Opposing Baathist murder

Yes, this open letter, and all the noise from and around StWC, feel more like politics than ethics.

A significant portion of the French Resistance was organized by the Comintern. I am sure they assassinated some ‘members of the new political class’ in the Pétain’s Vichy government. They were loyal to the the Soviet Union and, I am sure, would like to have a Stalinist state in France.

It doesn’t necessarily demotes them down to “resistance”, though. They were given a righteous cause and they fought for it.

By the way, I should make clear that we at CT don’t have a “line” on this, or anything else, that I signed in a personal capacity, and that other contributors may very well disagree with me.

(Please forgive long response. This is probably the last I can post for a while so wanted to cover bases.)

Chris: ‘soi-disant liberators’ honestly wasn’t intended to be a crack at you, but at those who took us to war – I know lots of signatories to the open letter oppose the war.

Second: the letters are ‘belated’? What does that mean? Saleh was killed on the 4th, Murry’s letter was written 3 days later, 2 days after the news hit, on the same day that Johann Hari wrote an article condemning the killing. Why is Hari’s condemnation ‘timely’ but StW’s not? When would have been ‘appropriate’? At what time could they have been written that would have satisfied you as to their bona fides?

They are ‘grudging’? What does that mean? The insinuation is that StW ‘don’t really mean it’ when they condemn the killing. Is that what you think? What is the evidence?

The letters contain ‘a fundamental untruth about the use of the phrase “by any means necessary”’? This must presumably be the claim that StW ‘has never issued a statement containing the phrase’. But that’s the truth: I’ve seen no smoking gun that the supposed ‘bamn’ statement ever appeared, but am reasonably persuaded that it was circulated _but_ only in a draft to supporters on 8/10. It was not present when it first appeared on the StW website, three days later. Surely the whole point of drafts is precisely to iron out misunderstandings, controversial phraseology, etc? Have you never written something then realised it wasn’t the way you wanted to express yourself and changed it before making it official? The only ‘fundamental untruth’ being perpetrated is the repeated claim that an StW statement was issued containing this phrase. (If I knew how to put links in comments I’d do so to the various careful demolitions of this claim.)

(I should add that in any case I think it’s moot whether or not ‘by any means necessary’ is an unacceptable formulation. Far from ‘repudiating’ traditional ‘ius in bello’ (in any case a wildly elastic concept, which can and has been used to (among other things) legally and morally defend the US’s burial alive of Iraqi troops in 1991), one could easily take a position whereby the ‘necessary in ‘any means necessary’ is understood precisely to include ‘ius in bello limits’: in other words, that murdering Saleh et al was not ‘necessary’, by any accounting. That’s a question I’m interested in but it’s not germane here – StW’s official statement did not include the formulation.)

You concede that your claim about silence is ‘literally’ incorrect. Does that mean that by contrast it’s ‘virtually’ or ‘spiritually’ or some-other-adverb correct? It was an incorrect claim: that was all I pointed out. All of your other claims – that StW ‘whitewashes’ the murders, that it ‘qualifies’ its condemnation, that it is ‘effectively’ silent – expressed as fact, are nebulous: at best matters of interpretation. I understand that they’re your opinion, and that’s a basis for debate – fine. But the way they’re framed is an attempt to render apparently ‘objective’ what are interpretive political disagreements.

To finish with your third point, there’s a difference in attitude between the signatories of the letter and StW. Yes, that is absolutely true. I do think that the struggle for self-determination in Iraq is just, yes, and that these murders are unacceptable and appalling excesses that I would never condone. This is precisely the debate we should be having, but that this letter is not. The letter to StW is entitled, let’s not forget, ‘The Murder of Hadi Saleh – Why Are You Silent?’ As you’ve accepted that we are _not_ silent, it should be clear that in its very title, let alone its substance, this letter uses disgraceful misrepresentation to make a political attack on StW. I would much rather the signatories, for some of whom I have real respect, simply openly debated the political analysis of the war and the resistance, than took part in what is – whatever the motives of individuals involved – an underhand attack.

It is a sad commentary on the Blairite ascendancy in Britain when any challenge to the legitimacy or good sense of invading Iraq is instantly interpreted as thereby indicating support for despotism, terrorism, genocide, Ba’athism and sundry other universal evils.

I venture to suggest government ministers are strongly pressed to disclose the best official estimates of how many thousands of civilians have been killed in Iraq as the result of the war.

As Blair put it in a keynote speech to the Chicago economic club in April 1999:

“If we want a world ruled by law and by international co-operation then we have to support the UN as its central pillar.” – at:
http://www.ndol.org/ndol_ci.cfm?cp=4&kaid=128&subid=187&contentid=829

As a matter of record, the StWC statement did not state “by any means necessary”.

The phrase used was, in fact, worse: “by whatever means they find necessary”

So the judgement over what is considered “necessary” is purely a matter for the ‘resistance’ and not for the StWC.

It was such a dreadful phrase that the StWC eventually withdrew it under protest.

