Milosevich the nationalist? hardly

[Borba100@xxxxxxxxxxx]

In a message dated 08/31/2000 6:25:01 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Lou forwards
a letter from Anthony who writes:

<<  In power he [Milosevic] did more to build the petty nationalisms
 of Craotia, Slovenia, et. al than any of their petty nationlist leaders
 could ever have done.  >>

This is simply untrue.  My question is, is it the media demonization of the
Serbs that makes leftists feel they have the right to talk without providing
evidence?  In other words,  have some people so absorbed Serb-baiting
assumptions, that this kind of fallacy can just be stated without requirement
of fact?

I've been doing research, mainly Lexis, on 1990-1992 and the more I read the
more obvious it is that a) Milosevich did not take a nationalist line.He was
a Yugoslavist, as opposed, say, to his opponent Vuk Draskovic.  He never
called for Serbia to expand - he called for holding Yugoslavia together,
quite a different matter.  Moreover, at the risk of sounding like a broken
record, Serbia itself as largely not ethnically Serbian.  . B) If Milosevbich
is to be faulted, it is for being soft on secessionism - a little of US Grant
would have gone a long way.  And wrong on Western reliability. For example,
in late 1991, when the West was trying to station UN troops inside the
Krajina, claimed by Kosovo but administratively semi-independent under Tito
and historically ruled by "Independent Croatia" only under Fascism - when it
was proposed to a) disarm the Krajina Serbs and b) install blue helmets
INSIDE Krajina and c) make Krajina Serbs adopt the laws of Croatia (which had
already expelled and beaten/murdered thousands of Serbs and whose laws
reduced Serbs to second class status) - when this was proposed Milosevich
said do it, the UN would be fair, and publicly attacked Babic, leader of the
Krajina Serbs for opposing same.  Babic said, put these troops between us and
Croatia, that's OK; but if these UN troops are stationed inside Krajina, if
the Yugoslav Army is withdrawn, and if we are disarmed (as the plan called
for) we will be destroyed in a few years.  The Army was withdraw from Krajina
(by the Great Nationalist Milosevich) the Krajina Serbs were disarmed and the
Blue Helmets were stationed in Krajina and the ENTIRE population of Krajina
was expelled in August 1995 by the Croatian Army under US leadership, with US
planes providing air support, strafing civilians, and so on.

That was in '95, but already in the spring (I think) of '92 the Croatian Army
made its first big attack on the Krajina Serbs - and the Blue Helmets did
nothing. The Western media disregarded this attack.

The notion of "Serbian expansion" is based on the ludicrous - for instance,
we are told that the Serbs "occupied" 1/3 of Croatia  (i.e., Krajina, where
they lived, and which was not part of Croatia historically). Similarly, the
Western media said the Serbs "seized" 60% of Bosnia whereas in fact they,
being peasants, occupied land in disproportion to numbers - as peasants
usually do. (As opposed to Bosnia's city dwellers, who were
disproportionately Muslim because Muslims, the elite under Ottoman rule,
owned and managed in disproportionate numbers...)

Jared