http://www.workers.org/ww/2003/yugo0213.php
YUGOSLAVIA
Washington's history of 'regime change'
By John Catalinotto
Iraq is not the first country where Washington has demanded "regime
change."
A collection of related articles in the Jan. 27 Christian Science
Monitor compared U.S. threats of "regime change" by warfare in Iraq
with its successful overthrows of governments in Guatemala, Chile,
Panama, the Dominican Republic and Grenada, and some less successful
attempts, as in Cuba.
To accomplish its goals, Washington has used economic sanctions,
diplomatic pressure, trade embargoes and support for local forces
trying to overthrow the targeted governments. It has also used bombing
and military invasion.
The Monitor articles mention another brutal regime change the United
States carried out, in Yugoslavia. What is significant is that this
establishment newspaper is now exposing some of the lies it and other
media told about Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2000 to demonize the Yugoslav
government and its president, Slobodan Milosevic.
In 1999, only a few tens of thousands of people in this country, about
half of them Serbian immigrants and their families, actively protested
the Pentagon's brutal bombing of the Balkans.
Today, protesters in the hundreds of thousands in the United States,
and millions more across the world, are actively demonstrating,
signing petitions, writing letters and marching in the streets in an
attempt to stop a murderous U.S. aggression against Iraq before it
begins. Probably few are sympathetic to or supporters of the Iraqi
government. But they know that the Bush administration's plan to
invade Iraq has nothing to do with improving the Iraqi government and
everything to do with oil profits and geo-strategic power.
In 1999, however, the media-industry propaganda machine managed to
mislead a large section of progressive public opinion into believing
that the Clinton administration's war in the Balkans had to do with
ending dictatorship and stopping genocide against some of the
non-Serbian peoples of Yugoslavia. It was successful in hiding the
real goal of the United States and Western European big powers:turning
all of Eastern Europe back into a colony of Western imperialism. At
that time, the European imperialists supported the U.S. war.
The Monitor articles give an opportunity to re-examine that period and
to reinforce resistance to future propaganda offensives.
Admits Milosevic no dictator
Four years ago, as the countdown for war against Yugoslavia was on,
the corporate media in the United States and Western Europe depicted
Serbs as beasts and Milosevic as a Hitler. Now, the Monitor admits
that far from being a brutal dictator, "Milosevic never resorted to
dictatorial repression of his political opponents at home.
"Indeed, opposition parties ran all the country's major towns and
cities after municipal elections in December 1996; independent radio
and TV stations managed to broadcast; opposition-leaning dailies and
weeklies published."
The Monitor doesn't add a relevant point here. After a U.S.-backed
coup overthrew Milosevic in October 2000, the so-called Democratic
Opposition of Serbia, which took over, turned out to be not so
democratic. It took over the media that had been favorable toward the
then-ruling Socialist Party of Serbia and its allies, while keeping
control of all the non-government media.
These had been described in the West as an "alternative" media, but in
reality were funded by U.S. and Western European imperialism. The
biggest source of funds was billionaire George Soros's Open Society
Institute. This group opened up shop in Belgrade in 1991, "and over
the next nine years distributed more than $100 million. ... The money
bought newsprint for independent papers, kept publishing houses alive,
and funded the growth of [anti-Milosevic radio station] B-92 as it set
up local stations in towns controlled by the opposition."
The U.S. Congress voted additional funds. U.S. agents pushed the 18
political parties in the DOS to unite for the election. As the Monitor
put it, "U.S. diplomats knocked their heads together until they formed
a cohesive and united coalition" that was a "credible alternative."
They picked Vojoslav Kostunica to run against Milosevic because he was
"reputed to be honest, and sufficiently nationalistic to broaden the
opposition's appeal."
It took nine years of subversion and economic sanctions--and three
months of bombing that targeted Yugoslavia's economic
infrastructure--before the U.S. succeeded in "regime change." During
the first six of those nine years Western European--especially
German--and U.S. imperialism were undermining and tearing apart
Yugoslavia by fostering the breakaway of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia,
leading to civil war.
The Monitor now admits that the overthrow of Milosevic in October 2000
"brought to fruition a three-year campaign by the U.S. and other
Western governments to dislodge the Yugoslav leader by strangling his
country's economy with sanctions and rocking it with bombs during the
Kosovo war."
