Red,
http://www.shofar.de/labeling-e.html The PR images of "Serbs as Nazis" became accepted as fact, even though the leaders of supposed "victims" were an Islamic fundamentalist and a Neo-Nazi Holocaust denier!
Clinton saw himself as "FDR", Blair as "Churchill", and the ICTY as "Nurenburg". All those countries that let the Jews down during WWII, wanted to prove that "genocide would not be tolerated" this time -- even if no genocide was taking place in the Balkans and the "defenseless victims" were "anything but that" Muslims:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1753444/posts
http://www.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,91134-bosnia_p3705,00.html
The ICTY is a kangaroo court where they make up "laws" as they prosecute, and not before -- they base these "laws" around what sort of case that they think that they can make against a indictee after the fact, not before. It's so bad that even the US will not allow it's citizens to be governed by a "World Court". The purpose of these UN Courts are nothing more than to justify writing history from the victors point of view. The people involved in prosecuting this are not heroes, they are narcisstic villains.
Our involvement in Balkan politics has yielded nothing for us except embarassment (we don't accept a World Court to prosecute us, but we expect you little countries to agree to it!) and grief (we gave al Qaeda a new base in Europe) -- we got our "thanks" for saving Muslims on 9/11.
The whole situation is a sick farce.
"we don't accept a World Court to prosecute us, but we expect you little countries to agree to it"
We have a justice system and apply the UCMJ to our troops. If no outside force had stepped in, no NAZI and no Serb war crimes would have gotten prosecuted by anyone. To some degree you're right. Many of these countries are not ruled by laws but regimes or a sort of "mob rule". In those cases a court like the Hague is very well suited to do what these nations are not willing to do on their own, apply some resemblance of law where there is none.
In Iraq today, some Sunni surly also thinks Iraq's courts are a kangaroo justice system. But just like our nationalistic thinking Serbs in this forum, they are blinded by their own personal convictions. Saddam and many others are war criminals. They are war criminals by international law.
http://www.un.org/law
In the US DoD the service member is is subjected to a code of justice that by far exceeds any international court system. The Hague will never sentence someone to death, which is possible under the UCMJ. The DoD investigates itself internally and prosecutes people for crimes even though they could easily have covered things up.
Example: The case of CPT Maynulet at Wiesbaden Germany in 2005. The DoD could have easily kept a lid on this, but it was a service member (Chief Warrant Officer) who turned the CPT in after review of a drone tape. The initial evidence was a drone tape which only the DoD had in its possession (No one knew). However, CID immediately initiated an investigation and began to dig deeper into the issue. The command immediately went public with the information. They eventually built a case against him and today he is a convicted felon, FBI registered. The behavior of the DoD is in stark contrast to many here who attempt to "rationalize" or through "polemics" attempt to wish away behavior that is illegal and immoral.
There is no doubt that a nation like Great Britain, Germany or the US will go after their own service members if they do wrong. There are numerous such cases from Afghanistan, Iraq, Balkans, Somalia....etc. The Canadian para unit in another example, and several service members got in some very hot water for some of the actions in Somalia. But they policed themselves. However, Serbia was not going to police itself. So yes, there is a double standard. So what?