“Srebrenica” and the Power of Reason
“Truth and reason are eternal,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to Rev. Samuel Knox in 1810. “They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail . . . ” Jefferson was wrong. His belief that “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left to combat it” was naive. As Patrick J. Buchanan proves in a passing reference in his otherwise sound latest column, even men of generally sound understanding and good intentions end up the victims of the disinformation campaigns that pass for media reporting.
“In none of the Libyan towns affected by fighting in recent weeks,” Buchanan writes, “has anything like the massacre in the Ivory Coast taken place, let alone Srebrenica.”
It is noteworthy that “Srebrenica” is used here not as a geographic location that needs to be preceded by a noun (“the massacre in…”) but as a stand-alone term that denotes horror, on par with “Auschwitz,” or “Katyn,” or “Hiroshima.”
“Srebrenica” used in this sense has established itself as a myth based on a lie. As the introduction to an enlightening recent article points out, we need to transcend the routine banalities of the Srebrenica debate which turns mostly on numbers; but the very term “debate” is rejected by those who should be on one of the two sides in that debate:
They deny as a matter of principle that there is anything to debate. So many thousand prisoners were executed and a distinguished international judicial forum of unquestioned authority has found it to constitute genocide. (These are the “routine banalities” that define the parameters of Srebrenica as an issue at least, if not as a debate.) According to our hypothetical debating partners there is nothing to debate because everything is settled and clear.
Reasonable people with no ethno-religious axe to grind in the Balkan quagmire have long fought such “routine banalities,” including the claim that as many as 8,000 Muslims were killed in cold blood and the systematic misuse of the term “genocide.”
BACK TO THE NUMBERS—The fact beyond dispute is that during the Bosnian war thousands of Muslim men were killed in the region of Srebrenica. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell almost without a fight to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison—the 28th division of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army—attempted a breakthrough. A significant number reached safety at the Muslim-held town of Tuzla, 60 km to the north; a few found shelter in Serbia, across the Drina River to the east. An unknown were killed while fighting their way through; and many others—numbers remain disputed—were taken prisoner and executed by the Bosnian Serb army.
The numbers remain unknown and misrepresented. With “8,000 executed” and—inevitably—thousands more killed in the fighting or reaching the Muslim lines, the column attempting to break out should have counted 12 to 15,000 men—an impossibly large number. There should have been huge gravesites and satellite evidence of executions, burials, and body removals. The UN searches in the Srebrenica vicinity, breathlessly frantic at times, still falls far short of the sanctified figure of 8,000. The Islamic shrine at Potocari, where the supposed victims are buried, includes those of soldiers killed in action, Muslim and Serb, between May 1992 and July 1995.
The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague (ICTY) never came up with a conclusive breakdown of casualties. That a war crime did take place is undeniable. The number of its victims remains forensically and demographically unproven. According to the former BBC reporter Jonathan Rooper, “from the outset the numbers were used and abused” for political purposes. The number of likely casualties corresponds closely to the ‘missing’ list of 7,300 compiled by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Rooper says. But the early estimates were based on nothing more than the simple combination of an estimated 3,000 men last seen at the UN base at Potocari and an estimated 5,000 people reported ‘to have left the enclave before it fell’:
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the 7-8,000 figure is that it has always been represented as synonymous with the number of people executed. This was never a possibility: numerous contemporary accounts noted that UN and other independent observers had witnessed fierce fighting with significant casualties on both sides. It was also known that others had fled to Muslim-held territory around Tuzla and Zepa, that some had made their way westwards and northwards, and that some had fled into Serbia. It is therefore certain that nowhere near all the missing could have been executed.
The Red Cross reported at the time that some 3,000 Bosnian Army soldiers managed to reach Muslim lines near Tuzla and were redeployed by the Bosnian Army “without their families being informed.” The number of military survivors was also confirmed by Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic in his testimony at The Hague.
