Note: many interesting hyperlinks can be found at the original
hypertext, under: http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
---
ANTIWAR, Thursday, March 6, 2003
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
From Kosovo to Baghdad
The Past And Coming War
As the frustrated Empire attempts ever
harder to justify the unjustifiable
and launch an invasion of Iraq with some
sort of placating pretext, it was
inevitable that the precedent of Balkans
interventions would come up again.
Richard Holbrooke, former foreign policy
hitman for the Clinton regime,
complained in the Washington Post on
February 23 that Bushites have lost the
"leadership" he and his masters had
created through Balkans interventions:
"in 1999, the Clinton administration and
our NATO allies decided to bomb
Serbia (for 77 days) without even seeking
U.N. approval, after it became
clear that Russia would veto any proposal.
This contrast with the supposedly
muscular Bush administration is especially
odd when one considers that
Saddam Hussein is far worse than Slobodan
Milosevic, and that Iraq has left
a long trail of violated Security Council
resolutions, while there were none
on Kosovo."
Holbrooke may be arrogant, condescending,
boorish, mendacious and
insufferable, but he is at least open
about it. What he is saying here is
that the US and NATO literally got away
with the international law
equivalent of premeditated murder, and
that Bush should have used that same
approach in Iraq. Justification? Who needs
one!? Earlier in the piece he
quipped:
"one should never underestimate the
persuasive power of power itself, as we
saw with the powerful and precise use of
air power in Bosnia in 1995 and
Kosovo in 1999." (emphasis added)
Nowhere in the entire article does he
mention the supposedly "humanitarian"
character of Empire's Balkans
interventions, while in this one sentence
alone, he uses "power" four times. While
this may not be (but is) indicative
of Empire's priorities, it is clearly
enough indicative of Holbrooke's.
False Challenges
Holbrooke's musings were quickly
challenged by Bush 41's henchman James
Baker, and Viagra pitchman Bob Dole, just
four days later. Well, sort of.
While he hotly denied Holbrooke's charge
that Bush 41 didn't "finish the
job" in 1991, Baker agreed with
Holbrooke's urging Bush 43 to attack now,
debate later. Dole, on the other hand,
rode his favorite hobbyhorse by
charging that Holbrooke and the
Clintonites did too little, too late to
save
the "beleaguered Bosnians" from "Serbian
attack." Neither actually disagreed
with Holbrooke's main argument about the
usefulness and desirability of
force - laws and even common decency be
damned. But this is what passes for
'debate' in Washington nowadays: the
concept of mass murder as
'statesmanship' is uncontested, and the
only disagreement is with details.
Exercises in Justification
That same week, another debate played
itself out on the pages of the
International Herald Tribune. Wolfgang
Petritsch, former Imperial viceroy of
Bosnia, rejected comparisons between
Kosovo 1999 and Iraq 2003, sounding
almost like a voice of reason. But when
one is arguing against Veton Surroi,
that's not hard. Indeed, Surroi's
comparison of Hussein with Slobodan
Milosevic from a few weeks back is riddled
with madness, of which this is
but a pinnacle:
"Change will only come when the bombs
begin to fall."
Surroi's belief in the healing power of
bombs is simply sick. And he is
actually considered a 'moderate' among the
Kosovo Albanians!
Petritsch's IHT byline, however,
identifies him as "chief EU negotiator at
the Rambouillet peace talks in 1999."
Given that Rambouillet was simply an
Empire-engineered extortion designed to
create a pretext for NATO's attack,
Petritsch's professed belief in
international law and UN legitimacy rings
manifestly hollow.
Both Holbrooke-Baker/Dole and the
Petritsch-Surroi debates focus on
appearances of Imperial intervention, but
never question its validity. Until
it is recognized that the Empire had no
right to use force in Serbia in
1999, nor does it have that right in Iraq
now, comparisons between the two
are merely exercises in justification.
Beware of Kosovo
That is not to say that Kosovo does not
offer plenty of hints as to what may
be coming soon to Iraq, from
terror-bombing to fabricated atrocity
stories.
If the Balkans is anything to judge by,
those who survive can expect an
Imperial protectorate, in which they will
be kept in check with armies of
bureaucrats, 'revenge attacks' and
occasionally, Imperial force. It won't be
a 'liberation,' as the Emperor proclaimed,
but a nightmare.
Far from being a shining example of
Imperial virtue, Kosovo is a 'twilight
zone' where logic gives way to madness and
nonsense is elevated to wisdom.
