The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

UN Report on Srebrenica—A Distorted Picture of Events
NATO’s bombing war over Kosovo. The UN report even claims, falsely,
that “the international community tried to reach a negotiated settlement”
with the “unscrupulous and murderous [Yugoslav] regime” (para.
502), presumably referring to the Rambouillet conference, an attempt
to sign-on the Kosovo Albanians, while putting forward a proposal designed
for Yugoslav rejection and to clear the ground for a planned military
assault. So the UN report transmits a lie that justifies an attack in
violation of the UN Charter!
Official deceptions about events in Bosnia and Kosovo surely paved
the way for false reports about mass weapons in Iraq, which were faithfully
echoed by news organizations in the early years of the Iraq war. The
success of these deceptions and a diminished, subordinate role for the
UN are part of the larger legacy of The Fall of Srebrenica.
Notes
1 The Fall of Srebrenica (A/54/549), Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to
General Assembly resolution 53/35, November 15, 1999, . Although this 113-page report circulated under Secretary-General
Kofi Annan’s name and became identified with Annan’s increasing
advocacy on behalf of the “responsibility to protect” and “humanitarian”
intervention, its lead author was David Harland, a former UN Civil and Political
Officer for Sarajevo from 1993 to 1999.
2 For some analyses of the ICTY’s real political purpose, see Michael Mandel, How
America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage, and Crimes
Against Humanity (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2004), esp. Chapters 3 - 6;
Michael Barratt Brown, Edward S. Herman, and David Peterson, The Trial of
Slobodan Milosevic (London: Spokesman, 2004), esp. Ch. 2, “A Study in Propaganda,”
pp. 31-78; John Laughland, Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and
the Corruption of International Justice (Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2007); and Edward
S. Herman, David Peterson, and George Szamuely, “Human Rights Watch
in Service to the War Party,” Electric Politics, February 26, 2007, .
In the latter,
these authors deal at great length with a report published by Human Rights
Watch (Sara Darehshori, Weighing the Evidence: Lessons from the Slobodan Milosevic
Trial, December, 2006), which they quote as follows: “Human Rights Watch
believes the evidence introduced [in the Milosevic trial] should help shape how
current and future generations view the wars and in particular Serbia’s role in
them.” Clearly, to shape how current and future generations view anything is a
political project par excellence. This assessment applies equally to The Fall of Srebrenica
as it does to the ICTY.
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