But despite that it clearly is the position of the SWP, Galloway and Andrew Murray (who has taken personal responsibility for the statement).

Well done to Chris for signing up to the statement.

As he points out this is not a matter of pro or anti-war.

I think Daniel’s “no thanks” policy is, generally speaking, a sensible one. However, I was somewhat swayed in this case by the presence among the signatories of Quintin Hoare and Branka Magas whom I have a lot of time for.

On the specific question of the “by any means necessary” document, there is the small matter of the fact that it “continues to appear”:http://www.idao.org/stopwar-statement.html on the website of the STWC-affiliates Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation. If it was “just a draft” then someone forgot to explain this to all the recipients.

One further point concerning what China says re ius in bello. I don’t see that “by any means necessary” can be construed as consistent with those restrictions since it is a straightforwardly consequentalist formula. Such restrictions as are recognized under such a formula are going to be, at best, rough rules of thumb rather than categorical prohibitions. The fact that various people have argued that all sorts of abominable acts are consistent with ius in bello restrictions isn’t any sort of argument. Of course they have. The real question is whether those acts were _actually_ consistent with the restrictions.

Being an American, I don’t have to think about this particular petition, but I have a rule of thumb (which I just invented) about such things. When my country is involved in a dirty little war, there are three types of petitions that might come up. Let’s assume, as is certainly the case in Iraq, that both sides are guilty of terrible crimes. The types are–

A) A condemnation of my country’s atrocities
B) A condemnation of enemy atrocities
C) A condemnation of the atrocities of both sides.

I’d feel happiest signing petition C, a little uncomfortable with A and very uncomfortable with B. The reason for this is that immoral pro-American jingoism is a much greater danger than immoral romanticization of Third World terrorists and if you sign a petition like B, it’s easily twisted into an attack on antiwar activists. I might sign it anyway, but I’d wonder why the writers couldn’t have made it into a C petition instead. (I haven’t read the petition here, but have the impression it is of type B.)

I don’t hold the A petition to the same standard because I think Americans have a duty to condemn their own atrocities independent of what the other side is doing. And we do a pretty poor job holding our high-ranking officials to account. Kissinger is still running loose, for instance. But we don’t have any problem trying enemy war criminals when we catch them.

Chris:

I don’t see that “by any means necessary” can be construed as consistent with those restrictions since it is a straightforwardly consequentalist formula.

misses the point with devastating accuracy. The point of course is whether ius in bello restrictions go without saying. If Steve Ballmer instructs some Microsoft salesman to win a certain contract “by any means necessary”, can the salesman later claim his authorization for bribery, theft, sabotage, murder of rival salesmen?

abb1

“The US/UK governments are 100% responsible for everything that’s been going on in Iraq since the invasion.”

Did Colin Powell really say that? It’s quite an assertion: *no-one* in Iraq, except the occupying forces, are responsible for *any* of their actions.

Among many other absurd consequences, this entails that the so-called “collaborationists” aren’t responsible for their actions — so how could they deserve to be assassinated? Then again, their assassins aren’t responsible for their deaths either. Rather an unusual state of affairs all together.

“No one should be telling people living under military occupation what the proper way to fight it is.”

Right — even if they went around raping babies, that would be their affair. And they wouldn’t be responsible anyway.

Jimmy,
you don’t fight occupation by raping babies, or by raping anyone for that matter. This is a non-sequitur.

And yes, “you break it, you own it” sounds to me like “you’re 100% responsible”. What do you think it means?

Thanks.

You know, I’m starting too see things that give me hope about the left–this article (though obviously not some of the comments) and the Juan Cole’s article linked to in it, being prime examples.

Whatever one thinks of the invasion, it does seem to be dawning on more and more people that the Iraqi election workers, local leaders, and office seekers should be seen as the equivalent of the Freedom Riders and the insurgents as the rough equivalent of the Klansmen.

I am in awe of the Iraqis who have the courage to work for free elections despite the very real dangers. I do wonder whether, in the same situation, I would be brave enough. I do not have too much trouble imagining risking my own safety, but I’m not sure I could stand up and knowingly put my family at risk of assassination, kidnapping, torture. Which, of course, is exactly why Saddam’s regime used those techniques when in power and why the insurgents are using them now.

Those bastards cannot be allowed to win.

abb1:

“you don’t fight occupation by raping babies, or by raping anyone for that matter.”

First, even if this were true, it would be irrelevant to my point. If no-one in Iraq, except the occupying forces, are responsible for any of their actions, then any Iraqis who went around raping babies for any reason at all — eg, they felt like it — would be automatically exculpated. Since this is an absurd consequence, the thesis from which it follows — that no-one in Iraq, except the occupying forces, are responsible for any of their actions — is clearly false.

Secondly, your claim that “you don’t fight occupation…by raping…anyone” is also clearly false. There are many documented cases of rape being used in war and insurgency as a weapon of terror and intimidation; it’s not hard to imagine this happening in Iraq. Indeed, it’s almost certainly already happening. It was certainly done by Saddam’s regime when they were in power; do you imagine that their deposition has made them more humane? And some of the tactics being used by the “glorious resistance” are clearly worse than rape.