When Kosovo Serbs tried to preserve what's
left of their lives and property
in the occupied province, Albanians roared
that any "division of Kosovo"
would be "unacceptable," while the
Imperial viceroy condemned "institutions
which are based on mono-ethnicity." Yet
Albanians saw nothing wrong in
dividing Serbia (of which Kosovo is, after
all, a part), while NATO's
occupation has created a 95% mono-ethnic
(Albanian) Kosovo, with the
remaining Serbs and others serving as a
fig leaf of 'multi-ethnic'
legitimacy.
Even Albania condemned the Serb autonomy
as something "unacceptable" (that
word again) that would "damage ethnic
coexistence" (!). As if the official
Tirana is unaware that 'coexistence' in
Kosovo today means militant
Albanians murdering Serbs - and even
fellow Albanians - with impunity, and
destroying priceless monuments of culture.
The 'War Crimes' Scam
Critics will contend that 'impunity' ended
when four KLA terrorists were
indicted by the Hague Inquisition last
week for torturing and murdering
Serbs and Albanians. Specifically,
Empire's favorite sycophants, the Human
Rights Watch, said the indictments "defeat
the claims of the Tribunal's
critics that it was ignoring abuses
committed by Kosovo Albanian rebels."
Well, no it does not. Had the 'Tribunal'
been truly interested in 'abuses'
by the KLA, it would have indicted Hashim
Taqi, Agim Ceku and Ramush
Haradinaj long ago. That's assuming it is
a legitimate institution to begin
with, which it isn't. Given the
Inquisition's political nature, assuming
that the small-fry KLA were indicted
specifically to create a pretense of
fairness would not be far-fetched at all.
It's not the first time the Hague
Inquisition came up with 'indictments' at
the most opportune moment; Milosevic was
indicted when NATO's attack needed
a legitimacy boost. Several Croatian
generals have been indicted as 'proof'
of even-handedness (and HRW commented on
them the exact same way as above),
and Bosnian Serb politicians were hauled
off in chains once their usefulness
on the ground ended.
One of them, Biljana Plavsic, was just
sentenced to 11 years in prison - a
virtual life sentence for the 72-year old.
Plavsic's lawyers were shocked
with this reward for her spectacular
'confession'. On the other hand, some
Bosnian Muslims protested the sentence as
"lenient". Death isn't good
enough? There goes the empty talk of
'reconciliation'.
This outcome was painfully obvious months
ago. Confessions did not help the
victims of Stalin's show trials - why
would they help the victims of
Empire's? Ironically enough, Plavsic and
associates fought against a regime
allied with Al-Qaeda. So much for the 'War
on Terror,' too.
And now, in yet another re-run of the
Balkans in the Middle East, the Empire
is campaigning to get Saddam Hussein and
other Iraqi officials indicted for
'war crimes', whether from 1991 or in the
war that hasn't happened yet. This
nightmarish combination of Kafka and
Philip K. Dick is only possible because
of the Hague Inquisition.
Effects of Intervention
One more thing to keep in mind is the
impact of Imperial intervention in
Kosovo and the subsequent occupation of
the province, and the likelihood of
similar effects in Iraq.
That NATO bombed, invaded, and got away
with it meant international law no
longer had any meaning. In addition to the
loss of life and destruction of
property stemming from the bombing, there
was a mass expulsion of
non-Albanians from Kosovo, a
NATO-sanctioned ethnic cleansing that
remains a
problem to the present day. Countless
medieval cultural treasures in Kosovo
have been deliberately destroyed. Iraq is
rife with remnants of the most
ancient human civilizations; how many will
perish in the planned missile
storm? The 'liberated' Kosovo has been a
haven for traffickers in drugs,
weapons and sexual slaves, as well as a
base for terrorist movements in
Macedonia and Presevo Valley. Now the rot
is spreading to northern Serbia,
where ethnic and political separatists
jockey shamelessly for power. Even
the current policy of 'regime change' was
tested on Serbia first, with
Kosovo as leverage. Thanks to it, Serbia
is now ruled by a gang of thieves
with dangerous delusions, who owe their
positions of power (nearly absolute
in Serbia, however petty in global terms)
to the Empire.
The Ring of Madness
The circle is thus complete. Scratch the
surface of any conflict, and you'll
find the Empire there; if not this one,
then its predecessors. And
everywhere it goes, death and despair
follow. The power of empire cannot be
abused - its very use results in evil.
Tolkien was right: power is the fiery
Ring, an end unto itself. Power for
power's sake, to paraphrase Holbrooke.
Is it not obvious, from everything here,
what Imperialism produces? It is a
parasitical madness that infests and
afflicts nations, leading inevitably to
rot and death. First in the areas the host
conquers - the Balkans, the
Middle East, or anywhere else - but
eventually, it reaches the host itself,
and kills it just as brutally as it killed
its other victims. There may yet
be time to stop this vile madness, but
only if there is readiness to learn
the real lessons of the Balkans, rather
than debate the details of evil.
hypertext, under: http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m-col.html
---
ANTIWAR, Thursday, March 6, 2003
Balkan Express
by Nebojsa Malic
Antiwar.com
From Kosovo to Baghdad
The Past And Coming War
As the frustrated Empire attempts ever
harder to justify the unjustifiable
and launch an invasion of Iraq with some
sort of placating pretext, it was
inevitable that the precedent of Balkans
interventions would come up again.
