We’ve heard a lot in the last few days about the anniversary of a certain war.
But four years before Iraq, let's not forget that Britain took part in another illegal US-sponsored war of aggression on grounds which were completely fraudulent.
In 2003 Tony Bliar’s Big Whopper was that Saddam possessed WMDs which "could be activated within 45 minutes". In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was "set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War Two".
The war of 1999 was, we were repeatedly told, fought 'to stop a humanitarian catastrophe'. “It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial genocide' – claimed the British Prime Minister – "something we had hoped we would never again experience in Europe. Thousands have been murdered, 100,000 men are missing and hundreds forced to flee their homes and the country." Yugoslav forces were, according to the US State Department, “conducting a campaign of forced population movement not seen in Europe since WW2". One US Information Agency 'fact' sheet claimed that the number of Albanians massacred could be as high as 400,000.
In fact, the number of both Serbs and Albanians killed during the 1998-1999 hostilities between Yugoslav Federal forces and the Western-backed terrorist group the KLA, according to the ICTY figures, totalled 2,788 victims. Compare that to the 3,500 people killed by NATO’s brutal war of aggression.
A dangerous precedent - that of launching an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign state without UN Security Council was set in 1999.
Just how dangerous, we would all see four years later.
UPDATE: Svetlana has more on this week's anniversary here.
3 comments:
In 2003 Tony Bliar’s Big Whopper was that Saddam possessed WMDs which "could be activated within 45 minutes". In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was "set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War Two".
While no-one but no-one could now believe Iraq ever possesed WMDs, the West, for all intents and purposes, has been successful in casting Milosevic as a supremacist aggressor. I know a lot of people my age (early twenties) who would consider themselves to be fairly left-wing but who, thanks to endless neo-con fabrications, are completely ignorant of the realities of socialist Yugoslavia.
Anyone who dares offer an alternative to the Free Market can expect at the very least to be demonised as a brutal autocrat. What chills me is that the extent to which the West has been successful in doing this to Milosevic, and in the process duping people who should know better, can easily be repeated. Reclaiming Milosevic as an anti-Imperialist beacon should be a priority for anyone who believes in a nations right to determine its own destiny.
OPiR.
Today in newspaper I found a photo of very skinny, naked toddler pictured in Jasenovac concentration camp (Croatia, WW2), and who probably died in most horrific way.
The person who can do something like that to a child, is for me devil himself, and I don't care if he/she is Serb or whatever. Even if there were killed 2 or 200000 innocent people the responsible ones have to pay!
But to bomb whole country, to bomb elementary school, hospital, buildings near maternity hospital, to use uranium, cluster bombs... because two video shots.
I saw one video, there was maybe hundred peasants or so, going up in hills with some tractors. The second video shown 20 or so bodies and according to UN forensic team was probably set up. These videos were evidence for whole world that 400 000 people were murdered. Come on, why then or after wasn't presented any pictures/videos of concentrations camps, mass graveyards? Where did we put all that bodies. 400 000!?
Maybe we ate them?!? We are Serbs, we are evil, ugly, stupid, and we play the best tennis in the world. Come on.
Sorry for too long comment, but need I to say, that this subject really hurts me...
That poor skinny toddler was probably "guilty" of being a SERB!! And, the NAZI-CROATS sure hated those Serbs and killed hundreds of thousands of them during WWII.
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