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Tuesday, December 14, 2010
I actively opposed both US invasions of Iraq. I actively
opposed US bombing of Serbia.
The two experiences were
completely different.
My leftist and progressive friends
applauded and supported my opposition to the US invasion of Iraq.
Serbia? "Nuke 'em" was too common an attitude.
In Bloomington, Indiana, a liberal university town, I went
door to door, trying to build a coalition against the bombing. I was told to
visit a prominent African American preacher who had a record of support for
social justice issues. I'll never forget what he said to me, through the crack
in the door – he would not let me enter.
"As an
African American, I have a historical responsibility to stand with the
oppressed people of color against their white oppressors."
He really thought that. He really though that Serbs were white
oppressors and their opponents in the conflicts over the breakup of Yugoslavia were
historically oppressed, dark-skinned people.
I am not
making this up. I wish I were.
Where did America get the
idea that Christian, Slavic Serbs were all evil, oppressive monsters and the
former Yugoslavia's Muslims were all blameless and innocuous?
Largely from our Democratic leadership at the time. Bill Clinton delivered
a profoundly dishonest speech from the Oval Office on primetime TV. Richard
Holbrooke used racist terms to discuss
Serbs.
My book, "Bieganski," talks about how
elite media voices, including the New York Times, The New Yorker, and Newsweek,
demonized Serbs in utterly racist fashion. "Bieganski" compares that
coverage to coverage of the genocide in Rwanda. When it came to Rwanda, the
same media sources, often the same authors, decried racist understandings. Two
different languages were used to discuss atrocities committed by Slavic Serbs,
and to discuss atrocities committed by black Africans.
NPR
has been covering Holbrooke's death, playing clips of him saying things like,
"You have to understand the Serbs. Serbs are tribal. They engage in
mythological thinking. They are invested in an image of themselves as victims."
I'm paraphrasing what I heard on NPR.
Here's the problem
with Holbrooke's self-serving propaganda. The Serbs really were victims. They
weren't imagining their victimization. And the Serbs confronted enemies who
were certainly tribal and who certainly had them targeted, for a very long
time, for genocide and enslavement.
Look at a map. Serbs
are on the receiving end of the tip of the spear of jihad. Do a Google search of
"Turkey massacres Balkans." Learn the word "devshirme." Another
word: "sakaliba." Slavic slave boys castrated by Muslim owners. I mention this because the insistence that Serbs must be historical oppressors because they are "white" is ... not supported by history.
The single most unforgettable sentence written during the
conflicts around the breakup of the former Yugoslavia appeared in the New York
Times on April 17, 1994. General Ratko Mladic was trying to
explain to a reporter his rationale for fighting non-Serbs. Excerpt, below,
from the New York Times.
***
Successive United Nations
commanders have tried to understand the general's relentless prosecution of the
war against the Bosnian Muslims. In one exchange at Sarajevo, Lieut. Gen.
Lars-Eric Walgren, who departed last year, asked General Mladic why he kept up
his onslaught.
"General, do you remember your
father?" General Mladic responded.
"Yes,"
General Walgren said.
"In my case," General
Mladic said, "my son is the first in many generations to know his father. Because there have been so many attacks on
the Serbian people, children do not know their fathers."
***
No. No one excuses, no one justifies, the slaughters the Serbs
committed.
Rather, decent people condemn the blatant
racism and open lies employed by the Clinton administration in their propaganda
to the American people justifying America's bombing of Serbia.
That is why there is no mourning for Richard Holbrooke here. Rather
I mourn the victims of the Clinton's administration's policies in the former
Yugoslavia. Those victims include the truth.
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