Ratko Mladic and Srebrenica revisionism
Posted on Thursday 26 May, 2011
Filed Under International
THANKS to DNA analysis, the International Commission on Missing Persons has been able to put names on over 6,000 of the corpses found in mass graves in Srebrenica. While the exact number of Bosnians slaughtered there in July 1995 will never be established, there seems little reason to doubt that what happened there marks the worst mass slaughter in Europe since world war two.
Today’s announcement of the capture of General Ratko Mladic – whose whereabouts have almost certainly been known to the Serbian authorities for years – means that the principle perpetrator is set to stand trial for his undoubted crimes.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is not a body that goes about its business with any notable alacrity. Three years after the capture of Radovan Karadzic, ICTY has yet to reach a verdict on the man who signed the paperwork. But both of them are entitled to due process.
Yet there are those who want to put across what they believe to be the other side of the story. Take for instance, the Srebrenica Historical Project. The group does not challenge the contention that ‘unfortunate events’ took place.
Instead, it seeks to ‘create a contextual record of the Srebrenica tragedy of July 1995 which can serve as a corrective to the distortions of the last decade and a half’.
While the SHP website is worded as reasonably as possible in the circumstances, some of its boosters are less mealy-mouthed. According to one supportive source, research into ‘the Srebrenica mega-lie’ by SHP’s Dr Ljubiša Simić ‘concluded that the total number of victims in all thirteen Srebrenica mass graves is well under 2,000 – woefully short of the magical number of 8,000, aggressively propagated by the State Department ever since 1995’.
Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt, at the time EU special envoy to the former Yugoslavia, opts for 3,000 as more likely figure.
CounterPunch journalist Diana Johnstone – who again insists she does not deny that a massacre occurred – penned a book questioning the mainstream media version of the killings. When it was rejected in Sweden, Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, Arundhati Roy and Tariq Ali among others signed a letter in her defence.
All of the above have studied the question in greater detail than I was able to in one very brief visit to Bosnia shortly after Dayton. While I have no particular reason to doubt received wisdom, legitimate scepticism is not automatically inadmissible. If there is evidence to adduce, the defendants are entitled to adduce it.
On the other hand, glibly to conclude that ‘the jury is still out’ feels uncomfortable like extending the same charity to holocaust deniers. Just because I cannot personally refute such arguments does not mean the refutation is not there. I fully realise that there will always be those who, for whatever reason, which to muddy the waters of history.
But what should be uncontroversial – but obviously isn’t always – is that the ‘unfortunate events’ amounted to systematic murder on a huge scale, perpetrated under Mladic’s command and on Karadzic’s orders.
Even on the most patently sympathetic Serbian nationalist counterestimate, they hold direct responsibility for thousands of illegal executions, and are very rightly in the dock. Let’s hope that that point is lost on nobody.
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90 Responses to “Ratko Mladic and Srebrenica revisionism”
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I wooD just have “lock all up war criminals” put in a camp and starved to death and then shove his corpse in an oven. and then do a blergghh Post abowt iT.
and then watch him whine about nobody helping or caring abowt him (as I actually don’t).
come on shitmark. Where are yoo? Suoorley yoUU have something to say and add in the blerggHH comment blank white spayse.
I hope so.
PS. I think i know where you live now as well.
to paraphrase some shit i seen here at some point that i can’t be arsed to even remember where now… “If there is to be democracy, either bourgeois or any other kind, then it will be won by the Iraqi/libyan/syrian people, foremost amongst them the [insert nation state's] working class”:
Well, obviously. My disagreement is not so much over this Marxist truism as over the different inferences that could be drawn from it. I think that there would be no chance whatever for any democracy in Iraq (for example) if it had not been for the military intervention (this is so true I do not even know how anyone with a few brain cells could dispute it — it is utterly true and true as true can be) , and that you ought to take full account of that undeniable fact. You don’t. Impasse. Antagonism. Hatred.
I want to see you ded you curntjerbs.
Why should MlADIC be arrested? So that they can place ‘blame’ at the feet of the ‘evil’ powers thaT aren’t THEM who are THJEM, repackaging the apolitical fantasies of the anti-jihadists in the equally depoliticised and idealistic abstraction that they presume to call ‘imperialism’, even though their moralistic, quasi-religious depiction of this Great Satan is far removed from the materialist critique of concrete imperialism initiated by radical liberals and taken up by Lenin, Luxemburg and others. Thus an anti-Islamism drained of any understanding of human interaction, and fixated on fantasy, finds its natural ally in a pseudo-Marxism drained of any understanding of the conditions for human action.
Poor Ratko Mladic having the misfortune not being a born again christian type or a catholic. It makes a difference slaughtering people for the true faith and democracy.
