An Ill-Timed Death

Some people are undoubtedly and understandably pleased by the death of former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic over the weekend. After all, he was a genocidal maniac who deserved his fate, be it a heart attack or a case of poisoning in a Dutch jail cell while on trial for war crimes. But his death prevented the trial from concluding and delivering justice to his surviving victims in the former Yugoslavia. Moreover, it prevented the court in the Hague from finding out more about Milosevic's co-conspirators. Any immediate hope for reconciliation among the various ethnic groups from Bosnia to Kosovo has been dashed.

The death of Lee Harvey Oswald, to put Milosevic's death in an American perspective, similarly prevented the United States from the catharsis an Oswald trial would have afforded after the Kennedy assassination.