that would be Al-Qaeda which emerged in 1988 out of the afghan mujaheedin who were financed until 1990 with more than 600 Million tax dollars by the CIA to kick out the Russians. Better luck this time? the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn.
1988 is also the year of the Halabja massacre pinned on Iran first by the US but it turned out that Saddam Hussein (at that time an Ally of the United States) carried out this largest chemical weapons attack directed against a civilian-populated area in history,[2] killing between 3,200 and 5,000 people and injuring 7,000 to 10,000 more, most of them civilians.
Bombing of Serbia was a bombing of European cities, specifically bombing of civilian population centers far from the front to terrorize the population. Also without UN approval.
They last gesture was massive ethnic cleansing. The US intervened when things went out of hand.
Putin risks to end up like Milosevic, a war criminal.
Now, even if those things were true, they are claimed by the proponents of bombing, enemies if you will, the same way that Putin is claiming there is a genocide of million Ukrainians in Ukraine. Do you believe your enemies?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten-Day_War
NATO bombing was not out of the blue. The head of Yugoslavia was a similar mad man (to Putin), just warring out of desperation. The best proof one has of his lunacy is the fact that Montenegro split from Serbia without any deaths. How did this happen? Due to the mad man dying in 2000. I'm pretty sure he would have enacted order by butchering civilians again, inside "his" borders.
Serbia is also the only country out of these conflicts that does not guarantee seat in the parliament for the exYugoslav minorities. Even though the leadership displayed aggression that was successfully deflected, the defenders made a deal to guarantee inclusion of the Serbian minority in the parliament (Croatia, Kosovo etc.)
Still, we have a country like Germany, that self-flagellates for decades and the sentiment of the majority is quite clear. While the general sentiment of people/press in Serbia is that NATO bombing is equivalent to Putin bombing Ukraine. and yeah, every now and then, the most popular Serbian (Monacoan) tennis player will say things like "Kosovo is Serbia" with complete indifference and still be the Jesus like figure his father makes him out to be.
Nobody said it was out of the blue, but it was illegal, wrong and plain terrorist like.
>The best proof one has of his lunacy is the fact that Montenegro split from Serbia without any issues. How did this happen? Lucikly, the mad man died in 2000.
And the best proof of NATO lunacy is that Kosovo declared independence in 2008 because they feared Serbia which at that point wasn't in Kosovo for almost 10 years, during which Kosovar population carried out pogroms of Serbs while the UN forces just watched.
Also Milošević died in 2006, never convicted of any war crimes. Later rulings on other people incriminated him but the same can be said for Tuđman. So, I guess if you die early you are not a war criminal.
>Serbia is also the only country out of these conflicts that does not guarantee seat in the parliament for the exYugoslav minorities.
It guarantees us a seat in the parliament, you just have to pass a laughably low percentage of the general vote. As a minority from Serbia, there's lot of problems in that country but minority representation is not one of them. If I wanted I could go through life without ever using Serbian language, I am not sure the same can be said for a lot of EU countries.
>While the general sentiment of people/press in Serbia is that NATO bombing is equivalent to Putin bombing Ukraine.
Because it is the same, a territory within a country decided it wanted to be independent and it is supported by an outside imperial force.
Yeah, I guess he stopped existing in 2000 and had nothing to do with the peaceful referendum.
> Because it is the same, a territory within a country decided it wanted to be independent and it is supported by an outside imperial force.
How can you believe this? Which part of Ukraine declared independence? What country was supposed to be created out of this independence? Which leaders decided they wanted to create a new independent territory?
> I am not sure the same can be said for a lot of EU countries.
Well, if your country is in EU, the citizens of EU are not forced to learn any language, even if they live outside of their country of origin. Language requirements for non-EU exist due to EU being an extremely lucrative place to live. Moving to Serbia and trying to hop on social benefits will not be as lucrative, so language requirement for citizenship might be unnecessary.
> It guarantees us a seat in the parliament, you just have to pass a laughably low percentage of the general vote.
In Croatia and Kosovo, there is no low percentage threshold. You are automatically in. There's no reason to believe the threshold is achievable, given that people in general do not vote.
Didn't those two breakaway republics declare independence?
>Well, if your country is in EU, the citizens of EU are not forced to learn any language, even if they live outside of their country of origin. Language requirements for non-EU exist due to EU being an extremely lucrative place to live. Moving to Serbia and trying to hop on social benefits will not be as lucrative, so language requirement for citizenship might be unnecessary.
I am not talking about EU citizens moving to another country, I am talking about minorities living in Serbia.
I am a part of minority that lived in the now Serbian territory for over 250 years and there's no legal requirement for us to learn Serbian. You can live your perfectly happy life without it. We have our schools, our communities so learning the Serbian language is not a requisite although most people learn it because it offers some benefits.
