Bgile wrote:US voters watched the debacle in Bosnia with great frustration as the Serbs killed thousands of helpless civilians. They saw what they thought was a similar situation developing in Kosovo, and it appeared they weren't helpless to do something about it. The Clinton administration lacked control of Congress and was inclined to take public opinion into account when making decisions, since that was the best way to gain control of Congress.
This is why he intervened in Kosovo. It had little to do with ideology.
You may recall that the USSR had dsiintegrated and the world and it' s dog was waiting pick over the corpse of Yugoslavia after the death of Tito. Milosovich as head of Serbia still maintained the mantle of socialism to keep his people imprisoned. Prior to his rise to power, Serbs had been seen as second class citizens, oppressed and kept poor because of their ethnic background. Milosovich as part of his campaign told the serbs they would never bow their heads to anyone again and that all restrictions on their right would be removed. Because of the way in which the stalinists -Tito included -handled the national question, a situation was created whereby it was impossible to improve the lot of one section of the community without offending the time honoured rights of others.
We had a similar situation in Northern Ireland where the protestants had enjoyed numerical dominance over catholics. If jobs were short, the protestants would be employed where the catholics were not. If social housing was in short supply the protestants were housed first. In times of economic stringency, it is impossible to unite the causes of separatist peoples. If the rights of catholics had been fully recognised, it could only be at the expense of the protestants. If catholics were gong to be house equally with protestants, then due to housing shortage soem prpotestants would not be housed. If a limited number of jobs had to be evenly shared, then Protestants would be seen to lose their jobs precisely in order to do justice to cahtolics. Hence the periodic explosions with murders and public beatings - set to resurface I wouldn't mind betting.
This is something I learned when I was in politics;
You cannot get by choosing between the good guys and the bad guys, because world events spin the leaders around so quckly that you cannot predict which way they will run when the next big change comes. The only guide you have is their self interest. All of the poltical leaders are opportunist to the core and behave like jackals. The leaders of the major powers must be in tune with their own corporations, or the press will destroy them and those of lesser powers look to the needs of their superiors, the imperialist powers. Everyone is looking out for his own phoney-baloney job.
If you are prepared to dig deep enough, you will find a pattern; if a minor power works well in harness with their imperial masters, they can get away literally with murder, killing and butchering their own people and suppressing national minorities at will. Look how long we tolerated Saddam murdering helpless Kurds and Marsh Arabs. Let them once offend their masters by taking an independent line on any issue and they will pay. Either hauled before the "international court" like Karradice or Milosevik or set up for judicial killing, like Saddam. I have no sympathy for any of these butchers, but they have done nothing which others have been able to get away with and under the watchful eyes of those who pay-lip service to this unbiased international court. Bush, Blair, Clinton etc.
Eidi Amin was educated at Sandhurst in the methods of suppression, learned over many years of such activity in maintaining Britain's hold on the empire, we fell out with him when he expelled the Asian community. Tha in itsef was not a problem, but as they had worked mostly for the British Foreign ofice in some rol or other they possessed british passports and we had to house them here. The Shah of Iran's Savak and other members of the Iranian guard as well as most of his armed forces were trained here. The Taliban were built in Pakistan and funded by US government money channelled through the Pakistani secret police funds. They were trained and groomed to take up arms against the then Soviet Russia which had invaded Afghanistan. Their backwoodsmen's ways were tolerated and indulged all the time they were working - and killing - for the USA, but as soon as they offended their imperial masters, they suddlenly became illegal drug-producers, harbourers of Al-Queeda and abusers of women who had to be hunted down.
The Taliban had by agreement, burned two years opium crops, but on seeing that the US was not going to honour the agreement re-started production. Until that time, the Bhurka and the summary beating and executing of men and women in public had been tolerated, but suddenly the liberation and the education of Afghan women became the new crusade and the Taliban became social leppers.
In order to build an alliance against the Taliban with indigenous Afghan people's, the USA and it's coalition partners made a pact with a body known as the Northern alliance. They account for 90% of Afghanistan's opium and other drugs whilst the Taliban accounted for just 10%. Not only that, the Northen Alliance, a grouping of thugs and gangsters, do not educate their women and they butcher, main and beat men and women alike who displease them. The much vaunted "education of Afghan women" has not materialised either. Ther are plenty of schools, or building which might be called schools, but ther are no teachers. When you make promises without building the infrastructure to facilitate, them it hardly adds up to help.
Right and wrong do not come into it. Britain and the USA will make a pact with the devil providing he does right by their respective corporations. Georgia was not in the right and neither was Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia and nor either were the leaders of those enclaves. It is all a matter of whom the USA (Britain will follow) cares to support and with Russia threatening to turn off oil supplies unless trade agreements are honoured (which favour Russia of course) it is hardly surprising that the poor little Georgians get the support of the USA against that horrible man Putin (Medvedev).
The difficult thing is, it is very hard to counter US attacks against Putin, because he really is an awful bit of work, to his own people and others who get in his way. It is difficult to support the South Ossetians because of their behaviour to toward Georgians. However, anyone with any consience cannot support Georgia because of the way in which it tramples peoples national rights in these provinces. It is a difficult situation to say the least, but by far the biggest outrage is the USA and Britain getting involved. The righteous indignation expressed is laughable. They couldn't care less about the Georgians. All they are interested in is putting international screws on Russia to ease the economic situation and Russia being so powerful, all they can do is shout from the sidelines about human rights. Touching.
It would be unfair to leave it at that. Britain and the USA are not the only ones invloved in this kind of skulduggery. You may recall Rwanda in 1994, when 77% of Rwandan Tutsis were butchered at the behest of the Hutu regime. The real bogey in all of this was the involvement of Britain and France. The antagonisms between Hutu and Tutsi were long-running and violent but had been smoothed over and a cease fire agreed. However, pressure from without caused a resurgence of the violence which led to the genocide. It was Britain and France fighting a war-by-proxy which caused all this. Britain backed the Tutsis in their quest for dominance and France backed the Hutus to maintain the status quo. Although the international community has accepted the lable 'genocide' - and the resultant slaughter was truly horrific - the aims of both sides were neither legitimate, nor were they unjustified. The Hutus were in control and wished to continue, though suppressing Tutsis as they went. The Tutis meanwhile were rebellious and wanted to dislodge the regime and establish their own rule. They came to an agreement between themselves, but somehow the two major powers intervened and managed to give both sides an inflated view of what they could justifiably demand and what they could reasonably expect to acheive. In the end the two major powers just stood and watched as Rwanda went up in flames.
How do you take sides in a dispute like that?
Britain and France managed it and soley on the basis of which tribal group would favour them in getting hold of Rwandan resources.
