The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

U.S. Media Coverage of Srebrenica
as a measure of executions, or is there any call or thought to reconsider
in the light of the absence of credible confirming evidence. While often
stating the usual number of executed and buried (7,500-8,500) as an established
fact—one even has them all in a single mass grave—the reporters
very often say that executions or grave site body numbers are
“believed to be” very large, or grave sites “could contain” large numbers,
or “investigators say” or are “suspicious” that large numbers may
be buried or that “executions allegedly occurred”—a stream of speculation
from interested parties, but never critiques of such speculation. 2
The bias is also reflected in the frequent reference to “men and boys”
allegedly massacred at Srebrenica. There is no forensic evidence that a
substantial number of “boys,” meaning males too young and small to be
fighters, were killed in the Srebrenica area in July 1995, and only a single
article in our sample made any kind of effort to give substance to this
word usage. 3 But the “and boys” helps support the notion that it wasn’t
just a killing of soldiers by the Serbs, but an attack on “civilians,” a
charge already threatened by the acknowledged Serb protection of
women and “children.”
From the beginning of the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1990-1991 with
the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, and the follow-up withdrawal of
Bosnia-Herzegovina from Yugoslavia, the West’s position has been that
the Serbs, with Milosevic in the lead, were responsible for the ensuing
land grabbing and ethnic cleansing and were the primary if not exclusive
ethnic-cleansing force. They were seeking a “Greater Serbia” and
committing aggression against all the constituent breakaway Republics
in the process. The Western powers were at fault only in a failure to act
forcefully against the Serb aggression, most egregiously in the Serb
takeover of Srebrenica in July 1995, but earlier as well. This was another
simple case of good versus evil, with the good deficient only in
dithering and a dilatory resort to force.
This simple view is contestable on each point: the West encouraged
the breakup, which was not subject to a popular referendum and was in
violation of the law and Bosnian constitution; 4 and it actually obstructed
the redistribution of the national groups in the artificial Republics
into their preferred associations thereby setting the stage for
ethnic cleansing. 5 The ethnic cleansing was mutual and mutually savage,
varying in origination and villain-victim relationship by locale and
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