Richard Holbrooke, former foreign policy
hitman for the Clinton regime,
complained in the Washington Post on
February 23 that Bushites have lost the
"leadership" he and his masters had
created through Balkans interventions:
"in 1999, the Clinton administration and
our NATO allies decided to bomb
Serbia (for 77 days) without even seeking
U.N. approval, after it became
clear that Russia would veto any proposal.
This contrast with the supposedly
muscular Bush administration is especially
odd when one considers that
Saddam Hussein is far worse than Slobodan
Milosevic, and that Iraq has left
a long trail of violated Security Council
resolutions, while there were none
on Kosovo."
Holbrooke may be arrogant, condescending,
boorish, mendacious and
insufferable, but he is at least open
about it. What he is saying here is
that the US and NATO literally got away
with the international law
equivalent of premeditated murder, and
that Bush should have used that same
approach in Iraq. Justification? Who needs
one!? Earlier in the piece he
quipped:
"one should never underestimate the
persuasive power of power itself, as we
saw with the powerful and precise use of
air power in Bosnia in 1995 and
Kosovo in 1999." (emphasis added)
Nowhere in the entire article does he
mention the supposedly "humanitarian"
character of Empire's Balkans
interventions, while in this one sentence
alone, he uses "power" four times. While
this may not be (but is) indicative
of Empire's priorities, it is clearly
enough indicative of Holbrooke's.
False Challenges
Holbrooke's musings were quickly
challenged by Bush 41's henchman James
Baker, and Viagra pitchman Bob Dole, just
four days later. Well, sort of.
While he hotly denied Holbrooke's charge
that Bush 41 didn't "finish the
job" in 1991, Baker agreed with
Holbrooke's urging Bush 43 to attack now,
debate later. Dole, on the other hand,
rode his favorite hobbyhorse by
charging that Holbrooke and the
Clintonites did too little, too late to
save
the "beleaguered Bosnians" from "Serbian
attack." Neither actually disagreed
with Holbrooke's main argument about the
usefulness and desirability of
force - laws and even common decency be
damned. But this is what passes for
'debate' in Washington nowadays: the
concept of mass murder as
'statesmanship' is uncontested, and the
only disagreement is with details.
Exercises in Justification
That same week, another debate played
itself out on the pages of the
International Herald Tribune. Wolfgang
Petritsch, former Imperial viceroy of
Bosnia, rejected comparisons between
Kosovo 1999 and Iraq 2003, sounding
almost like a voice of reason. But when
one is arguing against Veton Surroi,
that's not hard. Indeed, Surroi's
comparison of Hussein with Slobodan
Milosevic from a few weeks back is riddled
with madness, of which this is
but a pinnacle:
"Change will only come when the bombs
begin to fall."
Surroi's belief in the healing power of
bombs is simply sick. And he is
actually considered a 'moderate' among the
Kosovo Albanians!
Petritsch's IHT byline, however,
identifies him as "chief EU negotiator at
the Rambouillet peace talks in 1999."
Given that Rambouillet was simply an
Empire-engineered extortion designed to
create a pretext for NATO's attack,
Petritsch's professed belief in
international law and UN legitimacy rings
manifestly hollow.
Both Holbrooke-Baker/Dole and the
Petritsch-Surroi debates focus on
appearances of Imperial intervention, but
never question its validity. Until
it is recognized that the Empire had no
right to use force in Serbia in
1999, nor does it have that right in Iraq
now, comparisons between the two
are merely exercises in justification.
Beware of Kosovo
That is not to say that Kosovo does not
offer plenty of hints as to what may
be coming soon to Iraq, from
terror-bombing to fabricated atrocity
stories.
If the Balkans is anything to judge by,
those who survive can expect an
Imperial protectorate, in which they will
be kept in check with armies of
bureaucrats, 'revenge attacks' and
occasionally, Imperial force. It won't be
a 'liberation,' as the Emperor proclaimed,
but a nightmare.
Far from being a shining example of
Imperial virtue, Kosovo is a 'twilight
zone' where logic gives way to madness and
nonsense is elevated to wisdom.
