Posted on 03/17/2006 7:38:33 AM PST by Toddsterpatriot
It was also complicated by the fact that the Yugoslav constitution explicitly gave the republics the right to unilateral secession. It wasn't a matter of interpretation or "silence equaling consent," as the Neo-Confederates argue regarding the US situation.
Bottom line: Milosevic was a Communist thug who somehow managed to become some sort of "conservative hero."
This is not such an outlandish question to ask, especially when you consider the following factors:
1. Serbia represented absolutely no threat to the U.S., and yet the U.S. government twisted itself into knots to justify military action to break up Yugoslavia in the context of "the international community" (i.e., the United Nations didn't authorize any military action, so some half-@ssed justification was concocted under NATO).
2. There was a lot of vocal opposition among Republicans to the U.S. military action in the Balkans back in 1999 -- with the notable exception of those same "neo-conservative" jack@sses who have been such ardent supporters of military action against Iraq for the last 15 years.
3. Point #2 is particularly relevant when you consider that in recent years the U.S. has found itself in the bizarre position of waging a so-called "war on terror" in the Middle East after already serving as the strong-arm for radical Muslims in the Balkans. Richard Perle, in fact, was a paid consultant to the Bosnian Muslim leadership at the Dayton accords in the late 1990s.
Paul Craig Roberts may be off his rocker in a lot of ways, but I challenge anyone to provide me a rational, concise explanation for the idiotic combination of points I raised here.
You wonder if people like Roberts and Buchanan aren't using too much Viagara or something. This is just beyond silliness.
For a real Doomsday Thread, toss in Dubai.
How is attacking a country (Serbia) that was no threat, practice for attacking a country that was (Iraq) or is (Iran)?
I understand your sentiment and in pure "geographic" terms one cannot dispute the "civil war" label to what happened.
However, we are jaundiced here in the U.S., because we have a certain mindset as to what constitutes a nation, and no matter what distinctions we have, from one region to another, we, for the most part, do not allow those distinctions to make us think less of the whole as "our" nation.
That was never the case with Yugoslavia and it was only the communist dictatorship that held it in place. Yugoslavia was as artificially created as most of the countries in Africa were, during colonization, and as were most of the current Middle East countries. Boundries were drawn where it was convenient for the major powers, at the scacrifice of natural, ancient ethnic divisions.
Many of those division might have been lessened over time, if the "national" borders had respected them, and allowed peaceful relationships to expand between "different" people who each had a national interest in that peace - as western Europe finally settled into.
Just like the breakup of the Soviet Union, the old divisions in the artificial state of Yugoslavia were never healed by the force of dictatorship; and worse, that dictatorship made of group, the Serbs, more than simply dominant, within the dictatorship. To Croats, Bosnians and others, the end of dictatorship should have also meant the end of Serb domination. Milosevic disagreed.
I disagree as to your thought that we should have stayed out of it, and in fact, I and many others (Maragaret Thatcher) saw very early intervention (G.H.W. Bush) as necessary to prevent what inevitably followed.
I saw our two major sacrifices for peace in Europe, WWI and WWII and our forty plus struggle to defeat the largest European dictatorship, the Soviets, and I saw our great-grandfathers, our grandfathers and our fathers watching as we stood by while another dictator embarked on a new round of genocide, within Europe. Had we twice saved Europe and defeated the Soviets, just to make a Milosevic, nazi style dictatorship possible??
No. I saw the failure of the U.S., Britain, France and Germany to intervene early as (1)the laziness of "peace" and (2) a betrayal of many generations of U.S. and western European sacrifice to prevent such atrocities. Like all bullies, Milosevic saw weakness and decided to take advatage of it - no one was going to stop him. We, beginning with G.H.W. Bush should have forcesully and intervened; and had we should have done so early on, Al Queda would not now be in Kosovo. We needed the Bush II doctrine at the end of Bush I.
I agree with your sentiments in that post, but it's worth noting that the U.S. approach to Iraq is the exact opposite of the U.S. approach to Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia the U.S. supported the break-up of an artificial nation, while in Iraq the U.S. insists on perpetuating this delusional idea that an artificial nation can be sustained over time.
Kosovo is a part of the legal territory of SERBIA-MONTENEGRO.
Whether YOU like it or not, ths land of KOSOVO-METOJIA( MEANING THE LANDS OF THE MONASTERY) IS NOT THE LAND OF THE ALBANIANS.
So-called Albanians just moved into Kosovo with the help of the Turks hundreds of years ago.
Later, during WWII, under their friend, Hitler, they got more land as payment for their mining lead for Hitler's bullets and for forming a division of SS.
When Tito the commie atheist took over, he gave them more lands so the CHRISTIAN CHURCH of Kosovo would be weakened and hurt.
And, now with the help of the Clintonistas, the EU and the UN, the ALbanians have have become some of the BIGGEST LAND THIEVES IN THE BALKANS!! PLUS, they have stolen from a CHURCH!!
They have burned Churches and desecrated over 200 cemetries, removing not just crosses and monuments but also the DEAD . HOW CIVILIZED OF THE ALBANIANS TO TOSS DEAD CHRISTIANS BONES AROUND LIKE TRASH!!!
Plus, their primitive and feudal-type clann society is NOT one which can adapt to the level of Europe. The clan system defies freedom and democracy and even representative democacy.
The article on this thread is NOT very good and Milosevic was NO friend to the Christian Church in Kosovo-Metojia. In fact, his commie government refused to return Church property after he came to power.
Slobo was no friend of the Church and was an atheist!!
