The Unhappy History of Kossovo

[The Magistrate]

The NATO campaign against Serbia has come up for a good deal of discussion lately in connection with "candidate wars" here. As much of this debate is conducted by presentation of factoid, devoid of any context, it struck me that it might be of some benefit to put this piece up again: it was prepared about a year and a half ago, when the trial at The Hague of Butcher Slobo was in its early stages.



The Unhappy History of Kossovo


One: Origin of the Quarrel

The clash in Kossovo of Arnaut and Vascian, as the peoples known to we moderns as Albanian and Serb were oft known in Ottoman days, differs from the usual run of Balkan bloodletting; it describes a real ethnic difference. Serb, Croat, Slovene, Montenegrin; all are Slavs, divided due to institutions only. Albanians remain in some proportion survivals of the old Dalmatian and Illyric peoples of Roman days, taken to craggy peaks for refuge from a tide of Slavic invasion commencing with the sixth century.

Medieval Albanian Catholicism offered further differentiation from Orthodox Serbs. The northeastern extension of the Albanian remnant, and the southern marches of the Serb, coincided roughly in modern Kossovo. Here the Serb Czar and Orthodox Patriarchite were able to exert authority the more atomized Albanian polity could not. After the death of the Albanian chieftain Skanderberg, and the Ottoman routing of Venice from the latter’s Adriatic lodgments, late in the fifteenth century, Albanians generally converted to Islam.

In Kossovo, this established local Albanians’ dominance over the Orthodox Serb peasantry, as the Ottoman gave landlord’s tenure only to Moslems. More enterprising or desperate Serbs migrated north; Albanians of similar motivation replaced them from the west. The locale remained poorly ordered, and a frequent theater for rebellion and consequent Ottoman suppression.

The catastrophe suffered by the Ottoman besieging Vienna in 1683 led to the swift seizure of Bosnia, Albania, and Serbia by Austrian and Bavarian Catholic armies. An Austrian force ventured into Kossovo in 1689, setting Albanian and Serb alike both to rebellion against the Ottoman and to battle against one another. The Austrians soon were routed at Nish. In Kossovo, the Ottoman killed every inhabitant they could lay hands on for days. Serbs fled north in great number, Albanians fled west.

With Ottoman authority reasserted, it was mostly Albanians who returned. These soon outnumbered the Serb survivors and progeny. Erection of an autonomous Serbia early in the nineteenth century enticed Kossovo Serbs to migrate north and acquire a freehold farm there. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877, which saw near collapse for the tottering Ottoman, was preceded and followed by Serb attacks.

These fell on Ottoman garrisons and Moslem inhabitants in the south of modern Serbia, culminating in the 1878 sack and firing of the Albanian quarter in Nish. Islamic refugees fled into Kossovo; Christians fled into Serbia for shelter from ensuing pogrom, and advancing Ottoman soldiery. The peace imposed by the Treaty of Berlin left Kossovo under unrestricted Ottoman rule.


Two: To the Yugoslav Monarchy

Albanian agitation for autonomy on modern terms within the declining Ottoman imperium began at Prizren in Kossovo, and at Istanbul. The Serb remnant in Kossovo were subjected to a wretched existence, without recourse from predation by landlord or hostile brigand. Early in 1912, declaration of an Albanian state ignited a successful rebellion in Kossovo against the Ottoman. In the Balkan War, pitting Slav and Greek against the Ottoman that autumn, Serbian armies struck south through Kossovo with great massacre against the Albanian populace. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1913 confirmed Serbia in possession of Kossovo.

During World War One, Austria-Hungary put Serbia’s army to flight in 1915. Albanians in Kossovo rose against the retreating Serbs with utmost savagery. The Serb soldiers replied in kind to fight their way through to the Adriatic, there embarking on French ships to tremendous Allied acclaim. Serb armies re-entered Kossovo from the south by the 1918 Armistice, and were bitterly resisted by Albanian rebels. The new Yugoslav monarchy with its Serb king did not succeed in breaking organized resistance till 1924 in Kossovo. Brigandage, and brutal reprisal, remained endemic to the locale.

The Serb monarchy of Yugoslavia superintended a determined effort to secure its rule in Kossovo. Land was stolen from Albanians as “undocumented,” and made available for Serbs who would venture south to settle on it. Schools teaching in Albanian, originally encouraged in the hope they would keep Albanians backward, proved hotbeds of secessionist agitation, and were suppressed. In 1937, the monarchy entertained proposals by a leading Serb intellectual, the assassin turned historian Vaso Cubrilovic of Belgrade University, that all Albanians be forcibly expelled from Kossovo.

Near the start of World War Two, Fascist Italy seized Albania. Nazi Germany seized Yugoslavia in 1941. The mines in northern Kossovo, and most Kossovo Serbs therefore, were retained under Nazi occupation; the remainder of Kossovo was awarded to Italian Albania. Serbs in Italian Kossovo, mostly recent settlers, were pitilessly persecuted by Albanians, even against occasional Italian opposition. The S. S. security division “Skanderberg” was largely recruited among Kossovo Albanians.


Three: The Tito Era

After Italy capitulated in 1943, Tito, the Communist partisan leader, declared Kossovo would be allowed self-determination if Communists won. In 1944, his partisans succeeded in fighting their way into the place, with some local Albanian support at last. Royalist Chetnik partisans violently opposed any idea of Kossovo secession, winning Tito even more support in that locale.

Tito, however, reneged on that promised self-determination, annexing Kossovo anew to Serbia as an “Autonomous district” within his new Yugoslavia. The Albanian Communist leader, Enver Hoxha, was in no position to contest the matter, amid talk under Stalin of a Balkan Federation to include Albania itself. Tito’s break in 1948 with Stalin ended any real hope for Hoxha he could fold Kossovo into his hoped for Greater Albania.

Kossovo’s populace was then about three-fifths Albanian and one-quarter Serb, with the remainder including Moslem Slavs, Catholic Montenegrins, Turks, and Gypsies. Tito saw that Communist party and police supervisors in Kossovo were Serbs. These energetically hunted up the least hint of Albanian secessionists, harvesting batches of them for show trials in 1956 (coincident with the Hungarian revolt), and again in 1964.

Tito purged his Serb Interior Minister in 1966, for opposition to economic decentralization. Albanian Communists replaced Serbs in Party and police supervisory posts in Kossovo. In the “Prague Spring” of ’68, Kossovo Albanian students demonstrated for national status in Yugoslavia, and an Albanian language university. After many arrests, Tito granted the university in 1970. Albanian language textbooks could only be got in Enver Hoxha’s Albania, which opened a connection to the new Kossovo school in Pristina for his enterprising “special service” agents.

A new Yugoslav constitution in 1974 gave autonomous Serbian Kossovo effective national status, with a representative on the Yugoslav collective presidency. Albanian Kossovo police and party personnel suppressed radical cliques, inspired to “Enverism” (as secession became called) by Hoxha’s agents. Some of these cliques, formed about 1978, included young men who would later become leading lights of the present-day Kossovo Liberation Army.

Tito died in 1980. In spring of 1981, Kossovo Albanian students at Pristina University began demonstrations demanding independence, even fusion with Hoxha’s Albania, to applause from spectators. Yugoslav Interior Ministry troops arrived, and broke the demonstrations, shooting and beating scores to death. Kossovo Albanian party and police officials sustained the crack-down, loyally denouncing “Enverist” radicals, and arresting and beating hundreds suspected of such leanings.

Radical secessionist leaders fled to sanctuaries in Western Europe. Several, meeting near Stuttgart in 1982 to form a popular front, were ambushed and shot dead by unknown assailants. Surviving radicals concluded the bullets came from Serbs in the Yugoslav Interior Ministry, and swore blood vengeance. Under the name of Popular Movement for the Kossovo Republic, a handful of such trained in Albania, and attempted a campaign of gun-battles and bombs against Kossovo and Yugoslav police.


Four: Rise of Milosevic

These largely would-be assassins had no material effect, but a profound moral one. Any crime against serbs in Kossovo was in serbia reported as secessionist terror, and crimes against Serbs in Kossovo, particularly against property of isolated farms and Orthodox sites, occurred with increasing frequency. The Serb Orthodox Patriarchite was ranged alongside the Serb Academy of Sciebces in protest of this, with the latter, in 1985, calling the current situation genocide against against Serbs in Kossovo.

At the start of 1986, the banker Slobodan Milosevic ascended to leadership of the Serb Communist Party. Belligerence in favor of Serbs dwelling outside Serbia’s boundaries, or in the autonomous districts of Vojvodina and Kossovo, offered a ready lever for political power. Kossovo Serbs were organizing militias with assistance from Serb Interior Ministry police; Hoxha’s death had not altered Albania’s support of “Enverism” in Kossovo.

Early in 1987, Milosevic arrived in Pristina’s suburbs for a meeting with Kossovo Serb leaders. A large crowd of Kossovo Serbs rioted before him against the largely Albanian Kossovo police. It was not chance; four days before, Milosevic had met with the riot’s instigators, and a schedule had been fixed for the outbreak.

Widely broadcast film of the incident established Milosevic as champion of distressed Serbs. Later that year, Milosevic used this popularity to force Serbia’s president from office. In the summer of 1988, Milosevic’s Serb Communist Party organized a campaign of Kossovo Remembrance rallies throughout Serbia proper, claiming an average attendance of half a million at each. In November, Milosevic as Party chief dismissed the Albanians in Communist Party leadership in Kossovo, and promulgated constitutional changes effectively stripping Kossovo of its autonomous status.

Albanian Communist leadership in Kossovo mobilized sizable demonstrations and hunger strikes in protest early in 1989. These were broken with loss of life by Yugoslav Interior Ministry troops, who seized the arms of both Kossovo’s national guard and police. Closely surrounded by tanks, the Kossovo Assembly voted itself out of effective existence on March 23.

Milosevic now accepted the Presidency of Serbia. Continuing Albanian demonstrations in Kossovo were broken by Serb and Yugoslav soldiers and police; hundreds of arrests were accompanied by torture. At the end of the year, Albanian intellectuals and some Communist leaders collected to form the Democratic League for Kossovo. The police terror stilled the demonstrations early in 1990.

Milosevic ratified Serb Parliament decrees forbidding Albanians to buy land from Serbs in Kossovo, and removing Albanians from civil service, including hospitals, schools, and the police. The latter quickly became overwhelmingly Serb. The Albanian membership of the Communist Party in Kossovo took up membership in the League for Democratic Kossovo.


Five: The Kossovo Resistance

This L. D. K. was led by the writer Ibrahim Rugova. He inspired Kossovo Albanians to a program of passive resistance to Serb authority. A “shadow state” emerged, quartered in private dwellings, and with a government in exile operating in Germany. Rugova’s “shadow state” held elections, administered Albanian language schooling, even collected taxes. These applied equally to Kossovo Albanians dwelling abroad; most were guest-worker laborers in Europe, but some were prosperous businessmen, or smugglers of stolen cars and narcotics and prostitutes.

The handful of violent radicals constituting the Popular Movement for the Kossovo Republic (P. M. K. R.) were denounced by Rugova as stooges of the Serb police, and he was widely believed by Kossovo Albanians when he did. The radicals’ sporadic gunshots and arsons each served to signal a fresh campaign of interrogations and beatings by Serb police, directed against the nonviolent “shadow state” organizers.

With Yugoslav and Serb armed forces devoted to war in Croatia and Bosnia, Milosevic was content to leave Kossovo at this status quo. On Serb victory in Croatia, one of the leading Serb killers, an Interior Ministry employee known as Arkan, moved to Pristina with scores of armed followers. “Enverist” radicals of the P. M. K. R. secretly convened in Drenica (where resistance to the old Yugoslav monarchy had persisted into 1924), and there voted themselves the armed force of the Kossovo Republic. Albania’s newly elected government maintained cordial relations both with these radicals, and Rugova’s pacific Kossovo government in exile, now established near Bonn.

Kossovo Albanian boycott of official Serb elections in December 1993 gave Milosevic a resounding victory over his rival for the presidency, the Serb-American businessman Panic, and allowed the killer Arkan to win election to a parliament seat. The “Enverist” radicals were split into a Marxist faction, the National Movement for the Liberation of Kossovo, and a Nationalist faction, the Kossovo Liberation Army. The latter had a better footing abroad, where the pacific Rugova’s government in exile at Bonn was beginning to explore establishing its own armed force. Albania continued to assist by giving military training to dozens of radicals, and allowing transit through its borders.

The bloody summer of 1995 saw Serb massacre of Bosnian Moslems, Croat expulsion of Serbs, and NATO bombing of Serb forces in Bosnia. The Dayton Accords confirmed Serb gains in Bosnia, and recognized the rump Yugoslav Federation Milosevic dominated, from his seat for Serbia in its collective presidency. The pacific Rugova used his control of Albanian language media in Kossovo to maintain popular commitment to passive resistance, while the fledgling KLA demanded Serb departure from Kossovo, and launched a new campaign of sporadic shootings and bombings.

Serbia was greatly unsettled by the influx of refugees from Krajina and Slavonia. In Yugoslav elections on May 31, 1996, the Montenegrin presidency went to an opponent of Milosevic, and in Serbia, opposition parties won local posts in many cities. Milosevic refused to allow victorious opponents to take office in Serbia. He allowed three months of demonstrations, then bought off his principal Serb opponent by offering him a cabinet post. The demonstrations were mopped up by brutal police attack, and opposition figures allowed to take local office found their function superseded by various national agencies. The Vatican brokered an agreement Milosevic signed to allow Albanian language schools official existence in Kossovo, but he took no steps to implement it.


Six: Taking Up the Gun

In Bonn, the leading functionary of Rugova’s government in exile, Bujar Bukoshi, rejected passive resistance, and turned the radio transmitter he controlled to broadcasts supporting the KLA. Early in 1997, Albania’s banks were revealed as Ponzi swindles. Mobs looted government facilities, including military arsenals, and swiftly reduced the land to anarchic chaos, in which a Kalshnikov rifle could be had for a five dollar bill.

Bukoshi’s embryonic forces, consisting of a few hundred exiled policemen and soldiers, established themselves in Albania as the Armed Forces of the Kossovo Republic (F. A. R. K.), in competition with the KLA. Albanian students organized demonstrations against Milosevic’s refusal to implement the Vatican agreement on schooling, ignoring orders to desist from Rugova. Serb police crushed the demonstrations with extraordinary brutality.

