When someone uses the word 'contemptible' you realise that they HAVE a barrow to push. It may not be ethnic, but it is ideological (somehow). Then I see that the writer writes for Quadrant. Oh...

Anyway, the Serbian nation stuffed up, no doubt, but it was Croatia that led the UNILATERAL independence movement. Compare that to Palestine.

The Yugoslav army (yes, in reality the Serbian army) responded to 'defend' the borders. And of course, the nationalist Serbs dormant memories of WWII were re-ignited.

My point is it takes two to tango. The Serbs and the Croats were at that point in time (post Cold War 1990's)ready for one more fight, so to speak.

The writer's argument is pretty much taken in isolation of the broader picture.

Will she address this? The Serbs may have lost Kosovo but at least that was not overly populated by Serbs, unlike Krajina. Will the Croats cede the Krajina to the Serbs?

So many question's that the writer has failed to address. And she should if she is to make such inflammatory comments about an alleged war criminal.

Good lord, I had no idea that there was anyone left on earth who actually believed the UN, or any of it's processes, had any integrity to undermine.

How quaint.

?

What word would you use given the author, in a fine piece of writing, has actually made her prima facie case?

The ICTY bears a presumption of guilt now.

Unless you just mean to object to freedom of speech when it reflects negatively on a favoured group, if you would be critical provide the kind of substantial evidence the author uses but that supports the ICTY charge. Attempting to impugn a conservative journal is no argument and says more about your deeply held bias. The author in her commitment to justice has given you a good example of how a reasoned argument is constructed. Follow her.

Mrs. Ireland-Gora has persuaded me the ICTY bears the burden of proving that it was not the cause of a travesty.

Mr Tzionis, I object to the mass murder of thousands of people. If you want the broader picture, how about we look at the massacre at Srebrenica, where over 8000 men were rounded up and systematically slaughtered by Serb forces under Ratko Mladic. He then turned his attention to the Bihac enclave, where more than 160000 Bosniaks were suffering under a brutal siege. Generals Gotovina and Markac lifted that siege, preventing Mladic from slaughtering the people of Bihac as he did in Srebrenica. So, yes, I do find it contemptible that someone can be convicted of a crime they actually prevented.

This article is about a particular trial, not about the war in the former Yugoslavia, and (quite apart from the obvious word limitations) I have no obligation to address the broader picture. Indeed, given that the generals weren’t involved in Kosovo I don’t see how that part of the broader picture could even be relevant in a wider discussion.

However, I feel I should correct some of your misapprehensions.

Firstly, there was no “unilateral” independence movement. Under the Yugoslav constitution (as well as historically), all the republics already existed. They were part of a confederation from which they were legally able to leave following democratic referenda in each of these republics. Three decided to leave the confederation; it is also a different situation to Kosovo, which was a semi-autonomous region, not a republic.

The Yugoslav army did not “defend” any borders. At the beginning of the war, it crossed the Danube, the border between the republics of Serbia and Croatia, and decimated the beautiful Baroque city of Vukovar street by street until there was nothing left but rubble. It then took the medical staff and patients from the hospital and slaughtered them, etc..

Many Serbs live in Croatia enjoying full rights as Croatian citizens. Your suggestion that a portion of Croatia should be annexed on the basis of the ethnicity of its population demonstrates your intolerance.

As for Serb memories of WWII, I am flabbergasted that you think that’s any sort of justification for a fight.

How many bodies did they find at Srebrenica?
2400 or so from what I read, mostly Mujahideen who'd been killed defending the town.
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/Bosnia/Srebrenica/index.html
There are two sides to every story, the Serbs allege the murder of 72,000 of their people by the Bosniaks, where's the tribunal investigating those claims?
I don't believe anything that comes from NATO or their puppets, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq,Libya and now the coming war on Pakistan,they lie and lie and lie, yet people still swallow every word.

My intolerance is based on the hypocrisy that abounds in this world. And this article reveals some of that hypocrisy.

If a section of Croatia should not be annexed, then Kosovo should not be annexed (or in this case splintered off). The only reason it attained 'semi-autonomy' back in the day was because of its .... wait for it.... ETHNIC idenity. So what is so different to Krajina?

Or is the loss of the Krajina and Kosovo part of the Serbs punishment? Pity the Croats didn't similiar punishment at the end of WWII.

By the way, you did not address Palestine (the GREATEST hypocrisy).