The last census results, from 1991, counted 37,211 inhabitants in Srebrenica and the surrounding villages, of which 27,118 were Muslims (72.8 percent) and 9,381 Serbs (25.2 percent). Displaced persons from Srebrenica registered with the World Health Organization and Bosnian government in early August 1995 totaled 35,632. With 3,000 Muslim men who reached Tuzla “without their families being informed” we come to the figure of over 38,000 survivors. The Hague Tribunal’s own estimates of the total population of the Srebrenica enclave before July 1995—notably that made by Judge Patricia Wald—give 40,000 as the maximum figure. It does not add up.
Having spent five days interviewing over 20,000 Srebrenica survivors at Tuzla a week after the fall of the enclave, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Henry Wieland declared, “we have not found anyone who saw with their own eyes an atrocity taking place.” A decade later a Dutch field investigator, Dr Dick Schoonoord, confirmed Wieland’s verdict: “It has been impossible during our investigations in Bosnia to find any people who witnessed the mass murder or would talk about the fate of the missing men.”
A “PROTECTED ZONE”?—It is often pointed out that Srebrenica was an UN “protected zone,” but it is seldom noted that the enclave was simultaneously an armed camp used for attacks against Serb villages in the surrounding areas. Muslim General Sefer Halilovic confirmed in his testimony at the Hague Tribunal that there were at least 5,500 Bosnian Muslim Army soldiers in Srebrenica after it had obtained the “safe haven” status, and that he had personally arranged numerous deliveries of sophisticated weapons by helicopter.
French General Philippe Morillon, the UNPROFOR commander who first called international attention to the Srebrenica enclave, is adamant that the crimes committed by those Muslim soldiers made the Serbs’ desire for revenge inevitable. He testified at The Hague Tribunal on February 12, 2004, that the Muslim commander in Srebrenica, Naser Oric, “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region.” Asked by the ICTY prosecutor how Oric treated his Serb prisoners, General Morillon, who knew him well, replied that “Naser Oric was a warlord who reigned by terror in his area and over the population itself… he didn’t even look for an excuse… One can’t be bothered with prisoners.”
Cees Wiebes, who wrote the intelligence section of the Dutch Government report on Srebrenica, notes that despite signing the demilitarization agreement, Bosnian Muslim forces in Srebrenica were heavily armed and engaged in provocations (“sabotage operations”) against Serbian forces. Professor Wiebes caused a storm with his book Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-1995, detailing the role of the Clinton administration in allowing Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims.
On 11 July, 1995, the Muslim garrison was ordered to evacuate the town which the Serbs entered unopposed. Local Deputy Director of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, wrote in 2004 (“Was Srebrenica a Hoax?”) that Muslim forces did not even try to take advantage of their heavy artillery because “military resistance would jeopardize the image of ‘victim,’ which had been so carefully constructed, and which the Muslims considered vital to maintain.”
POLITICAL BACKGROUND—Two prominent supporters (at the time) of the late Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic, his Srebrenica SDA party chairman Ibran Mustafic and police commander Hakija Meholjic, have subsequently accused Izetbegovic of deliberately sacrificing the enclave in order to trigger NATO intervention. Meholjic is explicit: in his presence, Izetbegovic quoted Bill Clinton as saying that 5,000 dead Muslims would be sufficient to provide the political basis for an American-led intervention on the side of the Muslims.
Testifying at The Hague Tribunal, Muslim Generals Halilovic and Hadzihasanovic confirmed this theory by describing how 18 top officers of the Srebrenica garrison were abruptly removed in May 1995. Ibran Mustafic, the former head of the Muslim SDA party in Srebrenica, is adamant that the scenario for the sacrifice of Srebrenica was carefully prepared:
Unfortunately, the Bosnian presidency and the Army command were involved in this business … Had I received orders to attack the Serb army from the demilitarized zone, I would have rejected to carry out that order. I would have asked the person who had issued that order to bring his family to Srebrenica, so that I can give him a gun let him stage attacks from the demilitarized zone. I knew that such shameful, calculated moves were leading my people to catastrophe. The order came from Sarajevo.
Military analyst Tim Ripley agrees that Srebrenica was deliberately sacrificed by the Muslim political leaders. He noted that Dutch UN soldiers “saw Bosnian troops escaping from Srebrenica past their observation points, carrying brand new anti-tank weapons [which] made many UN officers and international journalists suspicious.”
