Initially modelled after Hitler’s rapid war-winning strategy, the NATO offensive was not expected to last more than three or four days before Yugoslavia folded. In the event, it lasted more than seventy days.
The first and most overpowering impression upon seeing a great state suddenly plunged into agony and disarray is sheer disbelief at “how the mighty have fallen”.
Since its illegal formation in 1993 in contravention of the Charter of the United Nations, the Hague Tribunal, also known as International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and by its acronym ICTY, has served as a battering ram for knocking down international law and, just as importantly, procedure (and here).
James BOVARD
President Bill Clinton’s favorite freedom fighter just got indicted for mass murder, torture, kidnapping, and other crimes against humanity. In 1999, the Clinton administration launched a 78-day bombing campaign that killed up to 1500 civilians in Serbia and Kosovo in what the American media proudly portrayed as a crusade against ethnic bias. That war, like most of the pretenses of U.S. foreign policy, was always a sham.
In this country I am regarded as White and therefore, privileged – it seems. People in the streets and on television say that Whites should kneel and apologise. Really? How come I find myself in this bizarre situation? How did I get here? How did a refugee from war-torn socialist Yugoslavia turned fisherman in the South Pacific become a privileged White male? Did I miss anything? Is it something I did? Something I said? No, it’s not something I did or said. It has nothing to do with me. Except that… it has everything to do with me and there is no-one to speak out for me!
Sensible people with a modicum of historical perspective are raising the question that until recently they dared only whisper: Quo vadis United States of America?
The passage in the 1960s song by Burt Bacharach and Hal David “Make it Easy on Yourself” – “breaking up is so very hard to do” – means the same thing for aspirant nations that want to go their own way. It has not been for a lack of desire that some would-be nations have found it almost impossible to separate from their mother countries. Outside interests from lands far away have deemed it dangerous to foster new nations in today’s political and economic climate.
