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NATO, Clark and Yugoslavia by Michael Parenti in '99. Bad, very bad.

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JohnOneillsMemory Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:29 PM
Original message
NATO, Clark and Yugoslavia by Michael Parenti in '99. Bad, very bad.
Edited on Thu Oct-23-03 11:40 PM by JohnOneillsMemory
http://michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html

(Several times I've posted to Clarkies that they should consider the man's actual track record and consequently been accused of parroting GOP talking-points or being a damned freeper. I'm truly dismayed to see du-ers failing to look at this horrid NATO episode in Yugoslavia that Clark commanded. I have a lot of respect for Michael Parenti's analysis of international politics and recommend that anyone who gives a damn read the whole article and more.)

Small excerpt:

"With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to "demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure" of Yugoslavia.
>snip<
...bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation."

Larger excerpt:

"NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia have been in violation of its own charter, which says it can take military action only in response to aggression committed against one of its members. Yugoslavia attacked no NATO member. U.S. leaders discarded international law and diplomacy. Traditional diplomacy is a process of negotiating disputes through give and take, proposal and counterproposal, a way of pressing one's interests only so far, arriving eventually at a solution that may leave one side more dissatisfied than the other but not to the point of forcing either party to war.

U.S. diplomacy is something else, as evidenced in its dealings with Vietnam, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, and now Yugoslavia. It consists of laying down a set of demands that are treated as nonnegotiable, though called "accords" or "agreements," as in the Dayton Accords or Rambouillet Agreements. The other side's reluctance to surrender completely to every condition is labeled "stonewalling," and is publicly misrepresented as an unwillingness to negotiate in good faith. U.S. leaders, we hear, run out of patience as their "offers" are "snubbed." Ultimatums are issued, then aerial destruction is delivered upon the recalcitrant nation so that it might learn to see things the way Washington does.

Milosevic balked because the Rambouillet plan, drawn up by the U.S. State Department, demanded that he hand over a large, rich region of Serbia, that is, Kosovo, to foreign occupation. The plan further stipulated that these foreign troops shall have complete occupational power over all of Yugoslavia, with immunity from arrest and with supremacy over Yugoslav police and authorities. Even more revealing of the U.S. agenda, the Rambouillet plan stated: "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles."

Rational Destruction
While professing to having been discomforted by the aerial destruction of Yugoslavia, many liberals and progressives were convinced that "this time" the U.S. national security state was really fighting the good fight. "Yes, the bombings don't work. The bombings are stupid!" they said at the time, "but we have to do something." In fact, the bombings were other than stupid: they were profoundly immoral. And in fact they did work; they destroyed much of what was left of Yugoslavia, turning it into a privatized, deindustrialized, recolonized, beggar-poor country of cheap labor, defenseless against capital penetration, so battered that it will never rise again, so shattered that it will never reunite, not even as a viable bourgeois country.

When the productive social capital of any part of the world is obliterated, the potential value of private capital elsewhere is enhanced -- especially when the crisis faced today by western capitalism is one of overcapacity. Every agricultural base destroyed by western aerial attacks (as in Iraq) or by NAFTA and GATT (as in Mexico and elsewhere), diminishes the potential competition and increases the market opportunities for multinational corporate agribusiness. To destroy publicly-run Yugoslav factories that produced auto parts, appliances, or fertilizer -- or a publicly financed Sudanese plant that produced pharmaceuticals at prices substantially below their western competitors -- is to enhance the investment value of western producers. And every television or radio station closed down by NATO troops or blown up by NATO bombs extends the monopolizing dominance of the western media cartels. The aerial destruction of Yugoslavia's social capital served that purpose.
We have yet to understand the full effect of NATO's aggression.

Serbia is one of the greatest sources of underground waters in Europe, and the contamination from U.S. depleted uranium and other explosives is being felt in the whole surrounding area all the way to the Black Sea. In Pancevo alone, huge amounts of ammonia were released into the air when NATO bombed the fertilizer factory. In that same city, a petrochemical plant was bombed seven times. After 20,000 tons of crude oil were burnt up in only one bombardment of an oil refinery, a massive cloud of smoke hung in the air for ten days. Some 1,400 tons of ethylene dichloride spilled into the Danube, the source of drinking water for ten million people. Meanwhile, concentrations of vinyl chloride were released into the atmosphere at more than 10,000 times the permitted level. In some areas, people have broken out in red blotches and blisters, and health officials predict sharp increases in cancer rates in the years ahead.35
National parks and reservations that make Yugoslavia among thirteen of the world's richest bio-diversity countries were bombed. The depleted uranium missiles that NATO used through many parts of the country have a half-life of 4.5 billion years.36 It is the same depleted uranium that now delivers cancer, birth defects, and premature death upon the people of Iraq. In Novi Sad, I was told that crops were dying because of the contamination. And power transformers could not be repaired because U.N. sanctions prohibited the importation of replacement parts. The people I spoke to were facing famine and cold in the winter ahead.

