Dickens predicted the Milosevic trial

Ed Morrisey at Captain’s Quarters has a post about the Milosevic war crimes trial. It reminds me of Dickens’ classic novel, “Bleak House.” Check out the comparison:

CQ:

However, a four-year trial with no end in sight has to be some kind of record. Milosevic's sick days cannot account for all of the delay. In order to get that strung out, one has to find incompetent prosecution and ineffective courtroom management from the judges.

Dickens:

On such an afternoon, if ever, the Lord High Chancellor ought to be sitting here—as here he is—with a foggy glory round his head, softly fenced in with crimson cloth and curtains, addressed by a large advocate with great whiskers, a little voice, and an interminable brief, and outwardly directing his contemplation to the lantern in the roof, where he can see nothing but fog. On such an afternoon some score of members of the High Court of Chancery bar ought to be—as here they are—mistily engaged in one of the ten thousand stages of an endless cause, tripping one another up on slippery precedents, groping knee-deep in technicalities, running their goat-hair and horsehair warded heads against walls of words and making a pretence of equity with serious faces, as players might.

It’s not possible to improve upon Dickens’ perfection.

If, by chance, you venture over to Project Gutenberg to read a little from that Dickens’ link, just reading the first chapter will give you an insight into the character of the European state. Where in the world can you find any deliberative body that accomplishes anything of value, blathering on and on about an absolutely slam-dunk obvious subject for four years? Dickens and Kipling, two of my favorite authors, regularly reappear in modern life. I read somewhere that one definition of a classic is that it is timeless. In Bleak House, the lawyers are arguing Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce for years in order to milk all the money out of the estate. Can it be any different at the Milosevic trial? Imagine all the camp followers employed there.

As the EU member states fall into a geriatric death spiral, think of the resources tied up in these trials. Whenever I go to a meeting at work, I count the number of people present, estimate the salaries of those I don’t know and compute the dollars spent discussing whatever minutiae happens to be on the agenda. I then convert it to lab equipment or training and figure out the real cost of the meeting. Do the same of the Milosevic trial and convert the money into R&D dollars for any of the ailing state-run industries in the EU. Since those companies are run by the government, there is no need to compute the indirect effects of taxation on some company’s bottom line. That trial is dipping directly out of the future survival of some state corporation. As the EU gets positively squashed by the economic dynamos in the Anglo, Chinese and Indian economies, recall the Milosevic trial and think about the choices the EU countries made. While the case may be a UN case, the EU is most certainly providing support for it.