And I do mean the bottom. You remember the Serbian Army? Those nice folks who gave us the Srebrenica massacre and the rape of Kosovo? Well, it looks like they're heading for Afghanistan -- courtesy of U.S. taxpayers:
Serbia to send troops and police to Afghanistan
The United States has accepted an offer by Serbia and Montenegro to send up to 1,000 combat troops and police to Afghanistan to participate with American forces there, senior Serb officials and foreign diplomats said on Friday...The deployment will be highly unusual. It raises the question of whether it will include Serb troops or officers who may have been involved in committing atrocities against Muslims in either the Bosnia war or the more recent war in Kosovo. Officials said that the U.S. military intends to vet all soldiers and police officers in the all-volunteer force.
The Pentagon is going to "vet" them? What, to make sure their mass murder skills are still up to date?
Sending Serbian troops to keep the peace in Afghanistan is more than just unusual -- it makes about as much sense as sending red ants to keep the peace in a black ant colony. Slavs and Afghans don't mix well. Just ask the Russians.
But the need for fresh cannon fodder apparently trumps common sense:
The American thinking was that the need for combat troops ready to take casualties in Afghanistan overrode political considerations about the wisdom of such a mission, and that in any case, the Serbs would be on their best behavior, officials indicated.
Best behavior? What does that mean? That they'll rape Muslim women before they kill them rather than afterwards? That they'll do a better job of hiding the mass graves this time? What?
But I suppose at this point the administration can't afford to be too picky. After all, the Serbs are our friends now. And what's a little genocide between friends?
And what's a little genocide between friends?
Cue GOP talking point: Genocide Is Such A Harsh Word
Yesterday my father, a retired Army trauma doctor who served in Vietnam, was called by the Army to see if he would be willing to sign up for "a few months." He declined--aware that once the Army has you on active duty they can keep you. We both suspect (duh) that the Army is having a hard time recruiting and retaining docs. Though it sounds a little disrespectful I would say that by contacting my Dad they were nearing the bottom of the barrel. My father is 72 and no longer practices medicine.
Though it sounds a little disrespectful I would say that by contacting my Dad they were nearing the bottom of the barrel.
Yeah, but how many war crimes has HE committed?
Unbelievable. A LA Times columnist accused the Bush II Administration of being medieval. They sure are trying to revive the medieval Christian Crusades.
The first act of second term of Bush II will be to reinstate the Draft.
I'm sure the Bush admin. isn't too worried about American public opinion on this one. Atrocities by Serb forces in the Balkans or in Kosovo are long since down the memory hole.
How they expect to slip this past the world Muslim community, I have no clue. Those atrocities are not yesterday's news for many Muslims. Just when you think the Bush admin. couldn't screw things up any worse it aligns itself with people who just a few years ago thought ethnic cleansing was good public policy.
I'm tempted to think that they won't stop 'til all Muslims everywhere hate us. Some of the Kosovars still thought well of the U.S. -- before this bonehead move.
Adding Turkish troops to the mix is may not be a good idea either.
Unfuckingbelievable. How many fucking Poindexters do they have over there in the Pentagon anyway? I guess the Serbian army didn't get to murder and rape enough Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. Is this another fucking neo-con "brain fart"? Jeebus Fucking Christ. What are these assholes thinking? And this on top of Bush giving Israel the green light to take out Syria.
Middle East experts in Washington said the apparent green light after the fact to the Israelis - who have threatened further attacks - and to Syria's critics in Congress may amount to a new strategy by neoconservatives in the administration to use Israel to topple the Syrian regime.
"Certainly for the neoconservatives, the idea that Israel could help us rearrange the map in the Middle East is not out of the question," said Judith Kipper of the Council on Foreign Relations, a nonpartisan think tank in New York and Washington.
Bush Backs Israel
Remind me again why this is not a war against Islam?
That's just brilliant in sheer madness and absurdity.
Weren't they thinking of asking Mongolia to send troops to patrol Baghdad a few weeks ago? I'm sure the locals have entirely forgotten the sack and complete destruction of the city in 13th century, after all.