DOES EUROPE NEED ANOTHER COUNTRY FILLED WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE SO PRIMITIIVE AND VOLITILE AS TO BEHAVE LIKE WILD ISLAMICS WHO RESIDE IN THE AREAS AROUND ISRAEL???
I think not.... somebody CIVILIZED needs to rule Kosovo for a long, long time.. and try to breed/teach/knock some sense into the heads of those wild Albanian tribal clans!!
And it not ALBANIAN CLAN CHIEFS who need to be in charge... that would like letting the insane run the asylum!!
No argument there,
and the test will be how central or how dispersed the power in Iraq will be allocated, over time.
If Kurds and Sunnis cannot achieve satisfactory political accomodation, then even without a civil war, the "national" government will probably go through as much, or more, repeated "constitutional" crises as have the French and the Italians.
That could be bad in terms of Iraq's relations with Iran, Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, but an ineffectual national goverment, without a civil war, may result in a higher degree of defacto autonomy for the Kurds and Sunnis. Time will tell.
Already the Kurds have advanced so much in the north, Democraticly and economically that Iran is having a hard time keeping their Kurds penned in, because the Iraqi kurds relative autonomy and booming economy are creating work and jobs for Kurds, in Iran as well Iraq.
Once the death wish of the Sunnis peters out, they too could spur their economic development with their ties to Jordan, regardless of what the "national" government does. They, like the Kurds, could trade political mastery of Iraq for self-reliance and economic development, without being required to make any religious concessions. They need to acknowledge that (1)they will never be the supreme power in Iraq again, but (2)they do not need to be to prosper.
No one disputes that, in the technical sense, and it has nothing to do with "what I like or not". What everyone questions is whether or not the Serbian ethnic cleansing operations in the 1990s and the response of the Muslim's of Kosovo since then, leave any room for Serbia to ever again excerise, as a minority, control over the majority in Kosovo, without another war. Most observers do not think accomodation between the two sides will ever be possible, until generations afterwards when, and if, they have been spent peacefully with each other on two sides of a border.
"Later, during WWII, under their friend, Hitler, they got more land as payment for their mining lead for Hitler's bullets and for forming a division of SS.
Hitler made deals with all kinds of groups in Yugoslavia during the war, Serbs included and the Serbs, as a group, were no more against the communists than anyone else. There is no political "purity" among any group in Yugoslavia from the war years through the end of Tito's rule, and after.
"They have burned Churches and desecrated over 200 cemetries, removing not just crosses and monuments but also the DEAD . HOW CIVILIZED OF THE ALBANIANS TO TOSS DEAD CHRISTIANS BONES AROUND LIKE TRASH!!!
Yes, the minority Serbs in Kosovo have not been well protected by the useless U.N. and it's horrible and oh yes, two other things, just two:
SREBRENICA and SERAJEVO and you reap what you sow.
I don't think it's so far-fetched. There was a lot of talk back then about what was going on behind the scenes. Maybe the U.S. military thought it could hone its ability to strike urban targets in a war against a government while minimizing impacts on civilians.
"Willie, I know you hate the military, but let us bomb Serbia so that years after you leave office, we'll be better prepared for when George W. Bush wants to bomb Iraq."
"Okay."
No, not far fetched at all. LOL!!
And if you don't think the U.S. military knew in 1999 that we would be invading Iraq sometime in the not-to-distant future, then you have no idea how the U.S. government works.
'Cuz everybody knows, Free Trade = Marxism!
= )
I gave up at "Bush regime."
And those churches in KOSOVO and their monks actually sheltered ALL people during the NATO bombing and related events of 1999!!! After the Serbian army left... the Albanian KLA raped the nuns and murdered some of the very monks who had helped so many ALBANIAN victims of that war!!
Shows how MUCH you do NOT know!! NOT MUCH!!!
You are Wrong about WWII. The Serbs did not make deals with Hitler. They were the ONLY group in all of Yugoslavia which did NOT, I repeat, DID NOT form any SS troops to support Hitler's dream of world domination. SERBS were victims of the nazis and There SERBIAN provinces were OCCUPIED!!
They also DID NOT participate in the pogram against the Jews of Yugolavia. This IS a documented fact at the Holocaust museum in Washington and in Israeli documentations. The other night another HOLOCAUST revisionist tried to implicate the Serbs in the holocaust and his "evidence" was deleted by the moderator when documental evidence was provided from Israeli sources!!!
Try NOT to paint the SERBS with the same "nazi"brush that ALbanian,Croats and Bosnians deserve so much!!
While the Serbian Chetniks( Royalists) were busy saving over 500 American and British flyers, who had been shot down over Jugoslavia by the nazis, the Bosnians and Croats were really busy commiting mass murder of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies.
Also the Croats operated the largest concentration camp in Europe for the extermination of 800,000 SERBS and over 25,000 JEWS and GYPSIES!!
Talk to me about monsters who were NEVER punsihed by that CROATIAN commiee.. TITO.... that would be most of the Croatian, ALbanian and Bosnian muslims, they got away with mass murder!!
Tito had the Serbian Chetniks executed because they WERE CHRISTIANS and he despised the Orthodox Church just as Hitler did!!!!
Bosnian muslims provided bin laden with a passport and the very man who planned 9/11 was one of their fighters against the SERBS in Bosnia. Iran supplied them with illegal weapons and clinton gave them an air force. All those who supported Bosnians ARE MY ENEMIES!!!
SOMEDAY THE WORLD WILL HAVE FIGHT OFF THE MUSLIM SLIME HOARDS OR DIE TRYING!!
The premise for this article is just plain silly. A waste of time and totally inane.
I don't ever look at Wikipedia anymore. Did a few times a couple years ago. Wikipedia is useless except for gradeschool writing assignments.
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