Replies

"should all bosnian serbs have waited for them to be personaly attacked?"

Talk about missing the point! If you're attacked in Sijekovac then why not strike back against the militants in Sijekovac? What connection does a poorly-armed militia in the Bileljina region have to do with it? Why rape women at a hotel in Zvornik? Why lay seige to Bihac? The atrocities that you claim provoked these attacks were death tolls of 1 in Sarajevo and a few dozen elsewhere in Sijekovac etc. Do you honestly expect me to believe that subsequent Serb offences all over the damn country were the result of these attacks as opposed to a pre-made plan to carve out Serb regions (or even Muslim areas like Bihac that stood in the way of linking them up)?

"let us presume, for the sake of conversation, there were no mujaheedins in 1992. They came in 1993. What's the big difference?"

As long as I've been on FR I'd been bombarded with Serb claims of having fought a war against foreign Al Qaeda-type Mujehedin Islamic warriors from abroad who aimed to turn Bosnia into the next Afghanistan. The Serbs, the story goes, were merely fighting the same war America is now when they struck Eastern Bosnia in spring of 1992. That being the case, don't you need to have the afformentioned Muj fighters IN BOSNIA before you fight a war against them? Surely you can see the problem of fighting against people who were not yet in the country in any sort of significant number. Justification for war comes BEFORE you fight, not after.

"Serbs took what was theirs."

Which of course is why they struck numerous cities, towns and villages were Serbs were not the majority.

The tale of the Lisbon agreement is a good one - if only the Croats hadn't rejected the deal before the Muslims. It offered the Serbs only 44% of Bosnia wihtout linking up the territory as Serb leaders envisioned. All that was agreed on at the Lisbon talks was a general framework for the carving up of Bosnia and not the actual demarcation lines.

"Let me turn question around: Why killing at the wedding? Why Pofalici massacre? Why Sjekovac and Kupres?"

One killed at a wedding is hardly a Muslim offensive. The rest, I'd have to know the scale and co-ordination from a source other than a Serb nationalist site. By all I've heard the Muslims had not launched a massive strike against the Serbs by the time the Serbs set about seizing the east and north.

A question that I think would summ up the situation for you would be: why would the Bosnian government call on the Serb-led JNA to help them if they had a plot all along to whipe out the Serbs?

Your quotes from Muslim magazines (if true) sound sorta like the paper thrown together by Serb intellectuals in the 80s that called for a return of Serb dominance to Yugoslavia which caused much of the tensions later seen.

Either way, your story of imminent genocide holds no water unless you can explain why the Muslims were so unprepared for war at a time when you claim they were set to re-enact the horrors of WWII. Izetbegovic's call to the JNA after Bileljina was akin to Pavlich calling for help from the Chetniks and Partisans. Blows your theory out of the water.

You know, I see this whole debate as being more sad than absurd or frustrating. The Serbs did have legitimate grievences in Bosnia and especially in Croatia. In many ways they got screwed. All sides committed crimes in the Balkans (Serbs more than others) and all sides shoulder some blame. The main reason why Serbs have been unable to shake their often unjust villain image after almost 10 years is largely because of people like DTA and yourself - people who deny the obvious, who keep parroting the same lines Karadzic used in 1992, who keep trying to justify the unjustifiable.

The Serbs largely messed up! They attacked regions they shouldn't have, with force that was unwaranted despite what was done to them in WWII, under justifications that often did not hold water. The sooner you realize that the sooner everyone - especially the Serb nation - can move on and progress instead of still sulking in the past.

>>>>>> Either way, your story of imminent genocide holds no water unless you can explain why the Muslims were so unprepared for war at a time when you claim they were set to re-enact the horrors of WWII. Izetbegovic's call to the JNA after Bileljina was akin to Pavlich calling for help from the Chetniks and Partisans. Blows your theory out of the water. <<<<<

According to Sefer Halilovic memoir book, Bosnian Muslims had 120 000 armed men at that time. Hardly poor defenceless victims.

In WWII, Pavelic Ustashi and Tito's partisans DID cooperate in Bosnia to fight against The Chetniks.

You have just made another moot argument. Politics has strange bedfellows and Izetbegovic was no exception.

Perhaps you need some reprograming of your Muslim infested distortion of history. This is good starting point.

LTC John E. Sray, U.S. Army: Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware!