Day: July 6, 2016
Careless but not prosecutable
FBI Director Comey seems to me to have it right: Secretary of State Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling classified material, but for prosecution the law requires that she mishandled it intentionally or with gross negligence. That standard, he thought, could not be met by any reasonable prosecutor.
I’ll get in trouble for this: the system, as Donald Trump says, is rigged. It is rigged in favor of the accused. It is rigged the same way with respect to criminal fraud charges against his Trump “University,” not to mention his importation of foreign workers to serve as waiters in a state with a high unemployment rate.
Comey got the analysis correct, but he did not quite capture my personal feelings on the subject. All material of an official character going to or coming from the Secretary of State in my experience is classified. When I was a director in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research more than 20 years ago, I would occasionally write pieces for the Secretary based entirely on publicly available material. They went up to the Secretary classified “confidential.” When I asked why, the answer was unequivocal: you wrote it and it is being read by the Secretary. That’s enough reason, I was told.
I objected at the time, but in retrospect I was wrong. It is one thing for me as a private person to speculate on the virtues of partitioning Cyprus. It is quite another for me as a State Department official to suggest that US policy be changed to support the idea. Words have consequences. They can be stabilizing half a world away. There are a lot of ideas floating around the bureaucracy, some of them bad. Government would be impossible if all of them were made public.
That doesn’t mean classification of information isn’t overdone. It often is. I wondered when I was in government whether we were protecting national security information, or just how little we knew. President Bush blundered to war in Iraq on the basis of inadequate and false information. Tony Blair blithely followed his lead. Journalists I knew at the time were convinced that the Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” were non-existent, but the Administration managed to squelch any serious discussion of that possibility. No doubt both Bush and Blair would have benefited from a more open flow of ideas and analysis.
But that is not what Hillary Clinton did. She arranged her email to her personal convenience, as if the rules did not apply to her. That is the real issue underlying this and many other criticisms of Hillary, whom I support for President. But she betrays an arrogance about whether the rules apply to her. Permitting Huma Abedin, a government official, to be employed also outside the government is another glaring example.
This contrasts sharply with one of Barack Obama’s unsung virtues: he usually avoids skirting the rules. And when he does, it is not for his personal gain (examples: his effort to loosen immigration rules by presidential decree, or if you like Solyndra). We haven’t had a White House involved in less personal scandal than his for many years.
I like to think Hillary Clinton can reform. She needs to own up fully to her mistake in handling emails while Secretary of State and pledge to run an Administration strictly within the letter and spirit of the law. Careless but not prosecutable is not an adequate standard for the Presidency.
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Turning the clock back
I received this long letter (only slightly edited for spelling and other minor errors) from a group of people listed at the end. I was amused by its accusation that I favor Republika Srpska, since the authorities in that part of Bosnia and Herzegovina regard me as one of its sworn enemies. That said, the letter raises interesting questions about the validity of the Dayton constitution, without however offering any practical alternative in my view.
We are writing to you following the interview you gave to Aljazeera Balkans of June this year where you made a number of claims and statements in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina that we find unacceptable, and some of them also untrue and incorrect.
As you also used a pronoun ‘we’ in the same interview, we would like to ask you to confirm to us if you were speaking on behalf of the US State Department or if it was just a ‘slip of the tongue’? The way you presented your views and analysis to the critical judgement of the public in the interview left us under the impression that you were trying to impose them on the public as the only possible solutions. One would have expected you to act as an independent and well-meaning analyst. However, given the way you made your claims we felt that you were favoring Serbia and its interests of safeguarding the genocidal creation called Republika Srpska (further referred to as RS).
We would like to reflect on some of the claims you made during the interview:
– You claimed that the genocidal entity called RS was in the state of ‘transitional democracy’. We have never known a language where ‘transitional democracy’ is synonymous to Fascism and Neonazism, neither of which bear even a slightest resemblance to even the most primitive form of democracy. Therefore, apart from that claim of yours being untrue and incorrect, we find it also to be a very damaging and unacceptable promotional stunt favoring RS.
– You claimed that the Dayton Constitution has to be amended (or ‘reformed’). As someone who worked closely with Richard Holbrooke on creating Dayton Peace Accords one would expect you to reflect on it over the time, and to admit to yourself, at least from this time distance, what we all already know. And we have known for long that Dayton Peace Accords are a criminal agreement in that it rewarded genocide, war crimes, and aggression, and suspended the only legal Constitution – the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina that had already extsted. It was a move that nobody had either a moral or legal right to make. We believe that you are familiar with the fact that the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina was confirmed by the majority vote of the Bosnian citizens at the referendum of 29 February and 1 March 1992 as an expression of the highest level of democracy.
On the other hand, Annex IV of Dayton Peace Accords, which is considered to be the Bosnian Constitution at present, is illegal as it has ever been endorsed by the Bosnian Parliament, and as it is being breached by everybody, and in particular by Dodik on a regular basis.
We believe that you are well aware that Dayton Peace Accords, and Dayton ‘Constitution’ alike, are completely dysfunctional. Therefore, we are struggling to understand why you still continue to persist on it? The only reason we can see behind it could be that it is the only way to preserve the genocidal creation called RS as Serbia’s criminal war gain. So, we would like to ask you to put forward the arguments in your response to us that would prove us wrong with respect to those intents.
One cannot talk of any changes or ‘reforms’ to the Dayton ‘Constitution’ as the ‘Constitution’ itself is contrary to the basic international laws, Conventions, and the UN Charter. Such a ‘Constitution’ is contrary to the human rights and freedoms which explains why it has been defeated, and in effect, terminated several times at the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg.