Draft? If you think the draft riots of the Civil War were violent, just wait for Bush to try to reintroduce it.
Kosovo Muslims were very friendly with the US so far. That kind of decisions might change the opinion of the last people outside Israel to still have a good opinion of US policies...
Draft? If you think the draft riots of the Civil War were violent, just wait for Bush to try to reintroduce it.
i would like to see how they would get today's youth up and in arms. One hint at the fact that there is no playstation2, mcdonalds, mtv or cell phones in war and that might put an end to bush. you haven't seen rage until you tell an ADD, ritalin-addicted, 18 yr old that he can't play Madden2004 and has to drop and give you 20.
I really cant believe this... I happened to have spent alot of time in FRY from 92-96 (thanks to Uncle Sam)..
It just blows my mind. Really. Maybe the BSA has reformed? The kryina ? Nahhh..
STANI ILI PUTSCAM!
When will the Israeli peace-keeper contingent reach Bagdad? And the Iranian one? I've heard it's a joint mission.
Bill:
There is a subtext here that you might not be aware of: The Yugoslavian Army and the Bosnia Serb militia groups were substantially supported, armed and trained by Israel and the Israeli intelligence bodies during the various Balkan Wars of the 1990s.
This isn't fantasy. Unexploded Israeli armaments identified with Hebrew writing were widely reported found throughout Bosnia during the war. Israel clearly felt that it had a vested interested in preventing the establishment of Bosnia as Muslim state in Europe.
It seems likely to me that Sharon, his Mossad allies and his hardline accomplices would welcome some proxies on the ground in Afghanistan, if just in name only. My feeling has been that our Defense Department vets a lot of our foreign policy moves through the Likud, anyway.
Finally, although Milosevic is gone, Serbia is still a real troublespot and the Serbian part of Bosnia is even much more so. If these folks are our allies now, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Let me also add that Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries are suspected of providing financial assistance to Muslim paramilitaries and guerilla groups in Bosnia during the same time frame.
Re: Barry Freed's comments on Israel's Syria attack, the beauty of this is that having taken out Iraq by deceiving Congress and the UN, Bush is going to use his proxy mercenaries in Israel to finish off both Syria and Iran to complete the PNAC agenda.Any money allocated by Congress for the socalled reconstruction of Iraq will be diverted for the Syria and Iran projects.If Bush is elecetd this time, we will see the map of the Middle east completely rearranged with the US/Israel and Britain becoming the new colonial powers.The war between civilizations that the Neocon Harvard Professor Huntington wanted is close.Let us brace ourselves for a perpetual war.
The Neocon dream of turning us all into Israelis
constantly under the threat of terrorism is going to happen.
This makes me think that 9/11 looks more and more like something engineered by these crazy guys.
Imagine an American President complicit in the killing of American people on American soil.If you think that is farfetched, imagine also an American President ordering the outing of one of our own CIA agents.
We have sunk very low.
unemployment means the uneducated are entering the cookie grinder. the draft is going on now.
arnie for prez, zeig heil. on and on.
A bit of history here.
After WWII the French were given back the Korean peninsula and Southeast Asia (Nam-Viet for those whose maps arent that old). Remember these had been under control of the Japanese for several years and had suffered some of the most brutal represions under them. Aparently there are some nasty racist tendancies between various asian groups. Well, the problem was the French had just seen some brutal represions of their own and didnt have the manpower to control these areas very well. Instead of admitting the Colonial Period was at an end and setting these colonies free to their own destiny the French used foreign troops to control these regained teritories.
Anyone wanna guess whose troops they used?
If you guessed those same represive Japanese troops releaced from the POW camps, you are right.
Led to some small problems later on, like the Korean War and the Vietnam War. Oops, I mean "Police Actions".
Politicos make boneheaded moves like this all the time. One of the reasons I dont trust ANY governments. Politicos want power. To keep it they will make short term decsions that have long term side effects that they hope will come home to roost long after they have left power.
Works pretty well most of the time. Afghanastan wont compleatly detonate for several years by which time Bush will be out of office, and the American public wll not remember this bad decision and the next generation of power hungry politicos can use it as an excuse to seize power.