KLA attacks, which by the Serb government’s claims had been occurring roughly once a week, and claimed ten Serb lives since 1995, began to take place almost daily at the start of 1998. In the old rebel district of Drenica, near the village of Likosane just before noon on February 28, a gunfight broke out between KLA men and a Serb police patrol. Once it was over, Serb police massacred the men of a wealthy Albanian clan considered leaders of the hamlet. Five days later, Serb police surrounded the family compound of a KLA leader and shelled it for hours, then went into the ruins and murdered women, children, and wounded, to a total of 58, including the KLA man, Adem Jashari.

These murders turned Albanian village elders throughout Kossovo against Rugova’s passive resistance. They put hundreds of their young men at the disposal of the KLA. In Drenica, and near the Albanian border, armed partisan bands appeared in such strength the Serb police retired to establish encircling roadblocks. Western diplomats threatened Milosevic with dire consequences if the murders by his police were repeated. Milosevic agreed to begin implementing the Vatican schools agreement, and to meet with Ibrahim Rugova. Simultaneously, Milosevic admitted the ultra-nationalist Chetnik party into a coalition government with his Serbian Socialist Party, and loosed his Serb police once again into Drenica.

This campaign was conducted with the same degree of atrocity that characterized previous operations by Serb police. In one typical incident near Gorjne Obrinje, after fourteen Serb police were shot in a fire-fight, a group of fourteen Albanian women, children, and old men found hiding nearby were shot point-blank by Serb police. Some 200,000 Albanians fled their homes to avoid the fighting, some to southern Kossovo and some to Albania. President Clinton ordered a show of force by U. S. warplanes over Yugoslavia, and in October, his pressure secured an agreement by which Serb Interior Ministry troops were to vacate Kossovo, negotiations with Kossovo Albanian leaders were to begin in earnest, and a body of diplomatic observers would enter Kossovo to monitor events. During the course of negotiating this agreement, Milosevic told a U. S. general that the way to bring peace to Drenica was to “kill them all.”

The monitored cease-fire brought many Kossovo Albanian refugees back to their homes. In Albania, the Kossovo government in exile’s small armed force was violently absorbed by the KLA; in Kossovo, KLA men began arresting and executing functionaries of Rugova’s “shadow state” as collaborators with Serbia. They also murdered about a dozen Serb civilians, and a Serb village mayor. By the start of 1999, fire-fights of company and even battalion scale between KLA guerrillas and Serb police were once more occurring.

Near dawn on January 15, battle broke out between KLA guerrillas and Serb police near the town of Racak. After nine KLA men were killed the rest fled. During the afternoon Serb police entered the town, raped and murdered two women, and murdered forty-three unarmed men and boys. Serb Information Ministry spokesmen in Pristina next morning invited Western journalists to visit the scene of a “successful” fight against the KLA; when they reported what they saw, Milosevic declared the KLA had fabricated the incident, and demanded the diplomatic observers quit Kossovo. The chief judge of the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for Yugoslavia was denied entry to the country.

Seven: The NATO Intervention

NATO demanded the talks agreed to the previous October begin in February, and threatened military action to force compliance. The meeting at Rambouillet Chateau featured a severely fractured Albanian delegation; its principal factions (all of which hated one another) were Rugova’s adherents in the old LDK, old line Communist functionaries from that same umbrella group, and the KLA led by Hashim Thaci. After days of negotiation, Milosevic struck out about half the already settled agreement, substituting his initial demands, which the Albanians and NATO had already rejected, and forced collapse of the talks on March 18. Two days later, 40,000 Serb police and soldiers with 300 armored vehicles launched a fresh offensive into Drenica.

NATO air strikes commenced against Serbia on March 24. While these aimed at destroying Serb anti-aircraft defenses, Serb police and soldiers in Kossovo commenced a wholesale assault on the Albanians of Kossovo, aimed at driving them from the country by exemplary massacre. During the course of this campaign, roughly 10,000 persons, mostly young men, were murdered by Serb police and soldiers. Almost a million Albanians took to flight, either west to Albania, south into Macedonia, or into the mountains of Kossovo itself. Lightly armed KLA guerrillas could accomplish nothing against the Serb forces.

When Serb air defenses were disabled, NATO warplanes began attacks demolishing bridges, power stations, and the like in Serbia proper. With Serb police and soldiers forced to retire their heavy equipment to shelter in bunkers by NATO air bombardment in Kossovo, their murder squads became vulnerable to attack by Albanian partisans, many of whom were not, properly speaking, KLA, but village militia deployed by their clan elders. When Serb police and soldiers attempted to group together to overpower these guerrilla bands, the Serbs were savaged by NATO warplanes.

On June 3, Milosevic capitulated. Serb police and soldiers retired northward; NATO troops moved in. Kossovo Albanian refugees streamed back to their homes. Many set upon Serbs still remaining in Kossovo. NATO troops intervened to protect lives, but not property; even so, several dozen Serbs, many elderly, were killed. The overwhelming majority of Serbs resident in Kossovo fled north into Serbia, or into that small portion of northern Kossovo around the mines where they had long constituted the principal element of the populace.

A government for Kossovo, formed under NATO auspices, blended elements of the LDK and KLA, with the KLA’s Hashim Thaci emerging as Prime Minister, while Ibrahim Rugova, the nonviolent leader, found himself without power, or much prestige. The KLA has kept its word to disarm only poorly, and remains a police problem for NATO occupation troops. It has attempted to provoke guerrilla war in the adjoining areas of Macedonia which are largely populated by Albanians, but has had scant success there, either in baiting the Macedonian government into atrocious reaction to their activities, or in gaining wide support among Albanian people in those districts.

[Zuni]

1. Thank you for posting this

I am sick of the politically motivated pseudo history that often shows up on these boards---this is a great article. Real history is far more complex than the inaccurate, myopic trivia blurbs on message boards suggest.

[sangh0]

2. Thanks Magistrate!

I've only scanned it, but it seems to coincide with my (limited) understanding of what happened. I'm bookmarking this.

[DemExpat]

3. Good work finding this, Magistrate!

I'll bookmark this too for reference...to re-post when necessary!

:kick:
DemEx

[AP]

15. I think The Magistrate wrote this.

It's not a find, it's a "did", right?

[The Magistrate]

17. It Is Indeed A 'Did', My Friend

Though it did take some finding. By some oversight, in shuttling the original draft between two machines during composition back then, only about half of it was saved into my own files. Administrator Elad was kind enough to provide me a link to the old site and its archives, where a methodical search brought the original posting to light.

There is a lot of rum fun back there, old friend: you may recall some wrangles on matters Balkan in particular?

One or two of the "usual suspects" are still in operation, it seems....

[AP]

18. Lordy. Do I ever remember that moment in DU history.

I would love to know why people so thoroughly discredited insist on holding on to these ideas with such tenacity.

[The Magistrate]

19. Sheer Perversity Of Mind, Sir

It flatters their image of themselves to imagine they see through to "truths" unavailable to lesser mortals. Below this is a frightened bewilderment at the complexity and uncertainty of this world, from which simple explainations offer refuge.

[bpilgrim]

25. you can say that again

yall got all the truth and the rest of us are just wannabees, eh...

interesting, so folks who think that we caused more harm than good and that we had a hidden agenda are just part of the bewildered herd right?

so zinn, chomsky and parenti are expressing "frightened bewilderment at the complexity and uncertainty of this world"

you guys can be a riot at times - lol

peace

[The Magistrate]

27. Thank You For Putting It Back Up The Top Of The Page, My Friend

That kind assistance is appreciated.

Please, Sir, do us both a favor, and back away from this lost cause of defending genocidal ethnic cleansing. No good can come of it for you.

"If a man will continue to insist two and two do not make four, I know of nothing in the power of argument that can stop up his mouth."

[bpilgrim]

28. my pleasure

this topic is of interest to me as well so it is right where it should be.

though i noticed you still ignore my questions?

and i will not stop asking the questions that haven't been answered and that cast doubt on the propaganda on why we went to war there.

i have 60 years of imperial aggression since the end of wwII from our side that dosen't jive with the package you and others are selling.

not to mention the actual facts of our actions there.

the war in yugo set the stage for where we are now legalizing PREVENTIVE WAR... and i don't care how much lipstick you or any other puts on it it is still the most henious of war crimes.

think about it :hi:

peace

[RichM]

30. If the Kosovo war was an example of "preventing genocide," would you

say that its supposed "humanitarian motive" was completely unique in the history of post-WWII US interventions? Do you think that people highly skeptical that the United States EVER undertakes military interventions for "humanitarian motives" are generally justified in that skepticism?

[The Magistrate]

33. Yes, Mr. M

It does seem to me something of a "white crow" in history.

It also seems to me a rather belated action: intervention should have been mounted even prior to '95, and many lives would thereby have been saved. It would not be unfair to say Kossovo, bad as it was, was in many ways a mere pretext to undertake a tardy punishment for the genocide already executed in Bosnia. Certainly it was that which made the political will for the Kossovo intervention possible. This may seem untoward to some people, but it strikes me as perfectly regular, and rather in the nature of things as they are in this unhappy world.

Concerning the more general statement, Sir, it does not seem to me many U.S. military actions have ever been billed as humanitarian. Since the Second World War, most have been billed as anti-Communist, and before that, were more honestly admitted to be exercises in debt collection. The move into Somalia, it seems to me, had some genuine humanitarian features, and so did the recent insertion of forces into Haiti. Minor things like the brief Liberian venture this year hardly matter.

More broadly, it seems to me best to examine each instance of anything on its unique characteristics and merits, rather than to apply a general view, and seek to make each case fit it.

[bpilgrim]

37. "a tardy punishment for the genocide already executed" - link please

"Today, Silajdzic, now the Prime Minister, routinely talks about genocide and the 'Bosnian holocaust' with nary an eyebrow raised in his audience. But there was no holocaust. For Bosnia, an area slightly larger than Tennessee, to have suffered more than 200,000 deaths would have meant roughly 200 deaths per day, every day, for the three plus years of war. But the fighting rarely, if ever, reached that level."

"When prominent intellectuals consistently level charges of 'genocide', comparing events in Bosnia to the Holocaust, we must demand evidence. While any killing is to be condemned, circumstantial evidence isn't enough, and while it's unreasonable to expect absolute proof, there can be no disdain for facts. There has never been evidence presented for the widely accepted claim that 250,000 people were butchered in Bosnia. Throughout the war, we haven't known exactly what's happened, exactly how many have been killed who they were or how they died. Mass graves on all sides could contain civilians killed in cold blood or soldiers killed in battle who needed a rapid burial or, most likely, both. No doubt thousands were slaughtered in cold blood. This doesn 't mean, however, that Bosnia was a killing field on the order of Cambodia or Nazi Germany.

From contacts in the U.S. intelligence community, I am positive the US government doesn't have proof of any genocide. And anyone reading the press critically can see the paucity of evidence, despite interminably repeated claims and bloodcurdling speculation."

more...
http://www.balkan-archive.org.yu/politics/myth/brutality.html

seems like a lot of HYPE but little evidence.

it is a DISGRACE to the memory of the victums of REAL genocide to try and claim it here.

where is the PROOF? how many pictures of mass graves filled with mass bodies do we have now?

gotta link?

thanks :hi:

peace

[The Magistrate]

39. Please, Mr. Pilgrim

The Srebrenicia pits are well known, and but one example. Do not disgrace yourself in this matter.

You will make it impossible in future to take with due seriousness your claims to oppose brutal behavior by states to their own citizenry, or the people of other lands, if you do.

[bpilgrim]

41. all i asked for was a link

and since i have been on this board - summer of 01 - no one has.

yet i still take you seriously. ;->

look, if you don't have any just say so, don't get all defensive, it is unbecoming.

peace

[EdGy]

58. see this

my response below in this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=586040#590748

[Jack Rabbit]

83. A few links for you, Mr. Pilgrim

The charges against Milosevic (BBC, February 20, 2003):

The Bosnia indictment is the only one of the three to accuse Mr Milosevic of genocide and complicity in genocide - the most serious of all crimes.
The indictment says he was responsible for "the widespread killing of thousands of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats".
It cites the July 1995 massacre at Srebrenica, where "almost all captured Bosnian Muslim men and boys, altogether several thousands, were executed at the places where they had been captured or at sites to which they had been transported for execution".
It accuses Mr Milosevic of involvement in the murder, imprisonment and subjection to inhumane living conditions and forced labour of "thousands of Bosnian Muslim, Bosnian Croat and other non-Serb civilians, including women and the elderly".
Mr Milosevic bears individual criminal responsibility for these atrocities, according to the indictment, because he "knowingly and wilfully" participated in a joint criminal enterprise in Bosnia, "while being aware of the foreseeable consequences of this enterprise".

Note: The charages against Milosevic are similar in nature to the charages often raised against General Sharon for his part in the Sabra and Shatila massacre (1982). The merits of those charages are not the subject here. The charages are not that the accused directly participlated in acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing, but that the accused supported military operations with knowledge that they would result in such a humanitarian disaster.

Milosevic trial hears of 'Bosnia plot'
(BBC, October 23, 2003):

The former presidents of Yugoslavia and Croatia had a secret plan to divide Bosnia between them, a key witness has told the International War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague.
Ante Markovic, the last prime minister of the old federal Yugoslavia, said that Slobodan Milosevic and the late Franjo Tudjman drew up plans at a meeting in 1991 before the outbreak of war in the Balkans.
He was giving evidence at the trial of Mr Milosevic, who faces 66 charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

Srebrenica timeline (BBC, February 20, 2003):

In the five days after Bosnian Serb forces overran Srebrenica, more than 7,000 Muslim men are thought to have been killed.

Soldier describes Srebrenica murders (BBC, August 25, 2003):

A soldier who took part in the Srebrenica massacre has given dramatic evidence to the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Drazen Erdemovic described how Muslim men and boys were taken in busloads to a farm, systematically lined up and shot - first with machine-guns, then with a single pistol shot to the head.
Many were blindfolded and had their hands tied, the court heard.

Milosevic says Srebrenica 'made up' (BBC, September 27, 2002):

Former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic has said that the massacre of more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica in 1995 was a plot hatched to make the world hate Serbs.
Mr Milosevic accused French spies and the Bosnian Muslim Government of the time of engineering the killings.

In my judgment, Mr. Pilgrim, there is more than enough evidence against Milosevic to justify putting him on trial.

[bpilgrim]

93. thanks

but i still don't see any evidence of genocide.

one anonymous sourceisn't very convincing and even if his story is true that doesn't mean that there was an orchestrated campaign to commit genocide.

anyways i am dropping out of this discussion upon request and we got bigger fish to fry ABB

:hi:

peace

[Violet_Crumble]

71. How is this any different...

...from a Holocaust denier demanding pictures of Jews being gassed to prove that the gas chambers existed? Or when being shown pictures of mass graves, turning round and suggesting that maybe it was mass suicide? We all saw the Serbian concentration camps, and Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch (now HRW) documented the atrocities. It was Helsinki Watch that criticised both Western powers and the Serbs for not doing anything to stop the killing, and it was Helsinki Watch that first called what was happening in Bosnia genocide. Both AI and HRW are very reputable organisations who in the case of genocide, tend to err on the side of caution before using that term.

