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Fools Crusade

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Kenney concluded that “counts count”, because the big numbers were deliberately used to urge the United States to take measures (arming the Muslims) that would result in many more deaths. — location: 1082 ^ref-34495

by readily believing the worst horror stories, they exacerbated hatred on all sides and helped to destroy the Yugoslavs’ multicultural reality. — location: 1095 ^ref-47060

was not in combating the communist regime in Yugoslavia, which by recognizing a “Muslim nationality” had greatly facilitated the revival of a Muslim consciousness and community. — location: 1148 ^ref-28694

Holbrooke’s warning ironically echoed an earlier warning to Izetbegović voiced by none other than the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadžić – the very warning that was cited by the International Criminal Tribunal as the main evidence of Karadžić’s intention to commit “genocide” — location: 1199 ^ref-39686

Islamists never allow their religious convictions to conflict with business interests – starting with their own. — location: 1237 ^ref-40635

A circular process developed in which the very horror of the alleged crime protected the allegation from the need for proof. The most horrible crimes had to be believed because they were so horrible. — location: 1507 ^ref-51023

French presiding judge, Claude Jorda, author of Rule 61, refused to allow Karadžić’s defense attorney, Igor Pantelić, to represent his client during the hearing. He was merely permitted to observe proceedings from the public gallery. In short, this was a public ceremony of uncontested accusation, in which the indicted man’s attorney was banned from cross-examining witnesses or offering rebuttals. Three attorneys for the prosecution presented the case, based on the four factors mentioned above. — location: 2077 ^ref-13814

Mustafić said that the orders came from Sarajevo for the Muslim army in Srebrenica to attack outside the safe area in order to provoke Serb forces to attack the safe area. — location: 2201 ^ref-53172

For the advocates of armed “humanitarian intervention”, the fall of Srebrenica was used as proof of the failure of the United Nations. More than that, it was used to discredit the whole tradition of neutral diplomacy in favor of the moral absolutist approach of “identifying and destroying the enemy”. — location: 2210 ^ref-43289

Of military-age men, many were detained and many more fled. Two months later, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that it was trying to obtain information from Bosnian Serb authorities about 3,000 persons who witnesses said had been detained, and from Sarajevo authorities about some 5,000 individuals “who fled Srebrenica, some of whom reached central Bosnia”. — location: 2220 ^ref-48241

The Sarajevo authorities never chose to answer questions from the Red Cross or even to inform next of kin as to precisely what happened to those men. — location: 2230 ^ref-17013

it had not been possible to verify the reports because the Bosnian Government refused to allow the Red Cross into the area.” — location: 2235 ^ref-55180

The accusation of a “Srebrenica massacre” was used by the Clinton administration to focus world attention on Serb misdeeds at precisely the moment when some 200,000 Serbs were being driven out of the Krajina by the Croatian army, supported by the United States. — location: 2246 ^ref-44528

If the United States was really able to watch everything the Bosnian Serbs were doing, and the massacres took place on the scale alleged, questions arise. Why were no photos displayed showing the massacres? — location: 2262 ^ref-44868

why did the United States wait until August to denounce the crime? — location: 2264 ^ref-56733

even if the number of victims proves to be no higher than the roughly 500 found so far at four execution sites and 150 found to date at one ambush site, what occurred in Srebrenica was unprecedented in postwar Europe. Srebrenica is unique because of the international community’s role in the tragedy. — location: 2274 ^ref-11324

Rohde rests his case not on the 7,000 figure whose fragility he must know, but on the political argument, which can be valid even if the number of victims proves no higher than roughly 500 or 600. — location: 2280 ^ref-25616

What matters, finally, is that the “International Community” must in the future intervene more vigorously on the “right” side. The point is to discredit neutrality in favor of aggressive military “humanitarian intervention”. — location: 2281 ^ref-57019

one does not commit “genocide” by sparing women and children. — location: 2287 ^ref-15578

men were singled out partly because the Serbs could exchange Muslim POWs for Serb POWs. More relevant to the accusations, Serbs were looking for Muslim fighters who took part in Naser Orić’s raids, starting with Orić himself. — location: 2287 ^ref-50503

“I’m not afraid to say that it is Sarajevo that deliberately provoked the dramatic events. It was the presidency, it was Izetbegović.” — location: 2295 ^ref-55120

