• Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        1 year ago

        context

        NATO bombed Serbia 78 days/nights with depleted uranium, leaving Serbia with the highest cancer rate in europe. NATO also destroyed an embassy people from several different countries were taking shelter in. Bernie Sanders (who many of us on Hexbear preferred over the other democratic candidates in 2016/2020, even though we don’t think bourgeois elections are how you fix society) supported president Bill Clinton in this because the propaganda at the time said this was necessary to stop Milosevic, who was said to be ethnically cleansing. Whether or not that is true, NATO’s bombing campaign didn’t actually improve the situation. It just killed a lot of innocent people, destroyed a lot of critical infrastructure, gave a lot of people cancer, and helped facilitate the process of balkanizing and privatizing Yugoslavia, which had been a non-aligned country during the cold war.

        • NovaPrime@lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          Agree on a lot of points, but do have to disagree with a few things. I’ve seen the sentiment here a few times now that Serbia was a victim and that the bombings were unnecessary, but as someone who grew up and lived in the area at the time, I can wholeheartedly and confidently say that Serbia deserved the bombings and they absolutely were necessary to prevent further genocide in Bosnia. The genocide 100% was real (my father helped pick up bones of those burried in mass graves during the srebrenica massacres). Serbia failed to listen to abide by the Dayton accords, and suffered the consequences. And for what it’s worth, the limited bombing campaign immediately led to a ceasefire and stopped the war, which I would argue immensely improved the situation for the bosnian people being murdered.

          That being said the privatization after the fact was a shame and destroyed one of the best examples of collective federal socialism we’ve ever had (re: Yugoslavia).

          • Tachanka [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            1 year ago

            Serbia deserved the bombings

            It was mostly civilians being killed, they destroyed an embassy, and decades later Serbia has the highest cancer rate in Europe.

            as someone who grew up and lived in the area at the time, I can wholeheartedly and confidently say that Serbia deserved the bombings and they absolutely were necessary to prevent further genocide in Bosnia.

            This is a weird way to follow up saying civilians deserve to get bombed and get cancer. I’ve also talked to other people from your part of the world who disagree with you. So maybe it doesn’t lend you as much authority as you think.

            Serbia failed to listen to abide by the Dayton accords

            Of course they didn’t. They were imposed by western interventionists for the explicit purpose of balkanizing and privatizing Yugoslavia!

            See this post I made about it. It was originally intended for this comment but for some reason it wouldn’t save after 5 tries. Probably hit some kind of character limit. https://hexbear.net/post/1011994

            (From the book “To Kill A Nation: The Attack On Yugoslavia.” Sources in the bibliography of the book itself. I am not hand copying them.)

            That being said the privatization after the fact was a shame and destroyed one of the best examples of collective federal socialism we’ve ever had (re: Yugoslavia).

            This strikes me as a cherry on top of a pile of shit since you just defended the Dayton accords as something the Serbs should have allowed to be imposed upon them by Western interventionists. I don’t know if you’ve just been handed down an oversimplified narrative or what.

  • MattsAlt [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    1 year ago

    Stealing Nima’s quote from a recent citations-needed stream:

    A humanitarian pause is just called reloading, Israel did 6-8 hour pauses during protective edge multiple times and just kept up with the horrors