: : The Left has made a mess out of the former Yugoslavia. The old communist criminals that used to run the country now are using nationalist politics to hold on to power.: Lets start by abandonning any pretense that those dictators were left wing, or that there is some homogenised 'left'. (DC: You're correct. No pretence intended. I stated a fact.) Also, its worth noting that the crisis over there was caused in part by IMF restructuring, and by US policy of penetrating those markets from about 1984 onwards...(DC: The conflict is fueled by a lack of business activity, caused by left-wing manipulation of Yugoslavian society and economics, which led to the severe lack of jobs in the region. Unemployed, desperate people make great mercenaries, as the Cubans have been well aware of for some time.)
: See the link below.
: : The U.S. has been trying to cobble a solution to this nightmare
: By what right? Oh, force, ok.
Yeah. Force. Ever see a communist (ohh, sorry
EX-communist?) respond to anything else?
: :The protests began the day that the Russians pulled out of the NATO operation in Bosnia, and are transparently run by the same old front organizations.
: For the Record: The Socialist Party opposed both NATO and the Serb Government and the Russian Government (DC: Must'a been a "co-inkidink"
), now read on...
: : Again, there was a flurry of desperate solutions to attempt to forestall a civil war. When the Croatians seemed too strong to be forcibly held in the old Yugoslavia, there was an attempt to form a peaceable break. Again, old guard Communist leaders did their best to throw gasoline on the fire.
: No, what happened was:
: 1:Germany flexed its regional muscles, and recognized Croatia Precipitously. (DC: AFTER Croatia showed itself able to carve out a piece of Yugoslavia. Now, the idea would have to be to make the break as painless as possible, as in Czechoslovakia. Germany, having an old influence with the Croatians, did what they could.)
: 2:FRY broke up into its constituent parts because of wealth differentials, and access to foriegn currency reserves (Lira and Deutch Marks) (DC: I agree. The fat cat Communist bureaucrats didn't like losing their dominant positions, and fought over ownership of the herd. "Class warfare", doncha know.)
: 3:The US negotiated for Serbai to retain the Yugoslav Army, rather than splitting it up.(DC: Being that the JNA was mostly controlled by the Serbian cronies of Milosevic, this was something of a fait accompli in any case)
: 4:According to Human rights agitators in FRY, the Western powers have never shown any encouragement towards democratic elements, nor the least opposition to Milosovich. (DC: Due to "agitators", the policy of the U.S. is to interfere as little as possible, except in the most extreme circumstances. Really, one ought not to complain when the West intervenes, and in the same breath admonish them for doing too little.)
: : Finally, we gave up, and prepared to station troops into the area to force a peace. I would suggest reading a book called To End A War, by Richard Holbrooke.
: But it is noticeable, from the Dayton carve up, that the Serbs were favoured by the peace- certainly they got to have the most resource rich areas of Bosnia-Herzegovena, and ostensible independance for Bosnian Serbs (the principle of self-determination being one of the impetuses for the KLA cuase).
Whatever. The idea was to stop the fighting, not to "favor" one side or the other. Unlike the old Soviet Union, we try not to use ethnic politics to manipulate other nations. As it was, accepting the lines that the respective sides had reached seemed to be acceptable by most of the parties. The negotiators saw a shot at a quick peace, and took it - to their considerable credit, and with the relieved gratitude of the locals, I might add.
: : Large numbers of civilians were being murdered. Women were being raped and killed. We bombed the forces responsible, and stopped the killing. Thanks for your support. Nice to see you support the right side.
: We stopped it, but to Whose advantage- British Foreign secretary of the time Douglas Hurd retired soon after, and became a director of Nat-West Bank, which co-incidentally won a contract to privatise serb utilities, and buy up the Serbian National Debt... hmmm.
(
) Might you think that the civilians might have profited a bit from not being raped and killed? Or am I too naοve to see the real reason for stopping a slaughter?
: : The KLA are terrorists. They've been active for some time. We would no more support the IRA than we would support a genocide of the Irish by Britain. We would support a solution agreed to by all parties concerned, and would stay out unless gross atrocities were being committed. That is what "peace-keeping" is all about, you see.
: Thats why teh US actively backed the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese after the invasion in ;'78 (?) and actively backed Genocide in East Timor? The US lacks credibility- why has not the UN been used to bring peace to the Area? because Russia considers that area its back-yard, so we have an inter-imperialist rivalry going on there
I don't believe this. The Khmer Rouge were communist zealots. They have been embraced by their Vietnamese "brothers". Gee, and all this time I thought we had supported Sihanouk
: .
