Double Standards

[This post is NOT INTENDED to justify/attempt to glorify the actions of Mr Slobodan Milosevic and his supporters. Nor am I trying to make the point that two wrongs make a right.

This article is only meant to announce some facts that the media of the so-called Western democracies are not acknowledging.

Another reason is that if the West could actually ENCOURAGE, AID and ABET TERROR in Yugoslavia, then there is no reason why they would not do it in India (at Musharraf's behest?). Wake up, friends, Indians, countrymen. ]

Not only have the EU and the USA failed to protect the life of Slobodan Milosevic, but have yet again brow beaten the Government of Serbia and Montenegro into not according the former president a state funeral. All this in the name of human rights - the 2,00,000+ people killed during the Bosnian and Kosovo wars or so they proclaim. Milosevic was facing trial for genocide and crimes against humanity during these wars, at the International Tribunal at The Hague.

Now for some facts:

* The figure of 2,00,000 dead in Bosnia and Herzegovina is an exaggerated figure quoted by the Bosnian Government and the Western media. Research done by the International Criminal Tribunal in 2004 determined a more precise number of 102,000 deaths out of which more than half were combatants.

Since the NATO were involved in the war on the side of the Croats and Muslims, by the same rules, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Helmut Kohl... should also have been indicted by the tribunal.

* Alija Izetbegovic, the war time Bosnian president, escaped trial for war crimes when he died in 2002, but was accorded a state funeral all the same. This man was a collaborator of Osama Bin Laden and had been arrested after WW-II for collaborating with the Nazis in their atrocities against the Serbs.

So, what next? Osama Bin Laden getting the Nobel Peace prize?

* The Balkan wars were certainly not started by the Serbs. A few Bosniaks like Izetbegovic have wanted an Islamic state since WW-II. Albania had been having territorial ambitions over Kosovo throughout the 20th century, and it was Kosovo's Albanians who began the ethnic strife.

A quick and violent end to socialism suited the West fine. (Remember how US arms manufacturers murdered JFK, and then got Lyndon Johnson to wage war in Vietnam, so that they could profit?)

So, why single out Serbia for the blame?

* The Al Qaeda and their supporters were involved in the Balkan wars, even against those Muslims/Albanians who were in favour of an unified socialist state.

If the USA has the right to fight terrorism through extreme force, then why not everybody else?

In a nutshell, why blame only Serbia and Milosevic?