22 Comments

1. Fred Mecklenburg:

It is really tragic that you seem to be buying into this kind of revisionist history. The falsehood begins in posing the issue as being “Muslim vs. Serb”–as the article you reprint here does. That in itself is a surrender to the ideas of Karadjic. (And bin Laden for that matter.) The real issue was whether a multi-ethnic Bosnia would survive the onslaught of the “ethnic cleansers” led by Karadjic and Milosevic.

Neither side was ultimately reducible to religion or “ethnicity.” There were many thousands of Bosnian Serbs who opposed Karadjic, even at the cost of their lives. There was an anti-war movement in Serbia as well, with groups like Women in Black, the Belgrade Circle, anarchists, and some of the Marxist humanist intellectuals fomerly associated with the journal Praxis.

To make such a reduction is as false as the idea that Tuzla was some kind of center for “jihad.” (As another of these commentators did.) In fact it was one of the strongest centers of support for multi-ethnic Bosnia. You should read Bob Myers article on Workers Aid for Bosnia, which discusses that Tuzla:

http://www.cceia.org/resources/publications/dialogue/2_05/articles/880.html

It is wrong to write all this out of history in order to falsify that history.

I hope you catch yourself before you go too far down this road. What an incredible intellectual and moral failure it would be for you. And what a miserable little victory for Karadjic, that herald of rape and murder, to console himself with as he watches his own testimony in his cell.

Aug 7, 2008 - 9:20 am 2. massaraksh:

To: Fred Mecklenburg

You seem to think that Bosnia was (or is) a Utopian multi-ethnic entity (ala another mythical Utopia – al-Andalus) where Christians, Jews, and Muslims happily live like brothers. Unfortunately, it’s not so – the non-Muslims have been marginalized in the Muslim controlled entity, and it’s also no accident that al-Qaeda made extensive use of Bosnian passports – clearly there are influential Bosnians helping al-Qaeda.

It’s also revisionist history to ignore the Jihad fought in Bosnia by thousands of Jihadis from all over the world who committed horrible atrocities against non-Muslims there. These atrocities were even acknowledged by the World Court in the Hague, but the Bosnian Muslim commander got off scot free there – supposedly, he didn’t “know” what the troops under his command did. The Serbs, of course, don’t get away with such excuses.

The bottom line is that the West took sides in a civil war, and the only explanation that makes sense is appeasement – the West wants to keep Muslims happy. You don’t see anybody in the West promoting breakup of Iraq and/or the Sudan although the minorities there have a much better case for independence, but in Yugoslavia, the Bosnians, Croats, and Serbs come from the same ethnic stock and share the same language; nevertheless, it was enough for the West to accept that the country deserved to be broken up.

We facilitated the creation of irredentist entities in the heart of Europe – we may have to pay a stiff price for it.

Aug 7, 2008 - 10:33 am 3. Fred Mecklenburg:

massaraksh,

What you say is both true and untrue. I do think that “the West” (by this I presume you mean the U.S. and NATO) “took sides” by imposing an arms embargo on Bosnia which kept it from defending itself. How the resulting carnage made Muslims happy you will have to explain to yourself.

I don’t know how closely you follow the news, but only a few months ago Senator Joseph Biden was floating a plan for the sectarian and ethnic division of Iraq. I presume that he is a part of “the West,” right?

I acknowledge that some “jihadis” were drawn to the struggle in Bosnia. I see this as an entirely negative thing, and the ideology that they brought as another challenge to multi-ethnicity in Bosnia.

That’s exactly why it is so important to remember things like Workers Aid for Bosnia. And all the other works of solidarity, moral and intellectual, as well. Ignoring that, and ignoring the many Serbs who rejected Karadjic and Milosevic, just cedes historic memory to today’s “jihadis,” by which I mean evil groupings like al Qaeda.

I believe that the world has already paid a very stiff price for that cession of memory and will probably continue to do so. That’s why I’m writing these words to you now.

I don’t believe that there is a Utopia anywhere on this earth, now or anytime in the past. I do believe that human beings have great reserves of decency, and that informed people saw the acts of Karadjic and his followers as the unprovoked atrocities that they were.

Aug 7, 2008 - 11:44 am 4. James Eaves-Johnson:

I am extremely skeptical of any publication that promotes an endorsement of it by well-known anti-Semite Patrick Buchanan (see http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?page_id=2). Moreover, when I read items like this one (http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2008/08/an-israeli-in-k.php) from Michael Totten regarding Israelis in Kosovo, I find it difficult to believe that this is a culture that is intolerant in the same manner as much of the Muslim world.