Aint it grand...
"Mediaeval" is used as a slur by people whose idea of what went on between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance is shaped largely by movies and Monty Python. Much good writing and philosophy came out of that period; one thinks of Boethius, the Venerable Bede, Peter Abelard, Roger Bacon, and every scientismist's[*] favorite philosopher they don't know anything about, William of Ockham. The mediaeval period also saw the birth of romantic writing; one thinks of Chretien and the unknown authors of the Song of Roland and of El Cid, Roman learning was deep in decay by the fall of the Empire; the last really good work came from the 2nd century AD, almost everything notable afterwards coming from Greek writers (e.g. Dion Cassius) and the early Christian fathers (e.g. Tertullian), with the notable exception of Ammianus Marcellinus, and even he was Greek (although he wrote in Latin.) Basically the popular picture that the Roman empire was a era of peace and light and the mediaeval period an era of dark superstition and anti-intellectualism is a load of hooey.
"Scientismist" - a vile word of my own coinage, in an attempt to distinguish between proper scientists and practitioners of scientism.
This makes me think that 9/11 looks more and more like something engineered by these crazy guys.
On sept 11, I was amazed by several things :
- the planes were precisely steered. It looked to me these planes were in the hands of decent pilots, not in the hands of some yahoo with a few hours flight lessons on his logbook.
- the Israeli PM was on french TV just hours after the attacks, and he identified "muslim extremists" as the culprits, and called for immediate action against them. He stopped quite short of pinning it to Arafat.
- Both towers crumbled. I am still amazed.
- The logistics of synchronising FOUR separate hijackings in a short timeframe are certainly quite heavy. Big organisation. In Europe, most sleeping cells have trouble coordinating the action of a few individuals, and the result are quite unsophisticated attacks, like gas shells and nails in a metro station. Perfect coordination of 20 yahoos ready to die ? I don't buy that.
- Sept 11 brought the administration a golden opportunity to push its PNAC agenda. What was the chance of that happening without such an event as a kickoff point ? Statistically speaking, nada.
In regard to Turkish Troops, the Iraqi Interim Governing Council has unaminously voted against accepting any Turkish troops anywhere on Iraqi soil... so yeah, that is not a good idea as I expound more at my blog.
I want to hear Wesley Clark's take on this.
superdupont: Because Bush's election in 2004 is crucial to the completion of the PNAC agenda, he and his minions will go for broke in using any means necessary to subvert the election process.
Unless the democratic Party is alert to all possible election rigging schemes,including disenfranchisement of blacks and hispanics on flimsy and illegal pretexts, voter intimidation,
outright fraud in the counting of returns etc. we are going to be shocked by how our country has been turned over to a bunch of gangsters in 2000.I suspect that Texas and California will be crucial states to watch.Karen Hughes is already at work in Texas purging the voter rolls with the assistance of Choicepoint claiming the mexican voters are illegal aliens a la Katherine Harris in 2000. Florida and California are in good hands with Jeb and Arnie reprising their nefarious roles.
So, you are right.Starting with 9/11, our citizenry has been terrorized into demonizing the arabs/muslims when the culprits are in our
White House.I suspect that Bush/Rove also had a hand in the Anthrax scare because the targets were people like Daschle who could cause political problems.To top it all off we now have the outing of a CIA agent which could only have come on the orders of Bush/Rove.
To repeat William Shakespeare,"The fault, dear brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves".
In fairness, many of the reported atrocities committed by the Serbs didn't take place, although many others did. There was a very active propaganda mill at work on both sides, similar to the false Iraq/Kuwait rape and hospital incubator stories designed to inflame the public and make them support Gulf War I. To think that any war is exempt from spin is unrealistic.
Israeli involvement with the Bosnian Serbs? I wouldn't doubt it a bit. It is a known fact that the Israelis regularly trained Noreiga's Panamanian death squads.
As for our Middle East adventures being part of a war against Islam, who ever doubted that? Just one look at the fanaticism in Bush's eyes when he preaches on and on about "evil" in his born-again Crusader speeches will show where his sympathies lie.