With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air war was to "demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately eliminate the essential infrastructure" of Yugoslavia. Even if Serbian atrocities had been committed, and I have no doubt that some were, where is the sense of proportionality? Paramilitary killings in Kosovo (which occurred mostly after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities in hundreds of around-the-clock raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, killing thousands of Serbs, Albanians, Roma, Turks, and others, and destroying bridges, residential areas, and over two hundred hospitals, clinics, schools, and churches, along with the productive capital of an entire nation.

A report released in London in August 1999 by the Economist Intelligence Unit concluded that the enormous damage NATO's aerial war inflicted on Yugoslavia's infrastructure will cause the economy to shrink dramatically in the next few years.37 Gross domestic product will drop by 40 percent this year and remain at levels far below those of a decade ago. Yugoslavia, the report predicted, will become the poorest country in Europe. Mission accomplished."

>snip<

Hmm. Does this sound familiar? Just asking...
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bluestateguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:40 PM
Response to Original message
1. Michael Parenti doing Karl Rove's dirty work for him
This is exactly what Karl Rove wants. Because Clark is the candidate * fears most, the White House knows that some people on the Left have a natural animus toward the military, hence they make sure that unflattering war stories appear in the newspaper so as to undermine Clark's support among core Democratic voters. Parenti has just played into Rove's hands. No centrist voter will be offended by this, only a Democratic primary voter in Iowa or New Hampshire. The enemy is Bush, and only Bush. I refuse to criticize the other Democratic candidates in this race, lest I provide soundbites for Freepers that could be used in the general election campaign.
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mikehiggins Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:41 PM
Response to Original message
2. Besides this quote
>With words that might make us question his humanity, the NATO
>commander, U.S. General Wesley Clark boasted that the aim of the air
>war was to "demolish, destroy, devastate, degrade, and ultimately
>eliminate the essential infrastructure" of Yugoslavia.

was there any other reference to Clark in Parenti's book?

It seems odd that Clark should be criticised by Parenti AND Shelton/Cohen. You'd think it would take a remarkable man to accomplish that kind of team-up.

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wyldwolf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 08:11 AM
Response to Reply #2
14. We have Shelton/Cohen stabbing Clark for being a humanitarian..
...then we have Parenti stabbing Clark for NOT being a humanitarian.

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Old and In the Way Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:42 PM
Response to Original message
3. Much better to have let the little Hitler have his way.....
ethnic clensing was going so well, too.
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jeter Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:44 PM
Response to Original message
4. Oh jesus, here we go again
Enough already with Yugoslavia. Didn't he succeed in Yugoslavia? Don't the people of Yugoslavia govern themselves. Didn't they themselves get rid of Milosevic? Wasn't the goal of Yugoslavia campaign to get the Serbs out of Kosovo where free elections could be held and the Kosovar people would have the right to self determination? Weren't the Serbs ethnically cleansing the Kosovars when we began bombing? Didn't we have the support of the entire NATO alliance?

How many war crimes did Milosevic ACTUALLY commit? How many different times did the US and the UN try a diplomatic tract? Remember the Dayton Peace Accords? Then after that Milosevic, in attempting to hold on to power among Serbs decided to once again attack another ethnic minority within the Yugoslav state. To use that to prop himself up so his blinded population would look past his sorry economic and domestic policies (sound familiar).

In war, things get bombed. The Yugoslav campaign was not illegal. Milosevic himself was in the act of committing crimes against humanity. It was only when diplomacy failed, that NATO decided that the only way to get them to stop was to bomb them out of Kosovo. When they left, the bombing stopped.

This has absolutely nothing to do with Iraq. Except that the US Army was used and bombs were dropped. We had a plan. We had an objective. We got in. We got out. The Yugoslavs themselves were the ones that toppled and eventually handed over Slobodan Milosevic. There was no policy of "regime change." There was no policy of "preemption."

Clark was the military commander of NATO. Since NATO (from the unanimous support of its members) was the organization that was given the mandate to carry out this mission. Clark was in charge of the operation.

