Killing Off Slobo - Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq?

Killing Off Slobo
Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

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Milosevic, already damaged by the wars of secession that destroyed Yugoslavia, lost the media campaign waged by public relations firms hired by contending factions that spun the news that Americans received. Milosevic was demonized, and the Clinton administration had Serbia bombed by
NATO forces for 78 days in the spring of 1999. Many Serbian civilians were killed by the air strikes which hit passenger trains and destroyed the Chinese embassy. In effect, the US interfered in Serbian affairs in behalf of the secession, with the result that Kosovo has been essentially ethnically cleansed of Serbs. Kosovo is apparently still considered to be a part of Serbia, but it is administered by the United Nations. Somehow, this has been presented as a great moral victory for humanity.

If the massive propaganda campaign against Milosevic had many facts behind it, he long ago would have been convicted at the Hague. What was the episode all about?

In my opinion, it was to establish the precedent, later to be employed in the Middle East, that the US government could demonize a head of state geographically distant from any legitimate "sphere of influence" and use military force to remove him. This is precisely the fate of Saddam Hussein, and the Bush regime still hopes to repeat the strategy in Iran and Syria.

The unanswered question is why does the "international community" go along with it? The numerous civilians killed by US interventions are just as dead as the ones killed by heads of state attempting to hold on to their countries. Why are the latter deaths war crimes but not the former?

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http://www.counterpunch.com/roberts03132006.html

Bosnian mess a few years before. And from the Rwanda inaction. Combined with a lot of hyperbole, some propaganda, some actual facts, and a bit of willful blindness of other facts in the face of what would now be called excessively effective 'framing'.

I think anyone that participates in genocide should be placed on trial. Using the lack of effeciency of the World Court to make a case that Slobo is innocent is not an effective argument. Partially because the US doesn't recognize the World Court making it sort of like the League of Nations. Slobo and Sadam were bad dudes and I'm glad they're out of power. However, I'm not pleased with the methods used to remove them from power. I think that would be the argument to make.

I agree that anyone who participates in genocide should be placed on trial, but in order to convict you must prove guilt. The prosecution - entirely a US/British affair, BTW, Ms Ponte didn't even show up 99 percent of the time - failed to do that, they didn't even try. As for the alleged war crimes - these were no better nor worse than what the US (NATO) does in Afghanistan and Iraq, and, in many cases (bombing of markets, train, embassy, refugee column, tv station etc) did in Yugoslavia.

Why even think about how to do "human intervention" right - when the cause is no worse than the (military) solution could be?

Was only a matter of time before they started lionizing the ol' Hitler wannabe in death, just as they did in life.

Fuck them.

for the uninitiated:

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATMilosevictrial.htm


(I have no idea who is behind the "Natural Law Party" in the UK, but the links to mainstream media where the quotes are taken from seem to work.

for the deluded and the deniers:

The Srebrenica massacre was the July 1995 killing of an estimated 8,100 Bosnian males, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly, in the region of Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina by a Serb Army of Republika Srpska under general Ratko Mladić including Serbian state special forces "Scorpions". The same special forces commited war crimes in Kosovo in 1999. The Srebrenica massacre is considered one of the largest mass murders in Europe since World War II and one of the most horrific events in recent European history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre

Srebrenica, Bosnia, the world's first United Nations Safe Area, was the site of the worst case of genocide in Europe since World War II. In July 1995, the Bosnian Serb army staged a brutal takeover of the small, intimate spa town and its surrounding region. Over a period of five days, the Bosnian Serb soldiers separated Muslim families and systematically murdered over 7,000 men and boys in fields, schools, and warehouses.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/cryfromthegrave/

Timeline: Siege of Srebrenica
In the summer of 1995, two years after being designated a United Nations Safe Area, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica became the scene of the worst massacre in the Bosnian war...16 July 1995: Early reports of massacres emerged as the first survivors of the long march from Srebrenica began to arrive in Muslim-held territory.

Following negotiations between the UN and the Bosnian Serbs, the Dutch were at last permitted to leave Srebrenica, leaving behind weapons, food and medical supplies.