“You know, I’m starting too see things that give me hope about the left”

Oh absolutely. It will continue to blend with the center right by careful exercise of masochism. And still not win elections. It’s called the Kerry principle. A left is a left only by its name.

Just kidding, of course…!

Yes, those who bomb and kidnap people are thugs. No, there should be no support for them. But can anyone explain to me, since when did Stop the War start managing Iraq? I mean, what if they tacitly or implicitely romanticise even terrorists as “resistance”. Misguided, wrong, naive, unprincipled, etc. etc. etc. Please insert your Moral Condemnation word of choice. But for gosh’s sake. Would it change anything? Did they create terrorist gangs? Are they those financing them? Are they arming them? Are they responsible for leaving Iraqi borders open to all jihadis of the world united? Are they the ones giving them more fuel and more support than they ever had? Are they the ones who managed to occupy a country by losing control of it?

And on the subject of verbal condemnations, are they enough to get away with stuff like this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4187583.stm

(Letter sent to Juan Cole)

Dear Professor Cole,

I had a feeling that something was up when I discovered that Chris Bertram had included a link to your article “The Third Baath Coup?” (http://www.juancole.com/2005/01/third-baath-coup-if-as-i-have-argued.html) on the Crooked Timber blog (https://www.crookedtimber.org/). It was intended to shore up pro-occupation opinion on the left, despite the rapidly deteriorating situation. Bertram was cheered by your ambiguous observation that in face of Baathist attacks on government officials you fear that “the US is stuck in Iraq.” I say that it is ambiguous because you don’t make clear whether you are for this or not, although those astute in the studies of ambiguity might hazard a guess that you favor staying the course.

Bertram also includes a link to “an open letter circulated by Labour Friends of Iraq to protest against the silence of Britain’s Stop the War Coalition in the face of events like the torture and murder of Hadi Saleh, International Officer of the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions on January 4.”

When you go to the open letter, you will discover that some of the key figures behind it have been heavily involved in pushing for the imperialist domination of Iraq from the beginning–like Peter Tatchell, David Aaronovitch and Norman Geras. Geras, as you probably know, is an ex-Marxist who now treads the same sorry path as Christopher Hitchens. I was also not surprised to see that Branka Magas and her husband Quintin Hoare were signatories as well. It appeared to me long ago that justifications for the invasion of Iraq were an outgrowth of those mounted on behalf of Nato’s war on Yugoslavia, which Hitchens, Magas and Hoare all waved pom-pom’s for.

Bertram, of course, has a trajectory very similar to Magas and Hoare, who were both associated with the New Left Review before drifting off into Hitchensville. On the Crooked Timber website, we learn that Chris Bertram “was until recently the editor of Imprints: A Journal of Analytical Socialism, now (2002) in its seventh year of publication and before that was once on the editorial committee of New Left Review, before resigning, along with nearly everyone else.” He adds, “These days I find the description ‘egalitarian liberal’ fits me better than ‘socialist’, but there’s lots of complicated autobiographical, cultural and theoretical stuff there which I won’t go into here.” I’d say thank goodness he didn’t go into all that “complicated” stuff, for at least to these ears “the god that failed” was a stale tune by the 1960s, although obviously good for career advancement in the intelligentsia.

On the question of Hadi Saleh, I am gratified to see that you have not jumped on the bandwagon to condemn the antiwar movement for not having “confessed” to the crime of supporting the CP leader’s killing. If indeed you are interested in reading a powerful defense of the antiwar movement, I’d refer you to the Friday, January 14, 2005 entry in the Lenin’s Tomb blog (http://www.leninology.blogspot.com/) titled “In Defense of the Stop the War Coalition.” It opens:

The recent spate of attacks by Johann Hari, Nick Cohen and Labour Friends of Iraq on the Stop the War Coalition is interesting for a number of reasons. They share the following characteristics:

1) Proximity in time (choreography).

2) Repetition of false claims (reading from a script).

3) Hysterical tone (histrionics).

I just want to conclude with an observation about the need for the left in general and leftist academics to eschew ambiguity. Turning to your blog entry, you say, “The police chiefs of many cities have been killed or kidnapped, or members of their family have, such that many more have just resigned, often along with dozens of their men. The US is powerless to stop this campaign of assassination.” Then, at the conclusion, you also say, “Sistani clearly fears a Sunni Arab coup, as well, and this is one reason he has not acted forcefully to end the military occupation, which he deeply dislikes. Is the Neo-Baath Coup scenario one that the US could live with?”

Am I projecting too much into your analysis when I say that you insinuate that the US might be accepting a Sunni Baathist regime in the same way that it supported Saddam Hussein? If so, this seems to disregard both the open ideological enmity and the systematic violence directed against “Baathism” in Iraq. I put “Baathism” in quotes because there is little evidence of a programmatic bid to re-institute the status quo ante in the same fashion that the NLF promised a socialist Vietnam. A video purportedly produced by the resistance has been circulating on the Internet. If it expresses Baathist values, then they are too subtle for me to discern.

