I think it’s clear their obsession with the oppressive governments of Russia and China stems from sheer envy.

Sorry this isn’t funny, but I’ve always despised Totten as one of the worst of the worst, a jackass who cheapens — no, shits on — on the best leftwing principles. He’s the kind of prick who never agreed with Hitchens until the drunk turned into a jingo after 9/11 (and then Totten thought him a journalistic God).

I love how Abkazia fails the Kosovo test because it practiced ethnic cleansing. So, he argues, it’s actually more like the Kosovars’ persecuters, Serbia! EEEevil!

Yet his beloved Operation Iraqi Freedom inevitably resulted in ethnic cleansing in Iraq, a process politically encouraged and logistically enabled by the United States. And of course he says nothing (and not just to preserve his check from the Pod People at Commentary) about Israel’s ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

Fuck him.

What kills me about Kosovo is that it declared independence after Serbia:

a) Withdrew its security forces from the region
b) Overthrew Milosevic and turned him over to the Hague
c) Became a free and open democracy

Serbia did everything the West asked of it and it still lost Kosovo.

Grrrr, just thinking about NATO’s intervention in 1999 and the support it received from normally anti-war liberals and leftists still makes me mad.

Grrrr, just thinking about NATO’s intervention in 1999 and the support it received from normally anti-war liberals and leftists still makes me mad.

Well, I sorta defended it at the time. Or, at least, I was not against it. Mostly, in 1999 I was rather politically apathetic. Though I do remember being disturbed by Clinton’s bombing of Iraq in… 1998 was it? But not knowing what to do about it.

AJB, I think part of the reason this may have been the case was that the entire situation in Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo etc. was just really complicated & hard to figure out. I remember reading newspaper articles in 1996 or so which described a slow war between three different ethnic groups for control of a territory that used to be a state but which was now being torn into small, random chunks of territory. The right thing to do was non-obvious.

Well, Abkhazia did issue one of the best stamp sets ever.

AJB, I think part of the reason this may have been the case was that the entire situation in Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo etc. was just really complicated & hard to figure out. I remember reading newspaper articles in 1996 or so which described a slow war between three different ethnic groups for control of a territory that used to be a state but which was now being torn into small, random chunks of territory. The right thing to do was non-obvious.

Fair enough.

But it should be clear by now, after revelations about non-existent mass graves and CIA meddling, that the bombing of Serbia was both excessive and unnecessary. I suggest that people who still support Clinton’s air strikes read about the Rambouillet Agreement and how Serbia faced an uneasy choice between accepting an unfair accord and being bombed by NATO.

Also, I should note that I’m not a Milosevic apologist or a Srebrenica denier. I just think that the Balkans was indeed a bit more complex than the West portrayed it.

Look, what matters is that you’re from the right country (USA / UK / Israel), you’re dealing with someone not difficult to portray (realistically or not) as shockingly nasty, and that you say your military intervention is for democracy and other great principles.

After that, no war promoter is required to make an argument that life for the intended beneficiaries will actually be objectively better, because those sorts of details are for the moral inferiors charged with carrying out policy.

Your duty as a humanitarian militarist is simply to declare the need for your latest intervention in the highest moral tones, and similarly to decry anyone of a wrong country who tries to use your same arguments for their purposes.

Your link about the mass graves is a bit old. Here is something from 2005:

Each body bag does not represent an individual victim. Excavators at the scene of a mass grave isolate body parts and bodies the best they can and put them into body bags. Because of the problem of commingling and secondary grave sites, parts of the same individual may be in other parts of the same grave site or in other graves. Therefore, the remains of one individual are sometimes contained in several different body bags.

This does not diminish the number of persons who went missing from Srebrenica. As of early 2005, ICMP has on its database 7,789 named missing individuals from Srebrenica – and there are more people missing because ICMP has bone samples for which there are no matches with family members’ DNA.

The nearest estimate of the number of exhumed bodies from Srebrenica in early 2005 is close to 4,000. No one can give a more precise figure than that. There are many more sites waiting to be exhumed – and doubtless more will be discovered.

http://citycellar.com/BalkanWitness/Sreb1.htm
=====
Bet you Raimondo never put that link up…

Being photographed in sepia doesn’t change the fact that you have a face like Ron Perlman with a more normal-sized head.

I note that yet again they don’t bother to mention that the first thousand people killed in this war were killed by the Georgian army, when they bombed the city of Tskhinvali. But yeah, other than that, Saakashvili is clearly a blameless victim.

Also, I should note that I’m not a Milosevic apologist or a Srebrenica denier. I just think that the Balkans was indeed a bit more complex than the West portrayed it.

Its simple, we picked our side in the Balkan’s and Serbia wasn’t it. The Serbs were fucked on any issue, and while you can argue the toss over Bosnia, Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia and therefore the bombing was illegal. More importantly, the NATO attacks on Serbia over Kosovo were a test run for what later happened in Iraq, in fact our Tony used it as a justification a number of times.

And I’m sorry, but I don’t get the argument that it was too complicated, it was a power play, pure and simple. Last thing the west wanted was a powerful Greater Serbia sitting aside Europe, better off, have a bunch of weak, vassal states begging for crumbs.

But saying that, massacres did occur in Srebrenica, however its funny that equivalent massacres by Croats & Bosnians never got a mention. “Operation Storm” & Krajina being 2 cases in point.

