The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

UN Report on Srebrenica—A Distorted Picture of Events
and then withdrew its large military unit before a small responding force
of Bosnian Serbs, and despite the testimony of Dutchbat observers and
the statements of Srebrenica’s Muslim leaders that the town was sacrificed
to provoke NATO’s intervention, the UN report exonerates Bosnian
President Alija Izetbegovic and his U.S. supporters. Incredibly, it
claims that no party, “Bosnian or international, engineered or acquiesced
in the fall of Srebrenica, other than those who ordered and carried
out the attack on it” (para. 485). This is a serious distortion of history. 49
As noted at the outset, The Fall of Srebrenica affirms that “The cardinal
lesson of Srebrenica is that a deliberate and systematic attempt to terrorize,
expel or murder an entire people must be met decisively with all
necessary means, and with the political will to carry the process through
to its local conclusion” (para. 502). But such a lesson not only gives a politically
biased version of Bosnian history, it misrepresents the real history
of the Bosnian Muslim’s military encampment at Srebrenica throughout
the civil wars, which would include the “systematic attempt to terrorize,
expel or murder” in Naser Oric’s unprovoked reign of terror against Serbs
living in the Srebrenica-Bratunac region (which spared neither women
or elderly civilians). Real history would also address the well-planned
and much larger scale “Operation Storm” that Croatians carried out
against Krajina Serbs in August 1995, with the strategic and tactical and
support of the United States. Instead, real events such as these are glossed
over in but six paragraphs out of a 506-paragraph document 50
By twisting the truth, The Fall of Srebrenica does a disservice to the
UN, which had its share of heroes in the overall humanitarian effort to
aid victims, as well as in diplomatic and military roles. UN Military
Commanders MacKenzie, Rose, Morillon, Nambiar and others understood
that the UN was being pressured and manipulated to the advantage
of one side. These senior military officers took political risks to
speak the truth about events that were often misrepresented in the press
and by member-states of the UN.
The Fall of Srebrenica reflects both Kofi Annan’s gratitude to the
United States for ensuring his elevation to the top UN post, and his
fealty to U.S. doctrine, which both inflated Serbian abuses and minimized
those of the Bosnian Muslims, the Croats and, later, the Kosovo
Albanians to justify NATO’s serial interventions in the Balkans. The
factually distorted, but politically useful “lessons of Srebrenica” also sold
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