In any case, I do hold you in the highest regard even when you are ambiguous or wrong.

Well, as presented this whole thing, from chutzpah-rich groupuscule name to the whores’ chorus of the commentariat does sound like a classic shitty, cynical New Labour PR stunt.

Hektor,
I don’t admire anyone and I don’t care how all those internal ethnic/sectarian groups solve their problems when left alone. It has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

American occupation does have something to do with me.

You’re implicitly retreating from your ridiculous claim that no one in Iraq has moral responsibility since the allied forces invaded. Well, that’s good.

Everyone has moral responsibility for his/her own actions, that’s obvious.

The US and UK leaders are responsible for the whole mess they created in Iraq, including car bombings, beheading, etc. This also seems rather obvious. Their actions are the source of all this, they should be condemned. If you start a fire that burns my house, I’ll be blaming you, not the process of oxidation. Perhaps I wasn’t clear, sorry.

I’m a big believer in self-determination, but it does not follow that a colonized people are correct to take any steps they feel necessary to correct their domination. Mass murder, rampant ethnic cleansing, etc. seem to fall into this.

I don’t understand this. I have never lived under foreign domination, no one have ever done to me (or my relatives, or friends, or neighbors) anything like this, for example. I don’t feel I’m capable of judging these people. Especially being an American citizen and taxpayer. How can you judge? I find it incredibly sanctimonious.

“Subjective”, “objective” …. the effect is almost like that of tasting a newly dunked madeleine….but not as pleasant.

Regular readers of CT (as well as the pro-war types who occasionally shovel invective in my direction) will know that I thought the Iraq war was a bad idea and that I have no time for Christopher Hitchens. But Mr Proyect clearly isn’t one to be diverted from his fatwa by a few facts.

Yes, use Hitchens, and then say it ain’t true.

I see that Norman Geras has joined the blogging community. Norm was involved in some of the early discussions around Crooked Timber and even suggested the name. He’s the author of many books on subjects as wide-ranging as Rosa Luxemburg, the holocaust, and cricket and he’s also been a contributor to one of my other collaborative projects, Imprints, which featured an interview with him recently (the current issue has his take on Polanski’s The Pianist). I’m sure that Norman’s blog will be one of my regular visits and I already see plenty to argue with, including his inclusion of Jules et Jim in his list of 20 best films when, as any fule kno, Les 400 Coups is superior. (Norman goes straight into the academic part of our blogroll under political science/political theory).

And then Nick Cohen, etc.

You choose the company your in, not us.

If you say it is your opinions, not the company your in, that should be the point of argument, sure. But then why mention just Hitchens?
Do you also have no time for Geras and Cohen?

But can anyone explain to me, since when did Stop the War start managing Iraq? I mean, what if they tacitly or implicitely romanticise even terrorists as “resistance”. Misguided, wrong, naive, unprincipled, etc. etc. etc. Please insert your Moral Condemnation word of choice. But for gosh’s sake. Would it change anything?

Yes, I think it does it matter how ‘Stop the War’ and the left in general react to events in Iraq. If the reaction to the murder of election workers and labor leaders and political activists is, “See, this proves things are hopeless and that we must withdraw at once and wash our hands of the situation”, then that provides an incentive for the insurgents to murder more election workers, labor leaders, etc.

If, on the other hand, their actions lead to coalition public opinion turning decisively against the insurgents (even — or perhaps especially — amongst those who opposed the war), that may make a great difference in what happens on the ground.

The reason is that the insurgents *have* to be sensitive to public opinion in coalition countries (especially the US of course) because they simply *cannot* ultimately win (as opposed to simply creating chaos) until the coalition forces leave, and that won’t happen unless public opinion turns decisively against staying in Iraq.

If the insurgents do not see any prospect of a collapse of coalition public opinion (and, therefore, any prospect of withdrawal), they may be driven into getting what they can out of the political process. But if they think continued terror has a good chance to produce a change in public opinion that will result in withdrawal, then they have every reason to persist.

So yes, I think it matters when Juan Cole — a persistent critic of the war — argues that the insurgents are not patriotic, nationalist freedom fighters but rather Baathists trying return to power and that allowing that to happen is unacceptable.

Luc, your point is?

I make my mind up on the issues rather than worrying about the company I’m keeping. As it happens I’ve disagreed very strongly with both of the people you mention in the recent past. Nick Cohen, for example, opposed the war in Afghanistan (I supported it) yet supported the war in Iraq (which I opposed).

I’m sorry, abb1, but I don’t completely believe you, since you have repeatedly stated that “you sympathize with the underdog” in discussions about the Iraq resistance. But you’ve never made clear what underdog exactly you mean: the Sunni insurgents, the Shiite majority, the Kurds, the Christians, the Turkomen, who? I suspect you mean the Sunni insurgents, but it’s not clear to me why they are the superior underdog. They certainly haven’t suffered the largest aggregate deaths.

