Anti-Serb Propaganda Misled Americans in '90s

As someone who has followed and written about the tragic civil war in the Balkans the March 12 headline, "Butcher" Milsoevic dies in jail,": prompted me to write yet another commentary giving the other side of the story.

I am no defender of Slobodan Milsoevic, who died under questionable circumstances, but in my opinion, he was nothing more than a two-bit dictator, and compared to Saddam Hussein, he was a piker. Unlike the treatment Milosevic received at The Hague, you can bet your bottom dollar that everything will be done to make sure Saddam gets a fair trial, and all the medical treatment he needs. Unlike Saddam, Milosevic was being tried in a trumpt-up International War Crimes Tribunal instead of in a court of his own people, whom he betrayed.

From the beginning of the war in Bosnia, the American people were not privy to many stories that would have given some balance to the conflict. In civil wars, all sides do terrible things; but in this war, the mainstream media misled the American people so as to present a favorable side for the Bosnian Muslims, while failing to report the meddling and bungling of U.S. foreign policy during the Clinton administration.

I remember the horrific pictures repeatedly shown on CNN of the two Muslim babies on a bus that had been "killed by a Serb sniper." I would never have known the truth had I not been watching France 2 TV where it showed the funeral of these innocent babies. Officiating at the funeral was a Serbian Orthodox priest. These were not Muslim babies killed by a Serb sniper, but Serbian babies killed by a Muslim sniper. However, for American consumption CNN had cropped the Serbian Orthodox priest from the video so that the American people would continue to believe that the Serbs were guilty.

The media lied about the supposed Trepca Mine atrocity, claiming Serbs had murdered 750 Kosovo Albanians, cut the bodies into little pieces and thrown them into the mine -- and the American people believed. It was Daniel Pearl, later murdered by al-Qaeda terrorists, who exposed the story as a hoax on the front page of The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 31, 1999.

The media also lied about the Markale market place massacre in Sarajevo, a massacre that was self-inflicted by Bosnian Muslim forces and for which NATO bombed the Serbian people. Yossef Bodansky, director of a congressional task force on terrorism, wrote in his book, Offensive in the Balkans, that the explosion at Sarajevo's main market place was a "special charge designed and built with help from Hizbullah experts," and that "This callous self-killing was designed to shock the West, especially sentimental and guillible Washington, to raise the level of Western sympathy for the Bosnian Muslims and further demonize the Serbs so that Western governments would be more supportive of Sarajevo's forcoming aggressive moves, and perhaps even finally intevene militarily."

ALL THE SUFFERING, bloodshed and death in Bosnia might have been averted had it not been for the meddling of our State Department. In The Lisbon Agreement of 1992, all three Bosnian leaders representing the Croats, Muslims and Serbs, endorsed the proposal that the republic be a confereration divided into three ethnic regions. The plan was scuttled when our American ambassador to Yugoslavia advised Alija Izetbegovic, representing the Muslim party of Bosnia, that "if he didn't like it, why sign it?" This doomed an agreement that even the same ambassador later said "wasn't so bad after all."

I leave you with the following quote: "This organized anti-Serb and pro-Muslim propaganda should cause anyone believing in democracy and free press serious concerns. It recalls Hitler's propaganda against the allies in World War II. Facts are twisted and, when convenient, disregarded." -- Yohanan Ramati, director of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense.

I contend that the Serbians were the "right side" in the Serbian/Bosnian conflict.

I supported them then - their excesses notwithstanding.

The Serbian/Bosnian conflict represented the "Clash of Civilizations" which professor Samuel Huntington wrote about so eloquently. Christianity vs. Islam, no-holds-barred.

The Serbians knew what was as stake.
They knew that they could not live peacefully with a mixed/Muslim population.
They knew what had to be done.
And they had the nerve to go out and _do_ it.

Thus, "ethnic cleansing".

I contend that the Serbian/Bosnian conflict represents a harbinger of where The West is headed in general - a view of what's to come.

Here on Free Republic, we talk about "Eurabia" - the fall of Europe to Islam.
We say that Islam is incompatible with all the values of a Western culture.
We talk about kicking Islamics out, sending them back to Muslim states.
Lots of "big talk". But - when the chips are down (as they someday WILL be), I wonder how many of the big talkers will turn into fast walkers (especially when something called a "draft" is mentioned!)....

The Serbians walked the walk - and we bombed them for doing so.

The clash of civilizations cannot be won on our terms of engagement. It will only be won on _their_ terms.

The Serbians understood the meaning of "their terms".

If we are not willing to engage in ethnic - and cultural - cleansing, the OTHER SIDE will eventually engage it - against US. They have no qualms - NONE - about establishing a worldwide Islamic state. They believe their way is superior, the destined will of allah (I refuse to capitalize that false deity), and they will do what is necessary to establish that will worldwide. For them the end is justified by the means, and they will use ANY means necessary to achieve it.

I believe OUR culture is superior (yes, SUPERIOR). And faced with such an enemy, there can be no reasonable or rational choice other than to grit our teeth and realize that we, too, must use what means necessary to achieve our goal. We do this not because we want to, but because we must.

That "goal" is the preservation of Western civilzation and the overthrow of Islam, the enemy of freedom.

- John

NATO wanted to go in. It's not like they were reluctant or whatever... Those within NATO (and outside it) who were itching for a war, faced with the threat of increasing obsolescence and growing irrelevance, had torpedoed every attempt at peace in the Balkans.

They were looking for a purpose, and the only purpose, their sole reason d'etre, as far as military alliances go, is waging war.

The Lisbon Agreement was the most overt example of interference ("If you don't like it, don't sign it," Warren Zimmerman to the Bos. Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic), but not the only time the U.S. made any kind of peace impossible.

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