6,186 victims at Srebrenica have been positively identified using DNA testing and it is antcipated 8,100 will be identified by the end of the forensic investigation. http://www.ic-mp.org/press-releases/dna-results-of-the-international-commission-on-missing-persons-reveal-the-identity-of-6186-srebrenica-victims-dnk-izvjestaji-medunarodne-komisije-za-nestale-osobe-icmp-otkrili-identitete-6186-sreb/

I really don't see what Palestine has to do with this. Perhaps I'll write another article on that topic another day! Kosovo isn't very relevant either, given that I didn't mention it in my article either. But I would remind you that Kosovo was semi-autonomous prior to its war, and that prior to Operation Storm the Serbs were offered elections for local self-government in the presence of international observers... but Milosevic ordered the Serbs to leave the Krajina rather than remain in the Croatian Republic.

Jay of Melbourne

Thanks for the link to that simple and cogently argued article. So much writing on the breakup of Yugoslavia (including this article) is usually so bogged down in excessive detail, it's often unreadable.

I also recommend the writings of Diana Johnstone and Edward S Hermann who have both done some excellent debunking of the reprehensible and one-sided NATO propaganda campaign that demonised Serbia and whitewashed the Kosavar Albanian KLA, and which remains the standard trope on the Balkan conflict to this day.

Sadly, the same trope is being trotted out re Libya. According to NATO propaganda, Libyans have lived under 'forty years of dictatorship'. This is NATO code for a political system that was debt-free, provided free health and education to all, enjoyed the highest status for women and highest standard of living in Africa and most of the ME, a nationalised banking system that provided no-interest loans and heavily subsidised housing, and a leadership role in a fast-emerging pan-African independence (which is now all but dead).

Now Libyans are being 'liberated', which is NATO code for the violent and bloody neo-liberal restructuring to a privatised economy and banking system, user-pays health and education that only the well-off will afford, the siphoning of oil revenues to outside corportations, the dismantling of women's rights and almost certain imposition of 'modest' Islamic dress, and a puppet government held in place by a corrupt psuedo-election process and kowtowing to pro-Western foreign policy.

'6,186 victims at Srebrenica have been positively identified using DNA testing and it is antcipated 8,100 will be identified by the end of the forensic investigation.'

That may well be true. However, the ICMP who handled all the DNA testing of Srebrenica remains is stacked (over 90%) with Bosnians and the rest are pro-Bosnian American or British – not a single Serb. Its methodology is highly secretive (supposedly out of ‘respect for the victims’ families’). Despite repeated requests, the ICMP has refused to publish the names of those identified or to allow its DNA evidence in court (again, supposedly out of ‘respect for the victims' families’).

Significantly, the ICMP identification process does not include the nature of death – i.e. it makes no distinction between those who died from execution, the several days of combat before the town fell (with no help from the UN who just stood by and watched), or the months of intolerable living conditions in Srebrenica that caused many deaths from disease and starvation etc prior to its fall .

More on this analysis can be found at: http://serbianna.com/analysis/archives/938

Killarney,
Another article of relevance to this topic, this demostrates the "template" for NATO action:

"Destroying a Country's Standard of Living: What Libya Had Achieved, What has been Destroyed

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky"
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=26686

Keith Preston, one of my favorite bloggers has the phrase, "We're all Iraqis now" on the banner of his site, that sums up a lot of what's going down at the moment.
NATO, the U.N, the "NWO", (call it what you will) is hurting us all,the goal is global hegemony, they don't care if you're Black or White, Jewish or Muslim, Gay or Straight, they're your best pals one day then when you're no longer useful or you start to make trouble for them they crush you.

@ Jay, Killarney, and Savvas:

Palestine, Libya, Kosovo - talk about avoiding the subject! If you're going to criticise, at least stay on the topic! As for the absurd comments about Srebrenica, do you seriously expect to have Serbs on the ICMP investigations? That would be like having the Japanese investigate the Burma Railway straight after WWII. And what about the testimony of Serbs about Srebrenica?! I'm the first to admit that things are rarely black and white, but the response of you guys pretty much proves the point about Serb paranoia and propaganda. And God forbid that anyone should provide "excessive detail", like evidence, to confuse you....

