http://www.antiwar.com/malic/m092503.html
Balkan Express - September 25, 2003
Return to the Crime Scene
Kosovo and Bosnia Revisited
by Nebojsa Malic
Nearly three years after he left office, Bill Clinton was Emperor
again – at least in the minds of worshipful Balkans peons,
who cheered him on as he strutted down his namesake
boulevard in Pristina and pontificated about good and evil in
Srebrenica.
Clinton deserves some credit because he at least visited only
the scenes of his own crimes; he left Macedonia to George W.
Bush, perhaps for a similar ego trip after his reign. Perhaps that
is not quite fair. What Reuters called the "Balkans lap of honor"
wasn’t entirely a celebration of Clinton’s ego, but also a
powerful propaganda show for the benefit of the Empire, aimed
to "highlight the peace gains of the previous Democratic
administration." (AFP) Clinton’s showboating was a message
that even if the current Emperor is in some difficulty over his
Mesopotamian adventure, the Empire itself is not in question.
False Honors and Bogus Tolerance
Clinton began his visit in Kosovo, where he was greeted by
cheering throngs of adulating Albanians. Upon arrival, he said
that he was "very pleased to see things look so well." (AFP)
Either he wasn’t paying attention, or – more likely – he didn’t
care.
Media coverage of the visit recycled the 1999 propaganda,
including the arbitrary figure of "estimated 10,000 ethnic
Albanians… killed during the crackdown." (AP)
The main event was his speech at Pristina University, site of
several grisly murders during Kosovo’s "liberation" from
international law, where Clinton was also granted an honorary
degree. Clinton confessed to an ethnically pure crowd
that he was "honoured to have been part of ridding Kosovo
of the scourge of oppression." (AFP)
He should really tell that to Albanians oppressed by the KLA
thugs, who murder and extort them freely. Or to Albanians
who believe they are oppressed by the international
protectorate that bars them from statehood. Or perhaps to
Kosovo’s non-Albanians, exposed to constant Albanian
violence, shrinking in numbers, invisible in public and living in
ghettos. But Albanians won’t blame Clinton, and non-
Albanians don’t take him seriously anyway.
During the speech described by the media as conciliatory, the
former Emperor asked the Albanians, "don’t you want to get
even?" (AFP) Note the form of the question, implying it would
be the expected and natural thing to do. He also referred to
"you" (Albanians) and "them" (Serbs and others), and said he
wanted "you" to be free. (AP) No one should care about "them";
they are only things, anyway.
The Farce in Potocari
Bosnia was Clinton’s pet issue in the 1992 election, and his
first "nation-building" experiment. On Saturday, he attended the
ceremony for victims of Srebrenica at the new memorial shrine
in nearby Potocari. There he opened a political monument to a
politicized massacre, delivering an insipid speech brimming
with clichés, hypocrisy and outright lies. Then he paid a visit
to the dying ayatollah Izetbegovic.
The Potocari speech, carried in fragments by wire services and
newspapers, sounds like standard Clintoniana. For example,
he claimed that "for much of [Bosnia’s] history, [Muslims],
Croats and Serbs have lived together in peace." (AFP)
What kind of history books has he been reading? But there is
more:
"We must pay tribute to the innocent lives, many of them
children, snuffed out in what must be called genocidal
madness." (BBC)
How is the alleged killing of 7000 (more on that later)
"genocidal madness," but starving 500,000 children isn’t? Well,
when the first is done by the designated villain and the latter
by the indispensable nation, the first is an atrocity beyond the
pale, and the second is the price "worth it." Modernist logic
personified.
"Bad people who lusted for power killed these good people
simply because of who they were." (NY Times)
Bad people? Good people? Who was he addressing, children?
And who is Clinton to lecture about evils of lust, of all things?
"[P]ride in our own religious or ethnic heritage does not require
or permit us to dehumanize or kill those who are different" (AP)
This must have been spoken from experience.
"I hope you can build on the bedrock of Srebrenica in Bosnia-
Hercegovina a place where all children are safe and loved and
able to live out their dreams" (AFP)
Certainly Srebrenica, a tragedy surrounded by a tangled web
of lies and propaganda, is just the perfect foundation for raising
Bosnia’s children.
"Children must be taught to hate." (NY Times)
Was this a lapse of tongue, lapse of pen, or a lapse in
judgment? Even if he’d said, "Children must not be taught to
hate," that would sound hollow at the dedication of a shrine
dedicated to teaching just that.