I found it odd that you thought I was talking about foreigners.
You mentioned that this cannot be said for a lot of EU countries. Turks born in EU do not have to learn German. Immigration within EU is free from language requirement too.
I do not even understand why do you think minorities not learning Serbian is impressive? Croatia and Kosovo both have schools that can use Serbian in their curriculum and no one is forcing Croatian on them. Similar things exist for Czech and Hungarian. No one is forcing these minorities to go to schools to learn Croatian.
> Didn't those two breakaway republics declare independence?
And were immediately annexed by Russia? How independent is that? Who's the new cultural head of these independent republics?
So Turks in Germany can have schools in Turkish for their children? Do you have a source for this?
>I do not even understand why do you think minorities not learning Serbian is impressive?
Because language rights are central for the survival of minority communities.
>Croatia and Kosovo both have schools that can use Serbian in their curriculum and no one is forcing Croatian on them.
Yeah, when they are not being stoned in Kosovo or have their Cyrillic signs smashed in Croatia.
Sure: https://www.schulentwicklung.nrw.de/materialdatenbank/materi...
That's the official lesson plan for non-German lessons in NRW; other German states have similar plans (teaching is devolved to the states in Germany). Notice that this is the plan used in the state-sponsored lessons; private schools are free to use their own plans.
1. The right to mother tongue: wherever in the world, the child must learn the mother tongue(s) of their parents to support the cognitive and psychological development.
2. The right to participate in the society as an equal: the child must learn the official language(s) of the society well enough to be able to understand and participate in the democracy, business, art etc.
On top of that, the bulk of the school curriculum can be in a yet another language, no problem, as long as these rights are ensured as well.
>And were immediately annexed by Russia? How independent is that? Who's the new cultural head of these independent republics?
They were not immediately annexed, no. Russia didn't even recognize them for a couple of years.
Crimea for some reason was annexed, despite leadership in Crimea wanting the same status given to two countries mentioned above.
Similarly, Ukranian army is not targeting Russian civilians in these regions and is not banishing them to Russia. There is no displacement of millions of Russians in Ukraine.
If you are trying to say "NATO bombing of Serbia is justified", therefore "Russia war against Ukraine should be too", therefore hypocrites, it does not really work.
In a way, they were implementing a century old policy of a guy named Vaso Cubrilovic who argued that Albanians should be expelled[2] from the lands Serbia (precursor of Yugoslavia) took in 1913.
What NATO did, is stopping exactly this from happening.
[1] https://www.hrw.org/report/2001/10/26/under-orders/war-crime...
[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expulsion_of_the_Albania...
And as for that supposed policy of Albanian expulsion, by how much did the percentage of Albanians diminish during the Serbian rule of Kosovo? And by how much did the number of Serbs diminish during the Albanian rule of Kosovo?
https://www.rferl.org/a/yugoslavia-hague-tribunal-major-mome...
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/bosnian-serb-military-l...
Multiple ethnic "serbs" were convicted of genociding muslims.
Ethnic Serbs in Bosnia are a different thing, same as ethnic Bosniak in Serbia are a different thing. Also I found it telling that used Serbs in quotation marks.
Justifying bombing of Serbia because of Bosnia would be like justifying bombing of Belgium because of the Netherlands. Yeah, sure they are kinda allies but that's it.
With the 5 veto powers, this basically means nothing.
I'd also remind you that we have insufficient evidence to suggest that the aim was naive altruism. It could have been naively ideological: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_C...
Well, of course, because then America would have had to give Iraqis the same rights as other Americans, or build a discriminatory system where "real" Americans enjoy more rights than them.
Not that colonizing Iraq would have been justified, but since the war wasn't justifiable anyway - the decision to not colonize Iraq was not out of goodwill, but because it was cheaper that way.
Not plausible? I think you've been watching too many Marvel movies where good vs evil is "obvious"
As for the WMDs, I referred to Saddam's history, not to America's discredited invasion pretext.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/m...
Invading Iraq was on the agenda way before 9/11. The people that decided it are anything but naive.
>There are conspiracy theories that America invaded to steal Iraq's oil but they are not plausible.
Why not? The second largest oil producer in the world is invaded because of altruism out of their great heart. Geopolitics have nothing to do with that.
I believe is someone is naive here is you. At least you should respect as a valid and plausible theory(not calling it conspiracy in order to denigrate it) that the biggest army in the world are interested in controlling the energy producing countries just like any other empires before. And remember that was USA the ones that ousted the British Empire from Persia and the ones that toppled the democracy there.
If America's plan was to take Iraq's oil, what went wrong with the plan, given Iraqis still control their oil?