George Bush's Christian Right seem to be a bit unnerved not only with the increasing percentage of Muslims in the world, but at the same time with the fact that these Muslims are not staying on their home "turf" and are instead spreading throughout the Christian "domain." In fact, a goodly number of our troops have converted to Islam, although you only hear about the two who married Iraqi women. That has to make the religious-right nutballs go stark raving mad.
Ernest, agree strongly with your point that the Middle Ages produced fine writing, philosophy, science. Disagree strongly that that wealth of knowledge was limited solely to the Christian kingdoms of Europe as evidenced by your list. Muslim Spain was for centuries the most significant center of education in Europe and is credited with saving most of our wealth of both Greek and Roman thought. I am not criticizing your evaluation of some very learned men, just mentioning the West's lack of focus on Islamic contributions which seems to be typical in our society. Spain was under Muslim rule for over 700 years, and hardly a single peep comes out about its great universities where people from all over the world came to study and its invaluable contributions to knowledge at a time when an infinitesimal few in the rest of unwashed Europe could even read.
As I was posting my previous note here, I remembered something that William Kristol one of the authors of the PNAC document that is the blueprint of the Bush administration wrote: He says that we want the arab/muslim countries to fear us, not like and admire us.
This, in a nutshell, is the Bush MO in foreign policy.Rove is certainly using the same tactics in domestic policy.
So long as they hold the power to tamper with the election process itself and skew the election results in their favor and block any investigations, they wouldn't care if the economy or the war causes popularity problems for Bush.
Bush/Rove will do whatever it takes to win in 2004.They cannot afford to lose and be investigated by a democratically elected Congress.
Ernest, agree strongly with your point that the Middle Ages produced fine writing, philosophy, science. Disagree strongly that that wealth of knowledge was limited solely to the Christian kingdoms of Europe as evidenced by your list. Muslim Spain was for centuries the most significant center of education in Europe and is credited with saving most of our wealth of both Greek and Roman thought.
You make a good point. My education on these matters, spotty as it is, has a strongly Northern and Western European bias. This is evidenced also in the fascination with Northern European epic--Beowulf, the Scandinavian writings, &c. By contrast, the only Middle Eastern writer who seems to get much traffic is Omar Khayyam. Without indulging too much in the disreputable game of seeing bias in anything that moves, I nevertheless speculate that education in classical and mediaeval history is shaped largely by British writers who imagined that British civilization was the inheritor, in a continuous line of tradition, of the flame of classical learning and history.
While there was some good philosophizing and scientificating going on during the Medieval, the L.A. Times writer was referring to another aspect of that era, the official faith-based irrationalism that excoriated science, rejected the fruits of empiricism and demonized anybody who disagreed. Even in the darkest of the Dark Ages, a few bright lights shone through, just as right now, under Rightwing sway, all is not despair and know-nothingism.
superdupont says: Sept 11 brought the administration a golden opportunity to push its PNAC agenda. What was the chance of that happening without such an event as a kickoff point ? Statistically speaking, nada.
See PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century" (2000), page 51: Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.
PNAC's "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century
Shorter PNAC philosophy: We don't need friends - we need enemies.
Has no-one noticed that there has been an entire change of government in Serbia? And that they are now aiming for EU membership in the short-to-medium term? And will likely be part of Nato before the decade is out?
And, moreover, that paramilitary and police units are implicated much more in the atrocities than the regular army
Billmon--
I'm a bit unsettled by your demonization of the Serbs as a whole.
Shorter PNAC philosophy: We don't need friends - we need enemies.
That bit of the plan is going very well.
Who was that russian diplomat who, when signing a treaty with the US, declared "Today we deprive the US of something they badly need : an enemy" ?
I didn't know what exactly the PNAC plan was saying regarding my assertion upthread. Thanks for that, parallel universe. Amazing. If I ever had any doubts on someone's spooks having a finger in the pie, they're gone.
And I agree with CJW, significant great work came also from the muslim world during the medieval times. We would know dick about the greco latin heritage if it were not for these people.
