Riots in Kosovo. Albanians attack Greek peacekeepers

[Imran Siddiqui]

Prevent a genocide.

[Bereta_Eder]

Prove NATO's usefulness and raison d'etre after the collapse of the USSR and kill some 3,000 people.

[Bereta_Eder]

The mass exodus of Albanians begun after the bombings started might I remind. They were escaping both the bombs and Milosevic wrath which the bombing simply crystalized after the CIA and the brit equivalant's trained UCK's bombing parades throughout Kosovo. It didn't stop the chasing of Albanians, it facilitated it and it didn't topple Milosevic. The bombings stopped and Milosevic was still in power for quite some time with the people rallied around him like never before. The Serb upriots eventually toppled him.

Apart from that the whole "masterplan" allowed UCK to continue their happy parade of fire to FYROM, having as they thought the support of the west, which it quickly revoked soon after.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Prevent a genocide.

From Milosevic? Well he is long gone and we are not.

Next.

[East Street Trader]

When the Falklands were invaded I thought a good solution might have been for the UK to offer every single Falkland Islander a million pounds to leave.

That would have cost no lives at all and would have cost, in money, a tiny fraction of the sums expended to wage a war and then to maintain a military presence for decades on the other side of the world.

I feel much the same here. If every Serb in Kosovo was offered a million pounds and access either to Serbia or to another European country it has got to be long odds they would all accept. That would remove a chunk of the tension and make it more likely that the ethnic Albanians and their neighbours could sort out their future without the whole mess starting up again.

But it would be naieve to think that such pragmatism is possible.

Paiktis, I'd suggest you try focusing on the future rather than dwelling on the past. There is just too much historical baggage in your neck of the woods. The people of Cyprus have gained nothing from the polarisation of the last forty years and the people of Yugoslavia have decidedly lost out from the fragmentation there.

We have all commited ourselves to bringing about an ever closer union. The people of Northern Ireland seem, at last, to be realising what that offers. And they are clinging less tenaciously to past grievances. If Greek and Turk, Serb and Croat (as the the French and the German have already done) just wholeheartedly throw their lot in together and stop regarding each other as enemies the world will be a better place.

Sorry to preach.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Ned
Next.

Prevent a bloody tribal civil war.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Ned


Because it would show that you can turn a government over to the local population despite hard feelings and not have ethnic cleansing.

Nothing against the basic idea, the problem is if it would work in a special environment. The current situation in the Kosovo rather indicates that at least for now and the near future, it would not.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
It's this conflict that makes me wonder about Old Europe's demands for the UN in Iraq.

I'd like to add further to this comment if I may. It was Europe that by insisting that legitimacy doesn't come from a strict adhearence to the dictates of international law and the sovereign equality of nations in Kosovo that opened the door for Bush to legitimately claim his actions were justified in 2003.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by East Street Trader
When the Falklands were invaded I thought a good solution might have been for the UK to offer every single Falkland Islander a million pounds to leave.

That would have cost no lives at all and would have cost, in money, a tiny fraction of the sums expended to wage a war and then to maintain a military presence for decades on the other side of the world.

I feel much the same here. If every Serb in Kosovo was offered a million pounds and access either to Serbia or to another European country it has got to be long odds they would all accept. That would remove a chunk of the tension and make it more likely that the ethnic Albanians and their neighbours could sort out their future without the whole mess starting up again.

But it would be naieve to think that such pragmatism is possible.

Paiktis, I'd suggest you try focusing on the future rather than dwelling on the past. There is just too much historical baggage in your neck of the woods. The people of Cyprus have gained nothing from the polarisation of the last forty years and the people of Yugoslavia have decidedly lost out from the fragmentation there.

We have all commited ourselves to bringing about an ever closer union. The people of Northern Ireland seem, at last, to be realising what that offers. And they are clinging less tenaciously to past grievances. If Greek and Turk, Serb and Croat (as the the French and the German have already done) just wholeheartedly throw their lot in together and stop regarding each other as enemies the world will be a better place.

Sorry to preach.

I hear you EST loud and clear. But it's hard you know. We're basically an island of democracy in a vast lake of extremism and conservatism bordering on the fundamentalism. Point me out one real democracy apart from Greece in our neighborhood. There is none. And I'm not claiming we're saints. We're as nationalist as any other around us. Maybe it was your fault to take us under your wing. You have helped create a democracy in the middle of extremists and nations which have no notion of democracy. What are we supposed to do?

Help others I guess but it's not easy. Anyway I hear you loud and clear and it's my fervent belief that if Germany and France could do it, we can do it. But without democracies around us it is hard.

For my part I do try and concentrate on the present but it's not very easy, especially when we have to deal with nations whose democracies are a joke.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I'd like to add further to this comment if I may. It was Europe that by insisting that legitimacy doesn't come from a strict adhearence to the dictates of international law and the sovereign equality of nations in Kosovo that opened the door for Bush to legitimately claim his actions were justified in 2003.

That's why the US (and the UK) was so up for the invasion DD. It helped her create a precedent she was sure to put to good use later on. That's why many people in many countries fought against that. So that such precedent wasn't set.

[DinoDoc]

Blame Europe then. They supported and wholeheartedly supported it. It's more than a little late for them to be extolling the virtues of the UN now.

[Bereta_Eder]

Why should one blame Europe when it was the US/UK which promoted it so bad?
You can only blame some parts of Europe for finally accepting it.

[Ned]

Originally posted by Spiffor

Prevent a bloody tribal civil war.

By the Albanians against the Serbs?

"[A]s Germans entered Prizren in Kosovo for the first time since World War II, an NBC correspondent reported:
"I was at dinner with a kind Kosovo Muslim family the other night when talk turned to the German NATO troops that rolled into town to make the city the headquarters of its peacekeeping district. The patriarch of the family, a man old enough to remember the last time German troops rolled into Prizren, said they all felt safe now. 'The German soldiers are excellent,' he said. Then he added, 'I should know, I used to be one.' Then he raised his arm in a Nazi salute and said, 'Heil,' and laughed merrily. (NBC, June 18, 1999)"

http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/thompson/rootsof.htm

Somehow, I have the feeling that we intervened on the wrong side here.

Regardless, even though this is Serbian territory, the only solution is to allow the people to vote. Undoubtedly, they will vote to join Albania.

We should then pull out with the advice to the Albanians that they have won in should now protect the rights of the minority Serbians, otherwise they risk war with Serbia; but this time NATO will back the Serbs.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
I'd like to add further to this comment if I may. It was Europe that by insisting that legitimacy doesn't come from a strict adhearence to the dictates of international law and the sovereign equality of nations in Kosovo that opened the door for Bush to legitimately claim his actions were justified in 2003.

Well, it is not that the US admin that time was against military action without an UN mandate. But yes, Europe supported it, and it is indeed a problem for those who supported this in 1999, but argue today that such an action is against international law.

OTOH I don't think Bush would have acted in another way in case of Iraq if the war in Kosovo was legitimated by an UN mandate.

[Ned]

According to himself, General Clark was the primary person urging intervention in Kosovo. Is this true?