I participate regularly in the I/P forum, and I've never thought to demand proof before of the deaths of Palestinian civilians, because most of them are documented by these groups, and there is no reason for them to be dishonest about human rights abuses. In the case of Palestinians, there's no genocide happening, and neither organisation has labelled it as such, but in the case of Bosnia they did. I can't see why they'd be dishonest about what they documented in Bosnia...

Also, when the term genocide was first coined, its creator was very specific that for something to be genocide it didn't have to reach the proportions of what the Nazis did to the European Jews. The Genocide Convention he created defined genocide as:

Article 2

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.


What happened in Bosnia was genocide, and there's absolutely no disgrace to the victims of other genocides to call it what it was...

Violet...

[reorg]

74. it never occured to anyone to deny the deaths of civilians

in Bosnia-Herzegovina - on all "sides".

What is questionable is the label genocide, since it was subsequently used as justification for an illegal intervention.

I doubt you ever saw "Serbian concentration camps"; what you certainly have seen are reports like those quoted in this snippet from Diana Johnstone (http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/kosovo20.htm):

"As the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina got under way in mid-1992, American journalists who repeated unconfirmed stories of Serbian atrocities could count on getting published with a chance of a Pulitzer Prize. Indeed, the 1993 Pulitzer Prize r for international reporting was shared between the two authors of the most sensational "Serb atrocity stories" of the year: Roy Gutman of "Newsday" and John Bums of the "New York Times". In both cases, the prize-winning articles were based on hearsay evidence of dubious credibility. Gutman's articles, mostly based on accounts by Muslim refugees in the Croatian capital, Zagreb, were collected in a book rather misleadingly entitled "A Witness to Genocide", although in fact he had been a "witness" to nothing of the sort, His allegations that Serbs were running "death camps" were picked up by Ruder Finn and widely diffused, notably to Jewish organizations. Burns's story was no more than an interview with a mentally deranged prisoner in a Sarajevo jail, who confessed to crimes some of which have been since proved never to have been committed.

On the other hand, there was no market for stories by a journalist who discovered that reported Serbian "rape camps" did not exist (German TV reporter Martin Lettmayer), or who included information about Muslim or Croat crimes against Serbs (Belgian journalist Georges Berghezan for one). It became increasingly impossible to challenge the dominant interpretation in major media. Editors naturally prefer to keep the story simple: one villain, and as much blood as possible. Moreover, after the German government forced the early recognition of Slovenian and Croatian independence, other Western powers lined up opportunistically with the anti-Serb position. The United States soon moved aggressively into the game by picking its own client state - Muslim Bosnia - out of the ruins."

[Violet_Crumble]

75. The definition of genocide is very clear...

I posted the definition from the Genocide Convention in the post you were replying to, and what happened in Bosnia falls under that definition. As I said, Helsinki Watch defined what was happening as genocide, so I'm curious to know what their reasons were for trying to justify an illegal invasion...

Doubt all you like. I know what I saw on the news, and didn't see anyone interviewed. I saw emanciated men behind barbed wire at a camp called Trnopolje. If yr claiming that concentration camps didn't exist, then why is it that Serb officials were showing Western media round one of them (not Trnopolje) that they'd 'tidied up' before the tightly controlled visit?


Violet...

[reorg]

78. emaciated men behind barbed wire

This is exactly the kind of story Diana Johnson is referring to. This very story (photos and film shot by a British team from Channel four) has been proven to be a fabrication, completey distorting the facts.

This camp was a refugee camp, not an Auschwitz like "concentration camp", the individuals in the picture were actually on the OUTSIDE of the fence, not inside the camp, as a German journalist, incidentally from the city where I live, Frankfurt, has later shown. www.tenc.net (emperor's clothes) have a video about this hoax, also an article.

The "emaciated" man, as you may have noticed (if you looked for it, that is) is the only "emaciated", or just thin, person in this picture, all the others depicted look quite well nourished.

As to the "genocide" claim by HRW, they use it for the Srebrenica incident, allegedly a massacre of up to 8000 captured Islamic fighters in the civil war. This number is based on persons reported missing, and on the fact that shootings of captured men undoubtedly occured. However, there is evidence that large numbers of these missing men may have died in combat. Also, as Diana Johnstone and others have pointed out, such killings of unarmed fighters were probably in revenge for reckless rapings, killings and torchings of entire villages carried out by these Islamic fighters in the Srebrenica region, right before the Serbians stormed the place. This is not to justify anything, just to shed a different light on what otherwise would indeed be only explicable as an attempt at genocide.

Why HRW would be one-sided in this? I cannot tell. But I have seen one of those HRW types questioned during the Milosevic trial in The Hague. To me he appeared to be a youngish careerist making a living on the plight of newly to be colonized people, in effect justifying a bombing campaign with as many civilian victims in a few months as there were deaths on all sides in the Kosovo conflict during an entire year, and he did it just by conjecture and making guesses. Biased, yes, to me at least, and maybe a few others, he appeared to be, he had a strong bias against Serbs.

Whatever the "official" definition of genocide may be, in view of real genocides that actually happened: attempts to obliterate entire ethnic groups like in Ruanda or in Nazi Germany -- I find it totally inappropriate, sensationalistic and disgusting to use that label in the case of Bosnia, and even more so in Kosovo (where mass killings such as the one assumed to have happened in Srebrenica never occured).

These were vicious, dirty civil wars, with all sides to blame for, and especially the armchair politicians outside of Yugoslavia who did everything they could to support the secessionists, supplied them with weapons, immediately recognized the tiny, newly (and illegally) seperated statelets, knowing full well that there would be Serbian resistance. Most of these statelets are in effect still controlled and administered by outside forces, and I assume you know where the largest US American military base in Europe is today.

[Violet_Crumble]

101. Sorry, I should have realised those prisoners were just a bit slim...

You can't even bring yrself to admit those men were emanciated. Saying that they were just a bit skinny is exactly the same as someone saying that the Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps were just a bit on the slim side...

I've got a book by Samantha Power with a photo of not one, but quite a few of these skeletal prisoners INSIDE a concentration camp. I guess that's just clever use of Photoshop? It's not the mindless kind of nonsense that Emperors Clothes is, which I'm already familiar with after reading its crap about the I/P conflict, but if you haven't read it, go and get a copy of 'A Problem From Hell' and give it a read. If anything, it'll give you a much clearer understanding of US foreign policy when it comes to ignoring most 20th century occurences of genocide...

No, HRW used the term genocide way before Srebrenica, 1992 in fact. And the only motive of HRW is to investigate human rights violations, a job they do very well. I'm not particularly interested in what one person who works for HRW 'appears' like to you. No offense, but yr denial of the atrocities committed have put yr credibility even lower than some of the Israel First gang in I/P, and that's saying a lot....

You still don't understand what genocide is, though it's more than likely you don't want to understand. The official definition of genocide was created by a man who lost his family in the Holocaust, and he stated many times that genocide is NOT defined as the extermination of entire groups. And when it comes to defining a term like that, sorry but I'll take the wishes of the person who coined the term and wrote the Convention over some person on a message board with a very clear and particularly ugly agenda, and who doesn't realise that with one fell swoop they admitted they think that what happened to the Cambodians and the Kurds wasn't genocide...

Violet...

[reorg]

107. correction and some more quotes

I said:

"This camp was a refugee camp, not an Auschwitz like "concentration camp", the individuals in the picture were actually on the OUTSIDE of the fence, not inside the camp, ..."

Actually, the individuals were indeed "inside" the refugee camp, but on the outside of the fenced-in area.

Since you don't like Emperor's Clothes, you can find a more detailed description of the problems with this picture here:

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/lm-f97/LM97_Bosnia.html

very short version:

http://www.srpska-mreza.com/lm-f97/LM97_Bosnia-press.html

The author, Thomas Deichmann, does not deny that some inmates of this camp may have been undernourished (while others clearly were not, as can be seen in the images), that rape and murder have have taken place.

As I said earlier, there is no doubt that this was an ugly civil war, full of horrors, almost unimaginable for any of us, I presume.

The more pertinent question for this thread, however, is not whether torture and killings have taken place, or what the definition of genocide is, as outlined in the Geneva Convention, or the Statute for the International Criminal Court. The question raised is rather:

Were the US and their willing executioners (NATO) morally justified to launch an illegal, aggressive war in order to prevent or punish alleged or real atrocities? Or is there a hidden agenda at work, using the moral outrage as a smokescreen? Were the "events on the ground" blown out of all proportion in an effort to whip up public support for this war?

In this context, bpilgrim provided a quote:

"When prominent intellectuals consistently level charges of 'genocide', comparing events in Bosnia to the Holocaust, we must demand evidence. While any killing is to be condemned, circumstantial evidence isn't enough, and while it's unreasonable to expect absolute proof, there can be no disdain for facts. There has never been evidence presented for the widely accepted claim that 250,000 people were butchered in Bosnia. ..."

From your replies I get the impression that you (and others) hold the view that yes, NATO was justified to launch an aggressive war against a country that didn't pose any threat to its neighbors, to take sides in a civil war taking place within its borders, meddle with the internal affairs of a UN member country - even without UN authorisation.

In order to strengthen this claim, like the "prominent intellectuals" in the quote above, you continuously bring up comparisons with the Holocaust:

#37: How is this any different from a Holocaust denier demanding pictures ... We all saw Serbian concentration camps ...

#101: ... Saying that they were just a bit skinny is exactly the same as someone saying that the Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps ...


And as to your persistance regarding the totally irrelevant legal definition of genocide, I put to you the following quote form Edward S. Herman (The NATO Media lie machine):

----------------
Genocide Politicized

One of the many successes of the NATO-media lie machine was effectively pinning the label of “genocide” on the Serbs for their operations in Kosovo. “Genocide,” like “terrorism,” is an invidious but fuzzy word, that has long been used in propaganda to describe the conduct of official enemies. It conjures up images of Nazi death camps and is frequently used along with the word “holocaust” to describe killings that are being condemned. On the Nazi-Jewish Holocaust model, genocide implies the attempt to wipe out an entire people. But in the Genocide Convention of 1948 the word was defined more loosely as any act “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group as such.” The Convention even included in genocide acts that were causing serious “mental harm” or inflicting “conditions of life” aimed at such destruction. This vagueness has contributed to its politicization, and Peter Novick notes how in the 1950s its users “focused almost exclusively on the crimes—sometimes real, sometimes imagined—of the Soviet bloc” (The Holocaust in American Life).

It is a notorious fact that the Clinton administration carefully refrained from using the word genocide to apply to the huge 1994 Rwanda massacres of Tutsis by the Hutus. To have allowed the word to be used there would have suggested a need to act, and having decided not to act, the decision to avoid using an emotive word that might have mobilized public opinion on the need to act followed accordingly. By contrast, in the case of Kosovo, the decision to act demanded the mobilization of opinion to support violent intervention, so the aggressive use of the word genocide followed.

In the context of the wars over the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and in its opportunistic use elsewhere, the word genocide has been applied loosely wherever people are killed who are deemed “worthy” victims. In our view this is not only opportunism but also a corruption of meaning of a word whose unique sense implies not just killing or massacre but an attempted extermination of a people, in whole or substantial part.
------------------
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/hermanmay2000.htm


And for good measure, another interesting article from Mr. Deichmann (see above) on the (German) government lies during the Kosovo war:

http://www.artel.co.yu/en/izbor/yu_kriza/2003-10-02_2.html

[The Magistrate]

111. Ah, Srpska-Mreza, Fellow

The connection to the "International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic" makes a pretty contribution to the discussion, and certainly establishes the nature and interests of the arguments made, and cited by you.

Once you out with it, and admit you are apologizing for state murder in its most grotesque forms, whether for ideological reasons or nationalist attachments, you really will feel a lot better....

[reorg]

113. assuming you can read

English, but most of you not German, I linked the first site I found that carries the English translation of an article that was originally published in German. Was meant as a courtesy, fella.

[The Magistrate]

118. As A Point Of Curiousity, Fellow

Was there no eighth or ninth listing in English, perhaps one without a prominent solicitation for the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic?

[RichM]

44. OK, thanks. 2 more questions -

First, whether or not there was "genocide" in Kosovo depends on how large the scale of the killing of Albanian Kosovars really was. No one denies that there was violence, with at least SOME killing. For example, Chomsky wrote in May 1999:

"In the preceding year, according to Western sources, about 2,000 people had been killed in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo and there were several hundred thousand internal refugees. The humanitarian catastrophe was overwhelmingly attributable to Yugoslav military and police forces, the main victims being ethnic Albanian Kosovars, commonly said to constitute about 90 percent of the population...."

http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/articles/z9905-balkans.htm

Do you think 2000 deaths is a fair estimate? If so, do you think it warrants a term like "genocide?"

Secondly: many leftist critics of the Kosovo war point out that its results fit nicely with the general aims of US imperialism -- while conceding that at the same time, it involved attacking Serbs who were engaged in violence against Albanian Kosovars. In this view, the situation in Kosovo presented an opportunity for US policymakers to advance an imperialist agenda, behind a smokescreen in which only the "humanitarian" goal was publicly enunciated. (Or, to put it differently, 2 birds were killed with one stone, while only 1 bird was offered for public consumption.) Do you find this view at all plausible?

[The Magistrate]

87. In Response To Your Questions, Mr. M

The second seems more interesting, and so shall be engaged first. As you do not specify anything concerning "the general aims of U.S. imperialism" in application to the Balkans, you may excuse my engaging here in a text-book "strawman", and suggesting possible features of such an agenda, that are familar to me in various attempts attempts at controversy in this matter, including in some cases elsewhere in this discussion. It is certainly not an attempt to misepresent your views, but a reaction to some uncertainty as to their detail. For it does not seem to me there is a great deal of imperial interest in this back-water peninsula, prominent as it may have been in the past.

