Sword and court: Since rewriteing Kosovo's history, VV moral absoluteism

It says: Petrit Selimi

VV uses moral absoluteism as its sword, in any political discussion, from the debate on the Special Court to talks with Serbia. In the best option, this is the morally lazy one disguised as a virtue.

Tens of thousands of Albanians, led by Kosovo veterans' organisations, protested last week against “the great injustice” being held in the Specialised Chambers, where co-founders of the military are being tried that initiated the uprising against Milosevic's regime.

Albania's Prime Minister Edi Rama, as well as important Albanian political figures from the region, strongly supported the protest, with some visible exceptions:

The president and former Kosovo prime minister remained largely silent. In fact, former government party, Vetevendosje, of incumbent Prime Minister Albin Kurti, published a harsh statement, hinting that Hashim Thaci brought this court on himself, that he had supported the establishment of the Special Court and therefore no one to blame for the indictment against him.

This is a common curse that allows the former prime minister to keep the role of the prophet with foresight: I have a day. I said” But there is also a cynical distortion of history, and a perfect example of since Kurti's permanent sense of “moral justice” has started by slipping into a rotten historical revision.

The VV's claim, of course, reminds us of the Gospel according to Matthew (26:52), where Jesus tells Peter:

Make your sword its place, because whoever takes the sword will die by the sword. This is one of the most quoted verses of the Bible and well conveys the message VV is trying to give the Albanian public, repeated without end by its party camera and the army of trolls on social networks.

But the whole claim is a big logical mistake. A dangerous falsity.

The context VV chooses to forget
A few years ago, Dr. Nevenka Tromp, a war crimes researcher and experienced investigator at The Hague Tribunal (ICTY), gave a speech that well explained the context of the creation of Specialised Chambers:

The speed of mentioning President Thaci's name in Dick Marty's report showed that the authors of the report and those providing information to authors aimed at establishing a special court and that President Thaci could be one of the accused. Paradoxically, the court managed to be formally established only in 2015 after Hashim Thaci lobbied strongly for the Parliament to change the Constitution of Kosovo to allow such a court to be deployed abroad in The Hague. This did not affect his popularity with his fellow citizens. The opposition used him in the political fight against him and his party... This score failure discour presents Thaci's role in establishing the tribunal as a sign of his political weakness. ”

So let's be clear: The Special Court was not a personal project of President Thaci.
It was the product of geopolitical blackmail. In 2015, the then U.S. government exerted tremendous pressure on Kosovo leaders and Parliament deputies to approve the court's creation in response to Dick Marty's accusations of organ trafficking. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland made a clear threat: If Kosovo refused to create the tribunalen itself, the United Nations would impose it, and Kosovo's “relations with the international community would be suspended. ”

The choice for Thaci and the then ruling PDK-LDK coalition was not in the middle of a “po” or “jo” for the special court, but amid a process led by Kosovo or a UN-binding court under Resolution 1244. Kosovo's top allies in the United States -- from then Vice President Joe Biden to Congressman Eliot Engel and former Senator Bob Dole -- conveyed alarming and clear messages.

Thaci, Mustafa and their government chose to preserve their alliance with the US. This was not a moral or ideological attitude; it was a tense strategic compromise. By taking over the process, Kosovo maintained at least one portion of its sovereignty, and what is most important, its relationship with the US. Today's VV rhetoric completely erases this reality, claiming that Thaci almost willingly invited foreign judges to destroy his own legacy.

In the same speech mentioned in Pristina (which, not by chance, was boycotted by VV), Dr. Tromp offered another prospect:

Another perspective interprets Thaci's role in the creation of Specialised Chambers as a sign of his leadership force. So, Thaci, realizing the danger that, once the tribunal was created, he himself could be charged, placed Kosovo's long-term strategic interest in his personal and professional interest. ”

Real boogies and fake dilemmas

This is VV's specialty: simplifying complicated issues to claim moral victory through a populist disinformation of moral absoluteism, propaganda with a momentum of slavery.

Presenting Thaci's decision as his betrayal of Kosovo, they create a <x0-gogogoggle straw” that can easily burn him. In the VV's binary world, there are only two choices: total resistance (which they claim to be leading heroicly now, although in 1998-1999 they did not testify strongly to the battle) or total surrender to American interests.

But that is a false dilemma. The refusal was never a clear or secure option for Kosovo. It would have brought the exact result that the US warned: a UN-appointed court, completely out of control of Kosovo. VV's moral absoluteism ignores the reality of compromise, presenting politics as a race of moral cleanness.
This type of discurs works well in populist mining and posting on Facebook. It gives comfort to party believers, conglomerates the past as a moral drama, and saves the VV forever from the obligation to explain the cost of rejecting the court for Kosovo.

Retrospect lessons

There's a popular saying in America:

“It means analyzing the game after it's finished, claiming you know what should be done differently. Kurti is the master of this in Kosovo politics. It's easy to judge the past when you know the end of a confession or event. But in 2015, nothing was clear. Thaci, Mustafa and other leaders did not face choice between “good and evil”, but between the worst and worst “ “: to leave the Russian and Chinese process entirely in court or risk a decline in popularity by creating a local but unified court in The Hague.
No one could then have known that an American prosecutor like Jack Smith would distort justice, shifting the focus from false charges for organ trafficking, to an absurd indictment that Thaci was “the undisputed leader of a <x2-based criminal enterprise” of the KLA, claiming that this uprising was largely a well-organised military structure.

As Daniel Serwer writes, former American diplomats and good Balkan connoisseur, in an editorial “, a tribulal that has emerged from the tracks”:

I never imagined that the Special Chambers would do what they did. The Kosovo Parliament, myself, believed the main focus would be charges of organ trafficking. But there was one trick: One idea was sold and another surrendered. ”
So, sodium “we have days” The VV's is nothing but retrospectives showed up after the event, dressed in the burden of prophecy. This concern implies that Kurti has an understanding that no one else could have had, much less a parliament under pressure. This is also a narratory that ignores the weight of responsible leadership for decisions made in the fog of uncertainty and state interest, not the clarity of retrospect and narrow party interest

Death by Sword

At the Bible's warning, those who live with the sword die by the sword.
The VV sword is moral absoluteism in any political decision, from the Special Court to the dialogue with Serbia, was always shown with momentum in captivity. But this populist and unproductive rhetoric has begun to turn against them. This black and white outlook serves well for partisan attacks on “traitors”, but depletes Kosovo's political discourse. It makes Kosovo poor even by alliances, poisons relations between Albanians and between us and others. By reducing history and diplomacy to personal guilt, expressing ballistic languages, the VV betrays the intellectual integrity it claims to protect.

The decision by Kosovo's Parliament and Thaci to create the Special Court was not heroic, but neither is it raw.

It was pragmatic: an imperfect choice made under pressure and threats, within the retina and borders of a small country trying to survive under the demands of the most powerful allies that freed and independent. The VV's refusal to accept this complexity is not moral clarity. It's morally lazy, if not worse.

Politics, such as religion, requires modesty and humility. And those who insist on waving the sword of moral justice against any opponent declared traitor can easily find that history and popular vote have sharp edges.