John Montgomery Presents This Week's  Creep Logo by Lynn Kauczka

June 30, 2001 Slobodan Milosevic

It's an all too rare event when we get to watch a despicable, murderous, evil and ugly monster go down. But it happened this week to Slobodan Milosevic. So pour yourself a shot of your favorite beverage and savor the moment. He's called himself "The Ayatollah Khomeini of Serbia". Others have called him "The Butcher of Belgrade". I'll just call him Slobo.

Slobo is the former President of Yugoslavia, but this week, the government he used to control turned him over to the international war crimes tribunal at The Hague in the Netherlands, where he will face charges of "crimes against humanity". Humanity. That's you and me they're talking about. So have another shot. Slobo had once claimed "the Serbs will follow me no matter what." Nobody followed him this time.

What are these crimes against humanity? Slobo was responsible for putting many previously unknown words into our vocabulary, like Serbs, Croats, Bosnia, Kosovo and ethnic cleansing. His war mongering between those groups in the region ended up destroying Yugoslavia and killing 200,000 people in the 1990's. In 1998, he began the ethnic cleansing of 10,000 Albanians in Kosovo. The tribunal is also preparing a case against him for genocide during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia.

Pretty nasty stuff. But that's not what finally did Slobo in. You know what really pissed off the people who had formerly supported him? He was stealing their money. Not only is Slobo a homicidal maniac, he's a greedy homicidal maniac. He looted hundreds of millions of dollars from Yugoslavia's treasury, leaving its residents penniless. That was what caused him to get booted out of office last fall and thrown in jail last April. Who cares about a few Albanians? We want our money back.

And in the end, it was money that caused the Serbs to turn Slobo over to The Hague. Doing that set the country up to receive over a billion dollars in international aid, which was being delayed until they coughed up Slobo. He had surrendered in April to his countrymen only under the assurance that they wouldn't hand him over to The Hague. They could be heard sheepishly explaining themselves to him this week, saying "Hey Slobo, it was more than a billion dollars! Surely you can understand that!"

What happens to Slobo now? He has threatened to kill himself rather than go on trial, so it would be nice if they just tossed the Butcher a butcher knife and let him do the rest. If that doesn't work, they could put Andrea Yates in charge of the bathroom at the jail. But the more likely probability is that he'll go on trial, be convicted and spend the rest of his life in the hole. Not quite Texas style justice, but good enough for an Ayatollah Khomeini fan club member who has a hundred million dollars of someone else's money stashed somewhere.

So while you're enjoying one last shot, and contemplating a few crimes of your own, keep in mind an important lesson that nearly all politicians know by heart but that Slobo learned the hard way: You can get away with anything as long as you show me the money.