: : We do not support civil war.
: Vietnam, Haiti, Columbia, The Contras?
South Vietnam: Invaded by North Vietnam, after they had signed an international agreement.
Haiti: In the midst of a civil war, we sent troops to quell rampant anarchy, and instill a democratically elected president, by all accounts the rightful leader.
Columbia: We arrested a drug dealer, who happened to be the leader of a country(?)
The Contras (also Afghanistan): We defended the people of a region against the machinations of murderous socialist "activists", masquerading as merely a faction in a civil war. We will always fight against international criminal activity, whether it be the piracy and lawlessness of the Barbary pirates or the more modern version advocated by the Left.
: : We are for human rights.
: Thats why US aid budgets go to regimes in proportion to human rights abuses within them- why has the US colluded in Turkey with the repression of the Kurds? (DC: Why did we deal with the Russians and the Chinese, even as they imprisoned their people in the name of the "people's revolution"? Why do we feed the starving North Koreans, even as they repress their people? Ain't realpolitik a bitch?) Why has the US supported Israel despite the human rigths abuses in Lebanon and against the Palestinians?(DC: Why have the U.S. negotiated with the Palestinians, even with their avowed murderous hostility towards the Israelis, their record of pogroms against them before the formation of Israel, and their active and enthusiastic support of terrorism? Maybe
the pursuit of peace? Ya think?) Why? because its not in the nationa interest to do so, dictators are only bad when they do not serve US foriegn policy purposes. Hence the American CIA budget being nearly two thirds of What Britain spends on Welfare.
All our budgets are BIG. We're capitalists, you see, and our system is quite superior. Thank you for noticing.
: :The sooner the Left realizes that they cannot get away with inhuman terrorist acts and genocide, the sooner they will finally be rid of by the world. Thus, we ought to have been more aggressive in Vietnam and against the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, but I digress.
: Pardon me, but the US dropped more bombs on Cambodia in a few weeks than it dropped on Japan during the entire Second world war, it armed and backed the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese, US foriegn policy in Indochina couldn't have been more agressive, people are still dying due to the after-effects of Agent orange in Vietnam, in non beligerant Laos, people are still dying because of masses of anti-personel bombs the US dropped there, and that it is refusing to Clear up.
The Vietnamese army of Hun Sen is STILL dropping bombs in Cambodia (as we speak), the Khmer Rouge and Vietnamese are now on the same team, U.S. policy in Indochina should have been and should be a HELL of a lot more aggressive, people are still dying in the killing fields of Cambodia and Laos for the "revolution", and so on, and so forth
God knows what's happening in Vietnam.
You, then, agree with me that we ought not to have left Indochina until the communists were fully purged from the region, and the devil take the Chinese communists if they didn't approve? Never too late to finish the job
and we'd find more than a few friends to help, too, if we move soon enough. Whadda ya think?
: : Western intervention has been well meaning, but has not attacked the real issue - that the grasping for power amongst the ex-communist leaders is the primary reason for conflict in the region. We ought to actively and ruthlessly pursue anyone who held a high position in the old Communist Party of Yugoslavia, and bring them to justice. Racist fascism is merely a pale, weakened version of communism, and these 'ex-communists' easily revert to Nazi politics when it suits their opportunistic objectives. Only when we are ready to purge this maniacal faction from the political equation in the Balkans will we ever have hope for true peace in the region.
: Hmm, blame the pople, not the power structures- this is of course why the US is determined not to unseat milosvich, but merely bomb him into submission, rather like they are trying in Iraq, they don't care about internally oppressive regimes, only about regional stability and capital flows.
You missed it. I did blame the power structure - the paradigm of revolutionary socialism (and its bastard cousin, Nazism), and the intellectual justification for theft and mass murder that it proposes. Sorry I wasn't more clear; I'll try to be more so in the future.
: Now, may I recomend a couple of links:
: www.zmag.org has a stack of articles regarding the Kosova crisis, of varying quality.
: www.iwrp.net- is an independant reporting service in the Balkans, covering the war, its analysis is good, and more balanced than mainstream media.
Thanks for the links. I'll get to them this evening.
: : DrCruel
: : :
: : : --Original Message-----
: : : From: Phil Gasper
: : : To: jmusselm_rpa@indiana.edu
: : : Date: Thursday, April 01, 1999 4:54 PM
: : : Subject: Fwd: Report from 2 Belgrade Socialists