I’m a big believer in self-determination, but it does not follow that a colonized people are correct to take any steps they feel necessary to correct their domination. Mass murder, rampant ethnic cleansing, etc. seem to fall into this.

I don’t understand this. I have never lived under foreign domination, no one have ever done to me (or my relatives, or friends, or neighbors) anything like this, for example. I don’t feel I’m capable of judging these people. Especially being an American citizen and taxpayer. How can you judge? I find it incredibly sanctimonious.

Maybe you should talk to people who have then, like I have. The main reason I’m against things like this is that I’m against mass killing. I don’t want to die, I assume you don’t, and I would suggest that I would judge these people pretty harshly if they decided to take all “necessary measures” and blew up my family, for example.

There are always going to be bloody liberation movements, but I would argue that the current Iraqi insurgency is not strictly a liberation movement – it is also a movement of conquest and defacto colonialism over Shiites and Kurds. So why shouldn’t I judge between one set of colonizers and another? After all, it’s not like the Baathists didn’t torture people and blow up their houses. Look up the Anfal campaign.

There is no doubt that Serbs were guilty of mass murder in Bosnia, but so were the Croats. But NATO did not go to war against Croatia, but against the Serbs. It is very likely that the animosity directed toward Milosevic has much more to do with geopolitics than human rights, however. This becomes obvious when you compare the Soros-financed “revolution” that just took place in Ukraine with that which toppled Milosevic.

In any case, here’s an interesting take on Milosevic and Srebrenica from Chris Stephens in the October 10, 2004 Observer:

Fresh controversy has hit the war crimes trial of Slobodan Milosevic with a claim from a senior intelligence analyst that the Yugoslav leader is innocent of genocide.

Dr Cees Wiebes, a professor at Amsterdam University, now says there is no evidence linking Milosevic to the worst atrocity of the Bosnian war, the massacre of 7,000 Muslims at the town of Srebrenica.

Srebrenica, which was overrun by Serb forces in July 1995, forms the basis of the genocide charge against Milosevic, but Wiebes, a member of a Dutch government inquiry into the atrocity, said there is nothing to link Milosevic to the crime.

‘In our report, which is about 7,000 pages long, we come to the conclusion that Milosevic had no foreknowledge of the subsequent massacres,’ he says in a radio programme, The Real Slobodan Milosevic, to be broadcast by BBC Five Live tonight. ‘What we did find, however, was evidence to the contrary. Milosevic was very upset when he learnt about the massacres.’

The prospect of the former Balkan strongman being cleared of the most serious charge he faces is a fresh blow to an already troubled case, which begins hearing defence evidence this week after several months of delays.

Any failure to prove genocide will cast a shadow not only over this case but over the whole practicality of holding tyrants to account in war crimes trials, most obviously in the case against Saddam Hussein.

Wiebes headed a team of intelligence specialists commissioned by the Dutch government to look into the massacre because its own forces were present in the town under the UN flag.

He had access to secret files, key diplomats and hundreds of witnesses to a massacre in which Muslim men and boys as young as 12 were butchered by Bosnian Serb forces. But while clearly implicating senior Serb field commanders, including General Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian army chief still on the run, Wiebes says Milosevic played no part.

He said it was understandable that Milosevic was upset ‘because in this phase of the war he was looking for a political settlement and this was not very good for him’.

Wiebes also says his team offered their evidence to the Hague tribunal chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte, but were brushed off. ‘What I heard from good sources in The Hague is that Miss del Ponte thinks that we’re too nuanced and not seeing things in black and white,’ he said.

Hague prosecutors insist this is not so, saying that the report was not relevant. Prosecution spokeswoman Florence Hartmann said: ‘The purpose of the report was not to deal with criminal cases relating to Srebrenica, and was commissioned… for other purposes.’

Wiebes is the first senior figure to say publicly what many Hague sources have been saying privately for some time – that there is simply no evidence to back the genocide charge.

Prosecutors have spent months trying to prove otherwise, but have drawn a series of blanks, despite the appearance of high-profile witnesses. These have included former Nato commander Wesley Clark, whose evidence in The Hague last December was that Milosevic told him he knew about the crime and tried to stop it.

Milosevic undoubtedly facilitated the killing by providing Bosnian Serb forces with guns, fuel and cash. But for a genocide conviction to stick, prosecutors must prove that he gave the order.

(Chris Stephen is the author of ‘Judgement Day: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic’, published by Atlantic Books)

The article you append doesn’t argue that the Srebrenica massacre didn’t take place, but that it did take place but Milosevic may not be culpable. Since I didn’t mention Milosevic nor discuss his personal guilt, but merely asked for your views on the Srebrenica massacre, you are evading the question.

If you don’t deny that the Srebrenica massacre took place- and you haven’t yet said it did or didn’t, although you have accurately said that both the Serbs and Croats carried out massacres- we’re left with options 1) and 2):
1) Don’t condemn Srebrenica, because Hitchens/Magas/Hoare/Bertram have condemned it;

2)Condemn Srebrenica even though Magas etc have condemned it, and then work out a rationale for why one can join them in condemning that massacre but not join them in condemning Iraqi murders.