One man who wanted to keep Bosnian Serb forces away from Srebrenica was Slobodan Milošević. In April 1993, he had helped forestall Bosnian Serb capture of Srebrenica because he feared that “the tremendous bad blood that existed” between Serb and Muslim fighters in the region might result in a bloodbath. — location: 2297 ^ref-61538

As the bombing continued, civilian targets were increasingly hit in an open effort to demoralize the population. The NATO action violated virtually every relevant international convention and treaty, as well as several national Constitutions. — location: 2305 ^ref-59071

“The indictment confirms that our war is just”, Clinton commented. That was, of course, the whole point and purpose. — location: 2324 ^ref-46062

the Genocide Convention, the legal basis for Belgrade’s suit, has never been recognized by the United States as applying to itself, although Washington is willing to let it apply to others. — location: 2327 ^ref-34449

the planned conviction of Milošević by the ICTY was designed not only to justify NATO bombing, but also to establish Serbia’s guilt for all the wars of Yugoslav disintegration. This could complete the destruction of the country by burdening ruined Serbia with endless reparation payments to its neighbors – an outcome eagerly sought by the Izetbegović regime in Sarajevo. — location: 2335 ^ref-53038

stopping war would seem to be more important than attempting to turn it into yet another object of courtroom proceedings. — location: 2339 ^ref-26816

an international criminal tribunal is almost certain to turn into an international political tribunal that stages show trials of scapegoats. — location: 2351 ^ref-10082

if the Tribunal needed NATO, NATO needed the Tribunal in order to complete its transformation from a traditional military alliance into a “humanitarian” world police. — location: 2361 ^ref-52579

So was the U.S. sabotage of Sandinista Nicaragua, the U.S. invasion of Grenada, the clandestine U.S. encouragement of drugs for arms deals in various parts of the world, and so on. — location: 2378 ^ref-26270

This focus on “evil dictators” conveys the message that they can be stopped, judged, and punished by the benevolent outside intervention of the “International Community”. — location: 2382 ^ref-21361

Sincere champions of international justice should be aware of the danger that under these circumstances, any international criminal court is likely to become an instrument to break down the sovereignty of weak states and thus to further the aims of an inequitable process of globalization. — location: 2391 ^ref-39558

This capacity to communicate with neighbors was reduced by the education policy adopted. — location: 4071 ^ref-22842

how can any society survive when its children are educated in complete ignorance of each other and with no common language? Bilingualism can be a great cultural enrichment; parallel monolingualism is a recipe for disaster. — location: 4072 ^ref-18043

“Albanian irredentism was inspired not by a lack of bread but by an excess of myths and nationalistically overloaded memories.” — location: 4116 ^ref-13220

The Western interpretation of the Kosovo conflict reversed cause and effect by presenting human rights violations as the cause of the problem. In this perspective, the issue was “violation of the human rights of the Kosovo Albanians”. — location: 4247 ^ref-2518

The constant demand to “respect freedom of the press” was a way of hiding the fact that press freedom already existed in Serbia, more so than in many other countries never served with such an ultimatum. — location: 4275 ^ref-2226

As for “minority rights”, it would have been hard to find a country anywhere in the world where they were better protected than in Yugoslavia. — location: 4280 ^ref-28628

If the Albanians had elected their own representatives instead of boycotting elections, they could have altered the political majority in Serbia. However, Albanian leaders preferred the “demonized” Milošević as an irreplaceable public relations asset to their cause. — location: 4320 ^ref-31723

During the NATO bombing, this same US-financed Council continued to provide the West with horror stories of Serb atrocities – which subsequently proved to be unfounded. — location: 4419 ^ref-28844

In the context of the eternal divide-and-rule strategy, a discontented ethnic minority is a potential key to weakening a stubbornly independent country. — location: 4428 ^ref-53026

Politically, the formula for winning support from American politicians was to identify Yugoslavia with the Serbs and the Serbs with “communism”. — location: 4454 ^ref-62191

For a long time, Rugova and his colleagues denied the very existence of the UÇK, claiming that it was nothing but an invention of Serbian propaganda designed to discredit the Kosovar cause. However, since Western commentators readily justified UÇK violence by the failure of peaceful means to change Kosovo’s status, it was Rugova’s nonviolence that was discredited. — location: 4518 ^ref-17275