Well, it could be worse. I’m pretty sure it was the WSJ, those notorious Russophobes, who once argued that the Abkhazian and South Ossetian minorities don’t actually exist. And then went on to label every single person in those two regions as terrorist or criminals.

Of course, that no-one outside Russia recognizes them as actual nations in no way explains why crime may be rampant in those regions…bad economies have never produced rampant criminality after all, only bad morals does that.

But his ploy is going to work.

Just watch. A handful of rich GOP are going to donate enough money (or already gave) to Totten, he’s going to report back that the conniving Ruskies are killing/stealing/drinking, and we’re going to have another push for intervention after the election. It doesn’t matter if McCain wins or Obama wins. The GOP will push this from their minority position in the legislature, and when it doesn’t happen, they’ll say it was because of Democrats being fags, or somesuch. They get domestic political points, and even the possibility to blow up another small country.

The way we have to combat this, is to get one of our own to fly to Georgia (Biden doesn’t count, sorry), and actually report on what the Hell is going on. The added bonus is that anyone we send should actually, you know, speak the local languages and be able to blend in and hence get a more honest perspective. Of course, to do this, we need to cough up some green for the transport and pay of said liberal, honest reporter, which hasn’t been the liberal blogosphere’s forté, exactly.

Just going to nominate myself here, having taken some Russian courses back when and having the general itch to travel.

Also, I’m a little sad I couldn’t see the esteemed Josh Marshall when he was in the Mile High.

I’m a little sad I couldn’t see the esteemed Josh Marshall when he was in the Mile High.

Aww, sorry I missed ya!

I’ll write about the trip soon, but for now I’ll just say that I was totally unprepared for pretty much everything I encountered there. I didn’t have much internet access when not in the tent, which made it hard to answer mail and keep up with stuff, people, events.

And I’m sorry, but I don’t get the argument that it was too complicated, it was a power play, pure and simple.

Lobbey

You’re in the UK right? Well, your press probably did a way better job reporting what the fuck was actually going on. Maybe you were more politically aware too.

To a semi-apathetic young American in the 1990s, the whole situation was far from clear.

we need to cough up some green for the transport and pay of said liberal, honest reporter, which hasn’t been the liberal blogosphere’s forté, exactly.

Just going to nominate myself here, having taken some Russian courses back when and having the general itch to travel.

Is that a serious offer, the_millionaire_lebowski?

Please tell me that’s Vaseline(R) on the camera lens.

Hey, Michael?

What’s your stance on the Confederate South, oppressed and enslaved by the Union?

Er, and one more thing, Michael. You know how you said Kosovo is a real state with sovereign rights because it’s recognised by 46 countries?

Well…

the_millionaire_lebowski says “to do this, we need to cough up some green for the transport and pay of said liberal, honest reporter, which hasn’t been the liberal blogosphere’s forté, exactly”

So, why doesn’t the liberal blogosphere have an equivalent to Michael Totten or Michael Yon? Why don’t they have someone who is willing to go into warzones and take the risks that are required to provide independent reports from the actual scene? Could it be that, (other than the_millionaire_lebowski, if he’s serious) you’re ….chicken?

After Russia’s current imperialist endeavor, people in former soviet bloc countries are more than a little nervous. If the American left appears to be ok with Russian actions in Georgia, and they spend more time attacking Russia’s critics than they do criticizing Putin, what message are we sending to people in places like Poland or the Czech Republic?

Serbia did everything the West asked of it and it still lost Kosovo.

Maybe they should have tried not being responsible for the atrocities in Bosnia, which put them on our shit list. Then maybe we would have been a little more willing to work with them rather than against them.

Read.

Europe was facing another ethnic civil war in the Balkans; they did not want a repeat of Bosnia. There being no other military alliance available, NATO got the duty. You can be liberal and anti-war and yet realize that using force to end war and ehtnic cleansing can be beneficial. Do not try to construct tortured analogies between Kosovo and Georgia or Kosovo and Iraq; every situation is unique and deserves to be evaluated on its own merits. We intervened in Kosovo because violence was escalating, we didn’t want another civil war in Europe and we didn’t like Serbia.

Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia and therefore the bombing was illegal.

That may be; but the alternative was to allow more ethnic cleansing and more refugee displacements, all because permanent members of the Security Council threatened to veto any requests for official sanction of military action. At which point do humanitarian concerns trump geopolitical obstructionism? It was technically illegal, by the letter of international law; but it was morally worth doing.

I’m not saying it’s an easy call. You have to decide how far you are willing to go and where you draw the balance between respecting international law and pursuing human rights. How much carnage will you permit, how many people have to die before you will support military intervention and to hell with international law? A thousand? A million? Ten million?

“Liberal interventionism” has taken a beating these past couple of years, and it’s a good thing to be skeptical; it’s all too easy for a humanitarian intervention to turn into imperialism and colonialism. But I think you need to keep in mind that the principles behind a “liberal intervention” may indeed be worthwhile, and we ought not to automatically dismiss any and all military interventions as mere adventurism.

Very informative article. Thanks!

Excellent article.

Michael Totten is the best war journalist working today.

The war in Kosovo was the fourth war essentially started by Serbian irredentism after Serbian agitation caused Yugoslavia to break up. After Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, it was pretty clear that Serbia wasn’t willing to behave in a civilized manner–especially as each war was more brutal than its predecessor–and needed to be taken down a peg or two before they got any ideas about stirring up trouble in Macedonia, Bulgaria and/or Romania.

Bollocks, that’s Chuck Norris.

very innovative and great article. Thank you