As for ‘Soros-financed Ukranian revolution’…I have a (non-Ukranian) friend out there, who speaks Ukranian, Russian and Polish- and, before you accuse him of imperialism etc, is actually of Arab parentage and a fierce opponent of the US in Iraq and Israel in Palestine. He was there for the revolution, and for months before. He is not prepared to say that this revolution was the work of the Soros, but was actually a popular campaign against a clear case of vote-rigging. The main proponent of your case- that it was all got up by Soros- is the far-right Ultramontane Catholic John Laughland, whose credibility may be judged from the Spectator article he wrote back in November laughing at the ‘fantasy’ (his word) that the ‘Orange’ candidate Yushchenko had been poisoned. I’ll take the word of my friend who says that the Soros subventions- exceeded on the other side by Russian funds and aid for Yanukovych- were a minor factor in a popular revolt against a campaign of vote-rigging. You can tell me he’s a liar if you feel like it, but I’d like to hear about where you got your knowledge of the Ukraine first.

What’s clear is that the silence of Chris Bertram and ‘Labour Friends of Iraq’ on the conduct of the war is a clear endorsement of US/UK policies in Iraq, including the destruction of Falluja.

Louis P: If you want to post the entire text of Guardian/Observer articles on distantly-related topics, then I understand you have your own website.

Dick Durata: If you think I’ve been silent on US/UK conduct in the war then you haven’t been paying attention.

Mill,
Human beings are not entirely free agents, their consciousness is shaped by their environment and experiences. People like you and I, for example, are very unlikely to initiate gruesome violence, but this guy just might. If not he himself then maybe his relative or a friend.

Statistically, on the macro-level, out of hundreds of thousands people with this kind of experience, there are dozens who will blow themselves up in the middle of a crowd and thousands who will be shooting RPGs.

I think this is just as certain as the process of oxidisation.

unkle kvetch, you are of course right. I haven’t forgotten the explicit apologies / minimisations of torture. I was only feeling generous to Bush voters. Or maybe I just prefer to think it was a case of naivete and blind faith rather than cynical indifference or overt support for those “tactics”. Don’t know. But it’s the results that count. As King George II himself said, there was a brief “accountability moment” last November in which the people confimed the King is King, so, no more accountability moments til 2008.

By the way, today is incoronation day, right? I think we all should take a “moment” to kneel in the direction of Washington.

Oops. Should have said “I prefer to believe the former” (i.e., blind faith & naivete) “over the latter” (indifference or support), obviously.

But WWII had a precise goal and a precise end. What happens when we are told we are in a perpetual state of war against a perpetually elusive and multiplying enemy, that is being fed and recreated by war itself?

A point that bears endless repeating, because it seems to get lost in the shuffle of immediate, day-to-day events: this is a war that ends when the president says it does…there is no other criterion on which to judge “victory.” That in itself should be enough to give pause to anyone who takes democracy seriously.

And the two are mutually exclusive because…?

Ophelia, if that’s another one of your “genuine” questions, I wonder about the other kind. Try starting from the top of the comments section, and then following all the way to the bottom.

At the risk of incurring Chris Bertram’s wrath for posting material from newspapers here, the only answer I can give to my interrogator Dan Hardie is the same that I gave during a prior debate with a Serbophobe. Put simply, you have to look at the slaughter in Srebrenica in context, which these articles do:

The Herald (Glasgow), July 12, 2001

Widows plead: bring killers to justice; Six years on the tears still flow bitter for victims of Srebrenica

By David Steele

Weeping widows who lost their husbands and sons in Europe’s worst massacre since the second world war lashed out yesterday at Slobodan Milosevic on the sixth anniversary of the slaughter.

”Milosevic is the biggest butcher in the world, and he is responsible for what happened to us,” said Zineta Mujic, among thousands of tearful Muslims who gathered to lay a memorial for the 8000 Muslim men and boys who were systematically executed by Serb forces in July 1995.

===

1. NASIR ORIC: “WE LAUNCHED THESE GUYS TO THE MOON”

The Toronto Star, July 16, 1995

Fearsome Muslim warlord eludes Bosnian Serb forces

By Bill Schiller Toronto

Belgrade, Yugoslavia

When Bosnian Serb commander Gen. Ratko Mladic swept triumphantly into Srebrenica last week, he not only wanted to sweep Srebrenica clean of Muslims – he wanted Nasir Oric.

In Mladic’s view, the powerfully built Muslim commander had made life too difficult and too deadly for Serb communities nearby.

Even though the Serbs had Srebrenica surrounded, Oric was still mounting commando raids by night against Serb targets.

Oric, as blood-thirsty a warrior as ever crossed a battlefield, escaped Srebrenica before it fell.

Some believe he may be leading the Bosnian Muslim forces in the nearby enclaves of Zepa and Gorazde. Last night these forces seized armored personnel carriers and other weapons from U.N. peacekeepers in order to better protect themselves.