"I hope you will teach them instead to trust," he said, and to
choose "the freedom of forgiveness over the prison of hatred,
tomorrow’s dreams over yesterday’s nightmares." (NY Times)
Nice words, but consider the source – and the occasion. The
Potocari memorial is a shrine to vengeance and hatred, not
forgiveness and hope. Many Muslims in attendance felt that
way, as did their political leader, who spoke afterwards.
Media Madness
The Clinton visit gave the mainstream media a chance to
indulge in propagandistic exaggeration of the worst kind.
Familiar clichés were trotted out to describe what allegedly
happened in Srebrenica: "the worst organized slaughter since
World War II" (Reuters), "the worst massacre in Europe since
the end of World War II" (AP), "Europe’s worst atrocity since
World War II" (AFP and BBC), the "worst war crime in Europe
since World War II," (NY Times).
Absent the actual truthful information, speculation about the
scale of Bosnian atrocities ran rampant: "up to 8000" were
killed in Srebrenica, and "260,000" in the entire war, said the
AP; Reuters "estimated 8000 killed" in Srebrenica, and "some
200,000" in Bosnia; "more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys" in
Srebrenica, and "more than 250,000 people" altogether,
claimed the BBC, while the AFP lowered it somewhat to "more
than 200,000." The BBC also noted that the memorial in
Potocari was designed to eventually contain "Ten thousand
white tombstones." Only the New York Times, while dutifully
repeating the number of "more than 7000" in Srebrenica, did
not speculate on the total death toll in Bosnia, at least not on
this occasion.
Both figures come from the claims made by the Muslim
government during the war, and have never been
independently verified. The International Red Cross said they
received "7,599 enquiries regarding people who went missing
in the town. Only 22 people have been found alive; the mortal
remains of 1,083 others have been identified." Also, "currently,
the identities of 6,461 Srebrenica-related individuals are
recorded in an ICRC-managed… database." Here are some
very real numbers, even if they only indicate that the fate of
some 6500 people is unknown. But no one bothers to cite
them.
All reporters embellished their accounts with strong and vivid
language, presenting sheer speculation as established truth.
In their eagerness, they often contradicted themselves and the
official story. For example, Reuters claimed that Srebrenica
was "95 percent" Muslim before the war. The actual figure is 72
percent. Muslims were a majority either way, so why lie?
Funny thing is, every Reuters story on Kosovo mentions a "95
percent Albanian majority." Magic numbers, sloppy editing, or
something else altogether?
Then there are attempts to capitalize on the identity and age of
the deceased. AFP cites, for example, the burial of the Delic
family – a father and three brothers, aged 33, 25, and 20. Yet
the Reuters story says:
"107 victims were laid to rest alongside 882 already buried
here, among them three Delic brothers and their father, the
youngest 17 and the oldest 75."
This clearly implies the youth and the senior were among the
Delics. BBC did even worse:
"The victims included three Delic brothers and their father - the
youngest 17 and the oldest 75."
While Reuters could use the excuse of sloppy editing, the BBC
clearly lied.
Why is mentioning the age so important? Because it creates
the impression that the victims were civilians, boys and old
men, not conscripts in the Muslim military, as all males above
the age of 16 had to be by law. (Though executing POWs is
also a war crime, it doesn’t have the visceral impact of
"genocide" and is thus far less politically useful. The Muslims
and their backers knew exactly what they were doing.)
But as a local reporter for Transitions Online indicates,
"Since July, 881 bodes have been buried here, and, of them,
four were under 18 years old, [emphasis NM] while the
oldest victim was 75." Yet Clinton spoke, of "innocent lives,
many of them children" – and the press repeated in unison.
Obviously, Bill Clinton’s loose relationship with the truth isn’t
the only problem here. The specter of Jayson Blair still haunts
Western journalism.
Hatred and Entitlement
Munira Subasic, president of Mothers of Srebrenica, is quoted
by Transitions Online:
"Clinton said there was nothing he could do to stop it because
there was always someone who was slowing down the
process of Western intervention, and I believe him. I think he is
an honest man."
Even if they were somehow honest, Clinton’s calls to
forgiveness and rebuilding in Potocari fell on deaf ears.
