 |  |  |
| 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 |
U.S. President Bill Clinton is touring the Balkans region, including Greece and Turkey. His planned entry into Kosovo--which is illegal, since he has not acquired the Yugoslav government's permission as required under international law--is meant to send a message to the region and beyond.
Clinton met unplanned opposition, however. Massive and angry protests forced him to pull back on his trip to Greece. Protests in Turkey were brutally suppressed.
Clinton and his handlers in Washington may have started to believe their own propaganda and lies. The conqueror of the Balkans may have thought he would be greeted as a hero. But he found that to the local people he is nothing more than a war criminal.
During the blitzkrieg against Yugoslavia, the U.S. media picked up the lies of the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department to create an elaborate but completely phony story to justify that brutal assault on a small country.
The core of the mythology was that the Yugoslav government was engaged in mass genocide against Albanian people living in Kosovo. On April 19, for example, the U.S. State Department declared that 500,000 Kosovo Albanians were "missing and feared dead." Then on May 16, U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen declared on CBS-TV's "Face the Nation" that "100,000 military-aged men were missing" in Kosovo.
"They may have been murdered," he concluded.
These lies have now fallen apart.
No evidence of 'genocide'
After a five-month investigation of allegations of massacres and genocide, ordered by the United States and NATO, there is no evidence to substantiate them. Even though the U.S. military is now in full power over Kosovo, able to control any investigation taking place in that region of Serbia, no mass graves have been found. After an intense and bloody war, only 2,500 civilian deaths--from various causes--can be documented.
The investigation was headed by Carla Del Ponte of the United Nations. In a preliminary report released on Nov. 10, the number of dead found in 195 sites in Kosovo was 2,108.
A Spanish forensics team participating in the investigation says that, at most, they expect 2,500 bodies to be found when all sites have been investigated. The major sites where U.S. officials had asserted massacres took place have already been opened. The sites still to be unearthed were not even alleged to contain many bodies.
According to a report on the findings in the Nov. 11 New York Times: "A long investigation of the Trepca mine, where Albanians said many bodies were brought for incineration, turned up no evidence of any crime. Similarly, at Ljubenic, near Pec, a widely publicized grave site said to hold 350 bodies only held five."
The Times noted that it is almost impossible to kill large numbers of people and dispose of them quickly. This is a sort of acknowledgment that there is no evidence of mass murder--let alone "genocide," as had been widely charged.
In fact, the report notes that many of the dead bodies found are probably "fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army or may have died ordinary deaths."
Or were victims of the KLA terrorists, the Times should have added. This would include Albanians as well as Serbs, Roma people and other nationalities, since the KLA murdered many Albanians who did not support their right-wing, pro-imperialist agenda.
The war isn't over
While the alleged genocide used to justify the brutal bombing of Yugoslavia stands exposed as a complete lie, the war criminals are still in charge--in Washington, London, Paris and Bonn. And the war against Yugoslavia is continuing, with economic sanctions and the continued military occupation of Kosovo.
An international people's inquiry into U.S. and NATO war crimes initiated by the International Action Center has been holding hearings in Yugoslavia as well as across the United States and around Europe. This effort has begun to expose even more about the criminal damage done to Yugoslavia and its people.
What is evident is that the U.S./NATO war on Yugoslavia never was a response to any alleged genocide. The war was about Washington establishing a permanent base in the Balkans, a militarily strategic location that borders on Europe, the Middle East and the oil- rich Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union.
That this was the purpose of the U.S./NATO war on Yugoslavia was acknowledged by Ken Coates, chairperson of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and until recently a member of the European Parliament.
The British Labor Party and the social-democratic left in Britain led Britain's participation in the war.
In the British quarterly publication Spectre, Coates notes that "after the Yugoslav war, Europe will not be the same again." The transformation is being brought about "by the establishment of what may well become a permanent NATO base in the Balkans."
The official explanation for the war cannot be accepted, Coates writes. The real goal was the creation of a "North American military presence in the Balkans." This gives the United States a base of operation for the whole region, from Macedonia and Montenegro to Greece and Turkey. But also beyond that into Ukraine and Russia. Coates asserts that there is a strong "prospect of American intervention if Ukrainians make the wrong decisions about their future."
It has become obvious, Coates concludes, that "it is power, not humanitarianism, that drives forward American policy, which has now indeed become hegemony in Europe."
This realization about the role of U.S. imperialism in Europe has so far only been taken to heart by the left in a few countries, most notably Greece. "Imperialism is not invincible. People can win if they want to," said the Greek Communist Party in a recent statement after organizing mass protests against Clinton, who has been dubbed Planitarchis, "Lord of the Planet," in the Greek press.
In most European governments, where the social democrats are the leading political force, those who claim to be for peace and against war became cheerleaders for the war on Yugoslavia.
The lessons learned over the last century of imperialist war must not be forgotten. Lenin's study of capitalism in its imperialist stage showed how to understand the forces behind war in the 20th century. His thesis remains the basis for understanding imperialist wars on the eve of the 21st century.
Modern warfare is rooted in capitalism's need to expand and cannot be separated from the drive for profits. If this is forgotten, then it becomes impossible to understand the forces behind war and how to stop them.