In the largest sense, imperialism aims at economic profit for the metropolitain region, and military containment of rival imperiums. It is hard to see anything that would repay effort along these broad lines in the region. The region has no particularly useful resources. There are the mines at Trepca, producing silver in Roman days, and now lead and zinc: these are sometimes reported as containing fantastic values in mineral potential, but large as the lode may be, it has been worked for millenia, and is doubtful the value of mineral remaining much exceedes the cost of extraction and processing. Neither of these are particularly scarce or important minerals, either, in a modern or a militarized economy. Nor is their any particular military value to the place. Even were one to take the Russian Federation as a serious rival, that would have to come through a good deal of contestable ground to reach it, and it certainly could not serve as a bypass to the Dardenales, as experience has shown the Adraitic can be easily stoppered like a bottle. NATO allegiance by the Baltic states, and by Poland, presents a real threat to Russia, by compare to which NATO presence in the Balkans might as well be on the moon.

It has been alleged by some on the left that the imperialist agenda involved was the destruction of Yugoslavia as the last functioning Marxist state in Europe. This would seem to proceed more from ideological views rather than reality. Tito's Yugoslavia mixed a good deal of free-market notions into its state-capitalism, and traded with the West a good deal. U.S. policy after Tito's death aimed explicitly at maintaining Yugoslavia whole, even after the sequential secessions began. Milosevic began as the protege in U.S. circles of Lawrence Eagleburger, a rather noxious reactionary fixture of previous Republican administrations. The reactionary establishment in the United States was hardly hostile to him, but rather the reverse, and both Eagleburger and Kissinger got some profit out of him.

The idea, therefore, that there was some great U.S. imperial interest in the matter does not seem very compelling to me. The idea that there was a growing fear of a larger and larger circle of war, coming to involve even such initially distant states as Greece and Turkey, if matters continued on their present course, at that time, does make some sense to me, and the maintainance of order, it might be urged, is also an imperial interest. With peace to the stock-holders in munitions enterprises, and to those who view all as arranged for "Merchants of Death" to profit, war is not, on the whole, good for business, and a sensible exploiter will try to discourage its outbreak and spread. Sometimes this may necessitate application of force majeur, as a doctor might lance a boil to prevent a blood-poisoning.

On the question of casualties, Sir, the two thousands figure beloved of many who decry the overthrow of Butcher Slobo does not seem correct to me. The Tribunal has received reports from eyewitnesses that run to a total of about eleven thousands, after correlation and professional review by experienced investigators. There remain large numbers of persons, mostly young men, missing and otherwise unaccounted for in the wake of the hoistilities. There are many credible reports of the removal of corpses from their place of execution, and the destruction and secreting of corpses. It is fashionable in some quarters to pooh-pooh such reports, but that to me simply indicates a poor understanding of human ingenuity and criminal behavior. The smaller figure, it seems to me, is being clung to in some quarters to reduce the discomfort felt by persons who are more used to making loose charges of murderous genocide against a state actor than they are to defending a state actor against them.

As to whether these numbers warrant a charge of genocide, that could be debated, perhaps, as question of semantics. Under the current definitions of international law, they probably do, particularly when it is taken into account what the clear intent of the murder state was, and that it was interfered with in the execution of its designs. In old Serb regions of Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, the scale of killing was certainly genocidal, though if averaged out among the total population of those jurisdictions, that can be obscured by persons who wish to do so. The intent of Butcher Slobo to drive out the Albanians of Kossovo, and to replace them with Serb refugees from Croatia, is most clear. Whatever you want to call it, it was clearly a monstrous crime,planned, and actually begun, that was thwarted. That it was imperfectly thwarted is, too, most clear. that a number of Serbs, most all of them innocent of the design in any meaningful sense, suffered in that doing, and subsequently, is also most clear.

Perfection, as it has been said, is in this world found only in the grave. A thing does not have to be perfect to meet my support: it only has to be better than the other available alternatives.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

59. Yikes. Listen to yourself, Magistrate. Even Chomsky and Parenti disagree!

Those two have written books on the details of American foreign policy and have spent their careers getting a lot of things right. AND THEY DISAGREE. So quit flaming du-ers and rolling your eyes.

So you've done some work yourself. Great. Thanks for sharing. Calling other du-ers who are concerned about the issue 'perverse minds' or 'simple, fearful' etc. is totally unwarranted.

Any source that is cited isn't 100% correct all the time but that doesn't mean the source has no validity anywhere ever.

Post #22 is my principal response to the issue from this (Sat.) morning. I just came back from the protest in SF to find more of this 'what the hell does he know? You must be an idiot so shut up' attitude.
Hey, a reminder: We're on the same side here.

By the way, during today's march in SF, one of the call-and-response items was the name of a member of the BushCo administration bullhorned ("Cheney!") with the crowd responding "War Criminal!"
And included with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and Rove's names was the name Wesley Clark. I mention this to remind you that he is not easily accepted as a legit candidate by many, rightly or wrongly, and he is worthy of LENGTHY AND DETAILED DISCUSSION.

Now I'm going to go do some more reading on NATO in Kosovo...

[wyldwolf]

60. Unless you count...

in Parenti's book, "Dirty Truths," Parenti criticizes other leftists such as Erwin Knoll, Chip Berlet, Alexander Cockburn, and Noam Chomsky for not buying into Parentis conspiracy theories. Parenti slams Chomsky for believing that atrocities were committed in Kosovo. On THAT, they do not agree.

[RichM]

62. If you weren't so intent on smearing Parenti, you'd see that the previous

poster specifically said "Even Parenti & Chomsky disagree" on certain issues. You whipped out the same tripe here that you already posted lower in this thread - but it only would make sense here if JohnOneillsMemory had said they "AGREE."

No one claims that all leftists always agree. Clark has had disagreements with the Pentagon & with other generals. So what? By itself, this means nothing.

[DemExpat]

21. Sorry......'blush'......didn't take this for your own work, Mag,......

Excellent!

:hi:

DemEx

[The Magistrate]

24. Thank You, Ma'am

Nothing gratifies an amatuer like being taken for a professional.

Study of history, and particularly of partisan war, has long been a private avocation of mine. To understand such events, of course, a good deal must be learned about the varying venues: people do not fight in a vacuum, after all.

"They say war is an art, but it's not. It mostly consists in outwitting people, robbing widows and orphans, and inflicting suffering on the helpless for one's own ends, and that's not art: that's business."

[Andromeda]

67. What an extraordinary gift...

your mind is Magistrate. So many details impeccably written.

If I had to rely on my own modest knowledge of history about the Balkans I couldn't recall any where near such a collection of facts.

Thank you for putting it out for us all to read. I don't understand how any reasonable person could turn a blind eye to the genocidal atrocities commited in this region of the world.

I believe that a great wrong has now been righted thanks to Bill Clinton, General Wesley Clark and NATO. They also paid a political price for their resoluteness and determination to rid Serbia of Slovo Milosevic.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

4. An Excellent Work, as Always

Many thanks for this very timely piece. I hope it puts to rest any further nonsense levied against NATO, President Clinton and General Clark.

DTH

[11cents]

5. Excellent, magistrate, thanks for posting it.

This sad chronicle is a real rebuke to rightbots and leftbots who want to turn complex human histories into brutally simple-minded morality tales. Bots like, hmm, Michael Parenti. Interesting, BTW, that people who rightly and oh-so-righteously protest Israeli actions on the West Bank were silent about Milosevic's much worse predations against the Kosovars. But then, if NATO hadn't intervened these same bots would have been indignantly asking why it hadn't, and accusing it of failing to act on behalf of a Muslim population.

Recommended reading for more background: "Kosovo: A Short History" by Noel Malcolm.

[newyawker99]

6. kick

:kick:

[The Magistrate]

7. That Is A Book Well Worth Reading, Sir

Lord Kinross on the Ottoman can provide some useful background on the general pattern of that imperium.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

8. Are There Any Other Good Recommendations You Can Make

Regarding books on this? Thank you.

DTH

[bpilgrim]

32. To Kill A Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia

For ten years, US and NATO forces have waged a campaign to dismember Yugoslavia, including 78 days of round-the-clock aerial attacks in 1999 that killed or injured upwards of six thousand people. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished material (mostly Western sources) and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999 shortly after the bombings, Michael Parenti challenges the mainstream media demonization of Yugoslavia and the Serbs, and uncovers the real goals behind Western talk of "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "democracy."

To Kill A Nation reveals a decade-long disinformation campaign waged by Western leaders and NATO officials in their pursuit of free-market "reforms." The political and economic destabilization of Yugoslavia continues today, Parenti shows, as does the forced privatization and Third Worldization of the entire region.

more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/ToKillANation.html


see also...

The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia
November 1999

In 1999, the U.S. national security state -- which has been involved throughout the world in subversion, sabotage, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, and death squads -- launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia for 78 days, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing thousands of women, children, and men. All this was done out of humanitarian concern for Albanians in Kosovo. Or so we were asked to believe. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S. forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major overseas support bases -- all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, and humanitarianism.

While showing themselves ready and willing to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of an ostensibly oppressed minority in Kosovo, U.S. leaders have made no moves against the Czech Republic for its mistreatment of the Romany people (gypsies), or Britain for oppressing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, or the Hutu for the mass murder of a half million Tutsi in Rwanda -- not to mention the French who were complicit in that massacre. Nor have U.S. leaders considered launching "humanitarian bombings" against the Turkish people for what their leaders have done to the Kurds, or the Indonesian people because their generals killed over 200,000 East Timorese and were continuing such slaughter through the summer of 1999, or the Guatemalans for the Guatemalan military's systematic extermination of tens of thousands of Mayan villagers. In such cases, U.S. leaders not only tolerated such atrocities but were actively complicit with the perpetrators -- who usually happened to be faithful client-state allies dedicated to helping Washington make the world safe for the Fortune 500.

Why then did U.S. leaders wage an unrestrainedly murderous assault upon Yugoslavia?

The Third Worldization of Yugoslavia

Yugoslavia was built on an idea, namely that the Southern Slavs would not remain weak and divided peoples, squabbling among themselves and easy prey to outside imperial interests. Together they could form a substantial territory capable of its own economic development. Indeed, after World War II, socialist Yugoslavia became a viable nation and an economic success. Between 1960 and 1980 it had one of the most vigorous growth rates: a decent standard of living, free medical care and education, a guaranteed right to a job, one-month vacation with pay, a literacy rate of over 90 percent, and a life expectancy of 72 years. Yugoslavia also offered its multi-ethnic citizenry affordable public transportation, housing, and utilities, with a not-for-profit economy that was mostly publicly owned. This was not the kind of country global capitalism would normally tolerate. Still, socialistic Yugoslavia was allowed to exist for 45 years because it was seen as a nonaligned buffer to the Warsaw Pact nations.

The dismemberment and mutilation of Yugoslavia was part of a concerted policy initiated by the United States and the other Western powers in 1989. Yugoslavia was the one country in Eastern Europe that would not voluntarily overthrow what remained of its socialist system and install a free-market economic order. In fact, Yugoslavs were proud of their postwar economic development and of their independence from both the Warsaw Pact and NATO. The U.S. goal has been to transform the Yugoslav nation into a Third-World region, a cluster of weak right-wing principalities with the following characteristics:

more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html

peace

[bicentennial_baby]

35. A fascinating book

is "Kosovo: War and Revenge" by Tim Judah, who covered the war as a journalist. His book gives an extremely detailed accounting of the history of the region and its peoples.

"Tim Judah forecast the Kosovo war in his writings before 1999, reported the Rambouillet peace negotiations, and covered the war from the refugee camps in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro. Immediately after the Serb withdrawal he went into Kosovo with the NATO forces, interviewing and reporting from both Pristina and Belgrade, which he has continued to visit subsequently. Using his contacts on all sides of the conflict Judah has written the hidden story of the Balkan conflagration, looking at the historical background, the immediate run-up to the war, the controversy of the NATO bombing, the background to the cease-fire and the NATO peace-keeping operation. This book not only provides the information TV and newspaper coverage didn't reveal, but gives an intimate account of the conflict as it appeared to those who fought it. There will be other books on Kosovo, but none will be more thorough, informed or immediate"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0300083548/qid=1067115978/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/002-0453235-6579234?v=glance&s=books

[reorg]

70. if you look for unbiased sources

you can occasionally find them, among a lot of propaganda pieces promulgating the conspiracy theory of how the genocidal serbs and Milosevic started it all (properly summarized in the opening message of this thread).

One of those unbiased sources would be the study of Heinz Loquai: Der Kosovo-Konflikt - Wege in einen vermeidbaren Krieg (The Kosovo Conflict - Avenues into Avoidable War). Unfortunately only available in German.

Loquai, a former general in the German army, was a member of the OSCE verificaton mission in Kosovo. He is no left wing radical, his study is published by a respected, social democrat leaning institute at Hamburg University (Institut für Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik). He draws on a variety of sources, first and foremost the daily reports of the OSCE, reports from the German embassy in Belgrade, and personal interviews with several diplomats and officers involved.

He thoroughly deconstructs the German propaganda lie about the so-called Operation Horseshoe (and mentions an interesting factoid: asked about that plan by the BBC at the time, General Clark said he never heard of such a plan ...) and shows how the so-called Racak massacre, despite the fact that it was never - and in fact still isn't - proven (to be a shooting of unarmed civilians), was quickly used as a pretext for starting the war.

He also points out that as an "humanitarian intervention", the war was illegal, since it wasn't authorised by the UN. All serious scholars, BTW, at least in Germany, agree on that.

Another interesting and very knowledgable source, from the left, is the investigative journalist Diana Johnstone. She has written extensively about Yugoslavia. Here are illuminative reviews of her latest book "Fool's Crusade - Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions", by

Edward S. Herman in Monthly Review: http://www.monthlyreview.org/0203herman.htm

Louis Proyect in Swans: http://www.swans.com/library/art9/lproy04.html

[The Magistrate]

88. The Work By Mr. Judah Refered To Above, My Friend

Is an excellent one, well worth consulting.

A readily available introductory account is Carole Rogel's "The Breakup of Yugoslavia and the War In Bosnia", part of the Greenwood Press Guides series.

Ms. West's old classic "Black Lamb and Grey Falcon" remains a most useful work, approached with a little care: it is a smashing read, which counts for a great deal with me.

Some of the works touted above are of use more for showing what people would rather have occured than for information about events as they transpired: people do sometimes mistake alignment with their own bias for lack of bias.

[EdGy]

95. beware of rebecca west

There is an excellent analysis and critique of her work on the Balkans that places that work and she herself in the context of what was happening in England at that time, it's an article by Brian Hall called "Rebecca West's War" published in The New Yorker, 15 April 1996, pages 74-83 (I am not able to find it online unfortunately).

[The Magistrate]

96. My Penchant For Understatement, Sir

Can be over-done at times. Thank you for amplifying my suggestion the work be read "with a little care." She does make things come alive, at least for me, but her commentary on them is not worth much.

[wyldwolf]

9. ..but...but...Michael Paranti said... and Clark did...

