http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=8690
Antiwar.com
March 13, 2006
Was Serbia a Practice Run for Iraq?
by Paul Craig Roberts
On March 11, the former Serbian leader and president
of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, died in his prison
cell at The Hague, where he had been on trial for four
years and one month for war crimes and genocide.
The Serbian Socialist Party leader Zoran Andjelkovic
responded to the news of Milosevic's death with the
following statement:
"Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Socialist
Party of Serbia and a former president of Serbia and
Yugoslavia, was murdered today at the Tribunal in
Hague. The decision of the Tribunal to disallow
Milosevic's medical treatment at the Bakunin Institute
in Moscow represents a prescribed death sentence
against Milosevic. Truth and justice were on his side
and this is why they have used a strategy of gradual
killing of Slobodan Milosevic. The responsibility for
his death is clearly with the Hague Tribunal."
A partisan accusation or the truth? Milosevic was
known to be seriously ill. The Russian government
promised to return Milosevic to the Tribunal after
treatment. The Tribunal refused. It is easy to
conclude that the case against Milosevic had collapsed
and that an embarrassed U.S. government, NATO
authorities, and Hague Tribunal decided to let him die
in his cell rather than admit that his guilt could not
be proven even after a trial lasting four years and
one month.
Milosevic was caught up in the post-Soviet era breakup
of Yugoslavia. Nationalist forces broke up the
Yugoslav federation. During 1991-92, Croatia,
Slovenia, Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded
from Yugoslavia. Large Serbian minorities in Croatia
and in Bosnia objected and claimed the identical right
of self-determination to remain in the federation as
Croats and Muslims claimed to leave it. Croatian and
Bosnian Serbs organized and a war against secession
began.
Milosevic could hardly remain a Serbian leader and not
support the Serbs. Abraham Lincoln was canonized for
invading the South to prevent its secession, but
Milosevic was damned for trying to protect
Yugoslavia's territorial integrity. In the end,
Milosevic accepted secession. In 1995, Milosevic
negotiated the Dayton Agreement, which ended the war
in Bosnia. According to Wikipedia, "Milosevic was
credited in the West with being one of the pillars of
Balkan peace."
In 1998, Milosevic was confronted with a more severe
problem. Armed actions by the separatist Kosovo
Liberation Army, listed as a terrorist organization by
the U.S. Department of State, in the ancient Serbian
province of Kosovo broke out into warfare. Milosevic
was now trying to hold on to a province not of
Yugoslavia but of Serbia itself, a province that had
been colonized by ethnic Albanians. The Serbian
population in Kosovo was outnumbered nine to one and
suffered greatly at the hands of the KLA.
Milosevic, already damaged by the wars of secession
that destroyed Yugoslavia, lost the media campaign
waged by public relations firms hired by contending
factions that spun the news that Americans received.
Milosevic was demonized, and the Clinton
administration had Serbia bombed by NATO forces for 78
days in the spring of 1999. Many Serbian civilians
were killed by the air strikes, which hit passenger
trains and destroyed the Chinese embassy. In effect,
the U.S. interfered in Serbian affairs in behalf of
the secession, with the result that Kosovo has been
essentially ethnically cleansed of Serbs. Kosovo is
apparently still considered to be a part of Serbia,
but it is administered by the United Nations. Somehow,
this has been presented as a great moral victory for
humanity.
If the massive propaganda campaign against Milosevic
had many facts behind it, he long ago would have been
convicted at The Hague. What was the episode all
about?
In my opinion, it was to establish the precedent,
later to be employed in the Middle East, that the U.S.
government could demonize a head of state
geographically distant from any legitimate "sphere of
influence" and use military force to remove him. This
is precisely the fate of Saddam Hussein, and the Bush
regime still hopes to repeat the strategy in Iran and
Syria.
The unanswered question is, why does the
"international community" go along with it? The
numerous civilians killed by U.S. interventions are
just as dead as the ones killed by heads of state
attempting to hold on to their countries. Why are the
latter deaths war crimes but not the former?
As a presidential candidate, George W. Bush criticized
President Clinton's intervention in Serbia and
disavowed the international policeman role for the
U.S. But as soon as Bush got in office, he plotted to
invade Iraq. Why?
Americans should be very concerned that Bush still has
not come clean about why he invaded Iraq. Americans
should be disturbed that despite the disastrous
results in Iraq, Bush still intends "regime change" in
Iran and Syria.