This is an admission that the effort to bring down the Yugoslav
government began at the latest in 1997, before the struggle in Kosovo
that was allegedly the reason for U.S. intervention.
Since the overthrow, two-thirds of Yugoslavs have sunk below the
poverty level. The suicide rate among elderly people has reached new
heights. Health care has become unaffordable for most.
And so few people voted in Serbia's presidential election that it was
voided twice last fall. Kostunica became virtually without power after
outright Western puppets like Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic took
over.
Role of Milosevic
Some of the recent media attacks on Workers World Party, centering on
its participation in the anti-war movement, charge WWP with being
followers of Milosevic. Yet any serious researcher could find WWP
articles in the early 1990s that raised criticisms of the Milosevic
leadership in Yugoslavia from a socialist perspective.
Once U.S. imperialism and its NATO partners--who are also
rivals--targeted Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav leadership resisted
having their country turned into a colony, WWP supported Yugoslavia
against NATO. WWP would defend any government's resistance to being
colonized by the imperialists. This is in the best internationalist
traditions of the left, which supported the feudal emperor of
Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, when he led the resistance to an invasion by
the Italian imperialist government in the 1930s.
Since Milosevic was captured in 2001 and kidnapped to The Hague to
stand "trial" in a NATO court for alleged war crimes, he has conducted
a political defense, with very little outside support, that has
skillfully bared the intrigues of the imperialists to dismember his
country.
Washington meant the farce in The Hague to be a show trial, but the
former Yugoslav president has effectively turned it into an exposure
of U.S./NATO war crimes against Yugoslavia.
That's why it gets so little media coverage here--and why Milosevic
has earned the respect of working-class activists worldwide.
The writer is co-editor of a book about the 1999 war on Yugoslavia
entitled "Hidden Agenda: the U.S.-NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia,"
published by the International Action Center in 2002.
- END -
Reprinted from the Feb. 13, 2003, issue of Workers World newspaper
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@.... Subscribe
wwnews-on@.... Unsubscribe wwnews-off@.... Support
independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)
YUGOSLAVIA
Washington's history of 'regime change'
By John Catalinotto
Iraq is not the first country where Washington has demanded "regime
change."
A collection of related articles in the Jan. 27 Christian Science
Monitor compared U.S. threats of "regime change" by warfare in Iraq
with its successful overthrows of governments in Guatemala, Chile,
Panama, the Dominican Republic and Grenada, and some less successful
attempts, as in Cuba.
To accomplish its goals, Washington has used economic sanctions,
diplomatic pressure, trade embargoes and support for local forces
trying to overthrow the targeted governments. It has also used bombing
and military invasion.
The Monitor articles mention another brutal regime change the United
States carried out, in Yugoslavia. What is significant is that this
establishment newspaper is now exposing some of the lies it and other
media told about Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2000 to demonize the Yugoslav
government and its president, Slobodan Milosevic.
In 1999, only a few tens of thousands of people in this country, about
half of them Serbian immigrants and their families, actively protested
the Pentagon's brutal bombing of the Balkans.
Today, protesters in the hundreds of thousands in the United States,
and millions more across the world, are actively demonstrating,
signing petitions, writing letters and marching in the streets in an
attempt to stop a murderous U.S. aggression against Iraq before it
begins. Probably few are sympathetic to or supporters of the Iraqi
government. But they know that the Bush administration's plan to
invade Iraq has nothing to do with improving the Iraqi government and
everything to do with oil profits and geo-strategic power.
In 1999, however, the media-industry propaganda machine managed to
mislead a large section of progressive public opinion into believing
that the Clinton administration's war in the Balkans had to do with
ending dictatorship and stopping genocide against some of the
non-Serbian peoples of Yugoslavia. It was successful in hiding the
real goal of the United States and Western European big powers:turning
all of Eastern Europe back into a colony of Western imperialism. At
that time, the European imperialists supported the U.S. war.
The Monitor articles give an opportunity to re-examine that period and
to reinforce resistance to future propaganda offensives.