...and... and... DON'T CONFUSE ME WITH THE TRUTH!

[bpilgrim]

26. and zinn and chomsky and others

have pointed out that we caused more harm than good and there were hiddin agendas.

but of course the MAJISTRATE knows better...

back in line

peace

[wyldwolf]

29. Parenti is a loon.

"Pointing out" requires facts, not taking the word of Milosevic.

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!

[bpilgrim]

31. thats what the elite ALWAYS say about truth tellers

and you just posted a whole lot of smear about the man but NOTHING about his message, typical as well.

parenti is a national TREASURE along with zinn and chomsky but i am sure you got nothing but hate for those giants as well, eh.

yugo set the stage for our current policy of PREVENTIVE WAR how quaint.


where are the mass graves? where are the laws that ordered ethnic cleansing?

there are NONE.

think about it...

peace

[RichM]

34. You have posted this exact smear now in at least 5 different places.

When is it enough? You are just copying & re-pasting the smear; you don't respond to questions raised against it. What is the difference between you & a little kid who goes around writing dirty words on the walls?

It would be very easy for me to find something ugly written about Clark. I could go plaster that repeatedly all over the DU boards, too. The only thing that stops me is a sense of decency & fair play. That doesn't seem to stop you, though.

[wyldwolf]

36. And will continue to...

As long as Parenti is used as a source in this matter..

It would be very easy for me to find something ugly written about Clark. I could go plaster that repeatedly all over the DU boards, too. The only thing that stops me is a sense of decency & fair play. That doesn't seem to stop you, though.

You don't have to do this. Some of your fellow conspiratorialists already do.

But you can if you want to.

[bpilgrim]

38. consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

adored by little statesmen, philosophers, and divines - Ralph Waldo Emerson

next time come to the table with FACTS instead of ad hominem attacks against the messenger.

this ain't FOX-NEWS ya know :hi:

Peace

[The Magistrate]

40. The Actual Quote, Mr. Pilgrim

" A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philkosophers, and divines."

The qualifier is important. Mr. Emerson's target is, indeed, those who attempt "one size fits all" explainations of events in this complex world, who seek to force all onto a Procustrean Bed of their own limited view, rather than view matters in the round with regard to their full complexity and individual characteristics.

Be warned, Sir: the old Yankee was speaking to you....

[bpilgrim]

42. "A foolish consistency"

exactly

on edit: it isn't in reference to a "one size fits all" solution but on the dangers of following PRECEDENT for precedent's sake.

something we have been doing in our foreign policy with ever greator vigor since the end of wwII.

to deny our imperial designs AND the lack of evidence for the present case is a HOBGOBLIN way to many minds are influnced by.

peace

[wyldwolf]

43. Constancy is the foundation of virtue - Francis Bacon

:)

[bpilgrim]

45. but a foolish consistency

IS the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen, philosophers, and divines." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

would love to see the evidence of 'genocide' or did we PREVENT that?

no one has ever revealed any mass graves or documents that show genocide was the PLAN.

or did they destroy all the evidence before we attacked? or shipped it to syria, iraq?

peace

[wyldwolf]

46. Well we agree I'm consistant...

the "foolish" part is where your opinion comes into play.

Nice consistency there in posting that quote twice.

[bpilgrim]

47. at lacking any evidence

just ad homien attacks at critics.

guess that makes me foolish for pointing that out to you with your consistancy and all but there are others who read these boards as well.

:hi:

peace

[wyldwolf]

48. What other evidence do I need about Parenti other than what I documented?

It is a fact that 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. And said Parenti, through his work with Project Censored, relied on dubious sources and a lack of rigorous research and fact-checking.

It is a fact that 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 and 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... 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.

It is a fact that Parenti's most recent work, "To Kill a Nation", praises Milosevic.

ad hominem Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.

Since Parenti has been accused of using shoddy research in writing about Kosovo and admiring Milosevic, each and every one of these points is relevant to the topic at hand, so does not qualify as "Ad Hominem."

If I had said Parenti has big nose and is therefore not credible, THAT would be Ad Hominem.

Guess that makes me foolish for pointing that out to you your misuse of the word and all but there are others who read these boards as well.

[RichM]

49. I can answer that. First, your repeat smears show disrespect for DU.

It is an abuse of these boards to keep plastering the same tripe all over the place. You are allowed to post your comments once, when you feel they're relevant. You're not allowed to run around copying & re-posting them all over the place. That kind of childishness simply degrades the quality of DU.

Second, what you are posting is just your own opinion. Some DUers, like me, have read a great deal of Parenti -- and on that basis, have the greatest respect for him.

Third, what you are doing here shows you think it's your right to censor the opinions of anyone you disagree with. It would be very easy to find a few quotes which are just as critical of Noam Chomsky, as you have found here about Parenti. Chomsky is of course more famous, but the two writers are in basic agreement about most things. Do you think you would have the right to go smearing Noam Chomsky on these boards, as you have done to Parenti?

What you have posted is not "evidence." It is just the opinions of a few people that don't like Parenti. It's no more "evidence" than articles that say all Democrats stink, are "evidence" that all Democrats stink. Everyone who ever criticizes the US government has lots of enemies, so it's not hard to find a few critical quotes. Your problem is you think that such quotes "prove" far more than they do.

Parenti is a world-class author who holds a doctorate from Yale University. He has written 17 books, & is invited all over the world to speak. He was invited to be interviewed on C-Span only a few weeks ago. He has more brains in his pinky than you have in your whole body. I'll tell you one more time - stop slandering him.

[wyldwolf]

50. I'll address this...

It is an abuse of these boards to keep plastering the same tripe all over the place.

When the board owners complain, then it will be an issue.

You are allowed to post your comments once, when you feel they're relevant. You're not allowed to run around copying & re-posting them all over the place.

When the board owners include that little nugget in their board rules, then it will be an issue.

That kind of childishness simply degrades the quality of DU.

That is your opinion.

Second, what you are posting is just your own opinion.

No, it is also the opinion of 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.

And it is the opinion of the protesters showed up outside the office of San Francisco radio station KPFA to protest Parenti's appearance on that station's "Flashpoints" show.

It is not my opinion that Parenti's most recent work, "To Kill a Nation", praises Milosevic! it is a fact.

Some DUers, like me, have read a great deal of Parenti -- and on that basis, have the greatest respect for him.

Many more DU'ers, like me, have read a great deal on Wesley Clark and Bill Clinton's Kosovo mission -- and on that basis, have the greatest respect for them and what they did.

Third, what you are doing here shows you think it's your right to censor the opinions of anyone you disagree with.

Oh, please! Like I have the power to censor anyone on DU. THAT statement would be hysterical if it weren't so misguided.

It would be very easy to find a few quotes which are just as critical of Noam Chomsky, as you have found here about Parenti.

Probably, but we're discussing Parenti.

Chomsky is of course more famous, but the two writers are in basic agreement about most things.

However, in Parenti's book, "Dirty Truths," Parenti criticizes other leftists such as Erwin Knoll, Chip Berlet, Alexander Cockburn, and Noam Chomsky for not buying into Parentis conspiracy theories. Parenti slams Chomsky for believing that atrocities were committed in Kosovo. On THAT, they do not agree.

Do you think you would have the right to go smearing Noam Chomsky on these boards, as you have done to Parenti?

You have a really misguided opinion of what is and isn't allowed on DU. I have the RIGHT to post information about ANYONE in the public arena - Chomsky included. If you don't believe me, go to the "Ask the Admins" section and ask.

What you have posted is not "evidence." It is just the opinions of a few people that don't like Parenti. It's no more "evidence" than articles that say all Democrats stink, are "evidence" that all Democrats stink. Everyone who ever criticizes the US government has lots of enemies, so it's not hard to find a few critical quotes. Your problem is you think that such quotes "prove" far more than they do.

Wait! You said they were MY opinions. Now you admit they're the opinions of a few people who don't like Parenti. Well guess what? People have THE RIGHT not to like Parenti. Having never at anytime called the Parenti information "evidence," I still contend that based on what I've read of him and by him, he is a conspiracy nut.

Parenti is a world-class author who holds a doctorate from Yale University.

Whoopty do! Bush graduated from Harvard with a Masters of Business Administration in 1975.

Bill Clinton graduated from Georgetown University, was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, and earned a Yale University Law degree.

In fact, Bill Clinton is on the opposite side of this issue than Parenti.

I know who's corner I'm in!

He has written 17 books, & is invited all over the world to speak.

Bill Clinton won two terms as president and is invited all over the world to speak

He was invited to be interviewed on C-Span only a few weeks ago.

CSPAN aired a multiple part class on the Clinton Presidency and Clinton had been on CSPAN dozens of times.

He has more brains in his pinky than you have in your whole body. I'll tell you one more time - stop slandering him.

Or what? You'll tell your mommy? :cry:

[Andromeda]

68. lol,lol lol lol lol!

Bravo!!!:bounce:

[WilliamPitt]

77. Ditto to that Bravo

Wow. :)

[AP]

81. excellent post

...

[WoodrowFan]

120. Game, set, match!

Nice answer WW!

[The Magistrate]

121. Indeed, Sir

The urging of a view is hardly censorship....

[WoodrowFan]

124. deleted by author

on further reading of Mags reply, I understood what he meant.

[The Magistrate]

125. My Apologies For Any Confusion, Mr. Fan

It is a pleasure to see Mr. Bryan's refrain, Sir. An excellent choice for signature in these times.

[bpilgrim]

54. The Assassination of Julius Caesar

A People's History of Ancient Rome


"With laser sharp research and analysis, Michael Parenti burns away stale orthodoxy and distortion. What a remarkable people's history!"
--Mark Solomon, Professor of History Emeritus, Simmons College

more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Caesar.html

an EXCELLENT, easy to read, short history of JC.

a remarkable work that reminds one of that old cliche 'the only thing new in this world is the history you don't know' h. truman

:hi:

peace

[wyldwolf]

57. Waging Modern War

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1586481398.01._PE30_PIdp-schmooS,TopRight,7,-26_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Clark, in contrast to other American military leaders, places protecting human rights among U.S. vital interests.

[bpilgrim]

92. i c

you are a clark supporter.

that explains things, thanks :hi:

peace

[wyldwolf]

99. i.c.

You are are not a Clark supporter, but a purveyor of conspiracy theories.

[reorg]

109. 30% off

no demand for New Liberal Imperialism?

[wyldwolf]

116. Common on Amazon... I guess you don't read much...

Look what you can get for 40% off...




Oooh... ahh... the best seller in the country...

And there goes your petty little snipe!

[bpilgrim]

51. calling him a socialist/marxist is an Ad Hominem

and claiming his sources were 'dubious' or a lack of rigorous research and fact-checking without providing ANY examples is just what the folks at fox news does.

where is the GENOCIDE? where are the PLANS for ethnic cleansing?

where are the WMDs?

just like the easter bunny...

peace

[wyldwolf]

53. See, here is where you are wrong...

I didn't call him a socialist/marxist (even though he himself has indicated he is.)

I also didn't claim his sources were 'dubious' or a lack of rigorous research and fact-checking without providing ANY examples... 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 did that. I just pointed it out.

Sorry!

[bpilgrim]

55. you just presented it as 'evidence'

no kidding

peace

[wyldwolf]

56. Where?

Oh, you mean when I pointed out those who feel that way about him?

:eyes:

[bpilgrim]

91. here - "Parenti is a loon"

i assume that was your opinion

then you follow that up with third party ad homines.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=586040&mesg_id=590243&page=

remember?

peace

[wyldwolf]

98. Parenti is a loon...

...but I didn't present my post as evidence - only to show others feel the same way.

[reorg]

73. it is depressing indeed

to see some participants in this thread desperately clinging to this old, worn-out conspiracy theory about how the bad bad Serbs and their leader Milosevic started all those wars ... when in fact he was the only "national" leader in Yugoslavia who actually wanted to preserve the multinational, multicultural Yugoslav federal state which was lauded and supported in unison by all outside forces - until the Soviet Union broke apart.

From then on, however, all those peace-loving, newly emerging humanitarian interventionist empires went into the business of nation building, having succeeded first with nation splitting, and nation bombing thereafter.

Obviously, mainstream Democrats, and in Germany even the majority of Greens, were unfortunately suckered into supporting this, by employing outrageous propaganda lies not dissimilar to the ones recently exposed as having been employed by Messrs. Bush and Blair of ill repute.

[Rooktoven]

76. Excuse me...

Milosevic didn't want a multi-cultural state, he wanted a region dominated by Serbia. To accomplish this goal, he armed thugs from the hillsides to go and wantonly kill and rape unarmed Bosnians.

Bob Dole and Margaret Thatcher were dead on right on this. We shouldn't have waited until Kosovo to intervene. (going off-topic a bit here...) Bill Clinton had made this an issue running against George Bush 1, but got cold feet when he assumed the presidency. The one person in the administration pushing for intervention was his Vice President, Al Gore. When I read about this years ago (in Newsweek I think) my respect for Gore shot up. It was my belief that he would have been a better, more forthright and resolute president than Clinton ever was.

In context of where we are today-- it's not wrong to go to war for purely humanitarian reasons. It is wrong to misrepresent the reasons for going to war. I'm glad Milosevic is gone, just like I'm glad Saddam is gone, despite how ineptly, disingenuously, and unjustly (to our troops as well) this war was handled.

[reorg]

79. why on earth

do you think anybody cares if you're glad that heads of states are "gone" - I assume in New American Speak this means "their countries invaded by American troops and used for their own purposes"?

And why on earth do you think this is any of your business? Are you aware that an increasing number of folks around here in Europe would be glad to see certain (... spare me to spell out the appropriate label) gone forever?

And, no, Milosevic absolutely didn't want a "region" dominated by Serbs, this is pure fantasy on your part, or rather, this is the part of the truth that was spoon-fed to you, for years on end. He, and others, saw it coming, way before most Americans couldn't find that "region" on a map, and they resisted the secessions, which BTW were carried out unilaterally, not - as the Yugoslav constitution required - in unison with all members of the federal state.

I dimly remember having read something about a civil war in a large country in America some hundred years ago ... thugs on the hillside are found everywhere, and most often they need little prompting to do their dirty deeds.

[The Magistrate]

80. No, Fellow, You Are In Serious Error

Milosevic was indeed an apostle of "Greater Serbia", and political agitation toward that end was a key-note of his rise to power.

As you have no qualms about apologizing for state murder, it is understandable why you would see no gain to human-kind by the elimination of a flagrant practitioner of that ancient craft. Many people are of a different view, and persons such as yourself, who consider the people mere chattels of the head of state, who is free on grounds of sovereign right to maltreat and dispose of them as he might be inclined, are really on the way out, kick and scream for the right to of a government to kill at will as you might.

