Ratko Mladic |
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SMELLYMIKE
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Wil Chips
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I thought it was a shoot from the hip sort of thread when you predicted Chinese global domination in 50 years time...actually you were a bit more time specific than me. All specualtion mate, anyway, the key thing for me is that the role of the UN (as defined and mandated) was lost (and the losing was plain for all to see), that awful day in Srebrenica.
In my youth seeing UN personnel on TV meant mediation was taking place on an issue, and that factions had been separated whilst this was ongoing. Those days are hell and gone.
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lofty evans
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And China has no Human rights issues.....
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In 1972, Roy Bergiers scored that try and said "that was for you lofty"
"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us" |
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omri jones
Veteran Joined: 27 August 2004 Status: Offline Points: 6996 |
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Wil's tongue in cheek predictions for China (will spiral into civil war and ultimately into a swathe of smaller domains) is the link Redeyes wanted between Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya. Next on the list will probably be Syria, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba. Although Syria, North Korea and Cuba may be less urgent as they don't have much in the way of oil. The ones already undermined are nations created in colonial times with sizeable minorities, and what the west has done first is to encourage these to break away, so that when the fighting begins, they can claim to be intervening on the rebel side for humanitarian reasons. In this way these countries can be brought under US control and made fit for the Texacos and Haliburtons of this world. Of course reparations for the thousands of deaths and injuries, destroyed infrastructue, are not the responsibility of the US as they only intervened for " humanitarian reasons." Once a civil war begins there is no knowing what attrocities will be unleashed, but they are not usually just the fault of just one side.
As for the same thing happening to China you can bet that the US won't be stupid enough to try that. The Chinese already hold trillions of US dollars in their foreign currency reserves and quickly dumping a fraction of these or calling in their loans would undermine the American economy and hit them where it would hurt most.
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redeyes
Moderator Group Joined: 16 August 2004 Status: Offline Points: 12247 |
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Nothing changes the fact that thousands of innocent men and boys were slaughtered on the orders of the war criminal Mladic. What makes it worse is that only hours before they were under the protection of Dutch troops. What is more, the Dutch actually handed them over. The best bit of all is the fact that some years later, the Dutch troops were awarded medals for that tour of duty. The whole episode is an absolute disgrace and sod all to do with oil in Iraq, China Libya or anywhere else. The fault for the atrocity undoubtedly lies with one side, the spineless actions of the Dutch commanders also makes them culpable.
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The stadium may change, but the dream will remain the same!
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omri jones
Veteran Joined: 27 August 2004 Status: Offline Points: 6996 |
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If you focus on that atrocity you are obviously right. It was a disgraceful and cowardly act. But the only way you can explain whatt happened is to assume that one side suddenly became murderous and cowardly lunatics and started slaughtering fellow countrymen for no reason - people who they had lived in harmony with for decades.
In the early eighties I hired a car and travelled through several of republics making up the then Yugoslavia and saw no sign of animosity or friction between nationalities or religions. ln fact the only visible difference on entering Serbia was the appearance of the Cyrilic script on the bilingual road signs. What I am trying to do is place the massacre in some sort of context, not justify it. If you leave it at the level of "these poor muslims were slaughtered by vicious, and cowardly Serbs for no reason", then for you the bombing campaign against Serbia was totally justified ,exactly what the West wants you to think.
Don't you find any similarities with the current war in Libya?
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Once a monkey
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The Yugoslav conflict came about as a result of centuries old unrest between differing national and ethnic groups. The Libyan situation has arised as a result of the unrest of the general populace, egged on by the west. They have very little in common in terms of the origins of the unrest, and there isn't oil in the Balkans to my knowledge.
As for your comment regarding no friction in the Balkans, with respect that isn't correct. I served in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo during the 90's, and the opposite was very much the case. A muslim interpreter who feared for his life in Bosnia, Kosovan Albanians who hated the Serbs for their jackboot approach to them, Croats who detested the Bosnians. Plenty of animosity, believe me, and its origins preceded the war.
And by the way, those poor muslims were slaughtered by those vicious and cowardly Serbs. There was a reason though, they thought they were ethnically inferior and overrunning lands rightfully belonging to the Serbs.
Whatever else the West has done since, there is no justification for Mladic's act.
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#George
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redeyes
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Not really. The Libyan conflict has nothing to do with ethnic cleansing, which is exactly what the war in The Balkans was all about.
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omri jones
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OAM, by the time you got there the conflict was in full flow and a lot of blood had been spilt on all sides. The different factions were hardly likely to be reminiscing about better days to a British soldier.
Redeyes, the ethnic cleansing was the result of the war, not the cause of it. The British firebombed Dresden during the second world war incinerating tens of thousands of civilians and destroying a beautiful and historic city which had no military targets left. It was a war crime, but not the cause of the war.
Libya is divided along tribal lines. The Western tribes have remained loyal to the government.
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lofty evans
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Throughout human history, cities, towns, villages, countries, Empires, have been layed sieged and murdered, plundered and wiped out millions of innocent women and children. For me its not about sides, who was in the right, mandates, political will etc, etc, its all about forgetting the very best of human nature and instead being the worst, horrible, cruelest creatures on the planet.