It may be that due to the way you feel about Dayton Peace Accords as its co-author you don’t seem to want to concede that Dayton Peace Accords, and ultimately Dayton ‘Constitution’, are the main and only obstacles to any progress of Bosnia and Herzegovina including the progress towards the Euro-Atlantic integrations which, at the same time you yourself (sic!) seem to be favoring.
– It is an unbeatable fact that Dayton ‘Constitution’ has to be terminated, and not changed or ‘reformed’ as you say, as it is morally and legally unacceptable, and as much as the whole of Dayton Peace Accords, it is the main obstacle to any progress of our country. Besides, the International Community have meant [the] Dayton Peace Accords to be only a temporary solution that was to stop the war. Please don’t try to affirm it as a permanent solution.
– In the same interview of June you were staunchly defending the April Package of the constitutional changes that you also co-authored. That was a ‘package’ of requests made by Milorad Dodik which the US State Department tried to push through via McElhaney and some of our politicians led by Sulejman Tihic. Its one and only aim was to preserve the genocidal RS, and to give it a right to veto as well as the decision-making powers that would be based on ethnicity which would have copper-fastened the genocidal entity, and made Bosnia and Herzegovina dissolve.
Although the Bosnian Parliament rejected the April Package, given your criticism of Haris Silajdzic in your interview of June this year, it appears that you still intend on continuing to pursue the April Package. And, we believe that you are well aware of the facts that the April Package would have copper-fastened the genocidal apartheid called RS. Therefore, all of us who took part in preventing an attempt to copper-fasten the genocidal creation called RS, strongly condemn and fully reject any such criticism of yours.
We would like to invite you to work hard on terminating the genocidal creation called RS, being led and guided by the international laws and Convention on Genocide Prevention and Punishment. Although we believe that you are well familiar with the International Court of Justice Judgement of 27 February 2007 which declared RS guilty of act of genocide, we would still like to remind you of it. Anything that has been created on genocide cannot continue to exist as it is legally invalid and void. Article 297. of the Judgement reads as follows:
297. The Court concludes that acts committed in Srebrenica, which fall within Article II(a) and (b) of the Convention, had been carried out with a specific intention to destroy in part a group of Bosnian Muslims as such; and accordingly, those represent acts of genocide which were committed by the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) in Srebrenica and the surrounding area starting on 13 Juy 1995.
Based on that Judgement the genocidal entity RS is legally untenable – bearing in mind the ius cogens principle, the UN Charter, and the Convention on Genocide Prevention and Punishment, and with genocide having been committed in all of the country, and not just in Srebrenica. The fact that Annex VII of Dayton Peace Accords has been breached due to the Fascism and apartheid that is being carried out by the genocidal creation RS, only means that genocide continues. The fact that one of the key conditions of Dayton Peace Accords continues to be breached makes Dayton Peace Accords legally void and voidable as per Contract law.
According to both the country’s and international laws, the citizens have every right to revert to the previous Constitution which is the Constitution of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. There is no need to reform that Constitution as it is a civilian and European one, and as it is based on civil rights and freedoms.
– At 13:57 minute of your interview of June, speaking of the ‘constitutional reforms’ you contradicted yourself by saying:
‘We need to strengthen the government in Sarajevo’, and ‘That also means devolution of powers to entitites, cantons, and municipalities’.
Do not those two statements exclude each other?
Your statement on ‘devolution of powers’ led us to conclude that you support not only the preservation of the genocidal RS, but that you are also very much in favor of further decentralization of the Federation, which is unacceptable, and leads to the total destruction of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and gettoization of its Bosniak-Muslim majority population which would be squeezed to live on 24% of its territory till they finally disappear. At the same time RS would remain unitarian, monoethnic creation built on genocide of Bosniaks and Bosnian Catholics.
– In the same interview you also stated that you would ask Serbia for help with devolution of powers in Bosnia and Herzegovina. It is both unacceptable and illegitimate for anyone to ask or encourage a foreign country to interfere or intervene in our internal affairs. And, to make it sound even worse than it already is such an ‘invite’ is being made to the country that committed an act of aggression on us, and occupied half of our territory having also committed genocide in the process. Is not inviting Serbia to interfere in our country in any way, including ‘help with devolution of powers’ an act of aggression on Bosnia and Herzegovina? Having signed Dayton Peace Accords, both Serbia and Croatia in effect admitted to committing an act of aggression on our country. By signing Dayton Peace Accords they both agreed to respect the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of our country, and not to continue the aggression on our country. Or, perhaps you are inclined to interpret their signatures as their right to intervene and interfere in our country any way they want- be it as they please or with the help and encouragement of the international community? Does that not constitute an act of aggression in international law?
Never in its 1,000 years old history has any part of our country been part of Serbia. But Sandzak which is now part of Serbia historically has been part of our country. Applying the same logic of ‘asking for help with devolution of powers’ would mean that we have even a much greater (and historically well founded) right to interfere in the internal affairs of Serbia and the way it should be organised as a state. Finally, given that for us Serbia is an aggressor, and still a Fascist country (judging by who sits in its government and Parliament), we would like to ask if you would find it acceptable for Nazi Germany (if it, hypothetically, still existed) to be a ‘tutor’ to one of the countries with the majority Jewish population, that it had occupied, and where it had committed Holocaust and war crimes?
– We would like to remind you of the historic fact that no Serbs or Croats ever lived in our country until the second half of the 19th century. There was only one people- Bosniaks of three different confessions that also welcomed Sephardic Jews from Spain who settled in our country, and have been living with us since. And our country was never part of either Croatian or Serbian territory. Unlike Serbia, we do not base our history on myths and lies, but on the actual historical facts and documents that nobody has any right to either deny or disregard. Read more
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