Your own location is un-known to me, but you do not seem much better informed about the history of the United States than you allege most here are about matters Balkan. There was a tremendous propaganda run-up to our secessionist civil war; it produced some of my favorite reading.

Your evident guess about the nationality of Ms. Crumble, a regular sparring partner down in the Foreign Affairs cage-match, is as sadly in error as your evident assumption about her general political coloration.

You will probably do no better with mine.

[Rooktoven]

82. Sorry, I guess I trust Christiane Amanpour's reporting

about what was going on in Bosnia. The fact is that reporting like hers went unheeded in the halls of power in the west, until met with the disgraceful Dayton accords, which basically rewarded the Milosevic/Mladic genocide.

Your response sounds like the ANSWER party line, which is poisonous not only for Americans, but the world in general. Armed conflict is often needed in this world, not only to remove fascists, but also to remove those who inflict terror in the name of socialism.

Our failure to help Bosnia undermined our standing with the Islamic world. It was a sad opportunity missed.

[reorg]

110. newsweek, cnn ...

Infotainment rules, I see.

I have no affiliation to ANSWER, nor any other splinter group, even though I commend them for organizing some impressive demonstrations. I like Ramsey Clark, though (and Chomsky and Herman and Zinn and Vidal etc), read news and commentaries at Counterpunch and ZNet - that's what I would call reliable sources.

If you really think that "Armed conflict is often needed in this world" then you have completely lost me (not that I think you care).

I prefer any Antiwar.com supposedly right-wing libertarian to Democrats who would hold this view. But then it is no secret that the US is ruled by and large by a one-party system. You must be mighty happy about that.

[Rooktoven]

114. So you think Christiane Amanpour is infotainment?

You're right that I don't care if I've lost you in regard to armed conflict. Obviously it is rarely desirable, but sometimes necessary. I think sometime syou have to shoot the bad guys. Maybe that makes me a cowboy republican, but I don't think so. (Checks voter registration card--yep, still democrat).

I _do_ happen to respect what Chomsky says about some things. Did he deny what was going on in Bosnia? It is beyond me how some people who pretend to care about compassion and social jusice look the other way or apologize for atrocities committed in the name of "socialism".

If I could, I would happily pull the trigger on a gun pointed at Milosevic or Mladic.

[The Magistrate]

119. You Are Forgetting, Mr. Rooktoven

The inherent superiority of Europe's old Trotsky-ites in political acumen and understanding to anything that can be found here among us cowboys.

[reorg]

122. this observation

would merit serious consideration, were it not for the fact that the most venerable, learned and outspoken opponents of the Kosovo invasion are hardly European, nor Trotskyites. Chomsky, Zinn, Herman, Vidal, not to forget Cockburn (ok, still a bit European), Tariq Ali (ok, living there, and also a FORMER Trotskyist, like SOME of the sources I cited), and on and on it goes, some have been quoted by others here, as you well may be able to yourself.

I would add even Clark (Ramsey) to this list - he has interesting stuff to say about the value of legal procedures and representation! Caught an interview with him on C-Span lately, an intriguing man and career.

[The Magistrate]

123. In Other Words, Fellow, The Usual Suspects

Being "agin' it" serves some for a reason to live, but makes them about as much use for analysis as a stopped clock for telling time: there is no real need to look to their views on any matter, for you may know in advance what they will be, merely by consulting the cast of characters involved.

Procrustes had nothing on these fellows....

[reorg]

126. yes, character is the key word here

- we are blessed to have these wise, old, and refreshing guys around.

They are standing tall against the claptrap that is going with the flow, flooding not only the corporate media but, sadly, some alternative venues as well.

[The Magistrate]

128. Refreshing, Fellow?

Rather, stale, predictable, and generally useless. A political equivalent of Mad-Libs, with a sadly limited vocabulary for filling in the blanks. A sort of Cold War-ism in reverse. One-size-fits-all does not work even in panty-hose, let alone geo-political analysis.

You seem, fellow, to be suffering from feeling "more-progresive-than-thou", an affliction common enough, but much less so than its sufferers believe. It cripples effective political action, however, and dooms those afflicted with it to terminal irrelevance.

[reorg]

130. useless, hm

maybe for those ahead of us lesser distinguished masses. I find often interesting information and analyses when checking with these quarters. Here is just one tiny example, a review of Clinton advisor Philip Bobbitt’s "Shield of Achilles" (of whom I had never heard before reading this), in case somebody interested might accidentally read this thread:

GOPAL BALAHRISHNA: ALGORITHMS OF WAR, in the latest issue of New Left Review (ed. by the previously mentioned Tariq Ali).

"... Bobbitt is not a Republican but a Democrat, and no ordinary Democrat at that. A nephew of Lyndon Johnson, whose father ran lbj’s radio stations, he is a scion of a Texan political elite that has produced such bi-partisan insiders as John Connolly, Lloyd Bentsen or Robert Strauss. His career has been an effortless spiral between academic and political appointments, tracing the profile of a figure at the highest reaches of overlapping establishments. Holder of a chair in constitutional law and international relations at the University of Texas, not to speak of concurrent appointments in history at Oxford and war studies at King’s College, Bobbitt is also a member of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Pacific Council on International Policy and the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In Washington, he served successively as Associate Counsel to the President under Carter, Counsel to the Senate Iran-Contra Committee under Reagan, Counsellor on International Law at the State Department under Bush Senior, and Director of Intelligence on the National Security Council under Clinton.

The Clinton catalyst

If Bobbitt’s opinion of such various masters of the American state is uniformly glowing, <2> one stands out for especial admiration. Clinton, although at first slow to grasp the issues at stake before him, and at times ill-served by his speech-writers, was the statesman who steered the United States towards an entirely new conception of international relations, a change ‘of a magnitude no less than Bismarck’s’. The turning point in this revolution was the President’s decision to intervene, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo, overriding the anachronistic fetishes of national sovereignty, and the un legalisms enshrining them, in the higher interests of humanity and the Western community. Bobbitt devotes a passionate chapter of his book to these episodes, in which he was evidently an ardent actor behind the scenes. He has since explained how he proposed to Clinton a justifying doctrine for such operations on a global scale. ‘The us would intervene when the threat to our vital strategic interests was overwhelming and imminent; or when significant strategic interests and humanitarian concerns coincided; or, when a vital strategic interest was absent, humanitarian concerns were high and strategic risks were low’. <3>

In offering the most systematic theorization of American imperial interventions to date, The Shield of Achilles makes clear that the major ideological innovations powering them are the creation of the Clinton, not of the Bush Presidency. Here the key development was the proclamation of the legitimacy of military intervention—regardless of national sovereignty or absence of aggression—to defend human rights, to stamp out terrorism, or to block nuclear proliferation. In the name of the first, Clinton launched a full-scale war on Yugoslavia; of the second, bombed Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan; and of the third, came within an ace of unleashing a pre-emptive attack on North Korea in 1994 (holding off only for the reasons that have so far also restrained Bush—fear of the consequences for Seoul). The Republican Administration, for all its glaring contrasts of style, has essentially operated within the same framework. The principal difference has been tactical—the lesser extent to which it has concerted with its European allies—rather than juridical: the degree to which it has cast aside previous constraints of international law.

It is in keeping with his role under Clinton, therefore, that Bobbitt should have been an eloquent apologist for the invasion of Iraq by Bush, since in his view the Ba’ath regime richly merited attack by just the criteria he had laid down at the time of Bosnia. Saddam was at once an arch-violator of human rights, a seeker of nuclear weapons, and—crucially—a holder of strategic assets vital to the us. ‘The West’s interest in prising Iraqi oil out of Saddam’s hands was at least as important a motivation to the us/uk as making the benefits of oil pay for ordinary Iraqis’, he has explained. ‘It was Saddam’s great wealth, derived from oil revenues and put in service of his relentless pursuit of wmd, that made his removal so imperative’. <4> Temporarily out of office in Washington, Bobbitt thinks the Bush Administration would have done better to insist more openly on the pre-emptive nature of its assault on Baghdad—to prevent rather than destroy Iraqi nuclear weapons—and should have appointed some distinguished Democrats to Cabinet positions, to manifest national unity in the war against terrorism. <5> Meanwhile, basing himself in London where his numerous academic stints have afforded him contacts at all levels of the local establishment, he has been tireless on behalf of the Blair government, in broadsheets, talkshows and on websites, firming up British opinion for Operation Iraqi Freedom. The role of informal adviser and courtier at Downing Street is curiously apposite, since the living embodiment of the unity of the Clinton and Bush periods is the uk’s social-democratic Prime Minister, an eager apostle of the war aims of both Presidents."

read more at:

http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR25701.shtml

and maybe some further snippets are tolerable under the rules:

"... If any two architects of the market-state were to be named, Thatcher and Reagan would be the obvious choices—the pioneer of privatization, and the unleasher of financialization on a world scale. In the United States, the agenda of the Reagan Administration to reflate American power through rearmament and a vast shakedown of organized labour was no mere paroxysm of the late Cold War: the employer offensive and militarism of the eighties signalled the advent of a new political order in which we are still living today. For Bobbitt, however, ‘President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were among the last nation-state leaders’, because their legitimacy still rested on their claim to improve the welfare of their peoples. In scrapping this relic, by contrast, ‘Bush and Blair are among the first market-state political leaders’. <23>

On this reading, no symbol could have been more apt than Thatcher’s fall from power at the very moment she was signing the ‘Charter for a New Europe’ in Paris in November 1990, when she was ignominiously ousted in her absence by her own party in London. Of the two antithetical accounts of the Peace of Paris that Bobbitt musters, there is little doubt which informs more of the narrative. The media splash of that month, soon forgotten, was not the inauguration of a new constitutional order, but the passing of an old one. <24> In short order, a series of post-Cold War crises and disasters dissipated its illusions, creating states of emergency in which the us not only claimed the sovereign right to decide on the interpretation of international law, but increasingly to make and break it at will. The first Gulf War, with its rhetoric of American leadership in the international community, looked as if it would be the inaugural event of the coming era, but ultimately turned out to be a false dawn.

For in the Balkans, the un proved a broken reed, and the homilies of Paris offered scant guidance. Far from displaying any united purpose, the newly minted market-states fell into lamentable disarray. Bobbitt’s account of the Yugoslav crisis shifts the focus from the axial relationship of social structure and strategy to the mise en scène of Western public indignation over the fate of Bosnia—that is, from hard to soft power. Although keenly aware of the plebiscitary nature of modern governance, Bobbitt often collapses the world into its journalistic representation. His selective reconstruction of the break-up of Yugoslavia rehashes the official lessons of Atlantic internationalism. It is a story of European appeasement, American hesitation and international indifference in the face of genocide, exposing the incompatibility of human rights and nationalism. In this myth of origins, the villainous Boutros-Ghali—impertinently pointing to the far greater enormities of Rwanda—expresses the shocking sophisms of a dying inter-state order. Western collusion in those events is passed over with unruffled composure.

Fortunately, in the end Clinton saw the light and acted to check Miloševic. Thus in practice the turning-point was Rambouillet rather than Paris. Not the pieties of the Concert of Powers, but an ultimatum by the United States was the moment at which the international architecture inherited from the Cold War started to be reshaped. <25> Since then, the field of manoeuvre of the American state has steadily widened. The limits of the possible are still being boldly redefined. In Bobbitt’s terms, the American regime is the detonator of an expanding legal universe of market-states, bursting asunder an old international order based on the nominal recognition of the sovereignty of all nation-states. The norms of twentieth-century treaty and alliance structures are thus in flux. This disorder is not, however, the transitional manifestation of a constituent power at work, but a new, protean mode of imperial authority that is dispensing with the very form of universal legal rules and adopting a jurisprudence based on flexible strategic guidelines. ..."

[The Magistrate]

132. Having Sorted Through This Twaddle, Fellow

And operating on the presumption you agree with it, or otherwise you would never have gone to the trouble, the principal use of the extract above seems to me to demonstrate that you consider state sovereignty to be the highest conceivable good in political order, and feel that no matter what a state power chooses to do to its populace, that whatever degree of maltreatment, brutalization, etc., a state power chooses to inflict on persons under its jurisdiction, no one from outside that jurisdiction can do a damned thing about it. It is, writ large, nothing but the old doctrine that a father may do as he pleases to wife and children, whether by way of privation or discipline or even sexual exploitation, and it is no one else's business, but only a family affair.

This is a rather odd view, it seems to me, for any progressive or leftist to adopt. Sovereignty, and the view all is the chattel of the sovereign, is the basis of the original reactionary order against which left and progressive persons have been struggling for centuries. What hope can there be for any sound internationalism, for any form of world governance, for any international law, for any taming of the anarchic relation between states, if sovereignty is so exalted above all other values?

Your view in this, fellow, is in fact extraordinarily reactionary, for all your protestations of being an exemplar of leftism for us all. As can be seen from your other comments, it has only led you to being an apologist for state murder and ethnic cleansing on a grand scale, and that being done by an actor using not even left ideals of establishing Communism, but using instead the most primitive forms of nationalist racialism for the energizing element of the crimes. Fortunately, few even on the left are so foolish as to follow your example.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

135. I Have Never Understood Members of the "Left" Who Support Doing Nothing

In the face of genocide or ethnic cleansing.

I suspect it amounts to, variously:

1) Idealists who do not wish to believe we live in such a flawed world;

2) Pacifists who refuse to act even when the cause is just; or

3) Ideologues who support a system of government more than morality.

DTH

[EdGy]

84. your ignorance of the situation is astounding

No one in Serbia is defending Milosevic on these grounds. His former associates and those who took part in the atrocities, including members of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior, have openly admitted their participation in the atrocities in Bosnia.

Read the memoirs of his political ally and then-president of the Yugoslav presidency, Borisav Jovic. He very clearly states that Milosevic, defense minister Kadijevic, and Jovic himself by June 1990 had decided that they needed to expel Slovenia and Croatia from Yugoslavia through the use of armed force.

This is not a question of "bad Serbs", it's a question of Milosevic and his allies in the Serbian communist party doing all they could to destroy the social democratic wing of that party. Serbs throughout the former Yugoslavia are among the biggest victims of Milosevic.

The person who wanted to preserver multiethnic Yugoslavia was Ante Markovic, who was number one on Milosevic's hit list. Croatian president Franjo Tudjman also had it out for Markovic as well as for Yugoslavia, and he, like Milosevic, used violence against civilians in order to achieve his own goals. And Croats, especially those in Bosnia, were among the biggest victims of Tudjman's policies.