In the five days after Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, more than 7,000 Muslim men are thought to have been killed.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/675945.stm

Well, thank for the links, there maybe some people who haven't read these stories, although I doubt it. Some more from a knowledgeable person on this matter:


Using War as an Excuse for More War
Srebrenica Revisited
By DIANA JOHNSTONE

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The Uses of a Massacre

Aside from the probable future use of "Srebrenica", there is the way it has already been used. Indeed, it was perhaps being used even before it happened.

From the the U.N. Secretary General's 1999 Report on Srebrenica, it emerges that the idea of a "Srebrenica massacre" was already in the air at a September 1993 meeting in Sarajevo between Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic and members of his Muslim party from Srebrenica. On the agenda was a Serb proposal to exchange Srebrenica and Zepa for some territories around Sarajevo as part of a peace settlement.

"The delegation opposed the idea, and the subject was not discussed further. Some surviving members of the Srebrenica delegation have stated that President Izetbegovic also told them he had learned that a NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina was possible, but could only occur if the Serbs were to break into Srebrenica, killing at least 5,000 of its people." (1)

Izetbegovic later denied this, but he is outnumbered by witnesses. It is clear that Izetbegovic's constant strategy was to portray his Muslim side in the bloody civil war as pure helpless victims, in order to bring U.S. military power in on his side. On his death bed, he readily admitted as much to his ardent admirer Bernard Kouchner, in the presence of U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke. Kouchner reminded Izetbegovic of a conversation he had had with French President Mitterrand in which he "spoke of the existence of 'extermination camps' in Bosnia."You repeated that in front of the journalists. That provoked considerable emotion throughout the world. <...> They were horrible places, but people were not systematically exterminated. Did you know that? Yes. I thought that my revelations could precipitate bombings. I saw the reaction of the French and the others-I was mistaken. <...> Yes, I tried, but the assertion was false. There were no extermination camps whatever the horror of those places.

... <<

http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone10122005.html

Poor, misunderstood Slobo.

Why don't you reply to the substance.

The Real Reasons for War in Yugoslavia:

Backing up Globalization with Military Might

Karen Talbot

The United States and its NATO underlings clearly were emboldened by their "success" in bombing Yugoslavia, by their earlier bombing of the Serb areas of Bosnia and by their victories in the other remnants of Yugoslavia--Croatia, and Slovenia and Macedonia. Burgeoning military alliances, with the U.S. at the helm, are now more likely than ever to try to intervene in a similar way against any country that refuses to be a new-world-order colony by allowing its wealth and labor power to be plundered by transnational corporations (TNCs). The assault against Yugoslavia threw open the floodgates for new wars, including wars of competition among the industrial powers. President Bill Clinton praised NATO for its campaign in Kosovo, saying the alliance could intervene elsewhere in Europe or Africa to fight repression. "We can do it now. We can do it tomorrow, if it is necessary, somewhere else," he told U.S. troops gathered at the Skopje, Macedonia airport (1)

It is hardly surprising that Clinton and the leaders of the other NATO countries glorified the aggression against Yugoslavia as "preventing a humanitarian catastrophe," "promoting democracy," and "keeping the peace" against a "Hitler-like" dictator who would not adhere to peace agreements. The public was repeatedly assured that the means--the bombing of the people of Yugoslavia--were justified by the ends. The media hype, including unprecedented demonization of the Serbs, was designed to mold public opinion to accept the "justice" of the war. The unmistakable message was that the "Serbs got what they deserved." This rationale also concealed, and allowed unimpeded momentum toward, the true goals behind the stepped-up saber-rattling of the world's superpower and its allies. The skillful disinformation campaign was spectacularly successful even in confusing and derailing sections of the traditional peace and progressive movement in the U.S. and Europe. So let's examine more closely the pretexts for the war and then look at the real motives.

Who Were the Real Terrorists?