Human Rights Watch (http://hrw.org/doc/?t=kosovo) shows that this story is not one simply of evil Serbs killing innocent Muslims. However, the history until very recently has been extremely one-sided and the ethnic cleansing has been overwhelmingly carried out by Serbian forces.

Aug 7, 2008 - 12:35 pm 5. Litany:

Fred is spot in – it really hurts me to see someone applying their perspective on the current threat of Islamic imperialism to the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.

“The bottom line is that the West took sides in a civil war, and the only explanation that makes sense is appeasement – the West wants to keep Muslims happy.”

This is totally devoid of historical context. Yes, again, there were highly undesirable forces in the former Yugoslavia who were not Serbs – but it’s useless to lump together “the Muslims” and assume that they all agreed with the Jihadists. Bosniaks do not primarily identify themselves as ‘Muslims’, just as Kosovans and Albanians do not. The Bosnian government was imperfect, but it was nonetheless a sovereign entity with a pluralistic multi-ethnic society at its core, which was being invaded from without and torn apart from within by forces with express racist, fascist and genocidal ideologies. The West dithered about for years appeasing Milosevic and Karadzic and the Croat fascist forces, maintaining an arms embargo on Bosnia and facilitating “negotiations” where the Bosnians would get to agree to just how much of their own territory they would cede to the forces of ethnic separatism and ethnic cleansing.

Over 90% of civilian casualties in the Bosnian War were caused by Serb and Croat forces. This does not excuse the atrocities of those who claimed to be on the side of ‘the Muslims’ (remember, imperfection of Bosnia aside, there are large Jews and Christians and Serbs and Croats opposed to their respective communitarian fascisms and committed to a multi-ethnic united Bosnia), but it gives you an idea as to which side the West should have intervened on. Additionally, every other force in the conflict was essentially a client state supported by one or another imperial power. Serbia was supported by Russia and Croatia was supported by Germany. Bosnia was the country that was not attempting to annex territory from another, and it was supported by nobody.

The fact that this kind of revisionism about the Bosnian War is very popular with both the far right and the indecent “anti-imperialist” left should give you an idea about its substance.

Aug 7, 2008 - 5:22 pm 6. massaraksh:

Mecklenburg,

I’ll try to answer every point you’ve made:

The West looked the other way when arms paid by Iran and Saudi Arabia were smuggled into Bosnia. Other Muslim countries, like Jordan, sent high-ranking officers to run Bosnian Army. At the same time, thousands of volunteers were recruited to come to fight on the Bosnian side from all over the world, including the West.

Senator Biden’s suggestion is just a flight of fantasy – there are no plans to break up either Iraq or the Sudan.

There’s no question that the Western “progressives” and Islamists found a common cause in Bosnia – no surprise here. It wouldn’t be the first time the progressives acted in such a fashion and it wouldn’t be the last – one should remember that Khomeini’s rise to power was paved by the Iranian leftists.

No one in his right mind would defend Karadzic and Milosevic – they were products of the Communist regime, but so was Tudjman, and Izetbegovic, a Nazi sympathizer, was no better either. We’ve been told about the siege of Sarajevo, but very few people talk about the takeover of Sarajevo by Izetbegovic and his gang who accomplished this feat with the help of the Muslim criminal underworld. There were plenty of Bosnian Muslims who had no desire to secede from Yugoslavia, but they were silenced by the Izetbegovic’s thugs.

Karadzic was able to exploit the legitimate fears of Bosnian Serbs who had no desire to be dominated by Muslims, and that explains the civil war. If the Kosovo Albanians have a right to set up a rump state (while ethnically cleansing all non-Albanians with the NATO troops looking the other way), then how come the Bosnian Serbs have no right to live in their own state?

Aug 7, 2008 - 5:36 pm 7. massaraksh:

Litany,

FYI: Bosnia is an artificial country created by Tito, and these are the statistics:

Bosniak 48%, Serb 37.1%, Croat 14.3%, other 0.6% (2000)

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/bk.html

Why should 48% govern the 52%? I don’t think anybody in his right mind would disagree that either Serbs or Croats want to be ruled by Muslims – only the NATO and generous subsidies from the EU keep this country from imploding.

Unfortunately, your statement “The Bosnian government was imperfect, but it was nonetheless a sovereign entity with a pluralistic multi-ethnic society at its core” is only wishful thinking completely unsupported by facts.

Aug 7, 2008 - 8:37 pm 8. Litany:

“Why should 48% govern the 52%? I don’t think anybody in his right mind would disagree that either Serbs or Croats want to be ruled by Muslims – only the NATO and generous subsidies from the EU keep this country from imploding.”

