The Saddam of the Balkans makes his escape into history /by Justin Raimond

[sasha031]

The death of Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic is an occasion for all wings of the War Party, no matter what their current squabbles over the war in Iraq, to come together in a bipartisan and trans-ideological show of unity: from the Weekly Standard to the The New Republic, and virtually all points in between, the consensus opinion is that the war to "liberate" Kosovo from the Serbian jackboot was a just cause. The same Clintonian Democrats who today decry the naked unilateralism of the U.S. in invading Iraq vocally supported America's attack on "The Butcher of the Balkans" – undertaken without UN approval – and defend it to this day. The bombing of Yugoslavia, which killed 5,000-7,000 Serbian civilians, was bitterly opposed by congressional Republicans, who were accused by the other side of the aisle of undermining the troops and acting, in effect, as a kind of fifth column. As George W. Bush and his supporters impugn the patriotism of Iraq war opponents, the Democrats' loud squeals of protest evoke no sympathy from me. Nothing is sweeter to the ear than the sound of a hypocrite's howls as he's hoisted on his own petard.

The image of old Slobo splashed across the front pages evokes, in me, a sense of nostalgia – for the good old days of Antiwar.com's youth, when we were just beginning our efforts to expose and oppose the War Party. It was a lonely time to be an antiwar activist, since so many on the Left supported the first wave of Wilsonian interventionism that later metamorphosed into the Bush Doctrine. A broad united front made up of Democratic Party loyalists, neoconservatives, George Soros, and leftist intellectuals of the black-turtleneck Susan Sontag type, along with Bianca Jagger and the mad Trotskyist <.pdf> "Red" Vanessa Redgrave, gathered to demonize not only poor old Slobo but all Serbs. The New Republic branded them an intrinsically evil people who deserved collective punishment, exhaustive "reeducation," and permanent occupation: Stacy Sullivan's piece equated the Serbs with the Nazis and recommended a latter-day version of the draconian Morgenthau Plan to reduce them to a state of harmless quiescence.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8704

a good read,I don't agree with Raimond 100% of the time, but there are many good points.

[KoKo]

1. Thanks! Sounds like a very interesting read............n/t

[hang a left]

2. I read this a couple of days ago....

I was not paying attention back then so I really needed to know why this war happened. It really opened my eyes.


The Real Reasons for War in Yugoslavia:

Backing up Globalization with Military Might

Karen Talbot

The United States and its NATO underlings clearly were emboldened by their "success" in bombing Yugoslavia, by their earlier bombing of the Serb areas of Bosnia and by their victories in the other remnants of Yugoslavia--Croatia, and Slovenia and Macedonia. Burgeoning military alliances, with the U.S. at the helm, are now more likely than ever to try to intervene in a similar way against any country that refuses to be a new-world-order colony by allowing its wealth and labor power to be plundered by transnational corporations (TNCs). The assault against Yugoslavia threw open the floodgates for new wars, including wars of competition among the industrial powers. President Bill Clinton praised NATO for its campaign in Kosovo, saying the alliance could intervene elsewhere in Europe or Africa to fight repression. "We can do it now. We can do it tomorrow, if it is necessary, somewhere else," he told U.S. troops gathered at the Skopje, Macedonia airport (1)

It is hardly surprising that Clinton and the leaders of the other NATO countries glorified the aggression against Yugoslavia as "preventing a humanitarian catastrophe," "promoting democracy," and "keeping the peace" against a "Hitler-like" dictator who would not adhere to peace agreements. The public was repeatedly assured that the means--the bombing of the people of Yugoslavia--were justified by the ends. The media hype, including unprecedented demonization of the Serbs, was designed to mold public opinion to accept the "justice" of the war. The unmistakable message was that the "Serbs got what they deserved." This rationale also concealed, and allowed unimpeded momentum toward, the true goals behind the stepped-up saber-rattling of the world's superpower and its allies. The skillful disinformation campaign was spectacularly successful even in confusing and derailing sections of the traditional peace and progressive movement in the U.S. and Europe. So let's examine more closely the pretexts for the war and then look at the real motives.

Who Were the Real Terrorists?

In the United States, we were told that the relentless U.S.-led NATO blitzkrieg (23,000 "dumb" bombs and "smart" missiles rained upon Yugoslavia for 79 days) was necessary to protect the human rights of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. The U.S. Senate labeled Serbia a "terrorist state" (2). But what could be more "terrorist" than dropping upon civilians--from the sanctuary of high altitude, and from computer-guided missiles--radioactive depleted uranium weapons and outlawed cluster bombs designed to rip human flesh to shreds? Was it not terrorism to deliberately target the entire infrastructure of this small nation including the electrical and water filtration systems critical to the survival of civilians? Was it not terrorism to obliterate 200 factories and destroy the jobs of millions of workers? What of the constant air assault--"fire from the sky"--against cities, villages, schools, hospitals, senior residences, TV towers and studios, oil refineries, chemical plants, electrical power plants, transmission towers, gas stations, homes, farms, marketplaces, buses, trains, railroad lines, bridges, roads, medieval monasteries, churches, historic monuments--destruction amounting to more than $100 billion? What of the incalculable destruction of the environment including the deliberate bombardment of chemical plants. Above all, was it not terrorism to kill, maim, traumatize, impoverish, or render homeless tens of thousands of men, women and children? Not only was NATO's war a reprehensible act of inhumanity, it was in contravention of all norms of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations. It was an unprecedented war by the most powerful military force in history. It involved the 19 wealthiest nations which possess 95 percent of the world's armaments against a small sovereign nation that had little chance of countering such an attack.

We were told that this war was for a noble, humanitarian purpose and people wanted to believe this explanation. Yet the most obvious and glaring contradiction was the absence of any similar concerns about hundreds of thousands of Serbs expelled from the Krajina region of Croatia by the Croatian military in 1995, described as "the largest ethnic cleansing" of the Yugoslav civil war (3). Thousands died in that "Operation Storm." Agim Ceku, who became the commander of the Kovoso Liberation Army (KLA) and later promoted to head of the Kosovo Protection Force (KPF), a key ally of the U.S. and NATO in Kosovo, as Brigadier General of the Croatian Armed Forces, had been a chief architect of "Operation Storm." The private Military Professional Resource, Inc. (MPRI) comprised of "retired" U.S. military officers, was also heavily involved in "training" for this and other actions in Croatia and Bosnia.(4)

More Here:
http://icpj.org/millitary_build.html