In the United States, we were told that the relentless U.S.-led NATO blitzkrieg (23,000 "dumb" bombs and "smart" missiles rained upon Yugoslavia for 79 days) was necessary to protect the human rights of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The U.S. Senate labeled Serbia a "terrorist state" (2). But what could be more "terrorist" than dropping upon civilians--from the sanctuary of high altitude, and from computer-guided missiles--radioactive depleted uranium weapons and outlawed cluster bombs designed to rip human flesh to shreds? Was it not terrorism to deliberately target the entire infrastructure of this small nation including the electrical and water filtration systems critical to the survival of civilians? Was it not terrorism to obliterate 200 factories and destroy the jobs of millions of workers? What of the constant air assault--"fire from the sky"--against cities, villages, schools, hospitals, senior residences, TV towers and studios, oil refineries, chemical plants, electrical power plants, transmission towers, gas stations, homes, farms, marketplaces, buses, trains, railroad lines, bridges, roads, medieval monasteries, churches, historic monuments--destruction amounting to more than $100 billion? What of the incalculable destruction of the environment including the deliberate bombardment of chemical plants. Above all, was it not terrorism to kill, maim, traumatize, impoverish, or render homeless tens of thousands of men, women and children? Not only was NATO's war a reprehensible act of inhumanity, it was in contravention of all norms of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations. It was an unprecedented war by the most powerful military force in history. It involved the 19 wealthiest nations which possess 95 percent of the world's armaments against a small sovereign nation that had little chance of countering such an attack.

We were told that this war was for a noble, humanitarian purpose and people wanted to believe this explanation. Yet the most obvious and glaring contradiction was the absence of any similar concerns about hundreds of thousands of Serbs expelled from the Krajina region of Croatia by the Croatian military in 1995, described as "the largest ethnic cleansing" of the Yugoslav civil war (3). Thousands died in that "Operation Storm." Agim Ceku, who became the commander of the Kovoso Liberation Army (KLA) and later promoted to head of the Kosovo Protection Force (KPF), a key ally of the U.S. and NATO in Kosovo, as Brigadier General of the Croatian Armed Forces, had been a chief architect of "Operation Storm." The private Military Professional Resource, Inc. (MPRI) comprised of "retired" U.S. military officers, was also heavily involved in "training" for this and other actions in Croatia and Bosnia.(4)

More Here:
http://icpj.org/millitary_build.html

Very good OP and while many liberals lapped up the militaristic-humanitarian spoon fed stuff the reality, parallels and history was quite different. The above article explains quite alot in detail and context.

If you did not read or listen to Democracy Now! from today's program you may wish to as it is relevant to your post.

Yugoslavia, like Iraq, was Balkanized because it wasn't playing along with the Globalizers. Most folks just want to demonize Saddam and Milosevic and etc. (which is easy to do as they are unsavory characters) instead of looking at the more complicated geo-political affairs of the region.

I have been wanting to know about the real reasons for this war. This helped alot. People that really want to understand the forces behind all the tragedy on this planet should read it as well.

snip>

Summary

The U.S.-NATO destruction of Yugoslavia established a precedent for military attack, cloaked in the disguise of democracy and human rights, against any sovereign country that might have the temerity to stand up to the encroachment of TNCs(Transnational Corporations). It awakened millions of people to the ferocious nature of the U.S. corporate drive for world dominance. That process needs to be accelerated by exposing the palliatives designed to mislead the public and getting down to a true diagnosis which can help lead the peace and justice movement to an effective response. We need to tear away the mask of lies and disclose the real goals of this new-world-order imperialism and see clearly how it hurts workers, poor, and the oppressed within our own borders and globally. We need to see the ways in which military dominance increasingly works in close tandem with economic globalization, privatization, and the drive for corporate super profits. This basic understanding is essential to building a powerful united worldwide resistance movement for real justice and peace.

snip>

Been perusing through some of the articles. Somebody is not telling the truth. It certainly seems possible that the reasons we went to war weren't the stated ones.

It sucks having to dig so hard to find the truth. It sure seems like there is/was a cover-up going on.

Milosevic was the baddie so NATO gets to kill thousands of Serbian civilians and destroy their infrastructure. And the reason people assembled on bridges during the sorties was because they were as evil as Milosevic. Have I got it straight now?

Well at least your baiting is too blunt to be terribly persuasive.