The term “genocide” is even more contentious than the exact circumstances of Srebrenica’s fall. Local chief of UN Monitors, Carlos Martins Branco, noted that if there had been a premeditated plan of genocide, instead of attacking in only one direction, from the south to the north—which left open escape routes to the north and west, the Serbs would have established a siege in order to ensure that no one escaped:
The UN observation posts to the north of the enclave were never disturbed and remained in activity after the end of the military operations. There are obviously mass graves in the outskirts of Srebrenica as in the rest of ex-Yugoslavia where combat has occurred, but there are no grounds for the campaign which was mounted, nor the numbers advanced by CNN. The mass graves are filled by a limited number of corpses from both sides, the consequence of heated battle and combat and not the result of a premeditated plan of genocide, as occurred against the Serbian populations in Krajina, in the Summer of 1995, when the Croatian army implemented the mass murder of all Serbians found there.
The fact that The Hague Tribunal called the massacre in Srebrenica “genocide” does not make it so. What plan for genocide includes offering safe passage to women and children? And if this was all part of a Serb plot to eliminate Muslims, what about hundreds of thousands of Muslims living peacefully in Serbia itself, including thousands of refugees who fled there from Srebrenica and other parts of Bosnia? Or the Muslims in the neighboring enclave of Žepa, who were unharmed when the Serbs captured that town a few days after capturing Srebrenica? To get around these common sense obstacles, the ICTY prosecution came up with a sociologist who provided an “expert” opinion: the Srebrenica Muslims lived in a patriarchal society, therefore killing the men was enough to ensure that there would be no more Muslims in Srebrenica. Such psychobabble turns the term “genocide” into a gruesome joke.
Yet it was on the basis of this definition that in August 2001, the Tribunal found Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic guilty of “complicity in genocide.” Even if the unproven figure of “8,000” is assumed, it affected less than one-half of one percent of Bosnia’s Muslim population in a locality covering one percent of its territory. On such form, the term “genocide” loses all meaning and becomes a propaganda tool rather than a legal and historical concept. On that form, America’s NATO ally Turkey—a major regional player in today’s Balkans—committed genocide in northern Cyprus in 1974. On that form, no military conflict can be genocide-free.
As Diana Johnstone explained in a seminal “Counterpunch” article, the ‘Srebrenica massacre’ is part of a dominant culture discourse that is highly relevant, some years later, to the ongoing intervention in Libya:
We people in the advanced democracies have reached a new moral plateau, from which we are both able and have a duty both to judge others and to impose our ‘values’ when necessary. The others, on a lower moral plateau, must be watched carefully, because unlike us, they may commit ‘genocide.’ … The subliminal message in the official Srebrenica discourse is that because ‘we’ let that happen, ‘we’ mustn't let ‘it’ happen again, ergo, the U.S. should preventively bomb potential perpetrators of ‘genocide’.
The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying. The relentless Western campaign against the Serbs and in favor of their Muslim foes—which is what “Srebrenica” is really all about—is detrimental to the survival of our culture and civilization. It seeks to give further credence to the myth of Muslim blameless victimhood, Serb viciousness, and Western indifference, and therefore weaken our resolve in the global struggle euphemistically known as “war on terrorism.” The former is a crime; the latter, a mistake.
In more ways than one “Srebrenica is, indeed, a totem for the new world order. And I hope that Pat Buchanan reads this.
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Jefferson also said you should not believe anything you read in the newspapers.
Of course, we stopped the genocide in Libya. President Obama assures us of this. And all because we did not Dilly Dally as we did in Bosnia:
"To summarize, then: in just one month, the United States has worked with our international partners to mobilize a broad coalition, secure an international mandate to protect civilians, stop an advancing army, prevent a massacre, and establish a no fly zone with our allies and partners. To lend some perspective on how rapidly this military and diplomatic response came together, when people were being brutalized in Bosnia in the 1990s, it took the international community more than a year to intervene with air power to protect civilians."
The President's complete remarks can be found here:
http://www.tampabay.com/news/world/president-obamas-remarks-on-libya/1160279
Let us hope that President Obama reads this, too. (OK! A bit of wishful thinking.)
