------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the April 3, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
EDITORIAL
WHEN BOMBS FELL ON BELGRADE
As U.S. missiles pouring into Baghdad murder the very people Bush is claiming to "liberate," the world should recall a similar aggression by U.S. imperialism just four years ago. On March 24, 1999, the Pentagon opened a bombing campaign on Yugoslavia that lasted 78 days. Washington sold that war with the big lie that it was a noble venture, a "humanitarian" intervention. It was supposed to rescue Kosovo and especially its ethnic Albanian population from alleged Serb repression.
Washington then had closer collaboration from its NATO allies. The big powers submerged their rivalry in order to smash independent Yugoslavia.
Western politicians and the ruling class media got public support for the war through an intensive campaign of demonization of the Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, just as they do Saddam Hussein today. But the assault on Yugoslavia had as little to do with Milosevic as the war on Iraq today has to do with Hussein--except that neither leader was ready to prostrate his country and submit to the interests of Western imperialism.
The goal of the 78 days of brutal bombing--preceded by 10 years of subversion, the fomenting of civil war and economic sanctions--was to remove the one remaining independent country in Eastern Europe that had kept some of the gains of its socialist revolution. Its people, resources, industry and strategic location were to be taken over to serve imperialist interests.
Taking stock today of the region that was once, and may again someday be Yugoslavia, one can see clearly just what imperialist "humanitarian" intervention has brought.
Four dependent mini-states, two imperialist protectorates and a Serbia in chains have replaced an independent state of southern Slavs that had 24 million people.
U.S. and NATO military bases dominate the territory. German and U.S. capital dominate the economy.
Kosovo has become an apartheid state run by organized crime, a center of drugs and prostitution based on the kidnapping of women. The right-wing KLA gangs have driven out Serbs, Jews and other minority people who lived there.
Whatever Yugoslav industry is potentially profitable, especially in Serbia, has been sold at dirt-cheap prices to Western imperialism. The rest has been closed, creating 30-50 percent unemployment and reducing two-thirds of people in Serbia to official poverty.
The imperialist takeover has failed even to bring order. The recent assassination of NATO-stooge Zoran Djindjic, Serbia's prime minister, brought that failure home.
Anyone studying developments in the region following the U.S.-NATO takeover of Yugoslavia might get a hint as to why the Iraqis are fighting so hard to prevent the U.S.-British imper ialist gang from seizing their country. n
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