Reply #17: War Crimes

[Tinoire]

This site also has lots of information but I haven't had a chance to read the whole thing since I'm at work:

Long article with links/sources here that I'd recommend you use as a base from which to research. Also covers Waco.
http://www.brasscheck.com/yugoslavia/clarkatwaco.html

When possible, check the old DU archives. Many of us were aware of what was going on in Kosovo and denouncing it. If Clark does run, there's going to be a lot of nasty information being exposed by both the left and the right. A lot of leftists protested against what was going on there. International Action Center led quite a few marches to include at least one on DC.

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Veterans for Peace of whom DUers are so enamoured for speaking out against Bush, spoke out loudly against the War Crimes taking place during our war against Yugoslavia.


Humanitarian Intervention?
By Jim Burkholder, Past-President, Veterans for Peace

<snip>

We and our principal allies in the EC avoided bringing the UN into the negotiations with Yugoslavia prior to our military campaign because we knew that humanitarian means would be invoked to solve the conflict. We and our allies were intent on imposing our military prowess over Yugoslavia to the extent that we were willing to profane the defensive mission of NATO by using its aircraft to destroy the cultural, economic, and industrial infrastructure of a nation with whom we were not at war.

Webster defines the adjective humanitarian as helping humanity, and the noun intervention as interference of one state in the affairs of another. War with all of its violence and destruction can never qualify as humanitarian and it is a very obtrusive interference in someone else’s affairs. The actions of the US and its allies culmination in the seventy eight days of bombing Kosovo and Serbia could, and should, instead be recognized as war crimes against humanity, as has been alleged from many sources.

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/interstatement.htm

Veterans for Peace statement on Kosovo (Excerpt thereof)

Adopted by the Board of Directors Meeting in Washington, D.C.,April 10, 1999

Veterans for Peace (VFP) is appalled by the violence, bombing, killing,and ethnic cleansing now going on in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia and in the province of Kosovo. We condemn both the NATO bombing campaign and the murderous campaign of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his military in Kosovo. We are deeply concerned over the resultant refugee crisis and dislocation of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars, the widespread suffering engendered thereby, and the potential for destabilization in Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and beyond.

http://www.gsoa.ch/zivil/kosov@/kosov@_nato/199905/19990503.0.html

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The bombing of Yugoslavia, which is a result of Albright’s diplomatic intransigence:-

1. is killing and maiming more and more innocent civilians every day (over 1000 dead so far);

2. has made repression in Yugoslavia and the refugee crisis much worse, not stopped it;

3. is a blatant violation of international law and the US constitution;

4. threatens to ignite a much larger war, with growing NATO antagonism towards Russia & China;

5. is blatantly hypocritical in the light of ongoing repression practised by US allies like Turkey;

6. is using illegal weapons of indiscriminate mass destruction, such as cluster bombs, mines and Depleted Uranium Bullets which leave behind a cancerous legacy of radioactive waste;

7. is an immoral waste of our tax revenues while here in the US, one in five children live in poverty and whole families are living on the streets.

Tucson Peace Action Coalition member groups Students Against Sweatshops, Pueblo por la Paz, Veterans for Peace, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, The Nuclear Resister, Raytheon Peacemakers, and Jobs with Justice join their voices to demand:

http://www.iacenter.org/albrt_ua.htm