 |  |  |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
| | |
| Return to: Left History: a digital archive | Return to: Say no to imperialist wars! | Return to: NATO-Yugoslav War Internet Resources |
Everybody now seems to be getting into the Kosovo act, admonishing the U.S., Britain and NATO for indulging in the most blatant disinformation propaganda since the Soviet Union imploded.
Many who now decry the Allied disinformation about mass graves and genocide, and the comparison of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic with Hitler and the Holocaust, are the same ones who once chastised former U.S. president Ronald Reagan for his "Evil Empire" analogy regarding the USSR, and who believed the way to world peace was to show goodwill to Communist butchers.
Thus does the wheel of history turn.
It's become abundantly clear that the 78-day air war against Serbia was not only a mistake, but a monstrous and unnecessary aggression, replete with deceit, disinformation, false assumptions and, perhaps most damning, stupidity.
And it failed - a cardinal sin of international politics. The Yugoslav military survived the bombing virtually unscathed.
Uncomfortable as it may be, NATO rhetoric during the war was mindful of World War I rubbish about Germans bayonetting Belgian babies, or Canadian soldiers being crucified on barn doors - fabrications to incite hatred against the Hun.
It's now irrefutable that "humanitarian bombing" (an obscene perversion of language) ostensibly to save Albanians from being "ethnically cleansed" actually triggered cleansing (refugees) and atrocities. Our leaders invoked images of "genocide" and "mass graves" to justify the war. Albanian refugees got (comparatively) lavish treatment. Guilt opened Western wallets.
After the bombing, retribution began. The International War Crimes Tribunal, then headed by Louise Arbour, now a Supreme Court of Canada Justice, seemed more mindful of vendetta than judicial process.
Acutely embarrassing to the NATO war-makers is that "mass graves scattered across Kosovo" (Reuters) have turned out to be non-existent. Or, if not non-existent, so far unlocated. The number of Albanians slaughtered by Serbs (the demonized "Hun" of World War I propaganda) was initially estimated at 100,000 (U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen), with even higher numbers hinted at by British PM Tony Blair. Most media uncritically, even gleefully, echoed these statistics.
Britain's Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon declared some 10,000 Albanians were buried in 100 mass graves. Western journalists in Kosovo competed in expressing their outrage at witnessing "incontrovertible evidence of massacres."
Yet after months of investigating - no mass graves. Atrocities and murders, yes. But nothing on the scale that justifies "genocide" or comparisons with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Rwanda. Or even Chechnya today, which escapes NATO's condemnation.
Britain's Spectator is one publication that has consistently expressed skepticism about actions in Kosovo and the Balkans, and tried to put the horrors into perspective.
When NATO announced "the biggest mass grave ever" had been found in Ljubenic, supposedly containing 350 bodies, the world waited. The grave revealed seven bodies. Probably an atrocity, but not genocide and certainly not a "mass grave." Stories of Serbs dumping some 700 bodies down mineshafts at Trepca, in northern Kosovo, turned out to be nonsense. No bodies.
Twenty forensic teams scouring Kosovo have reportedly exhumed some 2,000 bodies. As Lorrie Goldstein has remarked in the Sun: "NATO bombs may have actually killed at least as many civilians as Serbian paramilitaries did."
The irony of the whole, shameful, manipulated war is that it was justified because some 2,000 people had been killed in Kosovo the previous year - maybe 60% by Serbs, 40% by Albanian Kosovars. When one realizes that only 10% of the Kosovo's population was Serbian, it means Serbs were in far greater danger of being slaughtered than Albanians.
WILLINGLY CONNED
The most generous explanation for starting the war is that the U.S. and Britain were willingly conned by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which wants independence. Many of its members were considered thugs and terrorists before we transformed them into freedom fighters.
Because Milosevic is disliked - easy to do - our side was eager to believe the worst of all Serbs.
Rather than creating a "Greater Serbia," Milosevic, by his perverse ambitions, has created a "lesser" Serbia. Today, it's the spectre of a "Greater Albania" that makes the Balkans nervous. Albanian maps show parts of Montenegro and Macedonia as well as Kosovo as their sovereign territory.
In theory, NATO is keeping the peace in Kosovo. But is it? Now it's Serbs who've been "ethnically cleansed." Some 400 Serbs have been murdered and/or mutilated by the KLA - all under the guardianship of 50,000 NATO troops. Yet no KLA assassin has been cited for war crimes, only Serbian.
As well as NATO members being culpable for starting an unnecessary war for fabricated reasons (getting even with Milosevic for Bosnia?), the International Criminal Tribunal is alarmingly close to being a partisan fiasco.
Little glory, and questionable justice.
As an aside, half a world away in Timor, alleged scene of more massacres and mass graves - so far nothing. Atrocities, yes; genocide, no. Shame on our side.