Pass the crackers, please.
this is so retarded
has anybody of those yale grads ever contemplated that it might be counterproductive to have a country that just recently invaded its neighbors and committed military crimes of the worst, that has no clue of the meaning of separation of powers and fundamental rights of citicens goes to Afghanistan to enforce exactly these pillars of modern civilization that they've failed to uphold themselves ever since the fall of the old regime?
if this was an essay at school, i would get an F-.
Come on guys, don't be unfair. There's nothing fundamentally wrong with this, so long as
* the officers are "politically reliable"
* the troops have been trained to doctrines consistent with the Geneva conventions.
billmon, you can't have it both ways. The single biggest error in Iraq was to disband the old Iraqi army. Why should you assume that the Serbian army is any different? An army's behavior is by and large determined by it's political and military leadership.
Sending Serbian troops to keep the peace among Muslim Iraqis in 2003 is analogous to having Nazi troops run Jewish displaced person camps in 1946.
The Serbs HATE Muslims; it's an old Ottoman/Serbian rivalry dating back centuries.
Here we have a page out of Ariel Sharon's guide to 'keeping the peace': Sabra and Shatila anyone?
hey, i went to yale, and even i know this is stupid. cheney dropped out. rumsfeld went to princeton. i think the pnac guys went to harvard or something.
And, moreover, that paramilitary and police units are implicated much more in the atrocities than the regular army
the paramilitary units in Bosnia were, to a large degree, either Serbian Army regulars in drag, or were led by Serbian Army officers and noncoms in drag. In Kosovo the paras (mostly security service thugs and freelance hoods like Arkan) worked hand in glove with the regular army.
And BTW: the Serbs are going to send police units to Afghanistan, too.
Recruiting the Serbs for Afghanistan isn't nearly as risky as recruiting the Turks for Iraq. Although I'm not completely up to date - I lack some infos on the developments following the asassination of their progressive leader Zoran Djindic - they have gone quite a way in recent years.
And even more importantly - they have no interests and no bloody history in Afghanistan (as the Turks have in Kurdistan).
significant great work came also from the muslim world during the medieval times.
It was my understanding that Cordoba, in Spain, was the seat of enlightenment until the 15th century or so - coinciding with the Dark Ages in Europe. The European Renaissance actually spread from Cordoba.
I think the Srebrenica killers were Bosnian Serb soldiers which is not really the same thing as Serbian regulars -- different country.
Kosovo was real villainy but the Serbs have since kicked out Milosevic democratically by themselves and have taken things even further since the assasination of Djindjic.
Would you say the same about Germans or Russians going to Afghanistan?
...until the 15th century or so - coinciding with the Dark Ages in Europe. The European Renaissance actually spread from Cordoba.
Um, you do realize that the writers who are considered to have ushered in the Renaissance--Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer, &c.--are all 13th to 14th century? "Dark Ages", feh. I swear, half the people on the Internet must think that nothing of intellectual or artistic significance happened in Europe between the fall of Rome and the condemnation of Galileo.
Who got anything out of 9/11? Bush or Osama?
Bush went from known dolt to possible hero and his absurd totalitarian agenda flew under radar and under our doors and into every corner of our lives as fear of "terrorists".
Osama is a pariah hiding in a cave somewhere.
Bush's family and cohort "merchants of death" are getting hernias dragging their bags of loot to the banks.
You tell me who did it.
An army's behavior is by and large determined by it's political and military leadership.
Serb soldiers serving under BushCo. in a Muslim country.
Maybe it's just me, but that really doesn't give me a lot of confidence, Simon.
While there was some good philosophizing and scientificating going on during the Medieval, the L.A. Times writer was referring to another aspect of that era, the official faith-based irrationalism that excoriated science, rejected the fruits of empiricism and demonized anybody who disagreed.
This is wrong, although it took me a little while to realize why it was wrong. The "faith alone" theology, with all of its concomitant beliefs--sola scriptura (Scripture alone), mistrust of any tradition or knowledge outside of the Bible, and so on--is a product not of the Middle Ages but of the Reformation. It was a reaction against what was seen as the corrupting influence of other scholarship and traditions on the Roman church, but more importantly against the idea that one could earn salvation through one's own efforts, through good works and so forth, rather than through grace. It is this Reformation belief and not mediaeval religiosity that, mixed in I dare to speculate with a good dash of old-fashioned Manichaeism, has developed and blossomed in recent times (for the evangelical movement is very new) into American Protestant fundamentalism.