Maybe the Wikipedia know-nothings will read it, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_Genocide
Would those who have read on the subject share the better books written about it, please?
Thank you.
Unfortunately Mr. Jefferson rejected what Jesus stated: “without me you could do nothing”. Mr. Jefferson obviously did not accept the doctrine of Original Sin, thereby believed man could perfect himself and he need not look beyond a natural, worldly happiness. Perfecting self-love and pursuing self-interest should be the lodestar for an individual life. Supernatural grace and man’s striving to share his life with a Trinitarian deity is at best a myth or a stifling superstition. Using Srebrenica as a propaganda tool is just one of many symptoms of a hellish new world order.
Trying to debunk the myth of Srebrenica is sort of like trying to debunk any of the number of myths we konw, be it JFK, V
Vietnam, MLK, Iraq war etc. Whatever you throw at it, it does not stick. That someone like Buchanan accepts it, it means that after looking at it, in the end, it was a massacre.
"The accepted Srebrenica story, influenced by war propaganda and uncritical media reports, is neither historically correct nor morally satisfying."
Dr. Trifkovic,
Do you really believe at this point that uncritical media reports, true history or morality are of any concern whatsoever to the people who make the decisions to bomb or not to bomb? Do you think if the number murdered was 1500 or 500 the justifications for 77 days of bombing would have been any different? Who, exactly are you appealing to that cares about the means used to acheive a desired result? Surely a man of your wisdom and understanding can undestand unmitigated power.
The word genocide is as contentless as the word torture.
I do not mean to say that the above are trivial things. Far from it. When we say genocide, all we mean to say is that a lot of people were killed. And when we put it that way, we start asking questions - HOW did they get killed? WHO killed them? Under WHAT circumstances? Such things could range from simple starvation and disease during a blockade to overwork and exhaustion at labour camps to wartime killing to execution of unarmed innocent people. Genocide lumps them all together, ignoring the question of degree, intention, and the specific person responsible.
There is a prevailing juridical definition of genocide in international law: it is the deliberate extermination of a group or part of a group of people based on their national, ethnic or religious characteristics.
There is also a pretty clear juridical definition of torture in international law:
"...any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions"
"Do you think if the number murdered was 1500 or 500 the justifications for 77 days of bombing would have been any different?"
From a propaganda perspective the numbers matter, they are the difference between what is considered to be a normal historical process with unfortunate excesses and what is considered to be absolute evil which is beyond the pale and can be de-humanized to the nth degree. Since the Anglo-American Empire and its satellites wrap themselves in the presumed moral legitimacy bestowed by their victory in the Second World War, every future war must be propagandized under the same criteria that make the Second World War the "good war".
Deliberate extermination? So is there a form of accidental extermination?
If we had to use that definition, then we'd have a hard time calling anything genocide. Because genocides in Africa are not necessarilly just one ethnic group killing another, but hundreds of isolated cases with different causes. One killing may involve a man doing it for fun, without even knowing enemy ethnicity, and another killing may involve pure banditry during wartime food shortage. And so on.
My point about torture would be this: One Argentine general used to order that communists be drowned upside down by the head in water full of feces. One Pakistani official, on capturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, ordered that his children be tickled on their feet with rats or lizards (something like that).
Both are wrong, but what the Argentine general did was scary, while what the Pakistani policemen did was excessive and unnecessary but not as bad as drowning somebody in toilet water.
"Torture" makes it seem like Abu Ghraib punishments are still in the same proportion as the above two.
Your characterization of African genocide is incorrect. The Rwandan genocide, for example, has been found by the International Tribunal at Arusha to still be a genocide, even though they have acquitted all the alleged masterminds of pre-meditation. To take an obvious analogy, one can be a murderer without pre-meditation (it is called "second-degree" murder).
"“Torture” makes it seem like Abu Ghraib punishments are still in the same proportion as the above two."
What is your point? Murder would still be murder if it was conducted slowly with a hacksaw or painlessly with a syringe. There is always discretion in the sentencing to take account of the specific facts of the case.
"Deliberate extermination? So is there a form of accidental extermination?"
Oh boy...if it is an accident, then there is no criminal intent and therefore no crime.
