Lies vs. facts about the U.S. war on Yugoslavia
By Gary
Wilson
President Bill Clinton says that the U.S. must bomb
Yugoslavia because its leader, Slobodan Milosevic, is like
Hitler and must be stopped. Clinton even says that if the U.S.
doesn't do this, a new world war is certain.
Clinton's words are clearly meant to justify the U.S. war
against little Yugoslavia. No one in the world believes that
Yugoslavia is in any way a threat to the U.S. So Clinton has to
say something to justify what would otherwise be seen clearly
as a criminal bombing campaign by the U.S. military.
But Clinton's statement is so inflammatory that it is clear
he does not want any kind of negotiated settlement. The U.S.
government is demanding the full surrender of Yugoslavia on
terms dictated by the State Department.
That's why Clinton is making such extreme statements.
However, the facts do not in any way justify U.S. military
action against Yugoslavia.
Here are some of the things the Clinton administration
claims justify its war on Yugoslavia and the answers to those
claims.
Clinton says that Milosevic is like Hitler.
FACT: Germany under Hitler was a major industrial country,
an imperialist power that invaded its neighbors.
Yugoslavia is primarily a farming country that has had its
small industrial base severely weakened by years of
U.S.-imposed sanctions. Yugoslavia has not invaded any other
country and has never made any threats to do so.
The United States military, on the other hand, has attacked
four countries--Iraq, Sudan, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia--in the
last six months. This puts the U.S. at the top of the list of
aggressor countries in the world today.
Clinton says that the Yugoslav government is carrying out
Nazi-like genocide.
FACT: The Yugoslav government's policy of defending its own
country from attack, both internal and external, cannot be
characterized as different from what any other government in
the world would do under similar circumstances. A civil war,
abetted from abroad, has broken out in Kosovo. As in any civil
war there have been casualties, some of them involving innocent
people. War is terrible, but it is not genocide.
To call what is happening in Kosovo genocide is an affront
to those who have been victims of genocide. What is happening
in Kosovo now is nothing like the Holocaust of the Jews in
Germany and Eastern Europe or the genocide of the Native
peoples of North America by the U.S. military in the 1800s.
The stories being propagated by the White House, the
Pentagon and NATO are intended to justify their military
aggression. This is a war against Yugoslavia, and in a war the
first thing to question is the daily barrage of propaganda from
the officials of the attacking countries.
For example, thousands of civilians are reportedly fleeing
Kosovo. Why are they fleeing now, after this monstrous
high-tech war has begun? The explanation carried by the media
comes completely from U.S. and NATO military authorities, who
claim the refugees are victims of a Serbian "rampage." No
really independent reporting is allowed. The possibility that
they may be fleeing because their villages are being destroyed
by U.S. and NATO missiles and bombs is curtly dismissed.
While the Pentagon claims to be bombing only military sites,
its record in every other war says it is hitting both military
and civilian targets. In fact, according to a study done by the
U.S. Congress, only 40 percent of the bombs used against Iraq
during the Gulf War actually hit their targets. Civilian
casualties were quite high in that war, and were all caused by
U.S. bombs.
After just four days of the attack on Yugoslavia the U.S.
had killed over 1,000 civilians, according to reports by the
Russian government. Yugoslavia is not releasing casualty
figures, for the same reasons that the U.S. government refuses
to release militarily sensitive information about its planes
that are downed.
Since most of the NATO bombs have been dropped on Kosovo,
that would indeed be a very good reason to flee.
Clinton says the U.S. is engaged in a humanitarian
mission.
FACT: This isn't the first time Washington has used the
humanitarian excuse for outright intervention.
The U.S. said it was involved in a humanitarian mission in
Somalia in 1993. But U.S. troops were finally forced out by an
enraged populace after they assaulted the population and killed
500 Somali civilians, according to the just-published book,
"Black Hawk Down." The U.S. also claimed the invasion of little
Grenada was part of a humanitarian mission to rescue medical
students.
There are, however, many places in the world where genuine
liberation struggles are being repressed by reactionary
governments. And in not one case has the U.S. acted to support
those who've been brutally oppressed. Here are just a few
examples:
* the Palestinian fight for self-
determination against the Israeli oppressors; * the
Kurdish fight for independence from Turkey , where over
35,000 Kurds have been murdered by the government; * the
Tamil fight for liberation in Sri Lanka; * the East Timorese
fight for independence , in which a third of the Timorese
people have been massacred by U.S.-armed Indonesian forces; *
the Zapatista liberation struggle in Chiapas, Mexico,
where a massacre by pro-government forces took place in
December 1997; * the revolutionary liberation struggle in
Colombia that is fighting U.S.-trained death squads.
Big powers usually claim self-defense when they launch
aggression. They seldom declare they are launching a war for
purely humanitarian goals. That has happened only three times
in this century.
* Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931. Japanese
imperialists said the invasion was necessary to protect
Manchuria from Chinese terrorists. The so-called terrorists
were actually fighters for Chinese independence. The attack led
to a long and bloody occupation by the Japanese military.
* Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Mussolini
claimed the invasion was necessary to free people enslaved by
the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie. In fact, Italian
imperialists wanted to be the slave masters. Selassie's crime
was that he resisted their claims to Ethiopia.
* Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Hitler
said the invasion was necessary to end ethnic violence in the
Sudeten region. The Nazis had encouraged an anti-Czech movement
in the region and then used the repression of that movement as
an excuse for invading.
Clinton's war against Yugoslavia fits into this same
imperialist pattern. Yugoslavia is the only country in Europe
to refuse U.S. military bases. At the talks in Paris, the
Yugoslav authorities agreed to the autonomy terms for Kosovo
demanded by the U.S. government.
But they refused to allow Kosovo to be occupied by foreign
troops from the U.S. and NATO. For insisting on their rights as
a sovereign nation, they were attacked by Clinton's
"humanitarian" bombers.
This article is copyright under a Creative
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