Speaking at the same ceremony, the highest Bosnian Muslim
official, Sulejman Tihic, said:
"Everybody knew about the concentration camps, genocide
and the other ways of crime. They knew who was participating
in it. They knew who was the criminal and who was the
victim." (NY Times)
This is rhetoric typical of the wartime Sarajevo regime: long on
name-calling, claims of moral purity, and serious accusations
aimed at emotional impact, but utterly devoid of evidence.
Tihic’s words also continued the policy of deliberate ingratitude
to the Muslim government’s benefactors, calculated to shame
them into even more favorable behavior. Whatever anyone
does for this cabal, it will never be enough to satisfy their
feeling of entitlement.
Consider the words of Ahmija Delic, a former Srebrenica
resident:
"Even if someone killed all the cheniks, [sic]" she said, using
the word for Serbian nationalists, "I cannot forgive. They were
not human beings and it was a shame for the rest of the world
to allow one people to carry out these killings. […] Clinton
could have helped this not to happen," she said. (NY Times,
emphasis NM)
The ignorant NYT reporter did not know that in modern Muslim
parlance, "chetniks" are Serbs in general, not just ‘nationalists.’
Ms. Delic clearly believes that Serbs were collectively
responsible for mass murder, that this makes them inhuman,
and that they deserve collective extermination. Because
Clinton was perceived to have the ability to ‘help,’ he was also
perceived to have the obligation. And because he did not
exterminate the Serbs, as Ms. Delic desired, he obviously did
not do his job well.
If Clinton’s policies really aimed at peace, and his speech at
reconciliation, he failed on both counts.
The Politics of Empire
In their coverage of Clinton’s visit to Srebrenica, AFP cited a
local Serb, Novo Mladenovic: "Clinton is not coming here for us
or for them, but rather so that his picture from Srebrenica will be
broadcast in the United States."
At the time when war criminal Wesley Clark is championed as
the likeliest Democratic challenger to Bush the Younger,
supported even by some otherwise reasonable people, it
seems logical for Clark’s political patron and former boss to
stump for his favorite in their Balkans battlefields. It would also
seem logical for Americans to look at their former Emperor,
his favorite to become the next one, and the current one,
and understand that all three believe in power and force.
They use them in different places, and mask them with different
platitudes, but does that really make a difference?
It shouldn’t.
– Nebojsa Malic
Balkan Express - September 25, 2003
Return to the Crime Scene
Kosovo and Bosnia Revisited
by Nebojsa Malic
Nearly three years after he left office, Bill Clinton was Emperor
again – at least in the minds of worshipful Balkans peons,
who cheered him on as he strutted down his namesake
boulevard in Pristina and pontificated about good and evil in
Srebrenica.
Clinton deserves some credit because he at least visited only
the scenes of his own crimes; he left Macedonia to George W.
Bush, perhaps for a similar ego trip after his reign. Perhaps that
is not quite fair. What Reuters called the "Balkans lap of honor"
wasn’t entirely a celebration of Clinton’s ego, but also a
powerful propaganda show for the benefit of the Empire, aimed
to "highlight the peace gains of the previous Democratic
administration." (AFP) Clinton’s showboating was a message
that even if the current Emperor is in some difficulty over his
Mesopotamian adventure, the Empire itself is not in question.
False Honors and Bogus Tolerance
Clinton began his visit in Kosovo, where he was greeted by
cheering throngs of adulating Albanians. Upon arrival, he said
that he was "very pleased to see things look so well." (AFP)
Either he wasn’t paying attention, or – more likely – he didn’t
care.
Media coverage of the visit recycled the 1999 propaganda,
including the arbitrary figure of "estimated 10,000 ethnic
Albanians… killed during the crackdown." (AP)
The main event was his speech at Pristina University, site of
several grisly murders during Kosovo’s "liberation" from
international law, where Clinton was also granted an honorary
degree. Clinton confessed to an ethnically pure crowd
that he was "honoured to have been part of ridding Kosovo
of the scourge of oppression." (AFP)
He should really tell that to Albanians oppressed by the KLA
thugs, who murder and extort them freely. Or to Albanians
who believe they are oppressed by the international
protectorate that bars them from statehood. Or perhaps to
Kosovo’s non-Albanians, exposed to constant Albanian
violence, shrinking in numbers, invisible in public and living in
ghettos. But Albanians won’t blame Clinton, and non-
Albanians don’t take him seriously anyway.
