Free Republic

You can say that again!

This is a military mission to evacuate U.S. citizens trapped by a civil war in another country. A traditional use of our armed services and a use which I very much support. It is very different from intervention on one side or the other.

This is a military mission to evacuate U.S. citizens trapped by a civil war in another country. A traditional use of our armed services and a use which I very much support. It is very different from intervention on one side or the other.

Yep, Joan--that's it all right. The Albanians ethnically cleansed themselves out of Kosovo just to make the Serbs look bad! Thank you for reinforcing the point of post # 186 above.

Well, James, those charges have been reviewed by the Bush Administration Justice Department and vetted by our interagency process; i.e. run through Rumsfeld's Department of Defense, etc. The end result is that the USA continued to support the trial of Milosevic with funding for the court, "seconded" personnel to work on the trial, and the use of our military to continue to round up Slobo's war crime perp-buddies for their trials at the same court.

Here's the link to Milosevic's indictment. Perhaps you can identify which one of the counts against him were "trumped" up. Go to the ICTY base page and transcripts of his trial are posted, if you'd like to support your position.

And here's what the leadership of the Serbian Orthodox Church says about Milosevic (of course not legally binding, but significant in a much more long-lasting way!):

"We are both aware, as God knows, how much evil has been done [in Kosovo] in the course of the last year and especially in the last three months. The great part of the guilt lies with Milosevic."

-Bishop Artemije, senior representative of Serbian Orthodox Church, speaking for himself and Patriarch Pavle, head of the church, NYT, June 29.

Merry Christmas, Joan. Neither this thread nor what I posted was about Albanians. My post was simply poking fun at the absurd lengths so many Serbs will go to deny the reality of their murderous depredations against both their Christian and Muslim neighbors in the Balkans Wars of the 1990s.

However, since you brought up the Albanians, it is true that I and most Americans are grateful for their steadfast support in the War on Terror--troops in both Afghanistan and Iraq since the beginning; here's a photo:

Albanian Commando troops participate in a ceremony at Mother Teresa Airport before leaving for Iraq. Parliament has approved increasing the number of soldiers in Iraq. [Gent Shkullaku]

Interesting in that the international court is now sending war criminals back to national courts for trial.

Almost 2,300 Muslim, Croat (Catholic) and other non-Serb victims from the Prijedor area have been exhumed from 53 mass and several hundred individual graves so far, while 1,100 are still unaccounted for.

The Serbian ethnic cleansing of the Croatian Catholics is not given much play here by our Serb war crime apologists. It sort of puts the lie to their post 9-11 reinvention of the Balkan Wars as some kind of defense of Christianity.

Frank Costanza: Many Christmases ago, I went to buy a doll for my son. I reached for the last one they had, but so did another man. As I rained blows upon him, I realized there had to be another way.

Cosmo Kramer: What happened to the doll?

Frank Costanza: It was destroyed. But out of that a new holiday was born … a Festivus for the rest of us!

Cosmo Kramer: That must've been some kind of doll.

Frank Costanza: She was.

That was very touching. Do you happen to have a picture of the doll?

And to celebrate this thread--here's an oldie, but goodie:

A WHOLE NATION GOES MAD

Steve Crawshaw

Monday 31st May 1999

Winning the war is the easy bit. It will be harder to restore sanity to the Serbs, argues Steve Crawshaw

You can spend years refusing to face up to the obvious. You can find endless justifications and search for ifs and buts. Eventually, however, there comes a moment when the visitor to the Balkans must simply put his head in his hands and cry: "Enough!" One nagging question returns to haunt you: why have so many millions of Serbs become liars on a grand scale or gone mad, or both?

