“Humanitarian Imperialism”: US, NATO Lie to Justify Genocide and Destruction in Yugoslavia

Posted on 2018-03-302018-05-09 by Policraticus

Seventeen years ago today, on March 24, 1999, NATO began a 78-day deadly and devastating U.S.-backed intervention of Yugoslavia. It was the first time in history that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization decided they would attack a country without the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

Nineteen countries took part in the aggression led by the United States that was supposed to stop the repressive activities of the Slobodan Milosevic government and to establish a framework for its Southern province, Kosovo, under international law. Milosevic was president of Serbia from 1989 to 1997, and of Yugoslavia from 1997 to 2000.

The attack was carried out under the former U.S. President Bill Clinton’s administration and the rationale that it would prevent a “humanitarian disaster in Kosovo,” a “genocide of Kosovar Albanians“ caused by Milosevic and “comparable to Nazi atrocities in the Second World War.”

It was not the first, nor the last time, in subsequent years in different parts of the globe that U.S.-backed interventions would be initiated under the premise of a “preventive war.”

In the case of Yugoslavia, various parties later agreed that the alleged “genocide” never happened and that instead it was just another excuse to dismantle the socialists as well as federal dimensions of a unitary Yugoslav state and to break the country into ever-smaller pieces by bombing its people into submission.

This way, NATO’s bombing caused a much larger catastrophe than it averted.

The illegal bombing destroyed and damaged 25,000 homes, 300 miles of roads and close to 400 miles of railways. Many public buildings were damaged, including 14 airports, 19 hospitals, 18 kindergartens, 69 schools, 176 cultural monuments and 44 bridges.

The attacks killed at least 5,000 people (some sources claim it was closer to 18,000), injured 12,500, and left the area contaminated with depleted uranium, a chemical element internationally banned which to date is still causing childhood cancer rates to spike all over the Balkans.

The bombing of Yugoslavia was made possible by a number of public lies which were spread in an attempt to justify intervention into an internal conflict, which was eventually exploited by foreign powers to advance policy goals.

Myth 1: US-NATO Attacked After Milosevic Refused Talks

In 1999, Kosovo was a region of Yugoslavia where ethnic Albanians were the majority. And because Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia, the U.S.-backed NATO campaign violated international law.

While the U.S. government claimed that negotiations on Kosovo with Milosevic had failed and that the ongoing discrimination against Kosovo Albanians represented genocide, later statements by then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright proved that there were no negotiations.

The U.S. gave Milosevic an ultimatum, telling him, firstly, to grant autonomy to Kosovo. Secondly, to allow NATO to station 30,000 ground troops in Yugoslavia and, lastly, to allow a NATO-conducted referendum for Kosovo’s independence from Yugoslavia.

Milosevic made it clear that he would not allow a foreign-occupying army in Yugoslavia because it would be a gross violation of the country’s sovereignty and their independence.

NATO began bombing the country without further negotiation attempts.

Myth 2: Milosevic, a Danger that Needed to Be Stopped

It was well understood by NATO leadership that the bombing was not a response to the huge crimes in Kosovo, but rather their cause.

At the time bombing started, there were two potential diplomatic options for discussion, which included two proposals. One by NATO and another by the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

As Noam Chomsky once explained, “After 78 days of bombing, a compromise was reached between them, suggesting that a peaceful settlement might have been possible, avoiding the terrible crimes that were the anticipated reaction to the NATO bombing.“

The Bill Clinton administration was also wildly inconsistent in its practice of humanitarian interventions. The U.S. launched two military campaigns against Serbia while ignoring more widespread slaughter in Rwanda or justifying the Russian assault on Chechnya during the same period of time.

Myth 3: US-NATO Wanted to Protect Human Rights

A United Nations court has ruled that Serbian troops did not carry out genocide against ethnic Albanians during Slobodan Milosevic’s campaign of aggression in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999.