During the speech described by the media as conciliatory, the
former Emperor asked the Albanians, "don’t you want to get
even?" (AFP) Note the form of the question, implying it would
be the expected and natural thing to do. He also referred to
"you" (Albanians) and "them" (Serbs and others), and said he
wanted "you" to be free. (AP) No one should care about "them";
they are only things, anyway.
The Farce in Potocari
Bosnia was Clinton’s pet issue in the 1992 election, and his
first "nation-building" experiment. On Saturday, he attended the
ceremony for victims of Srebrenica at the new memorial shrine
in nearby Potocari. There he opened a political monument to a
politicized massacre, delivering an insipid speech brimming
with clichés, hypocrisy and outright lies. Then he paid a visit
to the dying ayatollah Izetbegovic.
The Potocari speech, carried in fragments by wire services and
newspapers, sounds like standard Clintoniana. For example,
he claimed that "for much of [Bosnia’s] history, [Muslims],
Croats and Serbs have lived together in peace." (AFP)
What kind of history books has he been reading? But there is
more:
"We must pay tribute to the innocent lives, many of them
children, snuffed out in what must be called genocidal
madness." (BBC)
How is the alleged killing of 7000 (more on that later)
"genocidal madness," but starving 500,000 children isn’t? Well,
when the first is done by the designated villain and the latter
by the indispensable nation, the first is an atrocity beyond the
pale, and the second is the price "worth it." Modernist logic
personified.
"Bad people who lusted for power killed these good people
simply because of who they were." (NY Times)
Bad people? Good people? Who was he addressing, children?
And who is Clinton to lecture about evils of lust, of all things?
"[P]ride in our own religious or ethnic heritage does not require
or permit us to dehumanize or kill those who are different" (AP)
This must have been spoken from experience.
"I hope you can build on the bedrock of Srebrenica in Bosnia-
Hercegovina a place where all children are safe and loved and
able to live out their dreams" (AFP)
Certainly Srebrenica, a tragedy surrounded by a tangled web
of lies and propaganda, is just the perfect foundation for raising
Bosnia’s children.
"Children must be taught to hate." (NY Times)
Was this a lapse of tongue, lapse of pen, or a lapse in
judgment? Even if he’d said, "Children must not be taught to
hate," that would sound hollow at the dedication of a shrine
dedicated to teaching just that.
"I hope you will teach them instead to trust," he said, and to
choose "the freedom of forgiveness over the prison of hatred,
tomorrow’s dreams over yesterday’s nightmares." (NY Times)
Nice words, but consider the source – and the occasion. The
Potocari memorial is a shrine to vengeance and hatred, not
forgiveness and hope. Many Muslims in attendance felt that
way, as did their political leader, who spoke afterwards.
Media Madness
The Clinton visit gave the mainstream media a chance to
indulge in propagandistic exaggeration of the worst kind.
Familiar clichés were trotted out to describe what allegedly
happened in Srebrenica: "the worst organized slaughter since
World War II" (Reuters), "the worst massacre in Europe since
the end of World War II" (AP), "Europe’s worst atrocity since
World War II" (AFP and BBC), the "worst war crime in Europe
since World War II," (NY Times).
Absent the actual truthful information, speculation about the
scale of Bosnian atrocities ran rampant: "up to 8000" were
killed in Srebrenica, and "260,000" in the entire war, said the
AP; Reuters "estimated 8000 killed" in Srebrenica, and "some
200,000" in Bosnia; "more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys" in
Srebrenica, and "more than 250,000 people" altogether,
claimed the BBC, while the AFP lowered it somewhat to "more
than 200,000." The BBC also noted that the memorial in
Potocari was designed to eventually contain "Ten thousand
white tombstones." Only the New York Times, while dutifully
repeating the number of "more than 7000" in Srebrenica, did
not speculate on the total death toll in Bosnia, at least not on
this occasion.
Both figures come from the claims made by the Muslim
government during the war, and have never been
independently verified. The International Red Cross said they
received "7,599 enquiries regarding people who went missing
in the town. Only 22 people have been found alive; the mortal
remains of 1,083 others have been identified." Also, "currently,
the identities of 6,461 Srebrenica-related individuals are
recorded in an ICRC-managed… database." Here are some
very real numbers, even if they only indicate that the fate of
some 6500 people is unknown. But no one bothers to cite
them.
All reporters embellished their accounts with strong and vivid
language, presenting sheer speculation as established truth.
