http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index2.php/ex/examples
>From Belgrade to Baghdad and beyond
Divide and conquer has been the classic Imperial strategy since Roman
times. Today's Empire builders are no different. The particular genius
of the modern neo-conservative project has been the use of the theory
of 'humanitarian intervention', to co-opt liberal-left support for a
centuries old project of conquest. In 1990s it was the Serbs- and
their "extreme nationalist" leader Slobodan Milosevic who posed the
threat to peace and civilised values. In 2001 it was Mullah Omar and
the Islamic hardliners of the Taliban. In 2003 it was the turn of
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, with its deadly arsenal of WMD. Now its Iran's
President Ahmadenijad's alleged attempts to develop nuclear weapons
which need to be countered. Each time a sizeable section of the
liberal-left has supported, not those attacked or threatened, but the
aggressors. You might have thought that by now, the pattern would be
clear to all. But the enduring success of the New World Order's
propaganda machine can be seen by the reaction of many on the left to
Milosevic's death.
Milosevic, a life-long socialist, was a man all true progressives
should have mourned. A man steeped in partisan culture, (both his
parents fought the Nazis in World War Two), he never once made a
racist speech: the famous Kosovo Polje address of 1989 which his
critics claimed whipped up ancient ethnic hatreds, was in fact a
statement of support for multi-ethnic, socialist Yugoslavia. Far from
being a rabid warmonger, the late Yugoslav leader was, in the words of
Lord Owen 'the only leader who consistently supported peace' and 'a
man to whom any form of racism is anathema'. The dismemberment of
Yugoslavia was initiated not by Milosevic, but by the German decision
to prematurely recognise the breakaway republics of Slovenia and
Croatia, against all the norms of international law. And war in Bosnia
would have been avoided too had US Ambassador Warren Zimmerman not
personally intervened at the eleventh hour to sabotage the 1992 Lisbon
Agreement which provided for the peaceful division of the republic.
'If you don't like it, why sign it' Zimmerman told the hard-line
Bosnian separatist leader Alija Izetbegovic, thereby lighting the
touch paper to a conflict which would claim over 90,000 lives. Even
after the 1995 Dayton agreement which ended the war in Bosnia, the
Imperial appetite was not satiated. Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia had to
be destroyed too, by providing weapons and training for a separatist
terror group, the Kosovan Liberation Army. When the inevitable
security clampdown from Belgrade came, the West was at hand to issue
the ultimatum, producing a document at the Rambouillet Peace
Conference, which as Defence Minister Lord Gilbert has conceded, was
deliberately designed to be rejected by the Yugoslav delegation. Why
was it all done? Milosevic's Yugoslavia was targeted not for
'humanitarian' reasons as many still believe, but simply because it
got in the way. 'In post Cold War Europe, no place remained for a
large, independent minded socialist state that resisted
globalisation', the words not of a left-wing conspiracy theorist, but
George Kenney, an official at the Yugoslav office of the US State
Department.
There's no doubting who has benefited from the wars which the West is
happy to pin on Milosevic. One militarily and economically strong
independent nation, has been replaced by a series of weak and divided
World Bank/IMF/NATO protectorates. Western capital has unhindered
access to raw materials and markets throughout the region, while in
Kosovo, Camp Bondsteel, the U.S.'s biggest from scratch military base
since the Vietnam war, jealously guards the route of the $1.3bn Trans
Balkan AMBO pipeline, guaranteeing Western control of Caspian oil
supplies.
It's worth remembering that the very same people who clamoured most
loudly for action against Milosevic in the 1990s, were those who were
at the forefront of the propaganda war against Iraq a few years later.
And today, the very same hawks are trying to convince us of the
necessity of 'strong action' against Iran. Among the members of the
executive of the Balkan Action Committee, who lobbied for US
involvement on the side of Izetbegovic in Bosnia, and then for full
scale war against Milosevic's Yugoslavia in 1999, are three names that
will need no introduction: Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard
Perle. 'It's either take action now, or lose the option of taking
action' was Perle's recent comment on Iran: in addition to signing
(along with Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) a notorious letter to President
Clinton in 1998 calling for a 'comprehensive political and military
strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime', he also acted as
adviser to the Izetbegovic's delegation at Dayton.
It's time those who supported the military actions against Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan, Iraq and the current 'strong' line on Iran, realised that
the biggest danger to peace did not come from Slobodan Milosevic,
Mullah Omar, Saddam Hussein, or, now, from President Ahmadinejad, but
from the serial warmongers who threatened them. The road to Baghdad
began in the Balkans. But it won't end there, unless the liberal-left
supporters of U.S. sponsored "humanitarian" interventions start to see
the bigger picture.
Neil Clark/The Morning Star 2006
posted by Neil Clark @ 5:03 PM 1 comments
1 Comments:
At 8:53 PM, Lukas said...
Neil, it is such a pleasure to find a writer who consitently tells the
truth- in a world where the western media so often pumps lies from
number ten and the white house. A great deal of the left should hang
its head in shame over its position on the West's destruction of
Yugoslavia. At the 'Stop the War' demonstration the other week, so few
people (this includes the supposed 'socialists' and 'pacifists') were
able to see the evident link between NATO's aggression in Yugoslavia
and the current situation in Iraq/Iran. Any defense of Milosevic
endowed me the label of 'a defender of tyranny', which was ironic as
surely those defending the position of the West were real the
defenders of tyranny. My family are from the Yugoslavia, and having
travelled there every summer since I was born, I know first hand what
people actually felt under the 'tyrant' Milosevic. Even during the
sanctions there was an enormous sense of soilidarity and fraternity
which I have never seen anywhere in the world. The 'democracy'
movement was minimal, although people did want a change- but a change
from sanctions and the destruction of their country by the West. A
number of family friends (students) attended the demonstrations
against Milosevic. Upon hearing this I decided that there was perhaps
some truth to the BBC reports of a widespread urge for 'democracy' and
an overthrow of Milosevic within the country. However, it soon emerged
that the organisation organising these events OTPOR (a, suprise
suprise, CIA financed group) had paid these students fifty german
marks, each, to attend!
Anyway, thank you for your work- you as a journalist are doing what so
few of your colleagues are- telling the truth!
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