There was no early distinction between religion and science; they were both seen as valid intellectual disciplines. The two greatest contributors to the philosophy of the scientific method, William of Ockham and Roger Bacon, were both mediaeval clerics. Kepler was as much a mystic as he was an astronomer. Isaac Newton authored a commentary on the Book of Revelations. And so on.
I wouldn't worry about it really. There will be a thousand armed Serbs in a country of ten million Muslim men who wouldn't think of stepping outside their front doors without at least three firearms on their person, where the art of the blood feud makes Sicilians look like forgetful apologetic wimps, where the toy de jour in the Peshawar bazaars is a locally-made 3" mortar from a backstreet workshop.
If the Serbs are smart they'll sit in their bunkers for a year and take the American dollars home. If they're stupid they are in for a world of hurt. Nobody wins in Afghanistan except those for whom the land is home. The best you can do is contain the bloodshed to that land.
I think the Srebrenica killers were Bosnian Serb soldiers which is not really the same thing as Serbian regulars -- different country.
Different country??? That's a good one.
The role of the former Yugoslavian Federal Army (Serb in all but name) in creating, training, supplying, equipping and officering the Bosnian Serb Army -- and the Bosnian Serb paramilitary forces -- has been amply documented. That's why Milosovec is on trial at The Hague, remember?
Would you say the same about Germans or Russians going to Afghanistan?
I would definitely say the same about the Russians, but I don't think even this administration is lunatic enough to try to use Russian troops in Afghanistan.
Unless the Germans are recruiting 80-year old veterans of the Nazi Wermacht to send to Afghanistan, then no, I wouldn't say the same thing about the Germans.
My point is that the blood is barely dry on many of the atrocities the Serbs committed in Bosnia and Kosovo. We're not just talking about the same country, or even the same Army -- but the same guys.
To my knowledge, there has been no purge of the guilty from the Serbian Army (formerly the Yugoslav Federal Army)or the Serbian police. And some of the politicians now calling the shots in Belgrade are almost as rabidly nationalistic as Milosvec and his gangsters.
In other words, Serbia has never been properly "de-Nazified." (Hell, even Germany wasn't properly de-Nazified -- they just eventually died off.)
If it makes you feel better to think the United States isn't dipping its hands in blood to scare up enough troops to garrison its new protectorates, go ahead. But you're only fooling yourself.
I don't think you can call the Serb/Muslim situation in the balkans an age old ottoman thing, I believe it was more a power tool for Milsovic. Also, the serbian reaction to the KLA was not entirely differant to what Israel has been doing for a long long time, and whast the US did to Afghanistan after 9/11. If someone started blowing up police stations and barracks in the US, what do you would happen? Chomsky has some interesting stuff to say about it.
Serbia was like any dictatorship, you did what you where told or you got shot (standard punishment for refusing the draft, orders etc). Kosovo destroyed Milsovics power base and how long did he last after that? The majority of serbs where as happy to see him gone as the muslims kosovars. Those who did are systematicly being dealt with (read the wide-scale purges after the PMs assassination), and I really don't think the Serbs could do any worse than the US in Afghanistan. They don't have strike-fighters for one, so the canadians are heaving a sigh of relief.
"Whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad." Bush the Minor is definitely on the down slope. One wonders if it can get any worse. Strangely enough it always does. From awful Arnie in California to Condi Rice as new person in charge of Iraq to the Serbs as cops in Afghanistan to institutional turf war in DC my head spins and kaleidoscopic visions of future events spin around in my consciousness. I don't think I would be surprised if the four horsemen of the Apocalypse thundered into our world. God, I can hardly wait for 2004 and another national miselection.
jack i'm pretty sure the afghans dont want to see even one russian soldier in their country
The Yugoslavian Army and the Bosnia Serb militia groups were substantially supported, armed and trained by Israel and the Israeli intelligence bodies during the various Balkan Wars of the 1990s.
