The Srebrenica video

[Mr. Harley]

My heartburn has always been that we got involved when bluntly there were no good guys, only varyijng degrees of bad guys all trying to manipulate us. The only justifiable intervention would have been to go in, have new plebesites to redraw the boundaries based on their original ethic identity, force constitutions with strong minority rights, and to encourage and pay for the exchange of ethnic populations between the various resulting countries, i.e. similiar to what happened during the partition of India but instead making it controlled and peaceful. Anything short of that we should have simply let them shoot it out.

[chequita guevara]

We got involved because Yugoslavia was a socialist state that was working. As in the case of Chile, good examples cannot go unpunished. Hell, it was Western policies in the first place that precipitated the breakup, and then ensured a civil war. Serbia was the bad guy because it refused to embrace the free market.

[Mr. Harley]

Che, there I will disagree. Chile was flirting with socialism, not communism which accross Eastern Europe had an anti-democratic tradition. Once Tito died there was going to be a civil war. Yugoslavia was very likely going to break up due to this, no matter what anybody did. I'll grant your analysis on how the favorites were chosen, i.e. pseudo free-markets and PR firms.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Chile was flirting with socialism, not communism which accross Eastern Europe had an anti-democratic tradition.

Perceptions matter. The fact that Chile, at best, was steering towards a Swedish style capitalism or that Yugoslvia was instituted what could be termed, market-socialism, is irrelevent. They both pointed the way to an alternative during turbulent times. And the way was in opposition to the interests of the US and western capitalism. How different might things in Eastern Europe have turned out if the Yugoslavian civil war hadn't destroyed the alternative both to Brezhnev style socialism and neo-liberalism?

[Mr. Harley]

From that viewpoint, i.e. why we supported the Croats and Muslims versus the Serbs, I can see your point. However, without meddling the victory of the market-socialism/Serbs still would have been highly problematic. Once the conflict had started, I have trouble believing that the experiment would have survived the conflict, but tha is purely opinion, sadly.

[chequita guevara]

The conflict had stablized in Croatia, and it was only Westerns arms, intelligence, and analysts that enabled Croatia to conquer Dalmatia. In Bosnia, the Serbs were slowly winning the war until the same thing plus the intervention of NATO war planes. Given time, it's likely that the Serbs would have won the war in Bosnia and reached an accord with Croatia allowing Dalmatia and Slovenia to secede and rejoin Yugoslavia.

[Mr. Harley]

I don't disagree with that - what I am saying is that could the grand market-socialism experiment you are discussing survived that kind of conflict. I would expect a reversion to strongman government, given the history of the region.

[chequita guevara]

Who knows. It survived pretty much, though battered and beaten, until the removal of Milosevic.

[Mr. Harley]

No, it survived until the sanctions and the bombing. After that there was no Serbian economy, just a collection of desperate people and black marketers.

[VetLegion]

[QUOTE] Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Did you know there were two Bosniak armies, one fighting for the Islamicist government and one fighting to keep Bosnia part of Yugoslavia?[/qoute]

False.

Did you know that just before the massacre in Srebrenica, Croat forces massacred a village nearby in which several hundred Serbs were killed?

False.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

Originally posted by molly bloom
Yes, that excuses shelling Sarajevo

Sarajevo was shelled by the Bosnian government, not the Serbs.

False.

invading Croatia and Slovenia

At first, the Yugoslav government did not recognize the legitimacy of the secessions, since the governments in Slovenia and Croatia did not put the secession up for referendum. The "invasion" of Slovenia lasted a mere few weeks before Yugoslavia decided to let go. Considering that Croatians, Macedonians, and Bosnians were all part of the Yugoslav army, you can't lay the fighting in Slovenia at the feet of the Serbs.

False.

In Croatia, the government was seized by unreconstructed fascists who immediately set out to take the property of Serbs, Jews, Muslims, Roma, etc. It's hard to blame Yugoslavia for defending the rights of Croatia's minorities.

False.

Furthermore, if we can respect that Croatia has the right to secede from Yugoslavia, we must also respect the right of those parts of Croatia that don't want to leave Yugoslavia to secede from Croatia and Bosnia.

False.

and bombing Dubrovnik.

Both sides bombed Dubrovnik.

False.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Sorry folks but Che actually has much of his history correct, reference both the Croats and Moslems.

First, the CROATS started the war.

False.

The borders of the Yugoslav provinces were largely artificial

False.

and Tito had been pacifying various constituencies with paper transfer of borders, similiar to what happened in the Crimea.

False.

The problem was that one area that the new Croatian pseudo-Nazi government claimed was 80% per cent Serb.

False.

But the new Croats put in a monetary unit that had only existed during the puppet Nazi-sponsered governement,

False.

during which Croat para-militaries helped the Nazi kill 800,000 (that is from memory) Serbs.

False.

[/q] Understandably, this made the Serbs in that area nervous, especially when Croat was made the official language in an 80% Servian area and all their schools were being switch go Croatian.[/q]

False.

So they said we are going back and joining Yugoslavia.

True.

The new Croat government said - Oh, but that's different and started the shooting.

False.

They also started the first killings of Moslems in Bosnia, as they supported Croat seperatists in that region. The Serbs ended up turning to their own strongmen.

False.

Fact - the Croats strong men started it, led by Franjo Tudjman.

False.

Fact - the Croat and Muslim atrocities got substantially less play in American media, see my last statement.

Possible.

Fact - the Serbs only brought in Milosevic after the Croats started their offensives against Serbian area in Croatia.

False.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Well, Tudjman was committed to free markets, while Yugoslavia was still trying to be socialist.

False.

That's the source of your problem right there Che - you get your info from socialist sources who claim Yugoslavia was somehow a thorn in US/West's side because it was socialist and that that is why it was broken up from outside.

The truth is quite different - long suppressed nationalisms were impossible to contain and they broke it from the inside.

Fearing violence, the West actually tried to preserve Yugoslavia at the outset of the crisis.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by paiktis22
The only thing I'll add is the country who recognized first the Croatian state as a separate country and thus expediated the conflict. That country is no other than Germany.

False.

And at that time it was pointed out many times that this would only act as a catalyst to the disindegration of yugoslavia and worsen the conflict.

False.

And a last thing. Who is the biggest foreign investor in croatia today? Yep, Germany again.

False.

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

I don't have the book in front of me now, but in Death of a Nation by Michael Parenti (which should be taken with some salt),

Should be taken with shovels of salt