American Engagement [in Bosnia]

Wall St Journal ^ | 11-23-05 | BILL CLINTON

[Owl558]

"One would hope that clinton was NOT stupid enough to make a comment like that."

It depends on how you define WORLD war.

[Hunden]

The first victims of Serb Communist aggression were the Catholic Croats. In that case, too, the Belgrade regime first disguised its war of conquest and extermination as a local insurrection.
That's when I understood who the bad guys are.

[Hunden]

The "Euroweenies" noticed that something was happening in Yugoslavia when the Yugoslav People's Army invaded Slovenia to restore federal control over border posts in late June 1991, and was defeated in a few days by the newly-formed Slovenian army.

They demanded that Slovenia and Croatia delay their declarations of independence for three months,thereby giving the Serbian Communists the time to launch a conventional military offensive against Croatia and thereby complete their political destruction of Yugoslavia by its physical destruction.

The Serbian Communists had started destroying the Yugoslav Federation in 1988, first subverting the Constitutional framework of 1974 by a series of coups in Voivodina and Montenegro, then by the violent and unconstitutional annexation of Kosovo to Serbia in March 1989. The Slovenes reacted by threatening to leave the Federation, as it had been legally destroyed.

Yugoslavia died in the night of January 22-23, 1990, when Milosevic failed to impose his will at the 14th Extraordinary Congress of the League of Yugoslav Communists. He then immediately decided to carve a greater Serbia out of Yugoslavia, by military means.

[FormerLib]

... giving the Serbian Communists the time to launch a conventional military offensive against Croatia...

So you are stating that the Yugoslav army attacked Croatia? I'm sure there are a couple of Soros-funded websites trying to pass off that fiction.

[montyspython]

What?

[montyspython]

LOL!!! Another Croat appologist!

[paltz]

B/c PR wise it's easier to go to war against europeans than muslims. He took the easy way out.

[montyspython]

"The Serbian Communists had started destroying the Yugoslav Federation in 1988..."

You're drinking way too much loza, please don't insult the intelligent people here regarding this nonsense. Should we post the ethnic make up of the Yugoslav government so that you may see how wrong you are? Croatian communists are a different sort of communist right? LOL!!!

[montyspython]

Entertainment ping.

[kosta50]

Entertainment ping

No kidding! Judging from some comments about how Big Bad Serbs destroyed Yugoslav Federation and attacked Croatia (and I suppose Slovenia), it's like watching Hee Haw comedy hour...

[FormerLib]

... it's like watching Hee Haw comedy hour...

But without the sexy women popping up in the corn field.

[kosta50]

But without the sexy women popping up in the corn field

You got it!

[Hunden]

Soros only started caring about the Croats when he discovered they had a nationalist government, which he did everything he could to discredit and overthrow.

And yes, the Serb Communists attacked Croatia, and openly so in Knin no later than August 17, 1990. But their first act of War against Croatia was the theft of the weapons from the Croatian Territorial Defence warehouses by the Yugoslav People's Army in May1990.

[Hunden]

WHAT Yugoslav government?

[Hunden]

I just read an interesting debate among two Balkan specialists as to when the Serbian Communists decided to destroy Yugoslavia: http://eastethnia.blogspot.com/2005/10/long-post-anatomy-of-denial.html (that's in the Comments) Of course, I agree with Hoare on this. And he didn't even mention article 135 of the1990 Serbian Constitution. For those who care to know where all this serbobabble above comes from, here is an interesting article: http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness/sells2.htm

[kosta50]

But [Serbian] first act of War against Croatia was the theft of the weapons from the Croatian Territorial Defence warehouses by the Yugoslav People's Army in May1990

You left out the fact that those weapons were illegally obtained from Hungary.

[kosta50]

I just read an interesting debate among two Balkan specialists as to when the Serbian Communists decided to destroy Yugoslavia

Serbs (no matter what political color) had no interest whatsoever in destroying Yugoslavia because it was only through Yugoslavia that all Serbs could live in one country. Those so-called "experts" never entertain the thought that it was against Serbian national interests (and I don't mean just Serbia's national interests) not to remain in Yugoslavia, which is why the post-war rump federation between Serbia and Montenegro was originally called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which even claimed to have all legal and diplomatic rights of the country formerly known as SFR Yugoslavia.

The prospect of creating what is often called "Great Serbia" (which was really a call for a federation of all Serb states created in the former Yugoslavia after it was dismembered by Slovenes, Croats, and Bosnian jihadists) became current only when the Helsinki Agreement was obviously rendered null and void by the nationalist Croat, Bosnian Muslim and Slovene independence drives, and when Germany and the United States decided to look the other way and allow the Agreement they signed only 15 years earlier to become a useless scrap of diplomatic toilet paper.

[montyspython]

Kosta pretty much flattend you're argument, 'nuff said.

[Hunden]

The Serbs certainly had no interest in destroying Yugoslavia, but that is what their leadership did. To save their parasitic privileges from decommunization, the Serbian Communists tried to take control of the Federal institutions, and staged the so-called "anti-bureaucratic revolution" to gain control of a majority of seats in the Presidency. They opted for greater Serbia when that first plan had failed in the face of Slovenian, and later, Croatian resistance. If you doubt that they deliberately destroyed Yugoslavia, read the Jovic diaries. The Serb pseudo-nationalists never accepted that the only way "all the Serbs" could live "in a single state" was in a Federal Yugoslavia and pushed for a Greater Serbia instead. Their Memorandum which appeared in 1986 was directed against the 1974 Constitution and the AVNOJ principles, which had rejected their territorial claims on Bosnia-Herzegovina and, increasingly, Kosovo. Their misguided actions have visited untold miseries on their own people and that is why I call them pseudo-nationalist: a real nationalist does not act against the interests of his people the way they have been doing. Together, they killed the only chances for Yugoslavia to survive democratization and liberalization: the neutrality of the Army, which was compromised by its participation in the forced annexation of Kosovo, and the Federal Constitution, which that annexation destroyed de jure as well as de facto. So Yugoslavia was already doomed in March 1989, and the Serbs had dealt it the fatal blow. To be sure, only the normal Serbs understand that, a minority whom the pseudo-nationalists accuse of having sold out to foreign interests whereas they are the only ones who really care for their own people.

[Hunden]

Not those. Tito had witnessed the behaviour of the Yugoslav Army Command during the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact in August 1968 and feared that they could betray Yugoslavia in favor of Serbo-communist interests — which they actually did starting in March 1989. So he had decided to create a parallel army on the principle of a Citizens' militia, which was organized by the Federated Republics and Autonomous Provinces under the name of "Territorial Defence" (TO). TO had weapons warehoused in public facilities throughout the Federation, including factories and municipal buildings (only the Kosovar Albanians were denied such weapons). Those are the weapons the Army stole from Croatia in May 1990. Slovenia, which had better intelligence in the Army, managed to retain a third of its weapons, and organized its defence from the already existing TO structures in 1990 and 1991.