Any links discussing this subject?
Nevermind, found a pretty comprehensive discussion myself.
Flipping through Google, I found a ton of articles like this one:
TEL AVIV [MENL] -- Israel and the former Yugoslavia have agreed to launch defense and military cooperation.
Israel and the Republic of Serbia and Montenegro have signed a memorandum of cooperation that would pave the way for joint training, intelligence exchange and weapons sales.
The memorandum was signed on Thursday during the visit by Serbian Defense Minister Boris Tadic to Israel. It was the first visit by a Yugoslav defense minister to the Jewish state.
"We have a lot of room for cooperation in our defense industry," Tadic said. My idea is to bring Israeli technology to our country, to have joint ventures and to find markets through our relations [with third countries]."
Israel and Yugoslavia were said to have cooperated in defense and military issues in the 1990s. But formal ties were avoided amid the United Nations embargo on Belgrade in connection to the military campaigns in Bosnia and later in Kosovo.
http://www.mail-archive.com/balkannews@yahoogroups.com/msg00585.html
The Yugoslavian Army and the Bosnia Serb militia groups were substantially supported, armed and trained by Israel and the Israeli intelligence bodies during the various Balkan Wars of the 1990s.
To lead credence to stories of Israeli involvement and support of brutal dictatorships around the world, you may want to note that there is actually an official Panamanian military insignia of the Noriega era which identifies the wearer as having been "specially trained" in Israel. I have don't doubt that some Serbians/Bosnians were similarly trained in the same methods of torture, etc.
A couple more points:
The Bosnian Serb militias were not necessarily either led or staffed by Serbians from Bosnia. Arkan, the legendary "Bosnian Serb" leader, was apparently born in Brezice, Slovenia, to Serbian parents.
As Billmon mentioned, there was a lot of bleed-over from Yugoslavian Army regulars into Serb forces both in Bosnia and in the Krajina, which was a Serbian enclave within the borders of Croatia.
Secondly:
Someone mentioned that Serbia was a dictatorship like any other: You do what you are told or get shot.
The reality was really much more complicated. Post-Communist Yugoslavia was a gangster state similar in character to the Russia of the late 1990s and the current time.
Complicity was enforced, in some cases, by political murders, but mutual and self-enforcement of oppressive norms by regular people in society was much more the standard.
By this, I mean that everyone was constantly spying on each other, reporting each other to the police and trying to make trouble in order to gain petty advantages in an extremely corrupt society.
One strange part of Milosevic's rule was that he was insanely unpopular in (relatively) affluent Belgrade and Novi Sad in the north, and wildly popular in much poorer Serbian Bosnia, Southern Serbia and Kosovo.
Intersting reflection of our own North/South split.
I think, it is more important to first find out where these Serb ISAF troobs are actually supposed to be stationed.
From the news I gathered over time from Germany, its ISAF forced concluded it pretty hopeless to think Afghanistan could ever be pacified as a whole.
The only region fairly at peace and showing progress, is Kabul itself. The German command also ran a very twopronged approach pacification and cultural development. Thus, for instance, they send alternative German musicians to teach returning Afghan artists on how to produce their own music-tapes and shoot their own music-videos. [ie:Kabul is swamped with Indian and Pakistani music, which is not indegenous]
Before there was a discussion to widen the mandate of ISAF, Germany pressed ahead and sent officers into the north, to inquire the feasability to expand ISAF to Afghanistan's northern provinces.
Resultandly, these fairly stable areas are now where additional German troops will be deployed.
Very recently, there have been public complaints about the lack of progress in rebuilding the Kabul-Khandahar highway, the probably most important piece of infrastructure to rebuild the country economically and politically.
This is, coincidentally, also the most dangerous part of Afghanistan.
I'd be in no way surprised, if this Pashtun area and the task of building the highway would fall to the Serbs (But, I don''t know that for a fact).
following the asassination of their progressive leader Zoran Djindic ,as a fellow poster started pointing towards Serbia's new Democracy's problems, might very well have an interest to send certain elements of their army to that area.