Milosevic did everything possible to destroy the forces in Serbia (and Yugoslavia) that supported a multiethnic Yugoslavia. He did all he could to destroy the social democratic wing of the Serbian and Yugoslav communist party.

The west certainly was complicit; it supported Milosevic and Tudjman throughout the 1990s, and in the post-war era the west and the "humanitarian" ngos are inflicting great damage on those societies, with the best of intentions.... (road to hell and all).

[GabysPoppy]

10. Kick

For the night crew. A good read for all.

[Fight_n_back]

11. Thank you

Im going to have to read this a couple of times because there are no pictures.

What a great effort.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

12. Isn't It, Though?

The Magistrate is a DU treasure. :-)

DTH

[wyldwolf]

13. Kick again.

[Jack Rabbit]

14. !!

Applause from the website of Glendale Community College, Glendale, Arizona

[wyldwolf]

16. Another kick...

..and an observation: Where are all the Milosevic apologists who usually chime in?

[Darranar]

20. Thanks...

Very interesting.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

22. Thanks indeed from one who, as you know, is concerned about this.

Obviously, you know that I was the one who posted the critical Parenti excerpts and raised the ire of wyldwolf, 11cents, DoveTurnedHawk etc.

?!?
"...a frightened bewilderment at the complexity and uncertainty of this world, from which simple explainations offer refuge..."
?!?
No, that is not the motivation for my putting the topic on the table and no, I don't hold Parenti or Chomsky or The Magistrate as issuers of stone tablet truths.

These are complex and relevent discussions and I'm grateful for the information shared despite personal scorns such as "...don't confuse me with..THE TRUTH!!" And, mea culpa, I've used loose language such as "I wish Clarkies would look at his record..." I understand that sounds condescending and frustrates those who have. But I think you'll agree that there are many who embrace Clark as a winner before contemplating fully whether he really should be the next POTUS.

The stakes are so high for the '04 election, literally the survival of the planet, that the right candidate is crucial and needs to be carefully chosen to prevent either getting more of the same or not enough difference in the White House. I hope we all remember this when we sloganize the issue to 'Any One But Bush.'

This not a website for fundamentalist dogma or idealogues.

Yes, I, along with many others, have serious concerns about a Generalissimo President and Clark has a unique career history among the candidates to consider, but I don't wish to see opponents or proponents for any candidate characterized as ignorant propagandists trying to maliciously manipulate people. Not all of us visit DU everyday, there are many newcomers to bring up to speed. For instance, I love that bobthedrummer regularly posts on Nazi America.
That stuff is a real eye-opener for bigger picture understanding of the US government.

And my gratitude is genuine. I appreciate shared info. on topics from du-ers who are either 'better' or 'other'-informed on a topic. No judgements intended. Thanks for sharing, Magistrate.

peace, I hope.

on edit: By the way, I already have skeptical genes regarding source material; My mother is a history professor at Sonoma State University where Project Censored is based. She used to chat with Mario Savio (of the 1964 Free Speech Movement at Berkeley)at the copy machine. Some of the posted criticisms of Michael Parenti included some raised eye-brows regarding Project Censored's credibility. Interesting. I plan to buzz up to SSU and meet Peter Phillips who heads the project and learn more. Thanks for the heads up.

[The Magistrate]

97. Forgive The Belatd Quality Of This Reply, Please, Mr. Memory

This comment of yours had escaped my notice, and it seems the best one to address. Mr. A.P. and myself had joined together long ago in a bitter wrangle over this matter with some thoroughly disreputable characters, and my comment that seems to have aroused your ire was more in the nature of a reminisce, and might have been better made privately. As a general indictment of "conspiracism" as a world view, though, it is my genuine feeling: things are not moved by some flawlessly operating "Hidden Hand" behind all, playing both apparent sides of every dispute, all-powerful, and yet susceptible to exposure by anyone with a keyboard and a web connection.

It is precisely the great stakes of the upcoming election that motivates me in this matter. A political line that sums basically to "the United states is the locus of all evil" will never, never, gain the mass following needed to win an election in the United States. So long as persons of progressive and left sentiments seek to present such a line, so long will they fail before a reactionary political machine. Most people in this country find the views of left and progressive elements, so far as they discern them, in questions of foreign policy and national security, to be other-worldly at best, and treasonous at worst. Thus in crisis, they turn to reactionaries, and in elections where such questions are at stake, left and progressive figures will fail. Understand, Sir, it does not matter if you are right: you will fail to convince the people.

Persons who echo Gen. Clark's name as a war criminal are a prime example of this self-defeating tendency. The NATO action he superintended is the sole credential the Democratic Party has to present to the people aa a demonstration that, yes, a Democratic Party administration is certainly competent to handle military matters. As the country currently sees itself as engaged in a species of war, that is not a thing to be thrown away lightly.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

103. Agreed, M. Sadly, only pragmatism=survival. How about this plan then?

Initiating this heated dialogue by throwing out that Parenti excerpt has been an eye-opening experience. I now better understand the personal tone carried over from old battles fought on DU with wished-for finality. I'm sorry to have opened old wounds.

Perhaps I'll temper my own inclination to post devil's advocate material as an Overture to Informed Response. There's quite a lot of heat obscuring the light already, too much arguing about how we argue instead of the initial topic. My own reaction to Clark runs hot and cold as more info comes around and hope wrestles empirical data versus contextual morality. The burning knowledge of horrible things hidden by propaganda and our passion to enlighten people without the tools to understand sometimes overwhelms the cooler efficiency of messages tempered with 'intellectual trajectory' which might actually hit the mark and be taken to heart and hand.

Carrying on: I agree with your statement regarding progressive's self-defeating tendencies. Good point to re-re-re-remember.

The debate about the paradox of the Genius General as possible saviour from the PNAC's abuse of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex is as complex as a debate about abortion.

Let us act on the contradictory truths of what you wrote and your signature quote (source? you?), both of which make sense to me:
1)"...it does not matter if you are right; you will fail to convince the people."
2)"When things are not called by their right name, what is said can not make sense. When what is said does not make sense, what is planned cannot succeed."

To make sense to the war mindset electorate in '04, we must speak 'their language.'

The hyper-nationalistic uber-patriotism which 9/11/01 and the Republicans have whipped up to levels not seen since the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings of the 1950's should be directed back to the healthier origins of American civic virtue.

NOW THE PLAN:
Instead of trying to pull the patriotic American mind back 350 degrees to explain how our government has abused it's power for years, let us push forward 10 degrees to come full circle with the first American Revolution. There is already universal acceptance, a vocabulary, a costume, storied personalities, the idea of virtuous citizens triumphing over wicked tyrants, in short-an accepted mythology. It is at the core of national identity we are raised to embrace from birth, That is, RED,WHITE AND BLUE=JUSTICE!!

1)This election's bumper sticker themes for Democrats should be:
LET FREEDOM RING AGAIN!
TAKE BACK THE FLAG AND TAKE BACK OUR COUNTRY!
IMPEACH KING GEORGE AND SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!


2)A symbol to wear-Liberty Bell pins? Blue ribbons?

3)All the imagery of Revolutionary times should be used, the tricorn hats, fife and drum corps, more flags than can be counted.

4)In the spirit of Keep It Simple Stupid, we have a list called the Bill of Rights to re-sell in the emotionalized market of ideas.

5)Every sympathetic, courageous journalist and activist should be apprised of this 'Talking Point' with the repetitious lock-step efficiency of the fascists we are opposing.

6)Every teacher and librarian should be asked to put up posters and pamphlets about the importance of the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution and the American Revolution.
Especially high school and college teachers this election cycle.

I think this is our only hope to rescue ourselves and our planet from the PNAC and their corporateer backers.

[DoveTurnedHawk]

104. I Don't Think It's That Hard

The debate about the paradox of the Genius General as possible saviour from the PNAC's abuse of the Military Industrial Congressional Complex is as complex as a debate about abortion.

In actuality, I think it's pretty simple: IF you accept Clark at his word, he is the one Democratic candidate who is best (uniquely, really) positioned, by merit of his credentials and experience, to fight both the MIC and the PNAC plan.

The issue is whether you and others on the left will accept Clark at his word. I believe that most Americans will do so. Clark's entire history is one of integrity and honor. That's exactly why Republican General Shelton's politically-motivated character assassination was so explosive.

As for your patriotism plan, many elements of it are being aggressively put forward by the Clark campaign. I think Clark's "New American Patriotism" and his "Democracy = Dissent" concepts are powerful ones, and I hope they resonate with the American public. They've certainly resonated with several of his opponents' campaigns, who are starting to copy Clark's ideas on this, as the debate last night showed.

The problem is that our populace has grown so apathetic and complacent, IMO, that only something easily digestible in a sound bite has any hope of moving the masses. I love Clark, but one of my concerns is that he's too intelligent and too nuanced to utilize the "art of the sound bite" effectively. IMO, he needs to learn how to do this, and quickly.

DTH

[JohnOneillsMemory]

106. Agreed. Clark's New American Patriotism theme is a cogent one.

And I'm impressed by his courage to promote it along with dissent. Of course, he practiced dissent in the military and thereby defends his own record. Which is all to the good, no matter how you look at it.

As for trusting his word, so far he still seems to be in the choppy waters of defending contradictory statements. And, what election-winning officials do in office can be extremely different from what they say to get there. Witness the current White House hijacker.

I would think, brilliant as he is, Clark would be too smart to think that a PNAC-type global dominance was attainable. Military thinkers tend to be the ultimate pragmatists regarding what is possible and it's cost.

My worst fears about Clark might be summed this way:
What if a Clark presidency produces a kinder, gentler, yet more efficacious corporate-owned military-dominated governance and TV Nation goes back to ignoring the destruction of the planet? Admittedly, this is a fear applicable to other candidates, not just Clark.

[The Magistrate]

105. Well Said, Mr. Memory

To deal with trifles first, the signature quote is from the thirteenth chapter of the Analects, in the Lao translation: "the Master" is the generally used reference to Confucious in these documents recorded by his students. That passage is perhaps the true core of Confucian teaching, which is a matter of deep study to me, and also in my experience a useful and practical guide toward life and politics, particularly of imperial variety. There are more overlaps than are comfortable to acknowlege between the usages of the Celestial Throne and our present circumstances.

My own view of Gen. Clark is that he would make an excellent candidate, with a fair chance of defeating our common enemy. He seemed an attractive figure to me during the conflict we have discussed somewhat, in which he displayed a political and diplomatic acumen a bit above that common to military figures, and the distaste for him in reactionary circles as "Clinton's General," widely expressed then, has always struck me as a fine credential. My inclination to defend him in this forum is owing not so much to dedicated support of him, however, as to a distaste for the style in which he is attacked by detractors who, in many cases, do not seem to me to be particularly interested in winning elections.

Your plan strikes me as sound one, Sir. We do not seem that far apart in gauging the popular mood and its possibilties, nor in our view of the country's situation. My common usage of "the criminals of the '00 Coup" for the current administration is no mere affectation, but expresses my genuine belief: a coup has occured, and the usurpers, as illegal holders of authority, fit the classic definition of tyranny.

The left needs to take advantage of the revolutionary traditions of our country: they are real, and most of the people retain a healthy willingness to disregard law they disagree with, and authorities they know to be corrupt and self-serving. It will be necessary to reclaim the idea of patriotism for the left, and to let go, at least in mass political work, of an internationalism that is, in fact, largely outmoded, and has never been able to move large numbers of people in any case.

People throughout the world value family above neighbors, neighbors above countrymen, and countrymen above all others. This is not going to change. The object of a political action might be, say, to improve the lot of exploited workers in Central America, but it will go farther if couched as preserving jobs for fellow citizens. And it can go further still if the corporations exporting jobs are denounced as unpatriotic, and even treasonous, for acting to injure the country we all love in order to line their damned pockets.

People throughout the world love their country, as they love the locale they were born and raised in; love it with great knowledge of all its flaws as well as its virtues. It is essential that we on the left learn to express ourselves in alignement with this natural feature of the political landscape, rather than set ourselves up in opposition to it. Our enemies, though they execute policies that greatly damage our country, and in many instances actually betray both its well-being and its principles, express themselves consistantly in the vocabulary of "Americanism" and patriotism, and derive great benefit from it, so long as we cede them that terrain.

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[bpilgrim]

23. excellant work...

"NATO air strikes commenced against Serbia on March 24. While these aimed at destroying Serb anti-aircraft defenses, Serb police and soldiers in Kossovo commenced a wholesale assault on the Albanians of Kossovo, aimed at driving them from the country by exemplary massacre. During the course of this campaign, roughly 10,000 persons, mostly young men, were murdered by Serb police and soldiers. Almost a million Albanians took to flight, either west to Albania, south into Macedonia, or into the mountains of Kossovo itself. Lightly armed KLA guerrillas could accomplish nothing against the Serb forces."


couple question here...

Is there any evidence of this "massacre"?

also...

Isn't it common knowldge that there was no 'flight' till the bombs started falling?

also how does that jive with what Zinn, Parenti and chomsky have to say on yougo? esentially that we made matters WORSE and we had a hidden agenda? when you look at our track record i have to go with their analysis since it better fits our 'PROFILE'.

To Kill A Nation:
The Attack on Yugoslavia by Michael Parenti

http://www.intellnet.org/resources/american_terrorism/ToKillANation.html

:hi:

peace

[EdGy]

52. NATO bombing did make things worse

The expulsion of the Albanian population as well as executions were triggered by the NATO attacks, that is absolutely clear; though it is also clear that prior to that police and army units under Belgrade's commands had attacked villages and civilians, and that the KLA had attacked police and civilians too.

The NATO bombing also empowered the most radical wing of the KLA, and undermined the growing democratic movement in Serbia itself (for this see http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr/bcr_19990402_5_eng.txt, "The Collateral Damage is Democracy")

On earlier points, the atrocities that were perpetrated in Bosnia were carried out in part by forces that were under the direct command of the State Security directorate of the Serbian Ministry of the Interior. This is something that has been covered indepth by the Belgrade media, you can check the archives of the weekly publication Vreme (online at http://www.vreme.com) over the past year and a half, or of the Belgrade weekly NIN (http://www.nin.co.yu/index.php, not sure if back issues are online). Also, testimony by participants in the atrocities -- that is, people who served in the special operations units as well as in various armies and paramilitary forces, has been given at the Hague Tribunal in the Milosevic trial and have been covered by the Belgrade media.

(By the way I think the Hague tribunal is not a good idea, especially given the US opposition to the ICC. Until the US signs onto the ICC, these should all be tried in national courts; it looks like the Tribunal itself is coming around to that view...)