Look at a map of ethnic distribution in Bosnia. Sure, there are Serb-heavy areas and Croat-heavy areas, but generally the spread across the country of all ethnicities is very broad. It would be impossible to determine what areas should be ceded to Serbia and Croatia. No clear lines could be drawn without a campaign of ethnic cleansing – which is exactly what the Republika Srpska was attempting. Serbs and Croats in regions of Bosnia may well feel persecuted as minorities, but if these areas were annexed by Serbia or Croatia, there would still be great numbers of Bosniaks there, who would then be small minorities in a Greater Serbia or Greater Croatia. Therefore, no such territorial adjustment can be justified on the basis of protecting minorities.

So: does the West simply dismiss it as a “civil war” and refuse to intervene, while every party except Bosnia has other great powers intervening on their behalf, or does it intervene on the side of Bosnia which, imperfect as it is, is NOT the aggressor, is not trying to annex territory from other states and is the victim of the vast majority of attacks on civilians and whose enemies have a clear, expressed aim of ethnic cleansing? Whose enemies are in fact governments ruled by neo-fascist juntas?

If we look at the former Yugoslavia now, ethnic tensions still exist, and there are difficulties especially regarding Kosovo, but it’s largely a peaceful region. This stems largely from NATO’s interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo which stopped a great deal of violence and led to the downfall of Milosevic and Karadzic. The “Muslim” regions, such as Bosnia and Kosovo and Albania, are by and large the most tolerant. No amount of loose talk about ‘islamic imperialism’ changes that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3qHJGiLF5A

Aug 7, 2008 - 10:33 pm 9. Fred Mecklenburg:

massaraksh,

You have no idea what relation those “Western ‘progressives’” had to the war in Bosnia, do you? In fact there was a deep, deep division over the issue, with a lot of “Western ‘progressives’” supporting Milosevic’s Serbia as somehow being a “Socialist” state. These people were very insistent on seeing an equivalence between the sides in Bosnia, with all kinds of conspiracy theories cropping up about Muslims bombing themselves to get world sympathy.

It is now you who echo, very exactly, almost word for word, the worst of these “Western ‘progressives.’”

In the same way, there were people on the other side like Republican Senator Robert Dole who expressed their support for Bosnia as against the Milosevic and Karadzic ethnic cleansers.

Please, at least do some basic research before you write these things. You insult the intelligence of anyone who actually lived through those times.

That brings me to Dr. Bostom’s column. I do respect the research that he’s done for his books. I think it is as valid as Dagobert Runes’ critique of Christian antisemitism in The Jew and the Cross. It is worthy as a contribution to a discussion.

However, this column on Izetbegovic is made up largely of innuendo and not fact. To establish what he wants to here Dr. Bostom would need to produce some public statements of Izetbegovic’s advocating a “caliphate,” or whatever, while in office. Some laws that were instituted. This he doesn’t do. Rather we are left with the great hanging question of conspiracy theory.

Not that I have any great desire to defend Izetbegovic either. Why should he, or any politician, get to be a stand-in for the people of Bosnia? In their actions in defense of their multi-ethnic society they spoke loudly and clearly for themselves.

Aug 7, 2008 - 10:46 pm 10. massaraksh:

Wishful thinking is a hallmark of the Western liberals in general and, when it comes to the Balkans, in particular. The appalling lack of consistency caused by it is the reason why the same people who deny Bosnian Serbs the right for self-determination are all for the Kosovo Albanians having their own state and even look the other way while the non-Albanians (Serbs, Roma, and Muslim Slavs) have been viciously expelled by the KLA thugs there. It doesn’t take much to learn the truth, but of course, it’s so much easier to parrot the politically correct (and false!) clichés about the Utopian brotherhood in Bosnia supposedly threatened by Serb “fascists”. If only it ever existed!

The plain truth is that the Muslim takeover of Bosnia was illegal and wasn’t supported by the majority of its population; the Muslim parties were heavily subsidized and armed by Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Muslim countries, thousands of Jihadis came to Bosnia and committed unspeakable atrocities there while the West looked the other way, the Western media ignored the Nazi past of Muslim Bosnia architect Izetbegovic and the criminal & Islamist ties while harping on the post-Communist thug Milosevic, and eventually NATO led by the USA instead being an honest broker took sides in the civil war.

One can keep piously pontificating about things one has very little knowledge of, but let’s make it clear – ignorance is no bliss. It’s the height of hypocrisy to ignore the genocide of Christians which took place in the Southern Sudan (at least two million dead!) but keep lying about the civil war in the Balkans.