“Our humanitarian intervention only make things worse and since then I’ve always been convinced it almost always will.”
But skidders, that is not enough, it is the start of a point, not a whole one. So what about the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia? Operation Storm (remember Karadic promise more of the same to the hundred thousand plus Muslims in and around Bihac)? What about the Australian intervention in East Timor (I would say thragically twenty five years late)? Can you say these things made things worse? How? By what evidence?
And the argument that “intervention” also included US support for Suharto’s butchery or Saddam’s mass murder or countless other examples is true at it happens but does not apply. Soviet mass murder of its own citizens and those of other countries doesn’t take away from the central role it played in the Second Wrold War nor its support from the independence struggles in the second and third worlds. We surely should take each on its merits or otherwise. This maxmilalist “anti-imperialism” is morally and intellectually the twin of totally uncritical support for US power. Both are inhumanly inflexible and mostly involve carrying water for mass murderers.
“an independent working class policy”, but what does that actually entail? It seems to mean for some of its advocates deny any solidarity with indiginous working class organisations if they are involved in a struggle against an “anti-imperialist” state and bizarre cortortions of political labels.
It really is a certain kind of satisfaction for the victims of the massacre and their family members but I am afraid his trial will be another series of legal toing and froing with no fair punishment at all.
David. The man has not been found guilty yet. What would be a fair punishment for an old codger with one foot already in the grave.
David O:
I’m not really sure what you are saying here, David. Quite who is saying ‘the jury is still out’? And the ‘jury is out’ about what, numbers massacred, or the fact of the massacre?
I have read this and other blog articles which wish to distance themselves from the apparently inevitable Srebrenica revisionists and deniers on the left. Who are these equivocators we should be wary of?
“Who are these equivocators we should be wary of?”
Noam Chomsky, for one.
An old friend now deceased visited the former Yugoslavia on many occasions and remarked what a beautiful place it was. He was under no illusions about the politics and petty nationalism that existed. He visited a town where two of the factions stared across the street at each other from the bars. This was mid eighties. He said with a degree of irony that when Tito died they would set upon each other. And they did and would still do given the opportunity.
If you don’t hate him properly yet, get a handbook.
socialrepublican – The invasion of Cambodia is one of two examples Chomsky gives of interventions that have saved lies (the other is India in Bangladesh, and I’ve seen Tanzania in Uganda added). The Australians didn’t go in until the conflict was essentially over.
But what the world really needs is an AWL hater’s handbook. My Cde “Lenin” is working on one as we speak. But don’t expect it to come too quickly though – he’s never done a day’s work in his life before. The nearest he came to it was when he choked on his Happy Meal at Burger King.
skidmarx. Maybe the Aussies did learn some lessons from Gallipoli.
Sorry Mr.Rubbish, there’s a documentary about Srebrenica on the BBC News Channel I’m trying to watch, so I don’t have time to worry about your drooling just now.
Plainly, Chomsky did not deny that there was a whole-scale massacre of Muslim males at Srebrenica.
Perhaps Jim D would like to chuck Diana Johnstone into the mix? Then we can all play the game of accusing each other of being insufficiently outraged by the atrocities committed by various actors in that bloody set of wars.
Meanwhile, quite who on the left is denying that the massacre at Srebrenica took place and that Mladic is rightly in the frame?
Just seen the documentary about srebrebica. One of the saddest things I have ever seen.
Time must never forget what happened there. The Serbian people must never be allowed to deny whAt their stooges did. Murdering scum.
Lobby says “Chomsky did not deny that there was a whole-scale massacre of Muslim males at Srebrenica”…
Read this, lobby:
http://srebrenicamassacregenocidemassgraves.wordpress.com/2006/11/25/srebrenica-revisionists-noam-chomsky-was-a-part-of-milosevics-lobby/
You may, having read it, now like to revise your opinion of Mr Chomsky.
Giraffe. The Catholic Croats and Muslims will have to accept the murder of Serbs, Jews and Gypsies when in the payroll of Hitler Mussolini and the Vatican.
not good enuff shitpAntylooNs. Not gUD enuff. the only drooling seen around here is the bum bleerts and anal leakage the leaks from your orrifice in the arse area.
shittpantS. So misunderstood. so sad. fucksponge IDioT.
Slavoj Zizek once wrote that “whoever reduces the war in Bosnia to a civil war between various “ethnic groups,” is already on the side of the Serbs”. These are words worth heeding, and so as always this is woertH linking to again and again when news of the sort above is current:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2000/mar/15/pressandpublishing.tvnews
Well written article from Mick Hall.