"If we had to use that definition, then we’d have a hard time calling anything genocide."
On the contrary, the prevailing definition has a tendency to be over-broad because one has to define how much is a "part" of a racial, ethnic or religious group.
Let's get back.
"The fact beyond dispute is that during the Bosnian war thousands of Muslim men were killed in the region of Srebrenica. Most of them died in July of 1995 when the enclave fell almost without a fight to the Bosnian Serb Army and the Muslim garrison—the 28th division of the Bosnia-Herzegovina Army—attempted a breakthrough."
This is what has been called a genocide. And that's what is so misleading here.
#13
It is called genocide because it is alleged by the Bosnian Muslim regime and its Imperial paymasters that all these men were killed as part of a criminal act.
On the contrary, if many of them were killed in battle as is argued by Dr. Trifkovic and many other observers, then the label of genocide would be harder to attach since to kill in battle in the course of hostilities is not a crime.
Exactly. So we are in agreement. That the word genocide has the potential for at least sometimes being applied arbitrarily. Right?
#15,
Of course, that is the problem with international law, on questions of war and peace it is almost always applied selectively.
This arbitrary application, however, is primarily the result of the manipulation of the facts, rather than of the legal definition itself.
Well, what is it about genocide that can't be covered under plain and simple murder?
Just as there are gradations of homicide, moving from manslaughter all the way to first-degree murder, so when one increases the scale of murder many times fold one can reasonably argue that one is dealing with a whole new category of malevolent action.
#19
If you kill 12,000 in battle and lose the war, you could be charged with genocide. But if you kill 100,000 "liberating" the same, it would seem to be called spreading democracy? Also I believe it makes a difference if you kill from the air , the land or sea. Killing from the air can sometimes be considered collateral damage, from the ground is genocide if done in large numbers and from the sea is a mishap or naval exercise. Boy,this killng business is quite complicated at the international level. I must defer to your judgement in the matter.
#20
It's like the Goldstone Report. Richard Goldstone first said that civilian casualties were incurred in Gaza, because there was a deliberate policy of attacking civilians. Boos and jeers. Then Richard Goldstone recants and says that when soldiers were killing civilians in Gaza, they did not do so because they got orders to do so and there was no deliberae policy. Hurrahs and yays.
Wait, one asks, how does that make a difference? So everybody has established that civilians were killed in a military operation, but the issue of human rights record merely seeks to establish whether or not there was any intention? How does that change anything?
And why did some of our Mediterranean friends get gleefully excited when the judge says there was no intention? They are all glad that their soldiers act beyond orders or do not represent their government's actions? They are glad for superiors who take no responsibility for actions of subordinates?
Killings on an international level are indeed a complicated issue.
Since we are on the general subject of holocaust and genocide denial, I would like to bring to Dr. Trifkovic's attention the way Gen. Milan Nedic is portrayed in the Wikipedia article, English speaker's version. The article is "Nedic's Serbia". The general trust of it is to imply that the Serbs were actively complicit in the extermination of Jews during WWII. Thus the statement like this:
Thanks to Nedić's war policy, Belgrade was proclaimed as the first Judenfrei (free of Jews) city in Europe.
I do not believe this to be correct,nor a number of other allegations. As I am not a historian, nor do I know how to edit Wikipedia, the English speaking version, I urge other readers here to do so.
Anther claim is that Nedic nationalized all Jewish property in 1942, that this was selfinitiated and was not a German order. I've never heard this before, so I am wondering if it is true. Now for some reason this allegation is on the internet also as a part of a blog on srebrenica! What gives?
The point of disputing the Hague Tribunal’s characterization of genocide while admitting war crime is very informative. What is surprising is that the author points out that the arguments for foreign intervention are bogus (as usually conveyed by our neocons and State Department), while at the same time evincing support for the neocon’s fraudulent War on Terror. If the author only knew that the evidence is overwhelming that it was Israel and our CIA that engineered and orchestrated 9/11, he would view the War on Terror, all current wars, our bankruptcy for those wars, and middle eastern Muslims differently. Almost all articles today are diversionary from the real issues facing America, but then again the culprits in 9/11 control virtually all media, which is the core problem.