I wonder how the West can support Georgia (and remain intellectually honest!) in its effort to regain a province populated by ethnic Ossetians after it recognized the right of Kosovo Albanians to break away from Serbia and set up their own state. The chickens have come home to roost for the Western hypocrites.

Aug 8, 2008 - 8:07 am 11. Fred Mecklenburg:

massaraksh,

What you describe as the “plain truth” just sounds like talking points for snipers to me. It isn’t dialogue at all and it clearly isn’t meant to be.

Many of us who opposed the Bosnian genocide have spoken out against similar atrocities, as in Sudan (including Darfur where the victims are Muslims) and Rwanda. I remember speaking to a large audience of Bosnians about Rwanda in 1994 and they had no problem making that connection. Further there were Bosnian women rape victims who went on to become activists in support of women in other countries who were similarly victimized.

The fight for a multi-ethnic Bosnia had a vital meaning for the whole world. It spoke to situations in Sudan, Rwanda, Kurdistan, East Timor, and it spoke to the heart of that Western “civilization” that must deal with its own historical atrocities.

For many of us that made the situation in Bosnia a real test of world politics.

There’s a great little book that was published at the time called Bosnia-Herzegovina: Achilles Heel of Western “Civilization” (News and Letters, 1996). In criticizing the Dayton Accord it gets to the point: “An outright fascist Bosnian Serb entity–complete with concentration camps–is being legitimized in the heart of Europe. This will give encouragement to similar retrogressive movements the world over–from the American neo-fascist militia movement and the Christian Right to the equally reactionary Farrakhanites, and from the Islamic fundamentalists of the Middle East to the anti-Arab National Front in France. For the truth is that today ‘democrats’ like Clinton are ready to give recognition to some of the most reactionary forces seen anywhere since the 1930s.

“In his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway suggested that the Western powers’ failure to aid Spain’s anti-fascist struggles in the 1930s paved the way for Hitler’s onslaught. He wrote that the bells tolling in Spain were ringing for all of us in the outside world as well, that the horrors would not end there. Those bells are tolling in Bosnia today, for those able to hear them.”

It seems to me that much that statement has proven true. The essence of it. To retrospectively paint the Bosnian struggle as some kind of religious “jihad” is a lie, compounded. And it leaves one helpless in dealing with realities like Muslim feminists (including people like Irshad Manji and Project Ijtihad), or labor activists like the imprisoned bus drivers’ union leaders in Tehran, or the democrats of Lebanon, or the victimized Muslims of Darfur.

None of these people need to supply proof of their humanity or civility before deserving the world’s support.

Aug 8, 2008 - 4:30 pm 12. massaraksh:

Fred

I’m not sure I understand your allusions to “talking points”, “snipers”, and the absence of “dialogue”, but let me tell you that wishful thinking is no substitute for reality, and, unlike the wild-eyed idealists, I do refuse to bury my head in the sand and ignore the reality. I prefer to call a spade a spade.

The “multiethnic Bosnia” you’re so eloquently waxing about is wishful thinking of the worst kind, but the Russian bombs falling on Georgia are real and can’t be ignored.

The peoples of Bosnia (Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks) have made it quite clear they don’t want to live with each other by freely electing for nationalist politicians time and again. Needless to say, the only reason Bosnia still exists at all are the billions of dollars in Western aid and NATO troops – once the West gets tired of it, Bosnian peoples will go back to fighting each other – there are profound historical reasons going back to the Ottoman rule why they hate each other, and no band-aid solutions from the Western do-gooders are going to change it. The truth is that Bosnia isn’t even a failed state – it’s just an oxymoron.

The West does bear some responsibility for the Yugoslavian tragedy – it was the irresponsible German recognition of Croatian that precipitated the breakup, but the bottom line is that good fences make good neighbors and Political Correctness combined with feel-good politics is a sure-fire recipe for disaster – in fact this is what happened there. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and Bosnia is a perfect example of it.

It’s rather ironic to call Serbs fascists the way you do when they are the only ethnic group there that didn’t collaborate with the Nazis, and when their enemies are either former Nazis or use Nazi-like slogans. Truth be told, ignoring the truth is another sign of PC run amok.

It’s rather nice of you to invoke Hemingway and the Spanish Civil War, but blaming the West for looking the other way isn’t the whole story there. The main blame lies with the Soviet Union – the NKVD death squads killed thousands of anti-Stalinist Leftists there and it was the Soviet Union that delivered coup de grâce by withdrawing Soviet advisors and personnel at the most crucial moment in order to pave the road for making a deal with Hitler.