John Norris, who was Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott’s communications director during the Clinton Administration wrote a book in which he explains the real purpose of the war from his point of view. Norris explains that the bombing had nothing to do with concern for Kosovar Albanians.

The U.S. decided to bomb because Serbia, the last corner of Europe which had not subordinated itself to the U.S.-run neoliberal programs, and which was not carrying out the required social and economic reforms.

Myth 4: KLA, a Genuine Liberation Army

The Kosovo Liberation Army was an ethnic-Albanian “paramilitary organization” that sought the separation of Kosovo from Yugoslavia.

Before the bombing there had been killings on both sides which were distributed between the KLA attacking from Albania and the Yugoslavian security forces.

In 1998, the KLA was considered a terrorist organization by the U.S., but one year later the CIA financed them, while Albright offered them training in the U.S. “in order to get the Albanians’ … acceptance (of the peace plan),” and in hope to transform the KLA “from a guerrilla group into a police force or a political entity, much like the African National Congress did in South Africa.”

NATO’s illegal intervention revealed the dangers of “humanitarian imperialism” and how the criteria permitting such interventions has become more self-serving both in Yugoslavia and in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Originally published on 2016-03-23

Author: Marija Marković

Source: TeleSur

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

READ MORE!

God and the Fascists

Origins of immages: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google & Pinterest. Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

The Macedonian Name Deal Threatens to Erase European Identity

The Liberal-Globalists are carrying out another socio-political experiment in the Balkan petri dish, this time using the Macedonians as lab rats for testing how to most effectively erode a people’s identity before rolling out their weaponized model for replicating this on a continental scale, which they hope will enable them to erase the various nationalisms of Europe in their quest to transform the EU into a “federation of regions”. The Republic of Macedonia and Greece reached a tentative deal to change the former’s constitutional name to the so-called “Republic of North Macedonia” as a “compromise” for Athens agreeing to Skopje’s membership ...

UN Response to US Attack on Syria: Noble Words, Empty Deeds

The refusal of the United Nations to qualify the recent US airstrike against Syria as an act of aggression makes the Organization irrelevant – something Russia has been trying to prevent. It has become vulnerable to scathing criticism after demonstrating its impotence and inability to act. The continued paralysis is an eloquent example of the UN’s disengagement and lack of political will to fulfill its duty. The Organization’s image has suffered great damage. It still has a chance to rectify it by launching an investigation into what really happened in Syria. Article One of the UN Charter states that one of the purposes is ...

The American War

I was 23-years-old the first time I was arrested. It was at the Pentagon— an act of civil disobedience in protest of the U.S. war on Vietnam. My boyfriend, Jerry Rubin, and I were organizers for the National Mobilization Committee Against the War (familiarly called The Mobe). Here we call it the Vietnam War. The Vietnamese more accurately call it the American War. After all, the U.S. was the aggressor. It was our troops that landed on their soil; our planes that bombed their cities and sprayed Agent Orange; our army massacred their civilians, women and children included. Not the other ...

NATO: Lying All the Way to Barbarossa

Despite claims made during NATO Summit Warsaw 2016, that “NATO remains a fundamental source of security for our people, and stability for the wider world,” it is clear that the threats and challenges NATO poses as existing to confront are in fact threats of its own, intentional creation and continued perpetuation. From the ongoing refugee crisis triggered by NATO’s own global-spanning and ongoing military interventions, invasions, and occupations, to its continued expansion along Russia’s borders – violating every convention and “norm” that existed during the Cold War to keep it “cold,” NATO has proven that it is to the populations it poses as protector over, ...