Today the Republika Srpska is one of the few liberated areas of Europe. Although I accept Dr.Trifkovic's analysis, I would not much care if he was wrong. The Bosnian Serbs have done nothing not initiated by their enemies and have avoided the extermination long prepared for them by their enemies only by going to war. Two and four-fifths cheers for General Mladic! Additionally, the hypocrisies behind the Hague- the US and EU- continue to deny the Bosnian Serbs their undeniable right to self-determination as a people, contra their general attitude towards the Muslim inhabitants of Kosovo. This US/EU dominated Hague Kangaroo Court is openly and hopelessly biased against the Christian Serbs and its opinions are a priori unreliable.
It wasn't described as a massacre, it was described as a genocide. And if the impromptu killing of less than 1% of a population is tantamount to genocide, then of what use is the term? So no, it is quite important to 'haggle about how many victims there actually were' and Holocaust-denial guilt association tactics are not needed.
Yes, Godwin's Law and everything, we have already reached the Holocaust. And god forbid, of all the things, why that?
The events between 1942 and 1945 are both old enough and heavily documented and researched enough for people to have anything close to a definite idea of what was going on. There has been a long enough margin after the happening of those events that those who experienced it were willing it to talk about it, once the lingering terror subsided.
The events of the 1990s discussed here are still fresh enough that many are still trying to move on from it, many are still collecting the facts, and truth and reconciliation is still far from settled.
There is no comparison.
Dr. Trifkovic generally monitors the comments, so I invite Michael Kenney to make an open case for exactly what ST has peddled as "anti-Muslim bigotry" at" every opportunity(sic) ." Perhaps, as a Serb, he has missed the delights of Islamic occupation, but we all await your correction of this Serb's inability to understand you, Mr. Kenney. What do you imagine you're talking about? Try and express it and hopefully Dr. Trifkovic will notice you and reply.
#20
"It’s like the Goldstone Report. Richard Goldstone first said that civilian casualties were incurred in Gaza, because there was a deliberate policy of attacking civilians. Boos and jeers. Then Richard Goldstone recants and says that when soldiers were killing civilians in Gaza, they did not do so because they got orders to do so and there was no deliberae policy. Hurrahs and yays.
Wait, one asks, how does that make a difference?"
The Israeli argument is the following: We only slaughter Palestinian civilians by accident, therefore we are morally superior to HAMAS.
The problem with this argument is that if one looks at the totality of the situation, it rapidly becomes clear that the Israelis know full well that their war to subjugate the Palestinian population will necessarily produce enormous human suffering and death, and yet they proceed anyway. In criminal law, that should easily qualify as second-degree murder. It might even be considered first-degree murder if one considers that Israeli strategy aims to punish the Palestinian population for supporting HAMAS over the collaborationist Fatah.
As for Justice Goldstone, his retraction has little to do with law and everything to do with the enormous pressure that Zionist agitators worldwide have brought to bear on him.
#26, Mr. Kenney,
I do not agree with Dr. Trifkovic's frequent characterization of Islam is as the primary threat to human civilization. I also think that he ascribes to Dar-Al-Islam a historical cohesion and unity that has not existed since the days of the state of Medina.
However, to argue that the manner in which the former Yugoslavia was dissolved reflected the popular aspirations of the various South Slav peoples, rather than the machinations of foreign powers and opportunistic petty warlords is delusional.
Two Croatian generals were sentenced by the Hague yesterday. The narrative for the Yugoslav War in the 90's was set when Germany recognized the independence of Slovenia and Croatia, coupled with American elite leadership concern for any religious minorities, at the expense of the religious majority of Europe.
Should the killing of Bosniak adult males be called a "massacre" or a "genocide" only matters in the American leftist game of putting victimization on a high mantle. All sides were guilty, the Western media did a disservice in only focusing on the crimes of one side. There is nothing new under the sun. Few Americans know or care about the crimes of the Soviet Red Army in WWII and the POWs sent back to Stalin at the end of the war to be killed. History is written by the victors and serves their purposes. Mr Kenny is right, to quibble over numbers is just an intellectual suicide mission to be labeled a holocaust denier.