But there was a coalition of naive countries going along with the US.
And it wasn't a surprise attack without serious diplomatic attempts. And even then, the US did actually worry about the legality of the invasion.
It was a mistake, but it's not the same.
Did you forget the /s? Honestly can't tell if this is satire or not...
If the US attack Belarus with an unjustified casus belli like in the Iraq war, it would still be a huge deal just like the current war in Ukraine - despite everybody knowing Lukashenko is also a dictator.
The elephant in the room & the key difference between Iraq and Ukraine: There are substantially more people in the West who consider Ukrainian people are "one of us civilized people" compared to the Iraqi people.
It has nothing to do with imperialism as i don't see any annexations made by the US, nor puppet governments.
Ukraine, on the other hand, had territories chipped away from it, separatists backed up Russia for years and years, and now a surprise attack without forward notice. It's completely incomparable to Iraq.
Anyway back to the topic - we europeans look at this war as existential threat to our democracy, its not about just Ukraine anymore. That's why thousands javelins and stingers were provided by US, UK and other states which allowed them to defend till now. After Ukraine, it would be increasing russian circle towards west - baltic states, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania. Thats 100 million of people who know very well how horrible the life is under russian oppression and terror.
Its also in US interests that this pans out with russians losing and stopping their imperialism - Europe is by far the biggest US ally (count 500 million relatively rich people), losing it would mean US power becomes progressively marginal in this world. Nobody free wants that, there are plenty of bullies out there, small and big.
It should also be said that, who is a bully depends on whose interests one happens to align with. Maybe transatlantic interests are always magically aligned forever but somehow I doubt it. One should wonder why or how that comes about, and at whose expense.
Who gives a f*k what some murderous dictator wants or not. That's undefendable position these days. He had done enough evil in this world in past 20 years and cost lives of millions civilians including many children that he can shake hands with Hitler, Stalin and Mao. Anything Russian is a big no-go. I guess they really have to build their tanks from wood now, since they failed with Armata tanks so badly (but for Russia predictably).
Do you also point out some traumatic events from Hitler's childhood as some form of excuse for his actions? He was also just trying to expand his country to what he seemed as more ideal setup and give it better future. This abhorable little man stands against everything western democracies value very dearly.
He managed to do 1 thing almost perfectly though - unify whole Europe and in fact most of the world in a way that leaders were failing for decades. Its just that its against him and his crooks and murderers. Hopefully the momentum will remain for long. As they say, the society is defined by common enemy, and well he is the best there could be right now. He would be comical if his actions were not killing hundreds of people every single day right now.
You really should educated yourself about Yemen. It is the worst war-caused humanitarian crisis going on in the world today. Worse than what is happening to the people of Ukraine, by far.
> But even Iraq does seem different: Hussein was a brutal dictator and, at least initially, Americans were welcomed as liberators.
> a. Killing members of the group;
> b. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
> c. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
> d. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
> e. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Crimean_Canal
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/08/world/europe/ukraine-russ...
I'm not pro-Putin or pro-Russia, but I'm looking at things objectively. If I had a browser history I could pull them from there but now the search engines are inundated with propaganda and I cannot find them. It is too late to get objective facts right now, unfortunately.
It is scary how facts become "facts" and now for you it is heresay from some random HN poster (me). Disinformation campaigns are effective.
Again, I'm not pro-Russia but just look at this thread to see that the pro-Ukraine crowd silence anything not 100% in their favour. We see the same thing in anti-Israel discourse online as well, where both sides vehemently do their best to silence any voice not on "their side", no matter how factual.
The Kuwait war was after an invasion by Iraq and at the invitation of the government there, and the US were restrained enough to halt at the Iraq border.
The Syrian war was not started by the US, and it has played a minor part there. In fact, it is Russia that has indiscriminately bombed Syrian cities and targeted civilians and hospitals there.
Afghanistan was in response to 9/11 and the refusal of the Taliban to end their protection of a terrorist organisation that had repeatedly attacked American targets internationally before their deliberate targeted murder of thousands of American civilians. This does not seem comparable to Ukraine.
The Iraq war stands out for me as the unjustified and imperialist war of modern times. It seems to me that the atmosphere post 9/11 was used as a pretence. But even Iraq does seem different: Hussein was a brutal dictator and, at least initially, Americans were welcomed as liberators. In Ukraine we are seeing widespread civilian resistance to the invasion. But Blair and Bush should answer for their war crimes.
By far the biggest difference here, I think, is that by being a European war and through the potential for further conflict and nuclear conflict, this war has far larger international ramifications and strategic risks attached to it. To see European cities bombed is to be reminded of what has happened in the past and that it can happen again. That is why it is receiving so much attention.