I'd think it unlikely, that the Yugoslav Government has a keen interest to send it's highest educated, most likely to defend a coup d'Etat Forces into the desert.
Of course Serbia played a role in Bosnia but Milosevic is on trial for his role in Kosovo, not Bosnia or Croatia. In public at least Milosevic and Mira Markovic were openly highly critical of Karadzic
This is exactly the sort of ignorance and oversimplification that leads to invading Iraq. Serbia has managed to evict its fascist leader democratically. Go to Belgrade and Zagreb and tell me which one scares you more.
And you are doing exactly the right wing/post modern paranoia bit arguing about where the argument is heading and what the motivation is. All the worse because you are wrong, about the facts and motivation. Certainly it is pretty damning that the US is effectively hiring mercenaries to get itself out of a bloody hole of its own making but writing off an entire nation of which you know CNN headlines should be beneath you.
Sorry for bad grammar and spelling
I think I might have been unclear towards my point:
The new Democracy (there is good and bad in every society) in Belgrad might have a strong interest to send some less Democratic elements of their Military into the desert.
writing off an entire nation of which you know CNN headlines should be beneath you.
When you know as much as the CNN headlines, come back and we'll debate this some more, Jack.
Your are actually explicitly wrong (Milosevic's indictment) and I have to go away and learn some more? Riiiiight!
Jack, do you propose, anyone of the makers of "Lepa sela lepo gore" (Pretty Village, Pretty Flames) thinks, that sending Serb troops to peacekeeping missions is a particular good and peace-inducing idea?
Maybe Anna Lindh would be supportive of Serb peacekeepers - oh, wait....
I think with Sebia wanting desperately (and needing despaerately) amalgamation into the EU and after that probably NATO (assuming that that organisation actually survives), any Serbian that steps out of line will get zero protection from their government.
And Werner, do you propose that the architects of Vietnam and the first Gulf War (not to mention all those nice little clandestine operations in South America) should even be in Afghanistan and Iraq? Not that I am saying that you are, but American history, as I am sure you well know, is not necessarily as pristine as a lot of presidential speaches make out. Problem is of course, which country has a clean slate?
Fuck, actually I don't even want to contemplate this/these situations anymore. What a fucking mess. My brain just broke. Sending the serbs in is a stupid fucking idea, but writing off an entire country is also a stupid fucking idea, much like invading Iraq, can Bush just stop fucking up the world for one fucking moment please?
This kind of exposure is counter-producite. The Serbs should be left to sort thier shit out some more (as, it must be acknowledged, they are doing), before getting involved in this. I wonder how much they are being paid, as you can bet they need the money. For fucks sake.
Sorry for the swearing and crap spelling. I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Night Night.
WMD, I hear you loud and clear, and it is a good point to keep track of.
However, I have kept track of them. And, aside of Canadians, they have done the world-record best of peace-keeping missions so far. Shamefully, not much good credit the world ( That means YOU ) has extended back to the current Red-Green Government so far, and last but not least, therefore they will be swept away by extreme right-wingers in the next federal election (Add that to the Presidency, the House, the Senate, the Supreme Court and now California Gubernatorials - due to nothing else, than YOU not speaking out and being supportive in public )
No, really, the German Government, trying so hard to do the right thing, and begging for the progressive liberal America to help, are now just hanging there to die! No, really! Let me bring this home to you! You don't realize how much effort the NeoCons spend overseas! They do!
What is it you do to help?
Sign of our defetistic times. I want to cry! (And, do often )
You people don't even get that it is past midnight.
Truely, we are way down in the Conan dark ages.
Why do you mice think, it is Conan leading us out of them?
Damn you, coward Hemingway! Damn you, stupid Americans!
I'm from and live in New Zealand actually.
The american ambassador just got booed off the stage when he tried to criticise our lack of support for W. and our anti-nuclear policy. Go figure.
The american ambassador just got booed off
Great news. Man do I like New Zealand.
yet another disgrace...i guess bush&co. are thinking they don't need anymore blood on their hands, especially that of our troops. why do i not see this going over very well...