The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

UN Report on Srebrenica—A Distorted Picture of Events
3 The Fall of Srebrenica , Sect. G, “Lessons for the future,” para. 498 - 506. Elaborating
on this theme at the time, U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said: “We
learned a very bitter lesson in Srebrenica and Bosnia when we allowed the United
Nations to carry out a role for which it is entirely unsuited. If the United Nations
had been in charge of this operation [i.e., NATO’s 1999 war over Kosovo], I do
not believe that we could have the optimism that we have today. The United Nations
is not the suitable vehicle. NATO is.” The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, PBS
- TV, June 4, 1999.
4 Among those NATO member-states which participated in Operation Deliberate
Force were the U.S., U.K., Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Turkey. As many
as 500 tons of munitions were used, including cruise missiles. See Tim Ripley, Operation
Deliberate Force: The UN and NATO Campaign in Bosnia 1995 (Lancaster,
U.K.: Centre for Defense and International Security Studies, 1999).
5 See, e.g., David Binder, “Bosnia’s Bombers,” The Nation, October 2, 1995; LTC
John E. Sray, “Selling the Bosnian Myth to America: Buyer Beware,” Foreign
Military Studies Office Publications, Department of the Army, Fort Leavenworth,
October, 1995, ;
and Cees Wiebes, Intelligence and the War in Bosnia, 1992 – 1995 (London: Lit
Verlag, 2003). Based on a confidential interview, Wiebes writes that “Even the
most important British policy body in the field of intelligence, the Joint Intelligence
Committee,…came to the conclusion that the shelling of the Sarajevo market
was probably not the work of the VRS [the Bosnian Serb army], but of the
Bosnian Muslims” (p. 68). This volume was also published as Appendix II to the
Netherlands Institute for War Documentation report, Srebrenica: A “safe” area,
.
6 “Force and Diplomacy in Bosnia,” Editorial, New York Times, August 31, 1995.
7 See, e.g., James Bissett, “The tragic blunder in Kosovo,” Toronto Globe and Mail,
January 10, 2000. A one time Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bissett noted
that the “UN estimated that close to 200,000 ethnic Albanians were displaced before
the NATO air strikes—again, a deplorable figure but not surprising given
that these people were driven from their homes as a result of the civil war. After
the NATO bombs began to fall, more than 800,000 Kosovars were forced to flee
from Serbian retaliation and from NATO bombs.” Bissett added that the “former
Czech foreign minister, Jiri Dienstbier, has…testified that NATO was fully aware
that bombing would force the Serbs to expel Kosovar Albanians as a military tactic.
Yet our political leaders continue to tell us the bombing was designed to prevent—not
cause—ethnic cleansing.”
8 See The Fall of Srebrenica, Annex II, “Individuals interviewed in the preparation
of the report,” pp. 115-117.
9 Phillip Corwin, Dubious Mandate: A Memoir of the UN in Bosnia, Summer 1995
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999).
10 Charles G. Boyd, “Making Peace with the Guilty,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 74, No.50,
September/October 1995, pp. 22-23.
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