Everybody feels that their own point of view is sometimes misunderstood. Many feel that their country is right, even when it is wrong. But none except the Serbs have managed in recent years to take this reversal of reality to such a high art form. According to a view held widely in Serbia today, anybody who accuses the Serbs of anything (yes, anything) either has been duped by or is part of an international conspiracy - an a la carte mixture of Bill Clinton (trying to distract from cigars and moral decay in the Oval Office), Germany (with its well-known ambitions for a Fourth Reich) and international Islam (seeking a fundamentalist takeover). When western news reports show Serbs in a bad light, it is only because the reporters are too stupid or venal to tell the shining, shaming truth.

The Serb grasp on reality can make The X Files seem down to earth. Take the extraordinary (and typical) conversation I had recently with Darko, a well-educated resident of Pale, a little town half an hour's drive from Sarajevo that used to be the capital of Radovan Karadzic's Bosnian Serb republic. "Why does Tony Blair blame the Serbs for everything?" Darko asked. "What have Serbs done wrong?"

Well, there's a question and a half. I take a deep breath as I flash through the mental index of the past eight years. Camps, cleansing, rapes, massacres - where shall we start? Finally I cautiously toss out one word: Srebrenica, the little Bosnian town where thousands of civilians were notoriously slaughtered in cold blood in 1995. Every detail of the massacre has been analysed and re-analysed. I expect my new acquaintance to sound defensive when the name is mentioned. Not a bit of it. He leaps upon the name of Srebrenica like a hungry piranha on a bleeding hunk of flesh: "It was war. We tried to relieve our country. There was no massacre." So that's that.

In a Serb Orthodox monastery, I have an equally baffling encounter. Father Luke, the abbot, wistfully notes that international attitudes towards Serbs have changed in recent years. "Before, all doors were open for me as a Serb. Now all of them are closed. What happened?" Another humdinger of a question. My explanation is promptly rejected: "No, it's not to do with what we Serbs have done." In his view Serbs are being crucified for the sins of mankind. "There was a need for one nation to take all the sins on its back."

You can find isolated instances of lunacy in any country. But nowhere more than in Serbia. Take the question of Albanians fleeing Kosovo - Serb TV blames the exodus on Nato raids. Ask Albanian refugees if that is indeed the reason, and they'll tell you that power comes out of the barrel of a Serb gun. The standard, shared experience is of a small group of armed men telling everybody in the village to clear out within the next half an hour, on pain of death.

Ask Serbs why the Albanians are leaving, however, and they will repeat with a straight face the line about Nato bombings. You get the impression that most of them could pass a lie-detector test on the matter. You can blame this in part on the Serb government's powerful propaganda machine. Milosevic's iron control of TV - with its poisonous messages of hate and paranoia - has played an important role in recent years. But even those who have access to alternative sources of news still subscribe enthusiastically to the view of unsullied Serb innocence.

Back in the winter of 1996, things seemed very different. The streets were filled with the deafening sound of thousands of whistles calling time on the Serb leader. The banging of pots and pans every night at 7.30pm was supposed to drown out the lies of TV news. Milosevic briefly seemed doomed, and a healthy Serbia seemed to be emerging. It was all an illusion. Nowadays many of the pot-bangers sit nodding in agreement in front of the TV news.

In recent weeks Nato has sought to highlight the demonstrations against conscription in Serb towns, as a way of proving that support for the regime is less solid than it was. Up to a point. But an unwillingness to allow your sons to be killed is rather different from understanding why your country is under attack in the first place. This far more important change is yet to come.

For the moment, most Serbs have a clear rule of thumb for assessing the accuracy of a news report. If the report shows others in a bad light, it is accurate; if it shows Serbs in a bad light, it is a malicious invention.

As the experience of modern Germany shows, there is nothing pre-programmed about lunacy. Germany was a normal country before 1933 and is a normal country again today. Just as a sane country can turn mad, a mad country can eventually become sane once more. But the change cannot happen overnight. A deep-seated sense of victimhood has helped to reinforce the sense of being misunderstood. In effect the Serbs ask: "How can we be guilty, we who have historically suffered so much? My forefathers fought bravely for a just cause. My country is less rich than many of the nations who accuse us. Therefore my country is free of sin." This conclusion leaves something to be desired in the logic department. But it accurately reflects the Serbs' guiding philosophy of life: once a victim, always a victim.