Yugoslavia was created by the four powers at Versailles in Paris in 1919 and experienced unrelenting separatism from then on whether at the ballot box or in combat 1941 or the 1990s. It was a fake country! Get over it! There was no "Yugo" other than the bad car! The "Yugoslav" myth is a dream of dopey Westerners looking for "praxis" or other non- Soviet socialist paradises. History did not begin in 1919 and "Yugoslavia" was just another made-up entity imposed by outsiders. Kind of like today's Bosnia. What is a "South Slav" people? A made-up concept of West. In the Balkans, confession trumps.
"The “Yugoslav” myth is a dream of dopey Westerners looking for “praxis” or other non- Soviet socialist paradises. History did not begin in 1919 and “Yugoslavia” was just another made-up entity imposed by outsiders"
Mr. Howard,
Persons from former Yugoslavia (Serbs included) have told me otherwise.
"What is a “South Slav” people? A made-up concept of West. In the Balkans, confession trumps."
Since the Croats, Serbs and Bosnian Muslims largely speak the same language...
You also seem to have misread my comments. I objected to the manner in which Yugoslavia dissolved, not the dissolution in and of itself.
#33. Your view is quite popular, but nevertheless, it is quite wrong. Yugoslavia is a lot less artificial than let's say Canada, but not more artificial than India or China or US for that matter. Those that think that the separation has resolved the problem of not knowing how to live together in a civil manner, couldn't be more wrong. The denizes of the successor Yugoslav statelets regard the other statelets as temporary historical aberrations and the current divisions as unacceptable. What is pacifying them, other than their own weaknesses and bankrupcies, is the hope that entering the European Union will somehow resolve all these issues. A false hope indeed.
Despite his rich history of writing on Srebrenica, this is probably one of ST’s best pieces on the topic. Comprehensive, yet concise. A must read for anyone trying to grasp what really transpired in Srebrenica.
I’ll forward the link to Sarah Palin.
The criminalization of "genocide" in international law has not stopped the practice. More to the point, one need not be attempting to erase an entire ethnic group in order to inflict terrible horrors that should inspire as much revulsion as does a true genocide. Think of the Great Leap Forward.
The United States, of course, will not attempt to force the Chinese government to repent or to alter its present unconscionable policies, either because the American political class fears a nuclear war or trade war or because the American business class fears losing their cheap labor and potential product-dumping playground (probably a lot of both of these reasons plays into it). For that matter, no one will force the United States to face its chicken-bombing of Serb civilians or the "collateral damages" inflicted upon probably a million Iraqis. After all, how COULD they??
It is only natural that a country should invoke only those aspects of international law that it can reasonably enforce AND that are in its long-term interest to enforce. The question is now whether standing up for Bosniaks and Albanian Kosovars was truly in the U.S.'s long-term interest.
From the standpoint of maintaining control over NATO and expanding its influence, the answer would be, yes, perhaps. From the standpoint of the perennity of the civilization of which we are a part, NO, absolutely NOT. Regrettably, the America of Bushes and Clintons, the America "without a dominant European culture," no longer recognizes herself as a part of that civilization, nor for that matter of any civilization. No wonder we act increasingly barbaric.
For that matter, no one will force the United States to face its chicken-bombing of Serb civilians or the “collateral damages” inflicted upon probably a million Iraqis. After all, how COULD they??
Forgot to mention: neither will anyone force Iraqi Islamic insurgents to regret driving half the Christians out of their country.
#38,
Not to belabour the point, but besides genocide there is still the category of "crime against humanity" which is defined as:
"...particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings. They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape; political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion"
"the category of “crime against humanity" particularly odious offences in that they constitute a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings.... by a government ...or part of a government policy... such as political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts"
It would appear from this definition, assuming Dr.Clyde Wilson, myself and other Chronicle readers would be considered persons under the act, that we could have a class action against the GOP and the duopoly for crimess against humanity in the international courts. Or am I wrong?
#41, Unfortunately not because that definition comes from the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Consequently, even if one puts aside the issue of enforcement, the United States government has made it abundantly clear that not only will it not ratify the treaty establishing the ICC but that it will make every effort to shield its officials from its jurisdiction.