Jesus, get over it.
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bluestateguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:49 PM
Response to Reply #4
5. Streets are named after Bill Clinton in Kosovo
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Bread and Circus Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 06:54 AM
Response to Reply #5
13. Clark has a street named after him there too.
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nocreativename Donating Member (121 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 12:58 PM
Response to Reply #13
17. streets are named by the winner
I bet in a few months we'll see Halburten street, Bush, Cheney, ... street in Iraq. Not becuase the people named them, but the people who "rebuild" them also make the signs.

There are streets in mexico named after Spanish invaders. Here in the US., Our Capital is named after a intruder. Did the natives name anything? Maybe a few places on there reservations.

I think Kosovo was the saddest time in the Big Dog's stay in the oval office. And since Clark was behind the steering wheele on that I will never vote for him. I'll vote green again, if it comes down to it.


Dean then Edwards Then Gep. Then maybe Kerry.
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carpetbagger Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 09:49 PM
Response to Reply #17
18. Uh, most Kosovars actually supported the invasion of Kosovo.
Since most of your post is opinion, I'll concentrate on the one refutable statement.

"Did the natives name anything? Maybe a few places on there reservations. "

And Delaware, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Wyoming, Idaho, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii, Alaska, not to mention Omaha, Cheyenne, Sioux City, Waco, Muskogee, Oklahoma City, Seattle, Tallahassee, and Chicago.

I've heard European-Americans live in some numbers on the banks of the Susquehanna, Potomac, Rappahannock, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Allegheny, Monongehela, Wabash, Illinois, Missouri, and Mississippi rivers, although I could be misinformed.


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StephNW4Clark Donating Member (547 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Oct-23-03 11:58 PM
Response to Original message
6. Yeah, what a bad guy, personally helping refugees find lost relatives...
Ossining, New York, July 14, 2001—The story leading up to the discovery of documents on the bodies of Agron, Mehmet, and Ylli Bytyqi in a mass grave in Petrovo Selo, Serbia, began on July 2, when the Albanian American Civic League held a book signing and reception in Yonkers, New York, in honor of General Wesley Clark, NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe for the critical role that he played in putting a stop to Slobodan Milosevic’s decade-long genocidal march across Southeast Europe.

During the question-and-answer session that followed General Clark’s address to the 400 people in attendance, members of the Atlantic Battalion (Albanian Americans who fought with the Kosova Liberation Army) appealed to General Clark for help in determining the fate of the missing brothers, who had disappeared without a trace at the end of the war. General Clark promised to initiate an investigation by phoning U.S. Ambassador William Montgomery in Belgrade, which he did on July 3.

On July 4, former Congressman and Civic League chairman Joe DioGuardi received a phone call from Vladimir Radomirovic, an editor at the Serbian Democratic opposition paper, The Reporter. Radomirovic explained that one of the Serbian ministries had leaked him information that a mass grave had been uncovered in Petrovo Selo and that the Bytyqi brothers were believed to be among the bodies. The three were found at the top of a heap of thirteen other bodies. They were the only ones who were blindfolded, their hands tied behind their backs with wire. The bullet holes in their chests indicated that they had been shot at close range. A Serbian court document, dated June 27, 1999, and listing the names of the Bytyqi brothers, was found on one of the bodies. It indicated that Agron, Mehmet, and Ylli Bytyqi had been sentenced to fifteen days in the Proluplje penitentiary, just north of Kosova, for entering Serbia illegally.

Radomirovic told Joe DioGuardi the incredible story of how the Bytyqi brothers ended up in Serbia and eventually were murdered by Serbian authorities. At the end of the war, in June 1999, Agron, Mehmet, and Ylli traveled from Albania to Prizren, having heard reports that their mother, Bahrije, sister, Bukerje, and brother, Fatos, had been killed. But when they arrived in Prizren, they were overjoyed to find them alive.

http://www.aacl.com/THREE_ALBANIAN_AMERICANS.htm

****************************************

Goodness, what a right bastard. Doing his job and continuing to help people out.