Barbarism in Words and Deeds. Barbarism of U.S. Imperial Wars is Unmatched

“What Russia is sponsoring and doing [in Syria] is not counter-terrorism it is barbarism” Samantha Power, US Representative to the United Nations The US representative to the United Nations, Ambassador ‘Ranting Sam’ Samantha Power, accused the Russian and Syrian governments of ‘barbarism’, claiming Moscow or Damascus had attacked an unarmed United Nations humanitarian convoy delivering aid to civilians in Aleppo. No evidence was presented. Rants and threats do not require facts or proof; they only require vehement emotional ejaculations and compliant mass propaganda organs. ‘Barbarians’, to be clear, evoke images of leaders and groups, which abjure all civilized norms and laws. They ...

Crimes against Humanity: Why is Henry Kissinger Walking around Free?

Two months ago, hundreds of thousands of Chileans somberly marked the 40thanniversary of their nation’s September 11th terrorist event. It was on that date in 1973 that the Chilean military, armed with a generous supply of funds and weapons from the United States, and assisted by the CIA and other operatives, overthrew the democratically-elected government of the moderate socialist Salvador Allende. Sixteen years of repression, torture and death followed under the fascist Augusto Pinochet, while the flow of hefty profits to US multinationals – IT&T, Anaconda Copper and the like – resumed. Profits, along with concern that people in other ...

Classified Evidence: US Soldiers Raped Boys in front of Their Mothers

According to a number of global mainstream media sources, the Pentagon is covering up a disturbing video that was never made public with the rest of the recent torture report. According to various well respected journalists, including Seymour Hersh, the appalling video was recorded at Abu Ghraib, the notorious US torture dungeon in Iraq that made headlines roughly a decade ago, when the inhumane tactics being used at the prison were exposed. Sadly, it seems that the evidence released years ago was only scratching the surface. While the video has remained under wraps thus far, Hersh says it is only a matter of time before it ...

The White House – A Purpose of the Institution

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement! Donate to Support Us We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations. Save Save Save

Have You been Brainwashed about Gaza?

It’s frightening. Unprincipled psychologists, in the service of a malignant regime, use sophisticated techniques in order to control the mind of a person from afar. The term “brainwashing” was born in 1950. It is a Chinese word (“xinao”, literally wash brain). Originally it served to describe a technique used – so it was claimed – by Chinese masterminds to manipulate the minds of American prisoners in the Korean War. They changed their unconscious mental processes and turned them into agents of sinister forces. Many books and movies purported to show how this works. For example, the classic film “The Manchurian Candidate” shows ...

For Decades Russia Has Been Forced to Respond to NATO Expansion

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949 on the pretext of “containing Soviet influence”, has almost doubled in size within the past two decades alone. In 1998, NATO comprised 16 member states, but with repeated expansions up to Russia’s very borders, it now contains almost 30 countries. Though seldom mentioned in mainstream discourse, NATO is a US-dominated organization, whose orders are issued from Washington and customarily obeyed. The US is by far the largest contributor to the alliance, spending more than all other member nations put together. One of the critical reasons behind NATO’s formation almost 70 years ago, was ...

The More Plausible and Reasonable History of Palestine and Israel

The history behind Palestine and Israel is a history of Jewish European settler-colonialism — i.e., Zionism. And since racism is a symptom and a tool of settler-colonialism, Zionism is also viewed as anti-Semitism, and as ethno-supremacy or Jewish supremacy, Arabophobia and Islamophobia. The triangulation of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and Arabophobia in the history of Palestine and Israel is part of the settler-colonial movement of Zionism and is not a “new history” in the sense of the term as introduced by Israeli historian Benny Morris in 1980 to humanize, in Israeli academic discourse, the victims of Zionism. It simply reflects modern terminology and ...

Gavrilo Princip or Franz Ferdinand? Heroes or villains?

In 1917, the Austro-Hungarian government erected a monument to Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the Duchess Sophie in Sarajevo on the third year anniversary of the assassinations on June 28. It was called the Sühnedenkmal or Spomenik umorstva, The Atonement or Expiation Monument. The bronze statue was by Hungarian sculptor Eugen Bori. 1918 Austro-Hungarian postcard featuring the monument to Franz Ferdinand and Duchess Sophie in Sarajevo date stamped August 25, 1918 by Kartenzentrale Jacob A. Cappon, Sarajevo, the same publisher of the Gavrilo Princip postcard published after the war. Sarajevo, Sühnedenkmal. Spomenik umorstva. 28 VI. 1914. Atonement or Expiation Monument. Stamped ...