Inasmuch as the UÇK could not expect to defeat the Serbian police and army militarily, its murders of policemen can be understood only in the framework of a strategy of provocation. — location: 4525 ^ref-17180

on the main political issue − the status of Kosovo − the NATO powers formally agreed with Belgrade, but condemned Yugoslavia for its use of excessive force ... which became the pretext for NATO to use even more excessive force to achieve the opposite political aim: de facto independence of Kosovo. — location: 4552 ^ref-45227

Serbian president Slobodan Milošević was eager to work out a peace settlement in Bosnia-Herzegovina in order to have international sanctions against his country lifted. — location: 4559 ^ref-7815

“We understood from the start that the information gathered by OSCE patrols during our mission was destined to complete the information that NATO had gathered by satellite. We had the very sharp impression of doing espionage work for the Atlantic Alliance.” — location: 4592 ^ref-41065

The fact that only the Serbian side had been obliged to accept the cease-fire, and therefore technically only the Serbian side could violate it, amounted to an open invitation to the UÇK to escalate hostilities and provoke Serbian retaliation. — location: 4596 ^ref-16319

“The situation on the ground, on the eve of the bombing, did not justify a military intervention”, said Swiss verifier Pascal Neuffer. “We could certainly have continued our work. And the explanations given in the press, saying the mission was compromised by Serb threats, did not correspond to what I saw. Let’s say rather that we were evacuated because NATO had decided to bomb.” — location: 4699 ^ref-4129

There was no “execution at close range” in Račak. Almost all the victims were killed by multiple shots, fired from different directions and at a distance. Only one victim showed signs of possibly having been shot at close range. — location: 4706 ^ref-33528

To speak of “innocent men, women and children”, as President Clinton had done, was misleading. There was just one woman and one adolescent boy; all the others were men. The woman victim was killed from a distance by a single bullet through the thorax from the back, most plausibly while running away from the shooting. — location: 4712 ^ref-24688

Cases of such police “overkill” occur in many countries, including, notably, the United States. Rarely do such incidents result even in reprimands, much less 78 days of bombing raids from outraged foreign powers. In any case, the scientific evidence contradicts Walker’s emotionally charged description used to prepare Western opinion for war. — location: 4718 ^ref-64629

The rise of the UÇK, hostile to any compromise and ready to assassinate “traitors” who dealt with the Serbs, had made peaceful negotiations over Kosovo more difficult than ever before. — location: 4721 ^ref-44173

Rambouillet was an exercise in fake diplomacy designed to “prove” that diplomacy had failed and that war was unavoidable. — location: 4724 ^ref-39479

“I hope the air campaign, even if it does not convince Milošević to order his troops out of Kosovo, will so devastate his economy, which it’s doing now, so ruin the lives of his people, that they will rise up and throw him out.” — location: 4813 ^ref-4433

In his first wartime interview, NATO’s air commander Lieutenant General Michael Short acknowledged that bombing was intended to cause distress among civilians as a way to strike at “the leadership and the people around Milošević to compel them to change their behavior”: — location: 4822 ^ref-52121

The destroyed country would have to follow the dictates of the destroyers in the hope of ever obtaining desperately needed reconstruction aid. This cynical ploy eventually worked. — location: 4831 ^ref-61113

In March 2000, former Czech foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier reported to the UN Commission on Human Rights: “The bombing hasn’t solved any problems. It only multiplied the existing problems and created new ones.” — location: 4943 ^ref-32017

The procedure for leading NATO into war against Yugoslavia followed a series of steps that amounted to a formula for transforming contemporary internal conflicts into pretexts for military intervention. — location: 5065 ^ref-18507

The pretext is flexible: harboring terrorists, building weapons of mass destruction, or “humanitarian catastrophe” – all can be used to justify bombing as part of an unfolding strategy of global control. — location: 5204 ^ref-38332

Professor Milivoje Ivanisević of Belgrade University scrutinized the Red Cross list and found the names of 500 people who had died before Srebrenica fell to the Serbs, as well as a total of 3,016 people listed as “missing” by the Red Cross on the lists of voters in the 1996 Bosnian elections. — location: 5743 ^ref-33928

“Serbs ‘Not Guilty’ of Massacre: Experts Warned U.S. that Mortar was Bosnian”, Sunday Times, 1 October 1995, p. 15). — location: 6466 ^ref-57763