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On March 11, the former Serbian leader
and president of Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosevic, died in his
prison cell at the Hague, where he had been on trial for four
years and one month for war crimes and genocide. The Serbian
Socialist Party leader Zoran Andelkovic responded to the news
of Milosevic's death with the following statement:
"Slobodan Milosevic, the
president of the Socialist Party of Serbia and a former president
of Serbia and Yugoslavia was murdered today at the Tribunal in
Hague. The decision of the Tribunal to disallow Milosevic's medical
treatment at the Bakunin Institute in Moscow represents a prescribed
death sentence against Milosevic. Truth and justice were on his
side and this is why they have used a strategy of gradual killing
of Slobodan Milsosevic. The responsibility for his death is clearly
with the Hague Tribunal."
A partisan accusation or the
truth? Milosevic was known to be seriously ill. The Russian government
promised to return Milosevic to the Tribunal after treatment.
The Tribunal refused. It is easy to conclude that the case against
Milosevic had collapsed and that an embarrassed US government,
NATO authorities, and Hague Tribunal decided to let him die in
his cell rather than admit that his guilt could not be proven
even after a trial lasting four years and one month.
Milosevic was caught up in
the post-Soviet era break-up of Yugoslavia. Nationalist forces
broke up the Yugoslav federation. During 1991-92, Croatia, Slovenia,
Macedonia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina seceded from Yugoslavia. Large
Serbian minorities in Croatia and in Bosnia objected and claimed
the identical right of self-determination to remain in the federation
as Croats and Muslims claimed to leave it. Croatian and Bosnian
Serbs organized and a war against secession began.
Milosevic could hardly remain
a Serbian leader and not support the Serbs. Abraham Lincoln was
canonized for invading the South to prevent its secession, but
Milosevic was damned for trying to protect Yugoslavia's territorial
integrity. In the end Milosevic accepted secession. In 1995 Milosevic
negotiated the Dayton Agreement which ended the war in Bosnia.
According to the encyclopedia, Wikipedia, "Milosevic was
credited in the West with being one of the pillars of Balkan
peace."
In 1998 Milosevic was confronted
with a more severe problem. Armed actions by the separatist Kosovar
Liberation Army, listed as a terrorist organization by the US
Department of State, in the ancient Serbian province of Kosovo
broke out into warfare. Milosevic was now trying to hold on to
a province not of Yugoslavia but of Serbia itself, a province
that had been colonized by ethnic Albanians. The Serbian population
in Kosovo was outnumbered nine to one and suffered greatly at
the hands of the KLA.
Milosevic, already damaged
by the wars of secession that destroyed Yugoslavia, lost the
media campaign waged by public relations firms hired by contending
factions that spun the news that Americans received. Milosevic
was demonized, and the Clinton administration had Serbia bombed
by NATO forces for 78 days in the spring of 1999. Many Serbian
civilians were killed by the air strikes which hit passenger
trains and destroyed the Chinese embassy. In effect, the US interfered
in Serbian affairs in behalf of the secession, with the result
that Kosovo has been essentially ethnically cleansed of Serbs.
Kosovo is apparently still considered to be a part of Serbia,
but it is administered by the United Nations. Somehow, this has
been presented as a great moral victory for humanity.
If the massive propaganda campaign
against Milosevic had many facts behind it, he long ago would
have been convicted at the Hague. What was the episode all about?
In my opinion, it was to establish
the precedent, later to be employed in the Middle East, that
the US government could demonize a head of state geographically
distant from any legitimate "sphere of influence" and
use military force to remove him. This is precisely the fate
of Saddam Hussein, and the Bush regime still hopes to repeat
the strategy in Iran and Syria.
The unanswered question is
why does the "international community" go along with
it? The numerous civilians killed by US interventions are just
as dead as the ones killed by heads of state attempting to hold
on to their countries. Why are the latter deaths war crimes but
not the former?
As a presidential candidate,
George W. Bush criticized President Clinton's intervention in
Serbia and disavowed the international policeman role for the
US. But as soon as Bush got in office, he plotted to invade Iraq.
Why?
Americans should be very concerned
that Bush still has not come clean about why he invaded Iraq.
Americans should be disturbed that despite the disastrous results
in Iraq, Bush still intends "regime change" in Iran
and Syria.
Jobs
Update
The Bureau of Labor Statistics'
payroll jobs report released on March 10 lists 205,000 new private
sector jobs for February. As has been the case for a number of
years, the new jobs are in domestic nontradable services. The
sources of February's new jobs are:
* construction (primarily specially
trade contractors) 41,000 jobs;
* wholesale and retail trade,
transportation and warehousing, 15,000 jobs;
* financial activities (includes
insurance and real estate) 22,000 jobs;
* professional and business
services, 39,000 jobs (roughly half of which are in administrative
and waste services);
* education and health services,
47,000 jobs;
* waitresses and bartenders,
21,000 jobs.
During the past year, the economy
has lost 60,000 private supervisory jobs, 48,000 manufacturing
jobs, 65,000 jobs in nondurable goods (mainly textiles, apparel,
paper and paper products), and 25,000 jobs in air transportation.
Over the last year, the economy has gained 203,000 jobs for waitresses
and bartenders.
New York Times reporter Vikas
Bajaj again misreported the BLS release. He attributed 38,000
state and local government jobs to businesses.
Charles McMillion of MBG Information
Services reports that hours worked in manufacturing have fallen
7.1 percent during the 51-month old current recovery and that
growth in total private sector hours worked in non-supervisory
jobs is the weakest of any recovery on record. This suggests
that many new jobs are for less than a full 40-hour work week,
which could account for the lack of growth in median household
real income.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury
in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the
Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of
National Review. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
Finally
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
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