Replies

Whoah. The UN had nothing to do with that little war. In fact, there was no UN mandate for our little bombing campaign. It was against the UN Charter (and also in violation of the NATO Charter). A small UN mission was temporarily added as window dressing after the bombing, but Kosovo was under full NATO military control. KFOR was *never* under the UN. And over 20 years later, NATO is still babysitting Kosovo.

Yes, the ethnic Albanians had been pouring into Kosovo to escape Enver’s Chinese nightmare all during Tito Time, and this after the Nazi-allied Albanians killed or chased out the Serbian and Jewish inhabitants during WWII and Tito did not allow those who fled to return to their homes. Then, granted a generous autonomy by Tito, the ethnic Albanians abused it, blinding cattle belonging to Serbs and raping Serb women. (Not Serb propaganda — you could read about it in Croatian newspapers of the time.) The rest of Yugoslavia resented having to support Serbia’s welfare province of Kosovo, and this was one of the main reasons Croats cited to me for their desire for independence: they were “tired” of their tax money being sent to “corrupt Albanians” to be wasted on “their” (meaning Serbs’) Kosovo Province.

It was in Germany’s interest to break up Yugoslavia*, and they had been clandestinely arming the Croats since around 1988. When the BND caught the KLA being trained by Al Qaeda, they decided to get in that game, too, to replace Al Qdaeda. And, just as we did in Croatia, we then jumped into the game to show Germany who is the real boss. Even Richard Holbrook seemed a bit perplexed in the beginning, calling the KLA “Che Guavera wannabes” but he soon got with the program.

Our aims there: (1) Prove once again the Europeans “can’t handle a conflict in their own backyard” and “the UN is useless” (2) prove NATO is indispensable — see #1 (3) establish a handy permanent American base (4) secure the EU’s important Corridor XII (the ethnic Albanians in FYROM were also acting up at the time and there was a troublesome drive for a “greater Albania”). The statue of Clinton was a bonus.

It’s true the UN was cynically used by us in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. We didn’t register any protest when the Croats violated the peace agreement and invaded the UN Protected Areas, slaughtering civilians and burning villages (see Madak Pocket Incursion — some of the Canadian Blue Helmets who fought them back wrote about it). We selectively enforced the arms and fuel embargos against former Y, allowing Iranian arms shipments into Croatian ports (and Iranian mujahidin into BiH) where the Croats skimmed off the cream before sending them on to BiH. We used the UN mission there to freeze the conflict while arming the Croats and sending MPRI to train them at Jastrebarsko. Finally, we assisted them in many ways when they ethnically cleansed Sectors North and South, an area the size of England, of 250,000 ethnic Serbs.

In BiH, we sabotaged every peace agreement and ceasefire, claiming the Muslims didn’t get enough map. From our catbird on the USNC, we declared the “Safe Havens” in BiH, but denied the funding and authorization for the UN troops necessary to their defense (only 4% of the troops needed “at a minimum” as reported and requested by the British commander were approved). But no matter, the “Safe Havens” were never expected to stand. They were considered bargaining chips for the end game by the warring parties, as trip wires by Clinton.

After Clinton told Izetbegovic that NATO would only become more involved in the event of a major massacre involving a Safe Haven, lo and behold the Serbs came upon Srebrenica, whose infamous leader, Nasir Oric, had fled with other top officers the night before. Seeing easy pickings (and a chance to get revenge for Oric’s horrible war crimes — he used the “Safe Haven” to launch attacks on surrounding Serb villages, slaughtering women, children and elderly — videoed it all and showed the videos to journalists while brazenly bragging about it).

Leaderless and confused, the Muslim soldiers of Srebrenica attempted to flee. Other Muslim troops in the area were ordered not to come to their aid. So the Serbs went on a sort of turkey shoot, with running battles all around with the fleeing Muslims. The Serbs did summarily execute around 1200 of them altogether, here and there in small groups, which is a horrible war crime, but the remainder were killed in the turkey shoot. In the minds of the Serbs, what were they supposed to do? Let them run off to fight against them again one day next Tuesday? Take them prisoner? They didn’t exactly have a Guantanamo handy. So turkey shoot it was. Of course the tiny garrison of Dutch Blue Helmets was blamed, poor guys.

Anyway, I ran into a few Americans who had been stationed at Bondsteel, who actually ventured out among the people and visited surrounding villages. They had come to the conclusion they had been lied to in their pre-deployment briefings and were horrified by the lawlessness and brutality of the KLA and thought we got it all backwards. They could not figure out why we took their side, and a few had started to entertain weird conspiracy theories. I could certainly sympathize. It took me awhile to figure it out why we acted as we did in former Y — I really wanted to believe we were the good guys, but sorry, Clinton and Madcow Albright were not such good guys. I always believed Americans have good hearts and would have seen the conflicts there differently had they known the truth.

It’s also true the media portrayed the conflicts there as what I first thought of as a black-and-white cowboy movie where the Croats wore white hats, the Serbs black hats and the Muslims were the schoolmarm tied to the railroad track. Later, it became obvious to me the Serbs were portrayed as Nazis, the Croats as the French Resistance and the Muslims as the Jews. Ironic, no? Considering the Croatian Ustasha and the Bosnian Muslims avidly sided with the Nazis during WWII and the Ustasha ran death camps so horrific they turned the stomachs of their Nazi SS minders who wrote back to their superiors in Berlin about their appalling excesses. And an active Croat neo-Nazi element at the time. Meanwhile, during WWII, villagers in Serbia sacrificed themselves to protect American airmen who had, parachuted in.

Peter Brock bravely wrote a book titled “Media Cleansing” detailing this, in case you are interested.

*The Germans wanted Yugoslavia broken up and considered Croatia and Slovenia as future second-tier markets and labor pools. Already there were lots of Croats working in Germany back then. Yugoslavia was more digestible in smaller pieces, so Germany wanted it in smaller pieces.

I’m sure you realize the EU is simply a euphemism for “Kinder Gentler German Empire”. We were all for the EU, as we considered Germany to be the natural ruler of Europe, and given that and their expansionist nature and history, we thought it best to let them have their “softer” sort of empire where the other countries got to keep their flags and stuff. It’s just nicer that way, no?

But, at the same time, we wanted to keep NATO and keep Germany on our leash, so to speak. Anyway, we jumped in when we finally figured out that Germany was already ahead of us in Yugoslavia, showed them a thing or two and proved *we* called the shots and yes, NATO was here to stay.

Maastricht was born of blood. The price Germany exacted from other European countries for submerging their precious Deutschmark into the Euro was recognition of Croatia’s independence against the recommendations of the Badinter Commission. Yes, some European consciences smarted a bit, but filthy lucre won out. Hello war! Izetbegovic knew recognition of Croatia meant war for Bosnia-Hercegovina, too, and begged them not to do it, but we and the Germans went ahead anyway, and the other European countries went along.

James Baker was evenhanded at the start and made sound recommendations, but the hawks weren’t inteterested in being a truly Benign Hegemon. We had the catbird seat at the UNSC after the dissolution of the USSR, and our goal was to prove to the Europeans they couldn’t even handle a conflict in their own backyard and UN peacekeeping was useless — only NATO could save the day. No way were we going to relinquish our fave lever of power, NATO.