Oric is a fearsome man, and proud of it.

I met him in January, 1994, in his own home in Serb-surrounded Srebrenica.

On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric’s Greatest Hits.

There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.

“We ambushed them,” he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen.

The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: “We launched those guys to the moon,” he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: “We killed 114 Serbs there.”

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

These video reminiscences, apparently, were from what Muslims regard as Oric’s glory days. That was before most of eastern Bosnia fell and Srebrenica became a “safe zone” with U.N. peacekeepers inside – and Serbs on the outside.

Lately, however, Oric increased his hit-and-run attacks at night. And in Mladic’s view, it was far too successful for a community that was supposed to be suppressed.

The only songs they want sung of Nasir Oric are funeral dirges. . .

2. A GREEN LIGHT TO SERB MILITIAS

The Daily Telegraph, July 13, 1996, Saturday

Secret shame behind Srebrenica’s fall A year after the enclave fell, Tim Judah asks if the Bosnian government colluded in its capture

By TIM JUDAH

THIS week the world’s television stations will be making a solemn pilgrimage. Their cameras will linger on the unburied bones of the men of Srebrenica or the shoes that poke from its shallow mass graves. It was a year ago this weekend that the single bloodiest battle of the Bosnian war was joined; in its aftermath, up to 8,000 Muslim unarmed prisoners or men attempting to flee Serbian forces were viciously murdered. What the reports will not exhume is the real story of Srebrenica. That is, how it was betrayed by everyone who said publicly that the Muslim enclave must not fall; and how, through incompetence or design, General Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, was tacitly encouraged to take the town by Western governments and the United Nations.

A year after the fall of Srebrenica it is possible to piece together the sequence of hitherto secret or little-known events which led to catastrophe for those involved but relief for Western diplomats charged with finding a solution to the war. In May 1995, Nato air raids against two Bosnian Serb ammunition dumps led to General Mladic seizing 375 UN hostages. To secure their release, the UN gave Mladic a promise that there would be no more air strikes. This meant that he could now turn his hand to Srebrenica which the UN was duty-bound to protest as a “safe area”. For weeks, US “Predator” drones tracked the military build-up around the enclave. The Dutch UN garrison also monitored these preparations. According to Muhamed Sacirbey, then Bosnia’s foreign minister, Western diplomats told him what was happening around Srebrenica but did nothing. “They believed its fall was inevitable,” he says.

There is, however, an even darker shadow which lies across the bones of Srebrenica – one that implicates the Bosnian government. A month before the attack, Nasir Oric, Srebrenica’s much-feared Muslim military commander was withdrawn with most of his HQ staff. Today, Bosnian officials say that Oric was pulled out because he was being investigated for war crimes. If Oric had been replaced, then this explanation would be more credible. As he was not and the town was left without military leadership the question remains open: did the Bosnian government collude in the fall of Srebrenica? The cynical conclusion – and in Bosnia, cynicism often proves true – is that the leadership in Sarajevo decided to sacrifice the town for broader war aims.

In a recent interview Anthony Lake, President Clinton’s National Security Adviser, said that before the fall of Srebrenica a decision had been made, “rather than draw lines [in Bosnia] in a kind of higgledy-piggledy way” that might make sense in terms of where people actually lived, the peacemakers sought to “do what we could to have a territory that was as simplified as possible”. With the fall of Srebrenica, the map duly became simpler. Encouraged by their American military advisers, the Croats reconquered the Serb-held Krajina region of Croatia and then large parts of traditionally Serb land in Western Bosnia fell to the Croats and Muslims. As if by magic, the land held by the warring sides in Bosnia reached the 49-51 per cent split desired by diplomats and the fighting stopped.

With Krajina and Srebrenica wiped off the political maps of Europe, the diplomats moved on to Dayton, Ohio, where a final peace deal was struck. Over the past week, the International Tribunal in The Hague has heard the evidence against Mladic from survivors of the Srebrenica massacres. Despite the clamour from the international community to see Radovan Karadzic, his political boss, come to trial, there is a curious silence over Mladic. It seems that the West requires Mladic for one more task. As long as Nato troops are on the ground in Bosnia, then Mladic is needed to keep his men in barracks and the Dayton Plan alive.

3. USING SRERBRENICA AS A COMMAND CENTER:

The Economist, July 15, 1995, U.S. Edition

Call that safe?

BELGRADE

IT IS not the first time that the Serbs have “liberated” Srebrenica. In 1992, during the first weeks of the Bosnian war, they also took the town but were driven out. Later, in blazing sunshine, Muslims and Serbs sat down in the middle of the road to hammer out a peace deal. The Serbs offered Srebrenica’s Muslims autonomy within the Bosnian Serb republic, but that was rejected. Since then the war in eastern Bosnia has seen the most vicious fighting in the benighted republic.

The reasons are partly strategic (Srebrenica is on the river Drina which, at the town, forms the frontier with Serbia), partly demographic (before the war, 73% of the population was Muslim and 25% Serb)–and partly personal. Srebrenica is the headquarters of Nasir Oric. . .

