COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY IVOR ROBERTS IN THE GUARDIAN
(AND QUICKLY REMOVED BY VIGILANT EDITORS)
“Why a statue to
Milošević? It’s all part of Russia’s Balkan bromance
“The proposal to
honour the former war criminal in Belgrade reflects a wider power play in
Serbia and the rest of the Balkans”
I find this far too one-sided.
Yes, this man and some others at the time did some terrible
things.
But I'm not sure I know of a single instance in history of
civil wars and revolutions where terrible things were not done.
There were what would be called genuine war crimes during
the American Civil War, and we see today paid mercenaries killing thousands of
civilians in Syria. Britain's good friend, Crown Prince Salman, has butchered
and bombed thousands of women and children in Yemen.
Odd thing, the International War Crimes people only seem to
spring into action where American interests have been opposed. Never is America
or any Western power called into question.
And the Bill Clinton War in Serbia was very much about
American interests, not about concern for war crimes, as was claimed at the
time.
Indeed, Clinton's own military could well and truly have
been tried for war crimes, as, just one example, deliberately bombing the
national broadcaster's headquarters, killing a number of journalists. That was
a clear war crime in international law.
Bill Clinton's ugly little war was about the break-up of the
old Yugoslavia and America trying to claim as many pieces of it as it could for
its interests in Europe. Not exactly idealistic.
We know Clinton was no great humanitarian because when his
State Department discovered the true horrors of Rwanda, with the better part of
a million to be butchered, word quietly went out for not a public word to be
said. And Clinton never lifted a finger with his massive armed forces and
economic leverage to stop the horror.
His godawful Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright,
actually is recorded on television as saying, in response to a question about
the tens of thousands of Iraqi children miserably dying under American
sanctions, "we think it's worth it."
She later got the prestigious Medal of Freedom, the same one
awarded by Obama to Joe Biden, a man who was the White House’s big advocate for
the extrajudicial killing machinery which now quietly hums along day by day.
You have to shed a lot of blood to earn that distinguished medal.
Mr. Clinton also destroyed a pharmaceutical factory in poor
Sudan with missiles when he had no clear information of any bad intentions
there. People were killed. A poor country’s large investment was destroyed.
Mr. Clinton's FBI attacked the strange cult at Waco and
incinerated 80 people including women and children. They were not nice people,
but they did not deserve such horrible deaths, and the whole matter could have
been waited out till they surrendered.