Hillary Clinton – A Member of the “Axis of (D)evil”

Shocking UN Report Lists Crimes by the Ukrainian Authorities

The 13th report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the human rights situation in Ukraine between 16 November 2015 and 15 February 2016, when the Minsk Agreements were in force, has come as a shock to Kiev. According to the UN, more than three million people live in the areas directly affected by the conflict. The exact number of people who have left Ukraine-controlled territory is still unknown, although rough estimates range from 800,000 to 1,000,000 people. The Ukrainian government has estimated that more than a million people have left southeast Ukraine for Russia, Belarus and Europe. This ...

America’s Culture War Mercenaries

USAID is spending $300,000 to fight traditional Christian morality in the Republic of Macedonia (a href=”http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-367912520/stock-photo-puzzle-with-the-national-flag-of-macedonia-and-dollar-banknote-concept.html?src=1NQf52M43o22eQ682DptgQ-1-66″>esfera/Shutterstock). A reader passes along a government document putting out bids for a contract. Here’s the top of the document: Apparently the (former Yugoslav) Republic of Macedonia, a small Balkan nation that emerged from the breakup of Yugoslavia, is insufficiently progressive on LGBT issues. So the American government is spending $300,000 to undermine the traditional Orthodox Christian culture of the country. Excerpts from the document (emphases mine): Macedonia has ratified the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Human Rights Convention. Through ratification of these human rights treaties, ...

Kosovo’s Mafia: How the US and Allies Ignore Organized Crime

PRISTINA, Kosovo — It was the fall of 2000, just over a year after the end of the war in Kosovo, when two NATO military intelligence officers produced the first known report on local organized crime, painting the former political leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), Hashim Thaci, as having “established influence on local criminal organizations, which control [a] large part of Kosovo.” The report, the existence of which has not been previously reported, was widely distributed among all NATO countries, according to former NATO sources interviewed by GlobalPost. And year after year as the nascent democracy of Kosovo struggled ...

Lithuania goes to War with Russia

A NATO defense ministers meeting that took place in Brussels on November, 8-9 resulted in the new and very important decisions for the future of Europe. Speaking at a meeting, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said it is vital that European roads, ports, bridges and rail networks are able to carry tanks and heavy military equipment. Stoltenberg also added that NATO countries have agreed to cooperate to improve civil infrastructure objects to make them usable for military needs. What does it mean in practice for Europe in general and for the Baltic States in particular? Lithuanian authorities, for example, will for sure try ...

Top Ten Myths Аbout the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

Myth #1 – Jews and Arabs have always been in conflict in the region Although Arabs were a majority in Palestine prior to the creation of the state of Israel, there had always been a Jewish population, as well. For the most part, Jewish Palestinians got along with their Arab neighbors. This began to change with the onset of the Zionist movement, because the Zionists rejected the right of the Palestinians to self-determination and wanted Palestine for their own, to create a “Jewish State” in a region where Arabs were the majority and owned most of the land. For instance, after a ...

Anglo-Saxon Roots of German Nazism

More than six decades after Berlin’s capitulation which capped World War II, the war is still raging, now in the form of revisionist attempts to cast a shadow over the memory of Soviet soldiers who fought in it. Among other things, the efforts aimed at equating fascism – a monster nurtured by the West in the 1930s-1940s – and Russia’s XX century wartime past are supposed to divert attention from the continuity between the Anglo-Saxon imperialism and the German national socialism. The nature and key traits of the continuity are exposed in “From Imperialism to Fascism: Why Hitlers’ India was ...