I didn’t deny that there were unspeakable atrocities committed in former Yugoslavia, but all sides were guilty of it. It was the WSJ investigative reporter, Danny Pearl, who wrote about it, and it’s quite possible he paid with his life for pointing out things few other Western reporters were willing to talk about. In short there was no Rwanda-style genocide there, and the same was true in Kosovo as well – the UN-sponsored teams scoured the whole place looking for mass graves and came up empty-handed. It’s true that ethnic cleansing took place there, but it was the non-Albanians who were expelled.

We are witnessing the result of the Western myopic policies right now in Georgia: we ignored the long-standing principles of territorial integrity in the Balkans and provided resurgent Russian with a perfect excuse to re-draw the borders using the same lame arguments we used to dismember Serbia – the people in Georgia are paying a horrible price for the stupidity of our irresponsible do-gooders, and this is only the beginning – besides Ossetia and Abkhazia, there’s also Transnistria, and of course there are sizable Russian minorities in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Ukraine. It doesn’t take much encouragement for them to call for help from their Big Brother, and there’s nothing we can do about it – we already lost the high-moral ground in Yugoslavia by taking sides there.

I admire such courageous people like Irshad Manji, but she has as much of a chance to convince anybody in the Muslim world as I of being the first man to land on Mars. Even better, if she and the Iranian human rights activists are seen as supported by the West, it’ll marginalize them even more – being seen as “Western stooges” doesn’t help them.

The only way to prevent human suffering is honestly facing the truth – unfortunately the do-gooders will never understand it.

Aug 10, 2008 - 11:12 am 13. Fred Mecklenburg:

massaraksh

One can’t argue “wishful thinking.” For a critique of that I’ll read Beckett or Leopardi. It does sound like you’ve sobered up on the current war, though–your last post sounded almost pleased with the situation.

The role of the NKVD is Spain is a valid thing to raise. The internet the last few days has been full of the same kind of propaganda that attacked the Spanish anarchists and Trotskyists before their “liquidation” by the NKVD. The same kind of lies that declared the revolution in Hungary in 1956 was the work of “fascists,” and justified Russian invasion. The same kind of lies that smeared the Bosnians as “jihadists” and “fascists” and justified the atrocities of Karadzic.

It is an old, evil tradition. It is why I’m always trying to be careful not to “call Serbs fascist,” and I don’t. I do consider Karadzic, his militant supporters, and the state they attempted to set up as the fruit of “ethnic cleansing” fascist.

But the bombs now raining down on Georgia are still falling to the sound of your own false equivalences and revisionist historical arguments. You acknowledge this, and I guess that’s to your credit. I hope you do some serious thinking on that, and perhaps you’ll be more careful whose “wishful thinking” you care to ventriloquize.

You are certainly correct in that Putin’s drive isn’t intended to stop with Georgia and Ossetia. The current crisis–which is really between the U.S. and Russia, in the end–seems to me to be the most serious since the Cuban missile crisis.

If the arms embargo on Bosnia had been lifted, as many of us were requesting at the time, the Bosnians could have defended themselves. The U.S. and NATO would never have to have been involved. There would have been no arguments for you, or Putin, to make about equivalence in Ossetia today.

Instead after Srebrenica there was a minimum of U.S. air support followed by a strongarm “settlement” at Dayton. Which settled very little. It was a “realist” answer at the time. Those of us who opposed U.S. military action while supporting Bosnia’s right to self-defense were right.

Likewise by the way in Kosova. There was a decade long, non-violent movement among the Kosovars for the rights that they, the majority, were denied in their own homeland. (Long before the KLA existed.) The ideas that justified the atrocities in Bosnia were born from the suppression of this movement for freedom. That is the way Milosevic became the ultranationalist that he did, and it’s the way the Serbian Academy of Sciences became advocates of such policies as well.

The “realists” of the world should have paid heed to that idealistic movement in Kosova. (Once again, it had nothing at all in common with any religious “jihad.”)

Just as the world today should pay great heed to the many movements from within the “Muslim world.” Irshad Manji, for instance, is both hated by some, and deeply loved and respected by many young reform-minded Muslims. She has an audience and she openly asks for support.

By the same token, to say that labor activists in Iran shouldn’t be supported means to throw out every tradition of internationalism that has ever existed within the labor movement. “An injury to one is an injury to all” doesn’t stop at the border. It doesn’t mean, “except Muslims, or Catholics, or Vodoun…” And in Iran labor and student activists are hardly more marginal today than the widely disrespected mullahs or the hated basiji.

I could go on but I think you get the point.

By the way, there is no way at all to prevent human suffering. Job, life and Leopardi concur on that. But one way to lessen it is to be scrupulous about our political statements and actions. That should include not promoting the myth of “ancient ethnic hatreds” in the Balkans. Karadzic’s atrocities were so extravagantly depraved because the hatred had to be created almost ex nihilo.