In short, winning the war against Slobodan Milosevic will be the easy part. Turning Serbs back into sane citizens of the world will be more difficult. If a Serb tells you that this is an unwarranted slur on a brave nation, just ask him or her why Albanians are fleeing Kosovo. Ask what happened at Srebrenica. And get ready for a depressing reply.

Red6, well done. You've supplied facts and perspective; things which--save from Hoplite--are not often evident on the Balkans threads. I know with that "6" suffix that you've been hit with much worse than the electronic bombardment of historical revisionism, illogic, fabrications, and personal attacks from our resident Serb nationalists.

The facts of the death & destruction of Serb ethnic cleansing in support of their irredentist goals are well established. It is both factually incorrect and an insult to the United States of America for the Serbs to try and associate what they did in the 90s--in terms of either goals or methods--with what the United States is doing in our current war on terror.

From one military veteran to two others: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The tactic of bewailing the lack of a draft because it is an easy protest target is not new. Back in 1979(?) when registering for the draft was proposed as a reaction to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, I can still remember the president of NOW on television stating that she was against draft registration, but if it was approved, it should include women so that they could have the same opportunity as the men to protest by not registering.

Classic lib logic. No discussion on the merits, just the political stance.

Wilson, a former ambassador to Gabon now struggling to earn a living as an international business consultant

Unfortunately, Wilson is raking in some pretty big bucks on the college lecture circuit. Back in Michigan, my wife forwarded me the laudatory newspaper article announcing his presence; not one word about his documented lies. His lecture was attended by over 1,000 students.

Great story, thanks for posting. Every deployment I've been on in the militay over a LONG career, ordinary Americans have been generous with their support and ordinary soldiers have been generous with the local people. At the small base I was at in Afghanistan, we received box after box of clothing, goodies, books, and school supplies and so on for both the soldiers and for the various Afghan schools and orphanages and relief agencies which our soldiers had "adopted." The chaplain would store them and once a week a volunteer crew would sort, re-box, label and organize for the approprite recipients. Then, usually on Fridays, we'd deliver to the Afghans. The good that was done and the good-will that was generated was significant, but as pointed out in the original post, not something that was reported by our media.

It's Clinton policy idiot.

Wow, we have another poster on the Balkans threads who make assertions he is incapable of backing up and then responds with personal attacks when presented with an argument he cannot answer.

I would like to hear a solution.

To what? From 92-95 in Bosnia they were slaughtering each other by the thousands. Now they're making speeches. What's the problem you want to solve?

It's Clinton policy idiot.

It's American policy and it's been pretty consistent since the first President Bush right up through now. GHW Bush recognized the former Yugo entities as sovereign nations, coordinated international response, and told Slobo that the US would use force if he started his ethnic cleasing act in Kosovo.

The current President Bush has done a great, but largely unheralded by the media & our "elites" (big surprise), job in the Balkans. He's brought US troop strength from a high of 30,000 down to less than 2000. The Europeans now are running the show and providing most of the troops & resources. He kept the conflict in Macedonia from expanding and established a lasting peace. There have been no new wars. Milosevic was kicked out of office and into the Hague from which he descended into the infernal region. From a basically hostile Yugoslavia run by a klepto-commie cum dictator, we now have six nation-states; all of which are now democracies and four of which (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia) are solid allies who have sent troops to fight alongside us in Afghanistan and Iraq. The US Balkans policy has been a success. The last major item on the agenda is resolving Kosovo's status and that's scheduled to get done this year.

That's exactly what combat troops want & need!

