sorry for him? How much humanity does a man like this deserve, in the face of the waves of inhumanity he helped to unleash?
I honestly don’t know the answer to these questions. I’d like to think that I have compassion…even for him. But with his death, the attempt to win justice for those who can no longer speak also dies. What compassion is left for the dead of Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia?
There are times that the cards life deals to us suck beyond the telling of it. This is one of those times.