I have consistently been an outspoken critic of US foreign policy at DU (though have not been around much of late), you can check the archives to confirm that, and I think in general Zinn, Chomsky and Parenti are on target. But in this case I think they miss their mark. What Americans seem to not realize is that regions of the world, the Balkans included, do have people who undertake policies for their own reasons; not everything is driven by the US, though we Americans do like to think we are at the center of the world.

There is also an unfortunate tendency on the left to replicate the American black and white view of the world. Thus if the US is against someone, they must be good.

In the Yugoslav case this does not work. Yes, US policy in that region has been disastrous for people in the countries of what used to be Yugoslavia. But more disastrous were the policies of Milosevic of Serbia and Tudjman of Croatia. Those leaders bear direct responsibility, they made decisions that led their countries and peoples (as well as those of their victims) to disaster. The US benefited from those disastrous decisions, and at times was complicit in them, in part through its support of Milosevic up through 1998, and its support of Tudjman throughout the 1990s.

Milosevic in particular bears heavy responsibility for destroying what was the most promising example of democratic socialism. From the early 1980s on he and his allies in the stalinist wing of the Serbian Communist Party did everything in their power to destroy the strong social democratic wing of that party, and to consolidate power within Serbia using typical right-wing authoritarian tactics (despite their claim to be leftists). He then went on to launch wars against Croatia and Bosnia in which civilian atrocities played a central role. His closest allies in their memoirs and other publications have also confirmed this. Tudjman of Croatia undertook a strategy that was almost exactly identical.

In terms of the domestic US debate, both Democrats and Republicans have supported imperialistic US policies that have involved violence that has killed innocent civilians. That is the nature of the United States. Bush may be more up front about it, but let's be honest, his foreign policy is just the same old thing without the kid gloves.

So criticism of Clark because of his involvement in Kosovo is irrelevant, though I was very much against the NATO attacks. Clinton is the one who ordered the attacks, Clark carried out the orders. No matter who becomes president, US foreign policy will continue to be the expression of the interests of those with power in US society, let's not kid ourselves.

[bpilgrim]

61. i am NOT criticising CLARK

he was just following orders...

AND i don't see things in black and white - ask anyone who knows me - i am looking at the facts on the ground AND taking into consideration historical precedent and respected poltical/historians perspectives - zinn, chomsky and parenti - and evidence presented and thus far it looks like we not only caused my suffering than we prevented but also that we had an alterier motive.

when folks - media gov - lie to me, repeatedly THEY have squndered their trust.

then when they get CAUGHT LYING in this very case the they have become suspect.

peace

[EdGy]

63. facts on the ground?

I don't really see any of that in your posts.

I can understand why you would trust Chomsky, Parenti, etc. As I mentioned, I have much respect for their work.

But they are NOT basing their arguments about what happened in Yugoslavia on facts on the ground. I have lived on the ground there, I know the languages, I know the people. Unfortunately Chomsky, Parenti and Zinn don't, and so they miss some extremely important parts of the story. By merely applying their general theories of imperialism -- which are powerful and do tell us a lot about US motives and actions in the world -- to a region that is not of prime economic importance to the US, they miss the major parts of the story.

Unfortunately, the facts on the ground that we see in the US are very selective and say more about us than about what's really been going on. The facts on the ground that are relevant are all available to anyone who wants them, although unfortunately things that are common knowledge "on the ground" are unavailable in English.

Finally, I think even more damage is being done by the US missionaries who are flooding into post-conflict situations. And I don't mean the religious missionaries, but the well-intentioned, often liberal and progressive folk who think they're helping out these poor people but in fact who are reinforcing the kid-glove aspects of US imperialism.

[The Magistrate]

65. Thank You, Mr. Gy

Your comments above, and in No. 52, are most helpful. You know my respect for your knowledge of the region, and your views in this matter.

Probably our most important point of agreement is that there was indeed a great deal of murder done, that it is most pernicious to attempt to deny in the service of ideological concerns. Certainly the great majority of that in Kossovo was done after the NATO intervention commenced. In my view, it would have been better to employ U.S. ground forces in quantity and from the outset, although that would certainly have faced tremendous political obstacles. As fought, the war certainly strengthened the hand of the most radical elements of the K.L.A., and it would indeed have been better to avoid this. It also seems self-evident to me that the Serb actions in the early phase of the intervention could not, as a practical matter, heve been carried out in the manner they were unless they were both planned, and already prepared for execution, so that it seem the best conclusion that they would have been carried out whether NATO acted or not. We may well disagree on that, and it is a metter, of course, that cannot be resolved.

Always a pleasure to see you around the place, my friend!

[The Magistrate]

66. Thank You, Mr. Gy

Your comments above, and in No. 52, are most helpful. You know my respect for your knowledge of the region, and your views in this matter.

Probably our most important point of agreement is that there was indeed a great deal of murder done, that it is most pernicious to attempt to deny in the service of ideological concerns. Certainly the great majority of that in Kossovo was done after the NATO intervention commenced. In my view, it would have been better to employ U.S. ground forces in quantity and from the outset, although that would certainly have faced tremendous political obstacles. As fought, the war certainly strengthened the hand of the most radical elements of the K.L.A., and it would indeed have been better to avoid this. It also seems self-evident to me that the Serb actions in the early phase of the intervention could not, as a practical matter, have been carried out in the manner they were unless they were both planned, and already prepared for execution, so that it seem the best conclusion that they would have been carried out whether NATO acted or not. We may well disagree on that, and it is a matter, of course, that cannot be resolved.

Always a pleasure to see you around the place, my friend!

[reorg]

72. facts on the ground

I would agree that those reporters and analysts would most deserve to be trusted who actually lived in Yugoslavia, preferably during the times of conflict they report on, and speak the languages, like e. g. Diana Johnstone (see reference in post #70), or Jürgen Elsässer, a German journalist, who has also written extensively (in Serbian and in German) on the civil wars in Yugoslavia. Interestingly, they take a completely different view from the conspiracy theory promulgated in the opening message of this thread.

[EdGy]

85. even Stalin had his apologists

so it is not surprising that Milosevic too has his defenders, despite the fact that he destroyed the potential for a successful Yugoslav social democracy, despite the fact that he robbed the Serbian people to line the pockets of his family and associates, despite the fact that he betrayed the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia, who are among the biggest victims of his policies.

As I explain above, I was against the NATO intervention because it played exactly into the hands of Milosevic as well as of the extremist wing of the KLA.

As for the "conspiracy theory," it's ironic you're using this term, since it's the exact same term used by right wingers to dismiss criticisms from the left of US imperialism... As we all know, powerful forces in society do conspire to suppress democracy. If we know that US leaders are willing to use violence and the deaths of civilians to achieve their goals, why would we think leaders in other countries are any different? Milosevic and Tudjman did exactly that.

[bushclipper]

86. Pardon my intrusion into this thread, but is seems several...

...Milosevic defenders have found a home at DU.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

89. Milosovic defenders at du?!? That's like saying they're Saddam defenders

because of criticism of the the Bush invasion of Iraq, isn't it?
See any parallels? I sure as hell don't support murderous dictators.

Criticize Parenti, Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, Clinton and Carter, for that matter, when justified. I sure don't hold any of these people as saints or prophets carrying stone tablets. Or any one else for that matter. See my post #22.

Content should always be assessed both seperately from and in relation to the source, yes? But of course! We're democratic Democrats; we can handle it without getting personal. Usually...

[The Magistrate]

90. Be That As It May, Sir

There have been explicit defenses of Butcher Slobo made in this discussion. There are indeed creatures willing to defend even state murder of persons in custody should it suit their ideological perspectives to do so. Such persons were called "gangster gramaphones" by Mr. Orwell; they have no place in progressive circles.

[wyldwolf]

100. All that aside - there are Milosevic defenders on DU - and defenders...

...of milosevic defenders - like Michael Parenti.

[reorg]

108. wrong address

Milosevic certainly has his defenders, but neither I nor any of the authors quoted in my messages is an apologist for Milosevic, Stalin, or anybody else. The use of nationalist rhetoric has certainly contributed to the Yugoslavian mess, but I think (based on what I read - not claiming to be an expert myself) it is first and foremost attributable to the dire and worsening economic situation beginning at least in the mid eighties under the auspices of the World Bank, and secondly to outside forces promoting nationalism (which of course had always been alive and well in Y) and secession (Tudjman had his first meeting with the German foreign minister in 88 already) in order to reestablish old spheres of influence. There was just no need for a buffer state anymore.

Nobody of those I quoted (former Trotskyists, mostly) harbours the illusion that there was some kind of socialism left to defend.

Their beef is rather with the new militarism in Germany and Europe, and the continued imperial policies of the US.

What you say about the derogatory use of "conspiracy theory" to dismiss criticism of the left is not entirely true. From my point of view, such criticism comes from the mainstream media in order to belittle and dismiss independent sources critical of mainstream politics. Sometimes it is justified, sometimes not. Right now, for instance, (mainstream) social democrat leaning media in Germany heap a lot of abuse on those sceptical of the official story lines about 9/11. On the other hand, it is quite interesting how and when full blown conspiracy theories are promulgated in these very same media, such as the outrageous claims of genocide on Kosovo-Albanians, or alleged WMD capabilities of Iraq.

[The Magistrate]

112. That Is Not True, Fellow

You have just cited, above in your No. 107, a site erected dedicated to the defense of Butcher Slobo. Do, please, at least have the courtesy to keep your distortions straight. That is the reason Mr. Twain famously cited for always telling the truth, that it was easier to remember.

There was no need for outside influences to promote secession in the old Yugoslavia: the place was an unnatural agglomeration, a miniature "prison of the peoples," that had only ever been maintained by central force, and never by willing attachment.

There is no conspiracy behind allegations of genocidal plan and practice by Butcher Slobo in Kossovo, only awareness of the history and facts of the matter.

[EdGy]

115. I must dissent here

The secession of Serbia and Croatia from Yugoslavia was not "natural" and the place was not maintained only by central force. The confederation was certainly going to be renegotiated, but there was strong support throughout the country for it to remain together. (Kosovo may have been one exception.)

Milosevic and Tudjman had to use the kind of violence they did use against civilians because the place would not fall apart short of that kind of violence. It is to that end that Milosevic employed the kinds of vile killing he did. Whether it was genocide or not is beside the point. Atrocities and crimes against humanity were committed by his orders, and by the orders of Tudjman as well.

Milosevic himself was just as much of a secessionist as Tudjman; again I will point you in the direction of all of the sources I site above.

I would agree though that the secession that was promoted came not from outside (in fact in July 1991 Secty of State James Baker reportedly promised the Yugoslav Army military assistance to hold the country together), but from parts of the communist party bureaucracy in Serbia and Croatia that grabbed onto nationalism as their ticket to remain in power.

[The Magistrate]

117. There Is A Good Deal To What You Say, Sir

Certainly there was deliberate aggravation of nationalist feelings in the decade following Tito's death, and had this not been so, the Federation might have remained in some recognizeable form, with, it might be added, many unfortunate persons retaining their lives as well. Kossovo, as you mention, is indeed a special case, but even this might, in theory at least, have been handled within the Federal framework, by secession from Serbia to Republic status within the Federation of Republics. Certainly leaders of good will and wisdom would have been able to hold the thing together, and these were sadly lacking in all quarters, with the possible exception of Mr. Rugova.

Still, Sir, it seems to me that this nationalist agitation could not have reached the critical and murderous mass that it did in several quarters, if it did not speak to something deep within the polities and peoples it was addressed to. People are not blanks of wax, to be freely shaped by a leader's propagandas, whatever these might be: like a person subjected to hypnotism, there must be a pre-existing willingness to do the thing commanded, or the spell cannot really take.

All of these polities had a seperate existance before the Great War, and their existence together in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia between the end of that conflict, and the German invasion in World War Two, was hardly stable, but marked by political unrest to the point of major assassinations, with rivalries between Serbia and Croatia being the major motor. The unity under Tito was maintained by very careful and skillful juggling, spiced by a well-judged ruthlessness where it seemed warranted to keep tight rein on centrifugal tendencies. With his death, there was no one to keep all the plates in the air, so to speak.

That remnants of the various Communist parties seized on nationalism as a means to maintain power is certainly true. Trudjman was a damned bad fellow: it is a shame he does not get all the credit he deserves in this question, and also that he was not brought as well to the dock at The Hague. Whether Milosevic can be strictly refered to as a secessionist is a little less clear to me; he seems to me to have aimed more at the aggrandization of Serbia, and converting the Yugoslav Federation into an extension of that state, or in short, gathering as much power as he possibly could over the greatest extant of land je could manage.

[bpilgrim]

94. that have been reported

i know many folks who live here and speak the language and they don't know of the pnac agenda.

how do you know what they are basing their arguments on anyway?

sorry, but unless you have evidence that you can present - other than anecdotal personal accounts - i will take their research and conclusions over a stranger on the internet.

i hope you understand and i do appreciate your responces.

:hi:

peace

[EdGy]

102. see my post #52 above

regardless of the PNAC agenda, there were atrocities on the ground ordered by Milosevic.

Those sources I mention in my above post (#52) document those atrocities and the direct involvement in them of Milosevic's Ministry of the Interior. (If you are interested in the Croatian Tudjman's similar involvement in other atrocities I can point you in the direction for those links as well.)

Those sources are based on indepth investigations, on the words of the people who were actually involved at every level in these policies. They are not "arguments" but documentation.

Now I suppose it is possible that Milosevic was actually a secret agent for PNAC, his actions certainly served to destroy Yugoslavia and make working people there much worse off than they were before (and in that he had the complicity and cooperation of Croatia's Tudjman). But a much simpler answer is that the US supported Milosevic (and Tudjman) for its own reasons, and took advantage of the situation.

In the end of course it really does not matter what Americans believe or don't believe.

[Lithos]

64. Excellent synopsis of a long history

You are to be commended sir!


Lithos

[Violet_Crumble]

69. A bit of a kick...

I've just had a quick squizz at it and I've bookmarked it for a better read later on...

Violet...

[Laszlo_Hollyfeld]

127. Oh my. That was splendid.

I'm speechless.

[The Magistrate]

129. Thank You, Sir

At the risk of seeming self-interested, let me welcome you to the forum, and wish you a long and pleasant stay here.

[Forkboy]

131. a fascinating run down of events

Even better coming from a source I can trust.Thanks for taking the time to write this,and for sharing it here.

[Muddleoftheroad]

133. As usual

The Magistrate puts his best effort out for all to see. It's really worth spending the time.

[The Magistrate]

134. Thank You, Sir

Your comment, and that of Mr. Forkboy above, are much appreciated.