For that is what we, during our tenure on this planet.
With the intelligence and capacity for unbelievable kindness and caring, in a moment we can all become the monster on the loose, for a cause, for a noble idea, for a vendetta, for revenge.
Reading through history, human worth has been meaningless and the cost to innocents has been incredibly gut wrenching. We even have to make laws to protect human beings, that in itself just sums us up.
For me, to slaughter children and women is simply indefensible, for whatever the reason and this has been happening for thousands of years, you would think that we would learn. Edited by lofty evans - 07 July 2011 at 12:27pm |
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In 1972, Roy Bergiers scored that try and said "that was for you lofty"
"All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us" |
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Once a monkey
Veteran Pull !!! Joined: 30 December 2008 Status: Offline Points: 15041 |
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The Dresden analogy is somewhat wide of the mark surely. It was a World War, where the very make up and existence of continents was at risk. All sides engaged in blanket bombing. However, that wasn't premeditated ethnic cleansing. And wasn't it the agreements that flowed from that war that were the catalyst for the classification of what would be considered war crimes in the future?
As for Libya, it finds itself where it is today for reasons which have nothing in common with the Balkans. The Libyan situation is borne of a western driven attempt to democracise the middle east.
I think little of some of NATO/the West or indeed our own countries actions at times. But to start bandying around comparisons of historical events, or modern day conflicts overseas with ethnic cleansing in Europe in the 1990's is a bit wide of the mark imo.
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#George
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RedZep
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Not in the 1940's - British and Allied bombings of places such as Dresden and Hamburg were carried out in response to the aggressive acts of the Luftwaffe. Whenever Churchill was questioned about these tactics he always referred to what the Germans did to Coventry in 1940. Obviously two wrongs don't make a right, but there is a difference between an unprovoked act of aggression and responding to such acts. If I punch someone, it is assault, right? If I punch someone who has just punched me first, it is self-defence and a perfectly legal and reasonable response. It was as a result of the 1939-45 conflict that the Geneva Convention was created, and as a result "war" was no justification for certain acts (War Crimes as we now refer to them). As a result British Forces have never deliberately targeted innocent civilians since. So to compare what the British did to Dresden in the 1940's, to what the Bosnian-Serb forces did in Srebrenica in the 1990's is unjust and totally unwarranted. |
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omri jones
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I'm not disagreeing that the act was unwarranted and cowardly. I'm just saying that anyone who gives the order to attack unarmed civilians needs to be locked up, and there are a hell of a lot more on both sides of this conflict and most others. Some on the West's side have a hell of a lot more blood on their hands than Mladic and they have statues made of them or are given Peace Prizes. My argument is that only one side is punished the side that goes against American dominance.
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RedZep
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It's your comparison that is unwarranted. I do agree, however, that in the case of the Balkans the West was very selective with its bombing campaign of Serbia for being the only faction not to conform to Western ideology. Please do not think for a second that I condone any actions carried out by the Serbs / Bosnian-Serbs during the conflicts - their cowardly acts of cold blooded murder and ethnic cleansing were deplorable and it was right to act. But they carried out no worse atrocities than the other warring factions. I witnessed first-hand the aftermath of ethnic cleansing carried out by ethnic-Croats and ethnic-Muslims in equal measure, where the women and children were not as fortunate as those in Srebrenica. Srebrenica is the most high profile of all the acts of ethnic cleansing carried out in the Balkans, but it was just one of hundreds of such atrocities. Mladic and Karadzic will rightly face justice, but there are many still free to roam from all sides who are equally as guilty, and even regarded locally as heroes. But heroes they are not. They are deplorable figures who carried out cold-blooded slaughter based on ethnicity. As far as I am aware, we do not have such figures in positions of authority in any Western democracy. Compare these monsters to the Nazis - fine. But the Western world in which I live (far from perfect, I know) has moved on a million miles from those dark days, and does not warrant your comparison.
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'' Know your three R's, son..... Rugby, Rock and Ridin'!! ''
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omri jones
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There is little that I disagree with in your post Redzep except the final sentence, but the behaviour of the USA and its European allies is deteriorating rapidly, and far from motivated by humanitarian concerns. Maybe the scale of individual incidents is smaller but taken together they have a huge effect on the countries of the victims. Even by 2006 the Lancet, the journal of the British Medical Council was estimating that since the invasion in 2003 at least 655,000 more Iraqis had died than if the invasion had not occured. I think we are moving back toward those dark days, with assasinations automated with the use of cruise missile and raptor drones fired from California by operators who will never see the blood or human cost of their actions. There's a Kid from Pembrokshire in solitary confinement in an American top-security jail. His crime was to release cables and video clips showing exactly what is going on in Iraq and elsewhere. And this in the land of the "free and the brave" They would like us to think that all the bad things like My Lai happened a long time ago and couldn't happen again. Have look at the YouTube clip released by Wikileaks showing a US attack helicopter mowing down civilians in Iraq.
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RedZep
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Omri, not a single sentence you have written here bears any relevance to the title of this thread. If you want to slate the Americans then fine, but at least start a new thread called "Why I Hate Americans..." and stop hijacking this one.
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'' Know your three R's, son..... Rugby, Rock and Ridin'!! ''
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