Re: Operation Christmas Child

Author: Mark Maher
Email: markamaher@worldnet.att.net
Date: 1997/11/25
Forums: alt.fan.mira-furlan
Message-ID: <73ftbk$11s@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>

jwcassell&364;my-dejanews.com wrote in message
<73f1mq$4jo$1@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...

>Karadzic and Mladic pursued a deliberate strategy of targetting
>civilians fortorture and slaughter as a way to gain territory.
>A very good case can be made that Milosevic was at the very
>least aware of their plans. While it is certainly true that
>Croat and Muslim forces also committed war crimes, the bulk of
>these offenses were committed by Serb forces. So have a very hard
>time with those who lump the Croats and Muslims in with the Serbs.
>Stikes me as saying a guy who shoots someone in a robbery is
>"as guilty" as a contract >killer. Technically correct, but
>not terribly insightful.


Yes, you are correct, technically speaking. The Yugoslav Federal Army (made up of almost exclusively Serbians) has been particularly ruthless in their attempts to maintain a unified Yugoslavia. A ruthlessness that has ultimately failed. But these three groups which began as a single people 1400 or so years ago have been at each others throats so many times over the centuries that they no longer care; they simply have so much distrust of the others that every 40 years or so they fall apart, kill a whole lot of people until someone else come in and *takes over* just to quiet things down or they exhaust themselves and settle back into an uneasy (and often very unequal) truce.

Yeah, this time the Serbs are perceived as being particularly brutal in their methods. Last time, during World War II, it was the Croats who were particularly enthusiastic in including Moslems, Roms and Serbs in Hitler's "Final Solution" for the Jews. I do not make any pretence of excusing the Serbian's actions in this breakup of the former Yugoslavia; they are nothing short of genocidal and those responsible should be held to account. Milosovic tried to be a little more subtle in Kosovo than with what happened in Bosnia and Sarajevo. Just drive the Albanians into the mountains and let them all starve to death; that's the ticket. Hopefully, the fragile truce will last long enough for that strategy to fail.

Sadly, genocidal practices are all too common in war. The Russians tried the same thing in Afghanistan by using Hind gunships, designed as heavily armored anti-tank weapons, to level villages and settlements. Saddam Hussein used poison gas on the Kurds. The United States killed hundreds of thousands of civilian Japanese during fire-bombings of Tokyo and other cities. I can go on if you like. No one's hands are completely clean in this war in the Balkans; in war no one's hands ever really are. Yes, the women, the children, the old and weak are mostly victims, having never lifted a weapon in anger. Sadly, their undeserved pain, suffering and deaths are always touted as justification for the *next* war. They become unwilling accessories after the fact. The next time, how many innocents on the Serbian side will be slaughtered to even the scales for this time? It is madness. It is insanity. And unfortunately for so many, it seems to be an inevitability. Unless and until the people of the Balkans can awaken from this centuries-old blood feud, each conflagration will only set the table for the next one.

__!_!__
Gizmo