Posted on 03/17/2006 7:38:33 AM PST by Toddsterpatriot
On March 11, the former Serbian leader and president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, died in his prison cell at The Hague, where he had been on trial for four years and one month for war crimes and genocide. The Serbian Socialist Party leader Zoran Andelkovic responded to the news of Milosevic's death with the following statement:
"Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Socialist Party of Serbia and a former president of Serbia and Yugoslavia was murdered today at the tribunal in Hague. The decision of the tribunal to disallow Milosevic's medical treatment at the Bakunin Institute in Moscow represents a prescribed death sentence against Milosevic. Truth and justice were on his side, and this is why they have used a strategy of gradual killing of Slobodan Milosevic. The responsibility for his death is clearly with the Hague tribunal."
A partisan accusation or the truth? Milosevic was known to be seriously ill. The Russian government promised to return Milosevic to the tribunal after treatment. The tribunal refused. It is easy to conclude that the case against Milosevic had collapsed and that an embarrassed U.S. government, NATO authorities and Hague tribunal decided to let him die in his cell rather than admit that his guilt could not be proven even after a trial lasting four years and one month.
Milosevic was caught up in the post-Soviet-era break-up of Yugoslavia. Nationalist forces broke up the Yugoslav federation. During 1991-92, Croatia, Slovenia, Macedonia and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia. Large Serbian minorities in Croatia and Bosnia objected and claimed the identical right of self-determination to remain in the federation as Croats and Muslims claimed to leave it. Croatian and Bosnian Serbs organized, and a war against secession began.
Milosevic could hardly remain a Serbian leader and not support the Serbs. Abraham Lincoln was canonized for invading the South to prevent its secession, but Milosevic was damned for trying to protect Yugoslavia's territorial integrity. In the end, Milosevic accepted secession. In 1995, Milosevic negotiated the Dayton Agreement, which ended the war in Bosnia. According to the encyclopedia Wikipedia, "Milosevic was credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan peace."
In 1998, Milosevic was confronted with a more severe problem. Armed actions by the separatist Kosovar Liberation Army, listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, in the ancient Serbian province of Kosovo broke out into warfare. Milosevic was now trying to hold onto a province not of Yugoslavia but of Serbia itself, a province that had been colonized by ethnic Albanians. The Serbian population in Kosovo was outnumbered nine to one and suffered greatly at the hands of the KLA.
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 United States 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 U.S. 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 the "international community" goes along with it. The numerous civilians killed by U.S. interventions are just as dead as the ones killed by heads of state attempting to hold onto their countries. Why are the latter deaths war crimes, but not the former?
As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush criticized President Clinton's intervention in Serbia and disavowed the international policeman role for the United States. But as soon as Bush got in office, he plotted to invade Iraq. Why?
Americans should be very concerned that Bush still has not come clean about why he invaded Iraq. Americans should be disturbed that despite the disastrous results in Iraq, Bush still intends "regime change" in Iran and Syria.
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Here's one I hadn't heard before, Milosevic=Lincoln.
According to the encyclopedia Wikipedia, "Milosevic was credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan peace."
Well, now we know where Roberts gets his "facts", Wikipedia. Anyone still want to defend him as a smart guy?
And MSNBC can't get enough, given that King paleo, pat buchanan, is on every one of their talking head shows.
I feel like the weather forecaster in "The Perfect Storm." This thread will either go to 10 replies, or a gazillion when the protectionists and the Balka-philes get together.
Serbia did not have, nor was attempting to get WMDs. Serbia did not harbor any international terrorists, and in fact was fighting the Muslim terrorists in its own country. Milosovic's situation was complicated by the prior secession of Croatia and to a lessor extent the other former Yugoslavian states.
Still, on this issue, Roberts is indeed baying at the moon.
It's still a mystery to these guys, isn't it? They simply refuse to understand the war on terror. They refuse, mainly to seek some type of policical benefit. If Bush can be discredited, or fails, they win elections. Never mind that the USA will ulitimately be filled with havoc, or be destroyed, at least the leftists won a few elections! They are sick.
Holy (bleep), Lincoln and the Balkans on one thread.
These 2 sentences seem to infer Bush established the precedent when in fact it was Bill Clinton.
It also seems to infer that Clinton was thinking out of the box when we all know Clinton was only capable of thinking in the box.
What do you think?
wrt the above, the writer doesn't give poppa Bush 41 his proper due in the overall Balkan matter, although it WAS Klinton who took it to the next level.