In their eagerness, they often contradicted themselves and the
official story. For example, Reuters claimed that Srebrenica
was "95 percent" Muslim before the war. The actual figure is 72
percent. Muslims were a majority either way, so why lie?
Funny thing is, every Reuters story on Kosovo mentions a "95
percent Albanian majority." Magic numbers, sloppy editing, or
something else altogether?
Then there are attempts to capitalize on the identity and age of
the deceased. AFP cites, for example, the burial of the Delic
family – a father and three brothers, aged 33, 25, and 20. Yet
the Reuters story says:
"107 victims were laid to rest alongside 882 already buried
here, among them three Delic brothers and their father, the
youngest 17 and the oldest 75."
This clearly implies the youth and the senior were among the
Delics. BBC did even worse:
"The victims included three Delic brothers and their father - the
youngest 17 and the oldest 75."
While Reuters could use the excuse of sloppy editing, the BBC
clearly lied.
Why is mentioning the age so important? Because it creates
the impression that the victims were civilians, boys and old
men, not conscripts in the Muslim military, as all males above
the age of 16 had to be by law. (Though executing POWs is
also a war crime, it doesn’t have the visceral impact of
"genocide" and is thus far less politically useful. The Muslims
and their backers knew exactly what they were doing.)
But as a local reporter for Transitions Online indicates,
"Since July, 881 bodes have been buried here, and, of them,
four were under 18 years old, [emphasis NM] while the
oldest victim was 75." Yet Clinton spoke, of "innocent lives,
many of them children" – and the press repeated in unison.
Obviously, Bill Clinton’s loose relationship with the truth isn’t
the only problem here. The specter of Jayson Blair still haunts
Western journalism.
Hatred and Entitlement
Munira Subasic, president of Mothers of Srebrenica, is quoted
by Transitions Online:
"Clinton said there was nothing he could do to stop it because
there was always someone who was slowing down the
process of Western intervention, and I believe him. I think he is
an honest man."
Even if they were somehow honest, Clinton’s calls to
forgiveness and rebuilding in Potocari fell on deaf ears.
Speaking at the same ceremony, the highest Bosnian Muslim
official, Sulejman Tihic, said:
"Everybody knew about the concentration camps, genocide
and the other ways of crime. They knew who was participating
in it. They knew who was the criminal and who was the
victim." (NY Times)
This is rhetoric typical of the wartime Sarajevo regime: long on
name-calling, claims of moral purity, and serious accusations
aimed at emotional impact, but utterly devoid of evidence.
Tihic’s words also continued the policy of deliberate ingratitude
to the Muslim government’s benefactors, calculated to shame
them into even more favorable behavior. Whatever anyone
does for this cabal, it will never be enough to satisfy their
feeling of entitlement.
Consider the words of Ahmija Delic, a former Srebrenica
resident:
"Even if someone killed all the cheniks, [sic]" she said, using
the word for Serbian nationalists, "I cannot forgive. They were
not human beings and it was a shame for the rest of the world
to allow one people to carry out these killings. […] Clinton
could have helped this not to happen," she said. (NY Times,
emphasis NM)
The ignorant NYT reporter did not know that in modern Muslim
parlance, "chetniks" are Serbs in general, not just ‘nationalists.’
Ms. Delic clearly believes that Serbs were collectively
responsible for mass murder, that this makes them inhuman,
and that they deserve collective extermination. Because
Clinton was perceived to have the ability to ‘help,’ he was also
perceived to have the obligation. And because he did not
exterminate the Serbs, as Ms. Delic desired, he obviously did
not do his job well.
If Clinton’s policies really aimed at peace, and his speech at
reconciliation, he failed on both counts.
The Politics of Empire
In their coverage of Clinton’s visit to Srebrenica, AFP cited a
local Serb, Novo Mladenovic: "Clinton is not coming here for us
or for them, but rather so that his picture from Srebrenica will be
broadcast in the United States."
At the time when war criminal Wesley Clark is championed as
the likeliest Democratic challenger to Bush the Younger,
supported even by some otherwise reasonable people, it
seems logical for Clark’s political patron and former boss to
stump for his favorite in their Balkans battlefields. It would also
seem logical for Americans to look at their former Emperor,
his favorite to become the next one, and the current one,
and understand that all three believe in power and force.
They use them in different places, and mask them with different
platitudes, but does that really make a difference?
It shouldn’t.
– Nebojsa Malic