The Shitting_One_in_His_Arsecrackers piece of filth blerggHh commentaytoreh Skiddypants — it is obvious that yoluj fuck horses and snort whien you laugh. prophbaly voted libdem also. and werk at daaddy’s buisness since graduayting from Oxbridge after ‘reading’ horse box desighnn.
http://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/the-rat-mladic-arrested-now-watch-for-the-apologists-and-deniers/#comment-37488
a link to a Zizek essay from 1999 that is worth the few minutes it will take to read it all
‘Social Republican’ considers Operation Storm a positive example of intervention. This was the expulsion of around 200 000 Serbs from the Krajina area of Croatia in 1995, involving the deaths of over 1000 civilians.
This was considered by the Hague tribunal as a major war-crime, and two Croatian military leaders, Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markač, have recently been given hefty jail sentences for their part in it. (Another person deeply involved in Operation Storm was Agim Çeku, who later appeared as a leading figure in the Kosovo Liberation Army.)
Will Social Republican be campaigning for the release of Gotovina and Markač, as leaders of a positive example of intervention? He won’t be alone if he does; lots of Croat nationalists have been protesting in favour of their heroes… much in the same way as the Serb nationalists protesting about the arrest of Mladić.
SocRep is a poster boy of sensiblism. It is laughable that Jim Denham feels he can moralise about these subjects, here is a man who doesn’t so much deny that mass murder took place in Iraq and Afghanistan but actually welcomes the mass murder and celebrates it. This goes for most of the sensibles.
wot a rediculous piece of ignoramous bowel movement DFTM is. maykes shit up that is pulled from owt of his arse and has imaginary ‘enemies’ that he thinks jhe is the first to annoint with stupid bullshit overaching blerggHH nyame. Wot a fucksponge of the lowest?order. I would set fire to you and then slit your throat after torturing ypour nearest and dearest in front of you. Wot a cockend.
DFTM is also obviously a peedofile. Rapes kids and abducts them.
and when he isn’t spending time on here he is pretending to be a 14 year old girl on BEBo so he can ‘groom’ his future victims. a throughly repulsive sub-animal.
“I would set fire to you and then slit your throat after torturing ypour nearest and dearest in front of you. Wot a cockend.”
You would go down a storm in Abu Ghraib. That must have been like watching porn for you. Figures.
When did that happen in Abu Ghraib? Can you cite a reference, Mr Deviant.
Jim D says:
I have read that stuff.It is still clear that Chomsky does not deny that there was a massacre at Srebrenica.
Trashing Chomsky (and I do not share his politics) is generally a game that the political right like to play. Leftist critics of Chomsky should not take their criticism and ‘misreadings’ as good coin.
It was one ethnic group (muslims) that were slaughtered and that is genocide. The West did its best to split Yugoslavia up by supporting autonomy in Croatia. The West was well aware of the ethnic, religious divisions in the Balkans and must have known the consequences that would follow. NATO did take one giant step forward.
Arse trumpets galore on this thread.
Socialrepublican doesn’t particularly consider Operation Storm a positive example. That is not what I said. Rather I asked, would the consequences of no US strikes been worst that what occured i.e. the annihilation of the Bihac pocket? It is somewhat of a stretch to then link me to Croat Ultra-nationalists and their cause celebre
“SocRep is a poster boy of sensiblism” you really know how to charm a girl
“Leftist critics of Chomsky should not take their criticism and ‘misreadings’ as good coin”
Especially as he has been rightly trashed by so many on the left. The emotional attachment that many on the left’s various shades put into the opinions of this part-time evidence distorting wishy washy anarcho-gnosist is reamrkable
Further, surely, in that case, Chomsky should be a little more picky about his choice of “currency”. Faurisson was not an “a-political liberal” of any sort. Neither could any of the many “revisionist/deniers” over the Wars of succession’s horrors on the left.
I mean, how does it feel for these anti-imperialist deniers to share, almost entirely, a reading of historical events with Pamela Gellar, SOIE and the BNP? I can’t say i’ve had the pleasure. How do you tell Muslim audiences that in this case, all the Islamophobes were right and the Bosniaks had it coming or nothing happened, that all those memes of drug dealing, white slavery and the wrong sort of Jihadism that are pinned on the two Muslim majority nations in Europe are useful truths?
Here’s my take on the section of the left who actively engage in genocide denial over Srebrenica, which by the way does not mean Chomsky, who is a bit all over the shop on this but ultimately decent, but it definitely means Ed Herman:
Srebrenica: Response to left-wing apologists for genocide
http://mihalisk.blogspot.com/2007/11/srebrenica-response-to-left-wing.html
“Srebrenica Massacre” Invented by Bill Clinton and Alija Izetbegovic:http://sz2604-max.blogspot.com/2011/06/srebrenica-massacre-invented-by-bill.html
max
FUCK. OFF heeedthebaall.