Oh, and let's not leave out that at tonight's dinner in New Hampshire, the following occurred:
"One especially poignant moment was when a waiter from the hotel came up to General Clark while he was sitting at his table and thanked him for liberating Kosovo. A little later, he came back over and brought his wife who was also working as a waiter and the two of them shook the General's hand and asked for photos. They thanked the General several times for liberating Kosovo and saving them and their families. It was obvious General Clark was very touched by them. The man quietly slipped us his name and address so we could send the photo to him."
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RuB Donating Member (402 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 12:30 AM
Response to Original message
7. All that destruction and not one American soldier died. eom
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JohnOneillsMemory Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 12:48 AM
Response to Reply #7
9. "All that destruction" was high altitude bombing of civilians so no US
troops would die because it was politically unacceptable for Clinton to have one US soldier die.
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Toucano Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 01:20 AM
Response to Reply #9
10. How is that Clark's fault?
Clark supported using ground troops to reduce civilian casualties. His commanders differed. You fault Clark. That's reasonable!
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RuB Donating Member (402 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 01:27 AM
Response to Reply #9
11. I had no problem with the Clinton wars and especially no soldiers dying.
Clinton cared about people, which is why his Presidency was successful. Bush is a miserable failure.
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StephNW4Clark Donating Member (547 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 12:39 AM
Response to Original message
8. Interesting lack of context also in this figure...
"A report released in London in August 1999 by the Economist Intelligence Unit concluded that the enormous damage NATO's aerial war inflicted on Yugoslavia's infrastructure will cause the economy to shrink dramatically in the next few years." <snip>

Actually the report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit in 1999 said the following:

"The bombing came on top of the expensive campaign Belgrade had been waging against the ethnic-Albanian guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The Serbian leadership had spent vast sums financing wars in Croatia and Bosnia which led to the imposition of United Nations sanctions on Yugoslavia in the first half of the 1990s."

So to be clear, while the bombing did impact the economy of Yugoslavia, the numbers quoted of GDP decline of 40% were largely caused by the "expensive campaign Belgrade waged" and the "imposition of UNITED NATIONS sanctions." (UN - not NATO)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_economy/427670.stm
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Kahuna Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 06:11 AM
Response to Original message
12. zzzzzzzzzzzz
:nopity:
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Richardo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 12:27 PM
Response to Reply #12
16. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Edited on Fri Oct-24-03 12:27 PM by Richardo
:boring:
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wyldwolf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Oct-24-03 11:02 AM
Response to Original message
15. Michael Parenti is a loon
It seems Parenti has a reputation for playing fast and loose with the facts. Here is one example:

David Walls, professor of sociology at Sonoma State University and author of The Activist's Almanac: The Concerned Citizen's Guide to the Leading Advocacy Organizations in America took exception with Parenti's views on Kosovo.

I was surprised by my reaction to its treatment of Kosovo. Project Censored had given this single topic an unprecedented five story awards plus a commentary by Michael Parenti... who has served on Project Censored's national panel of judges for several years. Even more troubling, for two years in a row Project Censored had whitewashed human rights atrocities committed by Serbs in the former Yugoslavia: Censored 1999 denies gruesome crimes at the Omarska camp in Bosnia in 1992 and Censored 2000 denies a massacre of civilians at Racak in Kosovo in 1999.

Speaking of Parenti and his participation in Project Censored, Walls also said, Reliance on dubious sources and a lack of rigorous research and fact-checking have tarnished the project's reputation as a media watchdog. On the subject of the former Yugoslavia, Project Censored, I sadly concluded, had departed the terrain of the democratic Left for a netherworld of conspiracy theorists, Marxist-Leninist sects, and apologists for authoritarian regimes.

The Marxist-Humanist News & Letters of June 2001 details how protesters showed up outside the office of San Francisco radio station KPFA to protest Parenti's appearance on that station's "Flashpoints" show. The protestors distributed a flyer which read, in part:

Divorcing Marxism from freedom all too easily leads to lending support to tyrants who claim the label "socialist." In a letter to the SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN (3/21/01), Michael Parenti claims a nostalgia for "the guaranteed income, free education, medical care and affordable housing" of the Milosevic era, and dismisses allegations of ethnic cleansing, rape camps and mass atrocities. He contends that only 70 bodies have been recovered from the supposed massacre of Srebrenica. This last contention openly conflicts with the report by the UN Commission on Human Rights on Srebrenica, issued 11/15/99, which provided pages and pages of evidence on the massacre, including an account by one Croat member of the Bosnian Serb Army, Drazen Erdemovic, whose unit by itself executed over 1,000 Muslim men and boys on the Pilica state farm.

Parenti consistently downplays the extent of Joseph Stalin's crimes. He recently claimed on KPFA that the number in the Gulags may have been as low as in the thousands. And he dismisses counts of victims in the millions, presented by the likes of Russian Marxist Roy Medvedev, as exaggerations and propaganda.


How conspiracy minded is Parenti? He once said, "The owners and managers of the press determine which person, which facts, which version of the facts, and which ideas shall reach the public.” quoted in Democracy for the Few, by Michael Parenti.

Parenti's most recent work, "To Kill a Nation", praises Milosevic!

He has been called a Stalinist apologist.

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