Of course, the unwillingness of Washington to put itself under the ICC's jurisdiction has not inhibited it from making use of the ICC to go after disobedient African rulers like Omar Al-Bashir of Sudan.
Jonathen,
Thank you for your comments on this thread. I have enjoyed your relentless efforts and dedication to researching what the ICC would look like if it were taken more serious by folks like me. There is an old saying among litigators that if you have favorable facts, argue the facts; if you have unfavorable facts, argue the law. I certainly have no objections to your statement of the international law.
What I have grown suspicious about is what the facts are in Srebrenica or anywhere else for that matter. Before Iraq I, it was reported Iraqi soldiers were throwing Kuwaiti babies and children from their hospital beds. Before Iraq II ? Well, who can recall all that was said without lying.
These expensive wars with no clear national benefit are seldom mentioned as a means of reducing our national debt. It would be interesting to know how much the 77 days of bombing cost us and how much benefit we derived from it. Speaking just for myself, (like a true libertarian, who else is there?), I can't begin to tell you how much better I felt on the 78th day knowing Kosovo was finally in the safe hands of the KLA!!
The problem with all this is had the US not intervened, Serbia under Milosevic would have captured most of the former Yugoslavia, with perhaps Slovenia intact and a small area around Zagreb left as Croatia. But he may have ended up with the whole country! One could say that it's none of the US business, who inherits Yugoslavia. However, the idea of Greater Serbia is just as fraudulent as that of Greater Croatia. Why either should be preferable to the idea of everybody's Yugoslavia is beyond reason.
Mr. Bailey,
In the matter of Bosnia-Herzegovina, there was already the Lisbon Agreement whereby the interested local parties could have divided Bosnia-Herzegovina amongst themselves peacefully. Alija Izetbegovic withdrew his signature and ordered his army to mobilize because Warran Christopher convinced him that the US would back him if he did. Therefore, the US intervention must be dated from the diplomatic intrigues that made war inevitable, rather than from the bombing campaign itself.
As for Croatia, the German military would likely have been on hand to prevent Milosevic from conquering most of Croatia had it come to it.
Interesting article. The beginning of the article raises a tangential question: Does anyone say that the Katyn forest massacre did not occur? Could anyone provide more information on this view?
An additional question is whether it is impermissible to oppose the Mohammedan religion. Is such an opinion beyond the pale for most of the readers of Chronicles?
Katyn is among the many massacres that are under-publicized. See recent article here:
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/04/11/the-katyn-forest-massacre-a-revisionist-history-rosetta-stone/
In light of the agenda of neocons (who control our media) to foment enmity against Muslims, which includes their desire to make that enmity fashionable, your second question seems ridiculous to me. The harder assignment is to find Americans intelligent enough to see through the bigotry and ulterior motive of wealth and power through perpetual wars and destruction of Israel's possible enemies while destroying our country/everything. If you want to read an exceptionally fine book on Muslims, I recommend The Road to Mecca by Muhammad Asad.
If we had to duly publicize every serious and major massacre, every inch of newspapers, every moment of casual conversation, and every second of radio and television would be dedicated to talking about them.
Sorry, but Dr. Fleming was right when he long ago said that to look particularly at any atrocity is to be too selective.
What happened in Katyn, Poland is a small repeat of what was happening all over the world in the same time period.
The Katyn Forest massacre was somewhat unique in that it wiped out the officers, the intellectual class of the Polish Army and the New York Times reported it was committed by the Germans. The order signed by Stalin to kill the officer corp of Poland was not revealed until after the fall of the Berlin Wall. There is a question of the NYT of Walter Duranty knowingly reporting a fraud. Katyn is near Smolensk, nowhere near the German position.
There are so many to blame. Look at the Stalinist army as it approached Berlin in WWII, "The Killing Fields" of Cammbodia after Vietnam, the entire African continent in the last fifty years, the Maoist of China,... the 20th century, qauntified by mere human pints of blood spilled, is one of the nastiest ever known to man. It requires a super human patience of the intellect to listen to leftists preach about human suffering.