In April 1993, with the town besieged by Serbs, Srebrenica was declared the first Bosnian “safe area” under UN protection (the other five followed three weeks later). Thousands of women, children and old men were packed into UN trucks and taken to Tuzla–until Mr Oric put a stop to it.

“Safe” Srebrenica was supposed to be demilitarised but this did not stop Mr Oric’s soldiers raiding nearby Serb villages. A recent raid, occuring soon after the collapse of the heavy-weapons exclusion zone around Sarajevo, plus the slow gathering of the West’s reaction force, gave General Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb commander, the reasons he needed for extracting the thorn of Srebrenica from the Bosnian Serbs’ eastern side. But Mr Oric escaped.

If, as seems likely, the town’s 40,000 other Muslims are carted off to Tuzla, General Mladic will have restored his battered credibility with Bosnian Serb politicians. He can now claim an eye for an eye: roughly 40,000 Serbs have lost their homes recently, driven from central Bosnia by the Bosnian army and from western Slavonia by the Croats. The UN has lost something different: Srebrenica will be remembered as the town where the policy of “safe areas” was born and died.

4. MUSLIM WARLORD BLOCKED EVACUATION OF SREBRENICA:

The New York Times, April 5, 1993, Monday, Late Edition – Final

Muslim Officer Stops U.N. Evacuation of Srebrenica

By JOHN F. BURNS, Special to The New York Times

The plight of the besieged Muslim town of Srebrenica deepened today when a Bosnian commander ordered a United Nations convoy to leave the enclave without the Muslim civilians the trucks had come to evacuate.

United Nations officials said the Muslim officer commanding the Bosnian garrison in Srebrenica, Nasir Oric, surrounded the United Nations trucks with armed soldiers and announced that he would not permit the evacuation to continue because it threatened to empty Srebrenica and leave the town and outlying villages to be occupied by the besieging Serbian forces.

As the 16 empty trucks left the enclave, the officials said, thousands of angry Muslims milled in the streets, protesting that they had been denied their last chance for survival.

The Bosnian officer’s action voided an operation that could have carried another 2,000 Muslims to the relative safety of Bosnian Government-held territory at Tuzla, 50 miles northwest of Srebrenica. . .

Dan, what evidence do you have that ‘thousands of unarmed men’ were ‘massacred’. It is known from many sources including the Red Cross that there was an attempt at a ‘breakout’ from Srebrenica involving thousands of ‘armed’ not ‘unarmed’ men. These armed formations were cut down in large numbers by the Bosnian Serb Army.

It is not disputed that many (but not thousands) of captured Bosnian Muslim soldiers were executed, however this has to be understood in the context of their commander, Naser Oric pursuing a ‘take no prisoners’ policy when razing Serb villages and massacring the inhabitants. If you read the Geneva Conventions you will find that they are reciprocal and reprisals are allowed if one side ‘opts out’ (The USA and the UK need to remember this in Iraq)

For a Serb view read Carl Savich
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/savich/051.shtml

Gerard’s is not a position, it is a bald faced and disgusting lie.
Maybe he should be forced to learn Dutch so he can spend the rest of his life reading all the reports, research, books and testimony that is present about the Srebrenica massacre.

If there ever was a reason to remove a comment from CT, this was it.

You liar: I have to admit I laughed out loud when I read your point.

You have asserted, and I quote you in full:

‘If you read the Geneva Conventions you will find that they are reciprocal and reprisals are allowed if one side ‘opts out’’

Now you realise you can’t defend that, and are reduced to listing Article 4’s definition of a Prisoner of War and arguing that Osric’s men weren’t POWs (arguable) so they were allowed to be the victims of reprisal: stupid and dishonest, since under the Gen. Conventions *no-one* whether civilian or military may be murdered or killed otherwise than in the course of combat. There’s yet another lie there, in that you are alleging, again, that the only people killed in Srebrenica were ‘ many (but not thousands) of captured Bosnian Muslim soldiers were executed’. Again, a lie. I shall post the relevant extracts from Honig and Both, and, yes, from Rohde: since they rely on judicial inquiries (conducted by the Dutch government into its own army’s failure) whereas you rely on nothing but your own prejudices.

And here is what the Geneva Convention actually says about massacres and reprisals:

Article 1

The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and to ensure respect for the present Convention in all circumstances.
Article 3

In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following provisions:

1. Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour, religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.

*To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:*

*(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;*

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

*(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.*
(Emphasis added but otherwise no deletions or additions- text is at
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm)

DH’s note: In case Gerard has difficulty counting, I should note that I have quoted Articles 1 and 3 which come before Article 4 and make it entirely plain that surrendered combatants may or may not receive the privileges due to Prisoners of War but may not, repeat *not* be massacred or executed without trial. Coming up tomorrow, if Gerard continues to lie: quotations from primary sources re the massacre of several thousand unarmed Bosnian men in Srebrenica.