April 24, 1999 The Hidden History of the War Against Yugoslavia By William F Hagel HUMANITARIAN? The United States government and its NATO junior partners claim they were forced to bomb Yugoslavia out of humanitarian concern for the victims of Milosevic's dictatorship. Because this is the main rational for what would be condemned as an outright criminal attack on a country with which we are not at war, it is important to examine this claim of humanitarian concern going beyond the rhetoric to actual deeds. At the early start of the Cold War, upon reports (rumors?) that the Indonesian Communist Party was planning a revolt, the Indonesian military with the support of the CIA carried out a preemptive campaign in which upwards of one million people were massacred. Anyone on the CIA's list of suspected communists was systematically eliminated without due process. It is incredibly difficult to believe there were one million Indonesian Soviet agents or that indiscriminate slaughter was the answer. Also in the case of Indonesia one doesn't have to go back that far to illustrate the US concern for humanity. In 1976 Indonesia annexed the former Portuguese colony of East Timor in flagrant violation of international law and the wishes of the people of Timor. Since that day the Indonesian military has conducted a bloody campaign to overcome the resistance of the people of Timor who only want their independence. In a revealing demonstration of the concern for humanitarian interests. the US government has enthusiastically supported the Indonesian military with money and weapons in this near genocidal war against the people of East Timor. The war against Vietnam was based on an outright lie and a paranoid deception. The Gulf of Tonkin attack on an American vessel was the lie and the paranoid "domino theory" of communist conquest was the deception. Neither one proved to be true. The object was to accomplish in Vietnam what the Indonesian military did in East Timor with US approval, to pick up a colony abandoned by another power. In this case, France was finally forced to surrender by the Vietnamese liberation army but not before the US made the "humanitarian" offer to help the French overcome the Vietnamese by using the atom bomb. The French, to their credit refused the offer. The US " humanitarian" effort in Vietnam cost 55,000 American lives one million Vietnamese lives, widespread ecological destruction from chemical warfare and the ongoing death and injury from the thousand of landmines the US employed in a "humanitarian" effort to "save" the Vietnamese people. The civilized world was horrified by the ruthless Khmer Rouge attempt to cleanse Cambodia of western influence. The slaughter of a million Cambodians left no doubt about the criminal nature of this enterprise. Yet for many years, the US government openly supported the Khmer Rouge claim to a seat on the UN and secretly helped to support them in the field with weapons and supplies. The reason for this "humanitarian" support of one of the most cold blooded regimes of this bloody century? The US hoped to use the Khmer Rouge against the Vietnamese government. The details of this sordid policy were hidden from the American people with the complicity of the commercial media. Nicaragua suffered under the US supported dictatorship of Somoza until 1979 when he was finally overthrown in a popular rebellion. The US responded in typical "humanitarian" fashion by open and clandestine efforts to overthrow the new democratically elected government. Economic pressure, CIA sabotage, including the illegal mining of Nicaraguan harbors and the arming of death squads specializing in killing and terrorizing civilians was the US " humanitarian" response to the first ever democratic government in Nicaragua. This "two wrongs make a right" policy was justified by the preposterous claim that this tiny desperately poor third nation of peasants was a threat to our national security. In hindsight it is disturbing to contemplate the power of the media to sell such a bald-faced lie. The same can be said about El Salvador and Guatemala where the attempt by a desperately poor peasantry to free itself from a military imposed semi- feudalism was met with a genocidal attack by a military financed, uniformed, armed and trained by the US. Thousands of innocent peasants, including women and children were slaughtered in protecting the power and privilege of a handful of propertied elites. Among the victims of this slaughter were Archbishop Oscar Romero, four American Catholic church women, countless priests and lay church leaders All of the death squad leaders involved in these crimes were trained by the American military in the School of the Americas or as it has come to be known the School of Assassins. The " humanitarian" impulse of the US government can best be judged by the fact that to this day after the full disclosure of these crimes, the US refuses to close down this notorious installation and is continuing to train more third world military. Chile elected Allende, a socialist president who had the nerve to exercise Chile's sovereign right to nationalize the US owned copper industry. At the behest of the copper industry, the US embarked on a campaign to destabilize and overthrow the democratically elected government. The US orchestrated a military coup which murdered Allende, killed thousands of his supporters and other political opponents and installed a reign of terror, the effects of which are still felt to this day. Fortunately for the cause of justice, General Pinochet, the Chilean puppet of US "humanitarian" policy, is being held in England pending criminal charges of war crimes. In invading the tiny Caribbean island of Grenada, the US claimed that Cuban forces were on the island building a military airfield and that American students were in danger from a local insurrection none of which proved to be true. The Cubans on the island were civilian construction workers, not military. The airfield was strictly for civilian, not military use and the students were never in danger. In fact, the government of Grenada offered to airlift the students to other islands but the other islands under US pressure refused to allow this. To justify the invasion of Grenada the US employed a humanitarian concern for the safety of the students where no danger existed. The US expression of "humanitarian" concern about the fate of oppressed minorities is especially suspect in the case of Iraq and Turkey. Both governments severely repress the Kurdish minority including savage attacks on civilian villages and ethnic cleansing of whole areas. When the US needed Saddam Hussein to counter the influence of Islamic Iran, we armed him to the teeth and turned a blind eye to the plight of his victims. It was only when we no longer needed him and he got too big for his britches that we suddenly became concerned about the Kurds the Kuwaitis and other victims. Our "humanitarian" response is to impose economic sanctions and bombing attacks that have resulted in the needless death of at least 500,000 innocent children while not touching a hair on Saddam's head. When questioned by a reporter about this effect of the sanctions, Madeline Albright the "humanitarian" Secretary of State replied that it was a tough decision but in the final analysis it was worth the cost. Contrast this with our treatment of Turkey. For years the Turkish military has been conducting a campaign against the same Kurds that Saddam Hussein is oppressing. The Turkish effort if anything is far more devastating including hundreds of villages destroyed, over a million refugees and countless killed. Turkey even violates international law by extending its attacks on Kurds beyond it own borders in Iraq. The difference is that this is done with the active support of the US government which is the major supplier for the Turkish military effort In this case our "humanitarian" conscience is conveniently put aside because Turkey is a key NATO ally Last but not least is the example of Haiti. After suffering many years under the cruelest of dictators, the Haitian people finally elected a democratic government with Aristide as president. As soon as Aristide was elected on a platform of social reform the US government through the CIA organized a coup that overthrew him forcing him into exile here in the USA. The coup resulted in the killing of anyone who dared speak against the coup. The killers, Tonton Macoute, were organized and armed by the CIA. When the US military finally went into Haiti to "protect democracy" their first act was to steal the official Haitian records which would have exposed the role of the US and the CIA in overthrowing the democratically elected government and supporting the dictatorship. To this day the US supported death squads are active in Haiti and the US refuses to return intact the stolen documents to the Haitian government. Thousands of innocent Haitians have suffered and are still suffering as a result of US "humanitarianism". The record of US "humanitarian" concern forces us to look beyond official explanations for the horrific bombing of both Kosovo and Iraq. It is not enough to expose the lies our government uses to justify its military policy, it is necessary to learn the real reasons for this criminal violation of international law and human decency. For this one must go beyond the establishment commercial media to the internet, the independent publishers and independent press. Anyone interested in receiving additional material from independent sources can contact me at <bill.hagel@juno.com>