Slobo dead, and good riddance

Well, Slobodan Milosevic is dead - died in his bed, even if it was in a jail cell in the Hague. I can't say that I think the whole trial proceeding - the sheer length of it, the fact that Milosevic managed to make a monkey of the court, succeded in getting himself elected to parliament in Serbia from his cell, and generally garnered sympathy for his genocidal self in Serbia, while in the end running out the clock on justice - speaks well for the Yugoslavia tribunal or for international tribunals in general. What are we running on costs for the Arusha tribunal - $20 million or so per trial? See this post by Julian Ku at Opinio Juris summarizing an important piece on this costs question in Foreign Policy.

The Economist takes a different view this week, here, in a special sub only report. But then it's difficult to take the Economist too seriously on its reporting without knowing who actually wrote the report. On the three or four occasions where I've been consulted by someone writing an Economist special report, the journalist in question had sharply formulated editorial views on what the result of the "investigation" was supposed to be, and on one occasion was actually a player in the process temporarily playing journalist.