Aug 10, 2008 - 11:28 pm 14. massaraksh:

Fred

I’m not sure you realize that we live in a real world where actions have consequences and innocent people die as a result. Clearly, the Russian rape of Georgia and the stunned, impotent silence of the West haven’t done anything to wake you up because you still failed to grasp the connection between our actions in the Balkans and the Russian actions in the Caucasus.

The West solemnly promised to support the territorial integrity of the UN member states after the WWII, but after the KLA thugs provoked Serbs into an overreaction, we bombed the hell out of Serbia, killing hundreds (if not thousands!) of civilians there, and in a flagrant violation of the international laws dismembered Serbia and after ethnically cleansing Kosovo even recognized its independence w/out even bothering to go to the UN! The architects of the Serbia’s dismemberment, Albright, Clark, and Holbrooke had their own reasons for doing it, but I assure you, the welfare of the Balkan people was the last thing on their minds. Clark even ordered the British forces to attack the Russian paratroopers in Pristina, but thankfully, the British commander was rational enough to ignore the idiotic order. After all, it was no accident that the Secretary of DOD, William Cohen, together with the Pentagon’s top brass hastily engineered Clark’s early retirement after Kosovo was occupied by NATO. One should make no mistake about it: pious gibberish about genocide in the Balkans provided cover for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia – if you don’t believe me, you should re-read Danny Pearl’s reports.

When we were riding roughshod over Serbia, Russian diplomats kept warning us that our unilateral actions would justify Russia doing exactly the same thing to the newly independent former Soviet states, and this is what is happening in Georgia right now. And make no mistake about, it won’t stop with Georgia – every former Soviet Republic and Warsaw pact member is quaking in their boots because they may be next. They all have restless minorities which could be easily manipulated by Moscow, and Moscow will use exactly the same “human rights arguments” to come to their “rescue” we were so thoughtlessly using in the Balkans. We had ample warnings but we closed our eyes and buried our heads in the sand – the people of Georgia are paying an awful price for our arrogant stupidity.We could’ve and should’ve helped the people in Yugoslavia resolve their differences peacefully, but instead we chose to take sides. Even better – we marginalized Russians and did our best to ignore them.

We taught Russians that “might makes right”, and we lost any moral right to tell Russians that what they’re doing is wrong.

Aug 11, 2008 - 10:06 am 15. Fred Mecklenburg:

massaraksh,

It’s true that innocent people can suffer as a result of one’s well-intentioned actions. Perhaps I know this better than you.

But I haven’t lost any moral right to tell the Russians they’re wrong. (Putin, if you’re reading this…) Nor did anyone have to impart the cynicism of “might makes right” to the rulers of the former USSR.

The Russian rulers would have been doing exactly this regardless. As they have for a few hundred years. As they perfected under Stalin. The Kosova argument is a propaganda shell game for them, as false as the lie of the Bosnian (or Kosovar) “jihad.” It provides them cover among the credulous.

The cynicism of the Russian diplomats that you mention is boundless. I can only add that they mentioned South Ossetia specifically, months ago, which should give everybody some notion of the cause-and-effect sequence of this war.

While you may wish to distance yourself from the worst of them, there are a lot of people right now using your argument to justify the rape of Georgia.

If Moscow can use “human rights arguments” as you say, it is only because cynical realpolitickers have contrived to put those words in quotation marks. Like I said before, there was a genuine movement for human rights in Kosova before the breakup of Yugoslavia. The world ignored it, it wasn’t “realistic” to do otherwise.

The Bosnians asked for the embargo on arms to be lifted, but that wasn’t realistic either. It might have led to the end of Milosevic, the “man we can do business with,” as I remember him being called by someone in the Clinton administration.

During the first Gulf War the people of Iraq were encouraged to rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein. They did, and the U.S. realists stepped back and watched them massacred in tens of thousands. Saddam remained in power. He was preferable to the Iraqi’s self-determination.

This is considered “realistic” because the known devil is preferable to the unforeseen events that can occur when populations start fighting for their freedom. So today, Robert Mugabe has been a preferable option in Zimbabwe for Mbeki and so many others.

When the people of Eastern Europe rose against their Communist masters in 1989 it was a great opportunity to change that whole equation. To put the real needs of people above cynical realpolitik. The events in the Balkans were a test of political imagination, perhaps above all. And that test the world failed.

