Sunday, November 19, 2006

Was the US intervention in Bosnia justified?

Without a doubt, Bosnia is now a hotbed for terrorism. See the following links here, here, here, and here. That is just the start of links, there are so many more I could link to! I do not mean to imply the vast majority of Bosnian Muslims were bad/evil/Islamists. But the leader, Alija Izetbegović, wrote a paper calling for an Islamic fundamentalist Bosnia, seized control illegally, and was in the SS Waffen Brigades, even founding a chapter of it! That is a fact, not even up for debate. There is no dispute that the leader of Bosnian Muslims was literally Nazis. What is up for debate is whether or not there was a genocide or civil war. In any case, I was not rooting for the death of Bosnian Muslims or said it was good that Bosnian Muslims were killed. I also contended that in fact Izetbegović led the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims and non Muslims. It is clear there WAS massive death on the Serbian side as well as Bosnian Muslim side. Peter Brock's new book Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting reveals that of the 8,000 Srebrenica "dead," 5,000 were Muslim troops who fled the enclave before the Serbs took Srebrenica, after regularly ambushing nearby Serb villages, to join other fighting. Their families claimed they had been killed, but 3,000 have since registered to vote in elections (though some of them are no doubt among the voting dead). The 2,000-3,000 bodies that have been unearthed belong to people who died during all three years of fighting around Srebrenica -- not just from the time the Serbs took Srebrenica. Nor is it clear how many of the bodies are Muslim and how many are Serbian. Brock's messier version of the otherwise tidy "8,000 slaughtered" event is consistent with this easy-to-read "Srebrenica Fact Sheet," as it is with this Globe and Mail article last year by the UN's first peacekeeping commander in Sarajevo, retired Maj. General Lewis MacKenzie. The 2,000-3,000 count is on par with the number of Serb civilians killed in and around Srebrenica, but no agency was tasked with counting dead Serbs and no humanity cries out for or commemorates dead Serbs. Indeed, upon being convicted of war crimes at the Hague, Srebrenica's Serb-hunter-in-chief Naser Oric was immediately released -- and got a hero's welcome home. As most Serb-killers do before pursuing political careers in the region. What is not up for debate is the way Islamic fundamentalism has now taken hold where it formerly had not, in Bosnia and especially Kosovo. (not saying all people are Islamic fundamentalists or that the nation is an Islamic fundie nation, but rather, that there is heavy recruitment and a propaganda base there) If there was no genocide and it really was a civil war, then without a doubt, it was not worth going in. I read reports of genocide, but the same people who say there was a genocide in Bosnia say there is a current genocide in Israel, and that is why I am rather sceptical when I read such reports. What do you all think? Am I barking up the wrong tree here?

3 comments:

Jason said...

Well, I don't know much about this specific conflict, but I do know what my position in general is about these kind of things.

As cold as it may seem, I don't think we should get the idea that we're obliged to stop all instances of "genocide" in the world, no matter how noble it might make us feel. We have our own self interest to consider as well.

Red Tulips said...

Jason:

I disagree, sorta. When the genocide reaches a certain level, I do think we have a moral imperative to act.

I do not believe that was the case with Bosnia.

Jason said...

The problem is determining that level. And what if it breaks out all over the world, with many nations engaging in their own genocides?

Morality aside, there is a real practical element. If we decide to go after nations responsible for genocide, we have to recognize that it is at least conceivable that we may find ourselves in a situation were, due to resources, we can only stop one instance of genocide out of many.

Thats why I couldn't buy all the arguments for overthrowing Saddam just because he was a brutal dictator. There are a LOT of dictators just like him, and if we think we have a moral imperative to overthrow them all, then we're in trouble, because we don't have the resources to feasibly do that.