Posted on 08/17/2008 3:18:15 PM PDT by kronos77
Compare, for instance, the geese of Kosovo and South Ossetia. Slobodan Milosevic's goose ended up percolating on the stove of an international tribunal in The Hague, with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization stirring the pot. The Serb leader escaped being a convicted war criminal only by dying before the end of his trial.
Having jumped from the sinking ship of communism to the leaky lifeboat of patriotism in the early 1990s, Milosevic tried but couldn't prevent the disintegration of Yugoslavia. He then attempted to stave off the disintegration of Serbia by resisting the secession of Kosovo, a province with an ethnic Albanian/Muslim majority. In 1997, he sent troops into a region where the insurgent Kosovo Liberation Army was assassinating Serb policemen. Milosevic fought the secessionist KLA and its supporters in the normal Balkan manner, which is to say brutally, until, concerned about ethnic cleansing, NATO unleashed its warplanes in the spring of 1999, and made a good start at bombing Serbia back into the Pre-Industrial Age. --- Now we're seeing a replay, except in a potentially more dangerous setting. The role Milosevic played nine years ago is assumed by Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, while Vladimir Putin is putting on the hat worn by British prime minister Tony Blair and U.S. president Bill Clinton.
Will Saakashvili end up before an international tribunal as an accused war criminal for resisting the disintegration of his country by sending troops into rebellious South Ossetia? I doubt it. Should he end up before such a tribunal? Not if you ask me -- I'm just not sure why he shouldn't, if Milosevic did.
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
Ping!
but, milosevic and saakasvili are hardly equals.
there will be no tribunal.
(i did not support bill clinton’s kosovo actions.)
"Well he did it!" is usually not a strong argument from a little boy.
Russia's actions can be judged for what they are. We don't have to search for some precedent to make sense out of them.
...except that Miloshevich never unleashed a surprise massacre killing 1500 sleeping civilians, like Saakashvili did.
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