Post-Communist Russia didn’t have to go the way it has, any more than Serbia did under Milosevic. But it takes ideas to battle ideas, and where were they? So the world looked at Bosnia and too many fell, lazily, disgracefully, for the myth of “ancient ethnic hatreds.” (The myth that has now been reformulated as “jihad in the Balkans.”) Rather than seeing the importance of the struggle to preserve a unique multi-ethnic society on the terrain of post-Stalinist society.

Bosnia should have been an occasion to come to terms with the experiences that defined the 20th century–the rise and fall of Communism, the meaning of civil society, and ethnic chauvinism, all things non-reducible to military terms. It was a tremendous missed opportunity and it looms larger as time passes.

Rather than forging needed human ties of solidarity and understanding, the situation was reduced to politicians and posturing and a narrow “realism” that cuts off in advance what an older time might call the angels of our better nature. Every time you announce the surrender of your right to speak I see that you are also a product of that great historic tragedy.

Well, in a sense we all are.

Aug 11, 2008 - 2:11 pm 16. massaraksh:

Fred

You’re absolutely right that Kosovo was exploited by Russian leaders in order to start redrawing the borders of the post-Soviet Union settlement, but that doesn’t excuse the Western do-gooders who thoughtlessly encouraged the gross violations of international laws in order to dismember Serbia and now are hiding behind lofty, but completely insincere and meaningless chatter about human rights. It was these do-gooders who empowered Russian nationalists and smothered the democratic forces there. You’re right that the cynicism of Russian diplomats is boundless, but so was the cynicism of Albright, Clark, and Holbrooke. Of course, there should be no surprise here, but the outright hypocrisy of the Western human rights establishment was even worse. They knew perfectly well that there was no genocide there, and they were aware that Izetbegovic, Tudjman, and KLA leaders were despicable characters, but they’ve done their best whitewash these thugs.

There’s no question that Milosevic was a thug, but compared with the KLA thugs running Kosovo right now, he was an angel. Of course, the same do-gooders who shed crocodile tears over a “genocide” in Kosovo (which turned out to be fiction!), now modestly keep quiet about the real ethnic cleansing which has taken place there. Thanks to the Western intervention, thousands of innocent people died there, just like thousands of people are dying in Georgia because Russian leaders feel free to trample upon international laws the way it was done in the Balkans by the West.

The talk about “human rights” turned out to be a smokescreen in order for the Western countries to dismember Serbia, and Russian leaders took note – unlike the primitive Soviet leaders they are now spouting the same rhetoric the West used to push around a small defenseless country – after all, what’s good for the goose is good for the gender. It’s not easy to ask Russia to respect other countries sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors when the enlightened West doesn’t believe it should abide by these rules.

It’s rather sad that the Western do-gooders don’t seem to learn – it would really behoove you to accept moral responsibility for the blind and unthinking support of thugs and jihadists in the Balkans – the defenders of human rights allowed themselves to be exploited and provided cover to the likes of Albright, Clark, and Holbrooke, and like them, they have blood on their hands.

Aug 11, 2008 - 7:41 pm 17. Fred Mecklenburg:

massaraksh,

One thing which marks the current rulers in Russia as true heirs of Stalinism is the ability to find others to justify their crimes. Stalin did of course mouth slogans of democracy, justice, peace and human rights in his time. He had a rather large echo chamber. On a side note perhaps, it is fascinating to see how the internet has been used to amplify Russian propaganda in the last few days. It’s the age of cyberwar.

Since you wish to distance yourself from the invasion of Georgia, it must be strange for you to hear your words in the mouths of the invaders and their cheering section. You must feel some cognitive dissonance there.

If you’re for real, you should learn from that, you should let it be the beginning of wisdom.

To sum up: You have never presented us with the slightest reason to doubt that mass atrocities occurred in Bosnia, and that Radovan Karadzic and his followers were the primary guilty parties. Nobody imagined that, nobody was taken in by any propaganda about it. It happened.

You have presented nothing to show that the Bosnian struggle was about “jihad,” rather than the fight to preserve a multi-ethnic society shared by Muslims, Serbs, Croats, Jews and Roma. It was a self-defense against the crimes primarily of Karadzic and his followers, and his state patron Milosevic. Not propaganda, but truth.

You refer to certain things without defining them. I’m not sure what a “do-gooder” is, or exactly who or what the “human rights establishment” is. Or how they could have “empowered Russian nationalists and smothered the democratic forces there.” Do they control other countries this way as well? Are they space lizards?

That’s like arguing about “wishful thinking,” there’s just no point.

Since you agree that the issue of Kosova has been falsely exploited by the Russians in the current crisis, there seems nothing else for us to argue about.

I’ll tell you that I do indeed accept absolute moral responsibility for my actions in support of Bosnia. Wish I could have done more than I did–it’s a cause I would have been willing to die for, then and now. Instead I try to live my life in support of those values.

