This isn't really a rant - I am too pissed off to rant. I am deeply upset by the war against Serbia.
I don't think our military should be doing this. My guess (no-one can ever know) is that it will probably increase the oppression of Albanians by others in Kosovo and more of them will leave or be forced out. The Serbs will want revenge & not being able to reach us or the Americans they will turn on their fellow-citizens. Hundreds of thousands made homeless and forced into poverty as refugees in Albania, millions of damage done to Serbia by bombs & it will all peter out in a few weeks & the yanks will go home leaving things worse than before.
There was a weird moment on the BBC World Service last night when the BBC interviewer got emotional - she sounded as if she was crying at one point - and started yelling at some US/NATO spokescreature she was meant to be interviewing. He came back with the standard line about having to stand up against these oppressors & maybe if the "democracies" had done that in the 1930s the second world war might have been avoided.
Then he said that the 1st war had "started in Sarajevo - not far away".
Of course he was wrong. What happened in Sarajevo was the excuse for WW1. The Austrians used supposed (probably actual, to be honest) Serb support for terrorism to make increasing demands on Serbia, culminating in an ultimatum that required the complete humiliation of Serbia - including the demand that Austrian officials be stationed in Serbia to monitor their implementation.
The Serbs refused, and the bombardment of Belgrade began on the 29th July 1914. We all know what happened next.
The relevance to today is not that another major European war is going to start (although we are less far from that than at any time in my lifetime I fear) but that the current goings-on play up to the Serbian national myth, that their corrupt government uses to stay in power. That government is willing - more likely eager - to play the "plucky little Serbia" card. The front-line of Christian civilisation. Serbia beat Austria in that war - and in their own telling of history they beat Germany in the second war. In the first half of this century Serbia was 5 times on the winning side against wars of aggression from larger powers.
They also have, of course, (after Russia) the second largest army in Europe, and (after the British) the second most experienced. They aren't going to beat the NATO forces (if only because they aren't going to be able to reach them - although the Americans might be in for a rude shock tomorrow if they haven't managed to disable all the MIGs tonight - the ex-Yugoslav air force is a much more serious war-fighting proposition than the Iraqi air force was, and there is a chance that they might try to go down gloriously) but they might inflict a hell of a lot of damage on the ground in Kossovo (or Bosnia? Or Macedonia?)
I honestly believe that the majority of their people want to be rid of the gang of land pirates that claims to rule what is left of Yugoslavia. I hope that they manage to do it & I still think they might. But when the bombs start to fall there is a chance that it might just make them pull together. And the results could be horrible.
And that is ignoring the men, women and children who will be killed and maimed by the bombing.
Ken - sad and praying - 24th March 1999
The above was copied from a posting to Cix on the first day of the war. 10 days later things haven't got better. The Serbs have shot down an F117 & captured a few US soldiers & kicked tens of thousands of Albanians out of their homes. Just exactly as we all thought they would. I hate this war that reduces our government to the depths of hypocrisy that we've heard from NATO in the last few days. NATO was a club to fight agains the Soviet Union. Now there is no Soviet Union there should be no NATO.There should be no NATO & if there is we should be out of it. It is sickening to see them playing with their shiny new toys & using the poor bloody Albanians as an excuse - people whose lives they are making worse.
If there has to be a war against Serbia - and surely there was a way out of it even last week - it should not be fought like this. There was some two-faced hypocrite from NATO on the box today claiming that the Serbian capture of 3 US soldiers was a "war crime", that we weren't at war with Serbia "by any stretch of the imagination" (What the hell does he call it then? They are dropping bombs on the poor buggers) and that though what the Serbian army are doing in Kosovo is "violence" (too bloody right); what the US planes are doing is not "violence" because the US is a democracy and Serbia is "totalitarian". In so far as there can be a right and a wrong side in a war like this we are probably, just, on the "right" side, although for the wrong reasons (Do really they expect anyone to believe that pity for the Albanians is the only reason for all this? Did they intervene in Sierra Leone, where things are almost as bad? Did they intervene in Rwanda where things were far, far worse? Did they intervene in Cyprus, Turkey, Algeria, Syria, Bosnia, Croatia, Timor, Palestine, Kashmir?) but mendacious clone-breaths like this almost persuade us of the opposite.