Lindy,
There's no excessive detail to be found, that's the problem, as always the NATO story is full of holes.
It's also a fundamental point of Western jurisprudence that one cannot sit in judgement of one's own case, though since Nuremberg this has pretty much been abandoned.Human rights tribunals always convict, that's what they're set up to do, the trip to the Hague is a one way ticket.
Should Eichmann have been subjected to a show trial in Israel, should the Japanese tried and executed by Australia after the war been so condemned, should Saddam Hussein have been sent to the Hague instead of lynched by his political opponents?
Srebrenica, Halabja, Manhattan 9-11, Auschwitz, and all the other atrocities of recent times all have big question marks over them, as they should.
The very idea of an "official story" or an official version of history is offensive, it insults our intelligence.
I read a lot, I try to find both sides of every hot button issue and draw my own conclusions, praise the internet!

Lindy

True. I am aware we've gone way off topic, but not necessarily off-theme. Underlying this discussion is the concept of what constitutes a fair trial for accused war criminals.

Also, people who post on forums like this can't really include lots and lots of detail and evidence to back up their points - that's why we provide links. So that anyone who wants to check the details can do so.

Also, Mishka. I confess to not knowing enough about the trials of Ante Gotovina and Mladen Markac to directly comment here. However, this article has given me an introduction from which to read more. For that I thank you.

Jay, it's great to question, but why do you only question one side of the story? You question Srebrenica, for which the "official story" is backed up by loads of witnesses, including Serbs, but you don't question the Serb sob story about Operation Storm. If you object to kangaroo courts, then you should be the first to praise this article because it's objecting to a show trial, it's questioning the official story. Or is there an exemption for Croats? Don't they deserve justice too?! And, Killarney, if this underlying discussion is about fair trials for alleged war criminals, why are you going on about Serbs and ignoring the obvious miscarriage of justice in this article? Looks to me like you only care if certain people receive injustice, that as long as it's a Croat in jail it doesn't matter if they're innocent. And I think that stinks!

So, I can't be trusted because I use the word "contemptible" and once wrote a book review for Quadrant Magazine... but my critics (and their links) can be trusted because they have big "question marks" about Auschwitz, 9/11, and Srebrenica? I rest my case....

I made the remarks re: 'contemptible' and 'Quadrant'.

But I did not cast any doubts on Srebrenica, Auschwitz, nor 9/11.

So what point have you made?

Mishka.
...Q.E.D, my case also rests, an "official" story is not good enough, Why shouldn't we question every tiny detail of history?
Case in point the Katyn Massacres, because people pushed for the truth the Germans were vindicated and the Soviets exposed as the perpetrators.
The only people who will suffer from historical revisionism are the "official" historians.

Historical enquiry is always concentrated into the hands of officials loyal to ideology or doctrine before all else, Vere Childe, Manning Clark, Raul Hilberg....the list is not huge but you get the point.
Another example, Raul Hilberg deems David Irving's research into the alleged Holocaust "impeccable" but he questions his motivation, believing Irving to be a "Neo Nazi".
So Irving is not wrong in the eyes of the world's pre eminent pro Holocaust scholar, he's only politically incorrect, Hilberg is happy to cite the new information Irving has brought to light but rejects him as a peer solely because of his (alleged) Neo Nazism.

@Jay, if you are going to question the official story, then you need to question the unofficial story too. And the point of questioning is to find answers, to discover the truth. (Yes, I'm one of those old-fashioned people who believes in objective truth!) If you find answers to your questions, genuine answers, but continue to "question", then you end up going in the opposite direction of truth and you are waylaid by subjective interpretations which only contain part of the true story. A little information is a dangerous thing.

What I find odd is that this article does question the official story, it does question the very people you say you don't trust, but instead of thanking me for exposing their hypocrisy and a miscarriage of justice, you prefer to take their side on this particular issue. From that I conclude that you are less interested in truth and more interested in pushing Serb propaganda.

@Savvas, I would have thought the point I was making was obvious, but I will spell it out for you. If the best criticism you can come up with is that I use the word "contemptible" and am a freelance writer who has written one book review for a conservative publication, then you really are scraping the bottom of the barrel.

I am sorry Mishka, but your 'critics' here have not had the privelege of writing an article for a supposedly popular and respected online website. You are the one that needs to face the question's. Not us.

We have every right to question incendiary term's like 'contemptible' in relation to accusations against alleged war criminals. And we have every right to question your motivation.

And I have already answered you, Savvas. I refer you to my post on Wednesday, 28 September 2011 at 10:09:48 AM. I also refer you to the post by Martin Ibn Warriq, Wednesday, 28 September 2011 10:03:55 AM, a stranger who has made some very reasonable points.