Lincoln/Civil War, Milosevic/Kosovo, Roberts/globalism. It IS the Perfect Storm.
It's always funny when someone takes the trouble to cook up a conspiracy theory that's so unnecessary.
Since when did the United States feel the need to go to all this trouble to establish a "precedent" to remove a head of state? Um, what exactly happened to Noriega just a few years earlier? How was that possible before this "precedent"? Mr. Roberts obviously thinks it's shocking for the US to remove a head of state but we have actually done it several times.
More likely explanation - the Clintonistas (plus people like Bob Dole) bought the KLA PR story instead of the Serbia PR story, and they wanted a nice, anti-fascist war (where he could honestly say we had no national interest whatsoever - i.e. it's not "for oil") under his belt, for his "legacy". Simple, and rooted in normal human emotions.
This image of powerful people sitting around thinking about how they can invent a war to "establish a precedent" makes me chuckle. Mr. Roberts, they have no need to do that! Your approval is not that important to them!
Why are the latter deaths war crimes, but not the former?
"War crimes" has a definition. It's not just "bad stuff that happens in a war you don't like". If unarmed civilians are shot execution style that's a war crime; if the US drops a bomb on an enemy combatant & some civilians get killed, it's not. Someone might think the two morally equivalent, but one's a war crime and one's not - because "war crimes" has a definition.
As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush criticized President Clinton's intervention in Serbia and disavowed the international policeman role for the United States. But as soon as Bush got in office, he plotted to invade Iraq. Why?
Because Iraq was actually in our national interest while Serbia wasn't. Saying he doesn't want us to be the policeman is not the same thing as promising not to use the military in our national interest.
Americans should be very concerned that Bush still has not come clean about why he invaded Iraq.
Wow, what *I'm* concerned about is that this author is apparently so freaking dense that after a zillion clear plainspoken speeches from Bush, he still doesn't know why we invaded Iraq.
Americans should be disturbed that despite the disastrous results in Iraq, Bush still intends "regime change" in Iran and Syria.
And why should we be disturbed about that? I don't see a good explanation in this article.
Ah, it's just another one of our civil war threads.
The writer ignores history - (1)Milosevic was a serbian "nationalist" before the Yugoslav fedeation broke up and elected to the head of the Yugoslav federation by the Serbian majority of Yugoslavia on a "Serbian nationalist" platform; (2)every "Serbian minority" militant group in Croatia and Bosnia had organizational links to Milosevic, before Croatia and Bosnia seceeded from the federation.
Milosevic was now trying to hold onto a province not of Yugoslavia but of Serbia itself, a province that had been colonized by ethnic Albanians. The Serbian population in Kosovo was outnumbered nine to one and suffered greatly at the hands of the KLA.
Again more ignoring of history - Was Kosovo "Colonized by ethnic Albanians"?? - No. Did they became a majority that was Muslim and identified with the Muslim Albanians? Yes. The people in Kosovo are not much different than the people in Serbia, other than, unlike the Serbs, their ancesters had not renounced the Muslim identity that their forefathers had taken, by compulsion, during rule under the Ottoman empire. When did Kosovo become a majority of non-Serbs? Centuries before Yugoslavia was Yugoslavia. Yet, from the end of the Ottoman empire, the now-minority Serbs of Kosovo ruled, not so nicely, over all of Kosovo - education, language, media, etc. At the start of the Kosovo push for autonomy there were active moderate forces other than the KLA. The longer the abscence of autonomy took, the less popular the moderates became and the KLA began to seek external support - thus, the origins of its association with Middle East terrorists.
The writer ignores how much Serbia dominated all of Yugoslavia, when it was still Yugoslavia. Most of the military and all important military leadership positions in "Yugoslavia" were held by Serbs. With the dictator gone and seeing the opportunity for more autonomy, all the non-Serbian provinces of Yugoslavia naturally felt occupied and instead of recognizing those natural forces, Milosevic thought he could depend on the Serbian majority alone and continue to promote its supremacy across Yugoslavia. The desire for secession, from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo were not without justification.
Did all the troubles of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia bring in "Middle East" groups and others and allow them to get established? Yes. But it was Milosevic's promotion of Serbian nationalism instead of a true pluralistic federalism that made it all possible. He and other groups of Serbs initiated the military confrontations and carried out most of the "ethnic" cleansing. You reap what you sow.
That's a 10 on the Mark Steyn scale. (Steyn himself often hits 11, per the Spinal Tap scale.)
It has reinforced my belief that this was an internal civil war, in whose outcome the United States had no interest whatsoever.
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