Admits Milosevic no dictator
Four years ago, as the countdown for war against Yugoslavia was on,
the corporate media in the United States and Western Europe depicted
Serbs as beasts and Milosevic as a Hitler. Now, the Monitor admits
that far from being a brutal dictator, "Milosevic never resorted to
dictatorial repression of his political opponents at home.
"Indeed, opposition parties ran all the country's major towns and
cities after municipal elections in December 1996; independent radio
and TV stations managed to broadcast; opposition-leaning dailies and
weeklies published."
The Monitor doesn't add a relevant point here. After a U.S.-backed
coup overthrew Milosevic in October 2000, the so-called Democratic
Opposition of Serbia, which took over, turned out to be not so
democratic. It took over the media that had been favorable toward the
then-ruling Socialist Party of Serbia and its allies, while keeping
control of all the non-government media.
These had been described in the West as an "alternative" media, but in
reality were funded by U.S. and Western European imperialism. The
biggest source of funds was billionaire George Soros's Open Society
Institute. This group opened up shop in Belgrade in 1991, "and over
the next nine years distributed more than $100 million. ... The money
bought newsprint for independent papers, kept publishing houses alive,
and funded the growth of [anti-Milosevic radio station] B-92 as it set
up local stations in towns controlled by the opposition."
The U.S. Congress voted additional funds. U.S. agents pushed the 18
political parties in the DOS to unite for the election. As the Monitor
put it, "U.S. diplomats knocked their heads together until they formed
a cohesive and united coalition" that was a "credible alternative."
They picked Vojoslav Kostunica to run against Milosevic because he was
"reputed to be honest, and sufficiently nationalistic to broaden the
opposition's appeal."
It took nine years of subversion and economic sanctions--and three
months of bombing that targeted Yugoslavia's economic
infrastructure--before the U.S. succeeded in "regime change." During
the first six of those nine years Western European--especially
German--and U.S. imperialism were undermining and tearing apart
Yugoslavia by fostering the breakaway of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia,
leading to civil war.
The Monitor now admits that the overthrow of Milosevic in October 2000
"brought to fruition a three-year campaign by the U.S. and other
Western governments to dislodge the Yugoslav leader by strangling his
country's economy with sanctions and rocking it with bombs during the
Kosovo war."
This is an admission that the effort to bring down the Yugoslav
government began at the latest in 1997, before the struggle in Kosovo
that was allegedly the reason for U.S. intervention.
Since the overthrow, two-thirds of Yugoslavs have sunk below the
poverty level. The suicide rate among elderly people has reached new
heights. Health care has become unaffordable for most.
And so few people voted in Serbia's presidential election that it was
voided twice last fall. Kostunica became virtually without power after
outright Western puppets like Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic took
over.
Role of Milosevic
Some of the recent media attacks on Workers World Party, centering on
its participation in the anti-war movement, charge WWP with being
followers of Milosevic. Yet any serious researcher could find WWP
articles in the early 1990s that raised criticisms of the Milosevic
leadership in Yugoslavia from a socialist perspective.
Once U.S. imperialism and its NATO partners--who are also
rivals--targeted Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav leadership resisted
having their country turned into a colony, WWP supported Yugoslavia
against NATO. WWP would defend any government's resistance to being
colonized by the imperialists. This is in the best internationalist
traditions of the left, which supported the feudal emperor of
Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, when he led the resistance to an invasion by
the Italian imperialist government in the 1930s.
Since Milosevic was captured in 2001 and kidnapped to The Hague to
stand "trial" in a NATO court for alleged war crimes, he has conducted
a political defense, with very little outside support, that has
skillfully bared the intrigues of the imperialists to dismember his
country.
Washington meant the farce in The Hague to be a show trial, but the
former Yugoslav president has effectively turned it into an exposure
of U.S./NATO war crimes against Yugoslavia.
That's why it gets so little media coverage here--and why Milosevic
has earned the respect of working-class activists worldwide.
The writer is co-editor of a book about the 1999 war on Yugoslavia
entitled "Hidden Agenda: the U.S.-NATO Takeover of Yugoslavia,"
published by the International Action Center in 2002.
- END -
Reprinted from the Feb. 13, 2003, issue of Workers World newspaper
(Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and
distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not
allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY,
NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@.... Subscribe
wwnews-on@.... Unsubscribe wwnews-off@.... Support
independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php)