Well, Joan, it is difficult to see how Milosevic could be a hero to anyone. He lost four wars and in the process caused tens of thousands of deaths and untold misery for millions--Serbs & non-Serbs; destroyed his own country's economy, was awaiting charges in Belgrade for murdering his politicial opponents, and was instrumental in ruining the reputation of the Serbian people.

As to his guilt, read the transcripts--it's pretty obvious. And if you don't want to do that, let's hear from a couple close observers.

"We are both aware, as God knows, how much evil has been done [in Kosovo] in the course of the last year and especially in the last three months. The great part of the guilt lies with Milosevic."

-Bishop Artemije, senior representative of Serbian Orthodox Church, speaking for himself and Patriarch Pavle, head of the church, NYT, June 29, 1999.

W also has something to say:

"I welcome today's arrest of Slobodan Milosevic, the former President of Yugoslavia. His arrest represents an important step in bringing to a close the tragic era of his brutal dictatorship. Milosevic was responsible for great suffering throughout the Balkan region. He deserves to be tried for his crimes against the Serbian people. He also deserves to be tried for violations of international law...."

You're an exceptional Dhimmi. I'll wager you've even come to enjoy the taste.

Ah yes, when losing an argument, just bring out the tried-and-true junior high lunch-break ploy of calling someone a name and accusing them of having oral sex with some other guy! Yep, FormerLib, you're a real credit to Free Republic and the conservative movement.

The Serbs had always been pro-US.

That's the propaganda talking point. Here's the reality:

Serbia and Saddam Hussein were allies.

Serbia, Iraq want united anti-U.S. front

Yugoslavia's Arms Ties to Iraq Draw U.S. Scrutiny

Saddam's Serb Supplier: How our last enemy has been arming our next one.

And Slobo & his wife combined to be the biggest political recipient of Saddam's oil bribes in Europe. The Yugo Socialist Party received vouchers for 1,000,000 barrels and the Yugo Left party received 9.5 million; those organizations are headed by Mr. and Mrs. Milosevic, respectively.

Hooking up with Yasser

April 6, 1989: Yugoslavia establishes diplomatic relations with the State of Palestine. PLO office in Belgrade acquires the status of an embassy.

Serbia was cozying up with Qadaffi before his rehabilitation:

Yugoslavia: Firms Helped Libya Acquire Cruise Missiles, U.S. Says

Gaddafi Given Yugoslavia's Top Medal By Milosevic

And the Iranians have a new friend!

Iran-Serbia Security Cooperation Agreement

And there's more to come as the documents captured in Baghdad continue to be translated. The Iraqi Perspectives Report prepared by the U.S. military details Serb missions to Saddam Hussein in 2001 (post-Milosevic and post 9/11 by the way) intended to help Iraq kill Americans. Here's one of the gems from that report:

"In a meeting with the leader of the Serb Radical Party in 2001, Saddam discussed how he was not impressed with the "Imperialist Tactics" of the United States because, in his opinion, Serbia was able to withstand them. Captured Iraqi document dated 12 December 2001, "Meeting Minutes between Saddam Hussein and Leader of Serb Radical Party."

Why does Albania allow free reign for AQ types and free access to its borders with Serbia? Thus allowing anyone and anything to cross over illegaly into Serbia. Whereas, the Serbian Authority did its job in attempting to shut down all border crossings against armed drug/human/weapon traffickers.

All the borders are porous in that area--it's why the "Balkans Route" is famous for smuggling. Having said that, it is true that Albania is a favored smuggling nexus. The Albanian government does not "allow free reign ... and free access," but the combination of weak and inefficient law enforcement, corruption, and long rugged land & sea borders makes it a pretty attractive path to travel for those who don't want what they are doing to be checked.

Well, Archy, since you posted that picture of Arkan, I think it is required that we post one of his wife, Ceca. Arkan certainly wins the award for "War Criminal with the Best Looking Wife"! With something like that at home you'd think he wouldn't have spent all that time out burning villages and murdering their non-Serb inhabitants...