Thanks to Phyllis Chesler for the opportunity to comment at such length. I stand by what I’ve said except for a few sleepy typos.

Thanks to you too.

“It’s the end, Clov, we’ve come to the end.”

Aug 11, 2008 - 11:40 pm 18. massaraksh:

Fred

First of all, I want to thank you for the interesting conversation we’ve had – it was quite civil and hopefully I conducted myself as well as you did.

I also want to thank Dr. Chessler for letting us have this exchange; I did write already that I have a great deal of respect for her intellectual honesty and courage which, by the way, have become quite rare nowadays especially in the academia.

I do hope you don’t just dismiss my arguments out of hand – I assure you that I have nothing to do with the pro-Stalin’s useful idiots and fellow travelers; I only refuse to duped by cheap, sensational propaganda and insist on using my own judgment.

Aug 12, 2008 - 7:37 am 19. John Peter Maher:

Let’s ask Mr “Mecklenburg” where where and when he heard me “always” heckling, intimidating’? Why didn’t he speak up? The only similar charge I ever heard was from a Croatian history teacher at a Catholic junior college near Chicago, but his name ended in the letters -UVALO, Put up or shut, Mr. Mecklenburg, if that is your real name.

Aug 13, 2008 - 8:06 am 20. Fred Mecklenburg:

I won’t dignify John Peter Maher’s ludicrously late and vaguely threatening post, except to recall my great amusement at once being called a “Paisleyite” by him. If he doesn’t remember that surreal moment then truly, historical memory is dead.

Aug 13, 2008 - 12:33 pm 21. John Peter Maher:

“Dr.” Ian Paisley is a murderous hater of “Fenian, Papists”. In his church over the years he has harangued his congregation to pick up the gun against “papists” or — if they’re not willing to do it personally, to give money to those who will (and do.)

Mr Mecklenburg. “put up or shut up” in the English language is not a threat. If you know English.

Aug 13, 2008 - 1:44 pm 22. John Peter Maher:

Raphael Israeli wrote:

Flashback 1999. International Piracy in Kosovo
Raphael Israeli. Jerusalem Post, March 26, 1999

Imagine an increasing Mexican population in southern California , or a growing Arab community in southern France , which would declare its will to secede from the American or the French heartland, and would use violence and terror to achieve its goal.

Would Mexico or Algeria be entitled to bomb Los Angeles or Marseille in support of the dissidents’ claim for independence? If they did, the civilized world would be unanimous in condemning this as an act of international piracy.

This is more or less what is happening in Kosovo today. The Serbs have considered Kosovo the cradle of their culture and ethnic identity, and as the stage where their history has unfolded, since the fourteenth century. Over the past decades, due to poverty and misery in neighboring Albania , tens of thousands of (mostly illegal) migrants have infiltrated into Kosovo to seek new opportunities. This is not unlike the process of illegal migration from Mexico to the southwestern states of the U.S. , or from North Africa to France .

And yet, those same countries which would not allow an illegal immigrant population to secede politically while tearing away part of the national turf, stand at the forefront of the western effort today not only to de-legitimize the legitimate Serbian endeavor to protect its national territory, but use force to achieve that morally and politically questionable goal.

NATO is not bombarding Yugoslavia because Serbia rejects peace in Kosovo, but because the West backs the Albanians’ demand for self-determination at the expense of their hosts, and insists on the presence of an international force on the sovereign territory under Belgrade’s lawful jurisdiction. This is something the proud Serbs reject, exactly as Washington and Paris would oppose any interference of outsiders in their internal matters.

True, there is the moral question of atrocities, and the international obligation to avert them. But, in addition to the proven inefficacy of the Western threats in this regard, there is also the factual question of presenting a true and balanced picture to the world.

The atrocities did not begin with the Serbs. They have an interest in maintaining peace and quiet in Kosovo, if only to ensure the livelihood of the Serb minority there.

Once the Albanians back up their demand for independence with violence and terror, what are the Serbs supposed to do? Bow out and withdraw from their sovereign territory? Under conditions of guerilla warfare, atrocities are bound to happen, on both sides, gory and inexcusable as they be.

If this new form of international piracy is allowed to continue, more foci of unrest will arise at the heart of the West. Instead of focusing the struggle against the rising threat of fundamentalist Islam (in which the Serbs have stood in the forefront, first in Bosnia and now in Kosovo), the West will make a grave error if it weakened itself in this exercise of self-immolation that is hard to understand, much less to condone.

The writer is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Truman Research Institute.

Aug 31, 2008 - 5:27 pm

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