When Kosovo Serbs tried to preserve what's
left of their lives and property
in the occupied province, Albanians roared
that any "division of Kosovo"
would be "unacceptable," while the
Imperial viceroy condemned "institutions
which are based on mono-ethnicity." Yet
Albanians saw nothing wrong in
dividing Serbia (of which Kosovo is, after
all, a part), while NATO's
occupation has created a 95% mono-ethnic
(Albanian) Kosovo, with the
remaining Serbs and others serving as a
fig leaf of 'multi-ethnic'
legitimacy.
Even Albania condemned the Serb autonomy
as something "unacceptable" (that
word again) that would "damage ethnic
coexistence" (!). As if the official
Tirana is unaware that 'coexistence' in
Kosovo today means militant
Albanians murdering Serbs - and even
fellow Albanians - with impunity, and
destroying priceless monuments of culture.
The 'War Crimes' Scam
Critics will contend that 'impunity' ended
when four KLA terrorists were
indicted by the Hague Inquisition last
week for torturing and murdering
Serbs and Albanians. Specifically,
Empire's favorite sycophants, the Human
Rights Watch, said the indictments "defeat
the claims of the Tribunal's
critics that it was ignoring abuses
committed by Kosovo Albanian rebels."
Well, no it does not. Had the 'Tribunal'
been truly interested in 'abuses'
by the KLA, it would have indicted Hashim
Taqi, Agim Ceku and Ramush
Haradinaj long ago. That's assuming it is
a legitimate institution to begin
with, which it isn't. Given the
Inquisition's political nature, assuming
that the small-fry KLA were indicted
specifically to create a pretense of
fairness would not be far-fetched at all.
It's not the first time the Hague
Inquisition came up with 'indictments' at
the most opportune moment; Milosevic was
indicted when NATO's attack needed
a legitimacy boost. Several Croatian
generals have been indicted as 'proof'
of even-handedness (and HRW commented on
them the exact same way as above),
and Bosnian Serb politicians were hauled
off in chains once their usefulness
on the ground ended.
One of them, Biljana Plavsic, was just
sentenced to 11 years in prison - a
virtual life sentence for the 72-year old.
Plavsic's lawyers were shocked
with this reward for her spectacular
'confession'. On the other hand, some
Bosnian Muslims protested the sentence as
"lenient". Death isn't good
enough? There goes the empty talk of
'reconciliation'.
This outcome was painfully obvious months
ago. Confessions did not help the
victims of Stalin's show trials - why
would they help the victims of
Empire's? Ironically enough, Plavsic and
associates fought against a regime
allied with Al-Qaeda. So much for the 'War
on Terror,' too.
And now, in yet another re-run of the
Balkans in the Middle East, the Empire
is campaigning to get Saddam Hussein and
other Iraqi officials indicted for
'war crimes', whether from 1991 or in the
war that hasn't happened yet. This
nightmarish combination of Kafka and
Philip K. Dick is only possible because
of the Hague Inquisition.
Effects of Intervention
One more thing to keep in mind is the
impact of Imperial intervention in
Kosovo and the subsequent occupation of
the province, and the likelihood of
similar effects in Iraq.
That NATO bombed, invaded, and got away
with it meant international law no
longer had any meaning. In addition to the
loss of life and destruction of
property stemming from the bombing, there
was a mass expulsion of
non-Albanians from Kosovo, a
NATO-sanctioned ethnic cleansing that
remains a
problem to the present day. Countless
medieval cultural treasures in Kosovo
have been deliberately destroyed. Iraq is
rife with remnants of the most
ancient human civilizations; how many will
perish in the planned missile
storm? The 'liberated' Kosovo has been a
haven for traffickers in drugs,
weapons and sexual slaves, as well as a
base for terrorist movements in
Macedonia and Presevo Valley. Now the rot
is spreading to northern Serbia,
where ethnic and political separatists
jockey shamelessly for power. Even
the current policy of 'regime change' was
tested on Serbia first, with
Kosovo as leverage. Thanks to it, Serbia
is now ruled by a gang of thieves
with dangerous delusions, who owe their
positions of power (nearly absolute
in Serbia, however petty in global terms)
to the Empire.
The Ring of Madness
The circle is thus complete. Scratch the
surface of any conflict, and you'll
find the Empire there; if not this one,
then its predecessors. And
everywhere it goes, death and despair
follow. The power of empire cannot be
abused - its very use results in evil.
Tolkien was right: power is the fiery
Ring, an end unto itself. Power for
power's sake, to paraphrase Holbrooke.
Is it not obvious, from everything here,
what Imperialism produces? It is a
parasitical madness that infests and
afflicts nations, leading inevitably to
rot and death. First in the areas the host
conquers - the Balkans, the
Middle East, or anywhere else - but
eventually, it reaches the host itself,
and kills it just as brutally as it killed
its other victims. There may yet
be time to stop this vile madness, but
only if there is readiness to learn
the real lessons of the Balkans, rather
than debate the details of evil.