- We're the Warmongers
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- Quiz time. Who said the following? "Serbia has never
had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other
peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for
Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition
of almost all countries in the world todayÖhas also been changing
in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and
races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more
successfully."
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- Elie Wiesel? Madeleine Albright? George Soros? Vojislav
Kostnica, Zoran Djindjic or one of the other creatures the U.S. installed
in power in Belgrade?
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- No, it was Slobodan Milosevic. He spoke these words in
Kosovo on June 28, 1989, the very occasion on which he allegedly whipped
the Serbs into a bloodthirsty nationalist frenzy.
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- The real Milosevic has never had the remotest connection
with the idiotic cartoonish figure depicted by the U.S. government, the
"two op-ed-page articles a year" denizens of the defense-industry-funded
think tanks and the ignorant reporters passing for "Balkans experts"
on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Milosevic was neither a "nationalist,"
nor a "Communist," nor a "dictator" nor a "demagogue."
To be sure, he was never one of those East European Communists-turned-Thatcherite-overnight
so beloved by U.S. elites. Nor did it help that he won elections handily,
or that in the late 1980s he was leading massive demonstrations against
the IMF bromides that were destroying Yugoslavia's industry. The U.S. actually
did Yugoslavia a favor by imposing sanctions in 1992. It freed the countryñall
too briefly, as the Serbs are about to find outñfrom the dreadful
ministrations of the IMF.
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- Milosevic did not instigate the wars in the Balkans.
On the contrary, his record throughout the decade was that of a man eagerñprobably
too eagerñto accept any peace settlement going. Who was really responsible
for the wars? Those who insisted on secession without waiting to settle
outstanding issues like final borders, the status of minorities or the
disposal of state property and debt? Or those who, in accordance with international
law, insisted that secession could only be "legal" if it was
accepted by the seceding state and the seceded-from state?
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- There is no question that Milosevic will be transferred
to the Hague. After a ridiculously unfair trial he will be convicted of
"war crimes," "genocide" and "crimes against humanity"
and sentenced to life imprisonment. With this conclusion the purpose of
the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia will have
been fulfilled. The real instigators of the wars in the Balkans will have
been absolved of any responsibility.
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- The Balkans today are littered with tiny, weak NATO protectorates
whose domestic and foreign policies are shaped down to the last detail
by the U.S. and its junior EU partners. This was an entirely foreseen consequence
of U.S. policy in Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War. There is
no truth whatsoever to the legend that the United States wanted to keep
Yugoslavia together but was thwarted in this noble endeavor by the machinations
of the Germans. In February 1990, nearly two years before the villainous
German Chancellor Helmut Kohl supposedly muscled in on the Balkans by recognizing
Croatia and Slovenia, Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger was
already telling the Slovenians that Washington would accept Slovenia's
secession provided it was done "peacefully and democratically."
The Slovenians did not need another signal. Even so, in October 1990ñeight
months before Slovenia declared independence, one year before war broke
out in CroatiañCongress passed an amendment to the Foreign Operations
Appropriation law barring any U.S. loans or credits for Yugoslavia unless
the assistance was directed to a republic "which has held free and
fair elections and which is not engaged in systematic abuse of human rights."
This was an extraordinary piece of legislation. According to Washington
then, Yugoslavia had ceased to exist. The U.S. government was henceforth
to deal with the "republics," entities with no international
legal standing whatsoever.
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- In the days leading up to the secession of Croatia and
Slovenia, U.S. officials would make pro forma declarations opposing unilateral
declarations of independence. Then they would warn the Yugoslav army not
to use force to stop the republics breaking away. It was a policy of accepting
de facto independence. Moreover, it was revealed in the London Observer
last year that, contrary to the publicly proclaimed Western policy of neutrality,
the British were in fact secretly selling arms to Slovenia days before
its declaration of independence. Since Britain is merely America's errand
boy on such matters, one can be fairly certain that this was a Washington-initiated
policy.
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- The carnage that was to come in Bosnia was entirely the
consequence of a ruthless and cynical U.S. policy. In March 1992, after
seeing the bitter fighting that followed the secession of Croatia, the
leaders of Bosnia's Serbs, Croats and Muslims sat down in Lisbon and hammered
out a partition plan of Bosnia. According to a 1993 New York Times story,
European Community "mediators who brokered the agreement argued that
partition was the only way to contain the ethnic rivalries. But the Bush
Administration was pushing the Europeans to recognize Bosnia as an independent
country, with a Muslim-led Government in Sarajevo." When the Bosnian
Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic returned to Sarajevo, U.S. Ambassador Warren
Zimmermann called on him. "He said he didn't like it,' Mr. Zimmermann
recalled. " told him, if he didn't like it, why sign it?' But after
talking to the Ambassador, Mr. Izetbegovic publicly renounced the Lisbon
agreement."
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- By April the United States had managed to bully the Europeans
into recognizing the state of Bosnia, thereby setting in train the carnage
to come. The U.S. subsequently sabotaged the Vance-Owen partition plan
as well as the Stoltenberg partition plan. The fighting finally came to
an end with a U.S.-sponsored partition plan at Dayton. We got what we were
after all along. Bosnia was turned into a colony.
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