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Comment by dbcurtis | Hacker News Reader

Well, but let's talk about the collapse of Yugoslavia for a while and the subsequent genocide in Bosnia. Here was something in Western Europe's back yard, and they were totally impotent, letting genocide happen right before their eyes. If US citizens are "complicit" in "crimes against humanity", are not European citizens complicit in the genocide that they let happen? Standing by and wringing your hands until the skin rubs off does not stop genocide. It took the US to get involved with a military deployment for any effective action to be taken.

I'm sick to death of being lectured by Europeans who can't be bothered to do anything beyond writing scolding editorials in newspapers.

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Well, at least we didn't start the war, not even under false pretenses, we welcomed a lot of refugees, held real trials, didn't torture or assassinate anyone and sent countless of soldiers on peacekeeping missions. And it wasn't like the US one day got involved and saved the day. NATO and the UN (Yes, the air strikes were UN sanctioned) was involved from the beginning of the war.

Its shocking that the "eurofag" crowd don't seem to get this aspect of the Bosnian conflict: Europe was definitely involved. European troops got there first.

Mostly "I don't know too much about the world, but the white house said they did great". If Europe had any larger responsibility for the conflict, it was probably that it couldn't stop the war from happening (even though this is a complex topic as well). Of course this is also one of the motivations behind the EU.

It is rather shocking that the propaganda defeats peoples willingness to investigate the truth for themselves - especially with regards to a topic that is, quite literally, extraordinarily inflammatory. Europe, having suffered two major world wars as a result of countries thinking they should just intervene whenever/wherever/for whatever reason, has reason to be cautious whenever someone starts a fire in the Balkans. American nationalists attempting to defend their country's honor don't seem to factor in this key value in their analysis: European leaders have learned to be cautious when it comes to making a case for multi-national warfare. America, having gone into the great dark void it current inhabits, for the most part alone (albeit with a collection of puppet states for the sake of keeping up appearances), seems all too boisterous when it comes to just sending military resources and assets across multiple borders.

This was all factored into place when Europe responded - before the US - to the Bosnian crisis. Very definitely, mistakes were made - but the conflagration was defused and there is now - relatively speaking - a peace in the area. Bosnia could've been Europes' Syria/(Israel,Palestine). However, it isn't today - and the reason for this is the cool headedness of European leadership. Not the arrogant bragadocio of American militarism.

If you are arguing that Western Europeans were powerless to do anything about it, yes, that is an argument in favor of having a sizable military -- but not necessarily an argument in favor of taking action with it.

If you are arguing that they just chose not to do anything, and the US intervention was virtuous -- that does not necessarily show that other US military actions in the past 30 years are similarly valuable.

> but not necessarily an argument in favor of taking action with it.

Stopping genocide is the clearest justification for "taking action" with a large military.

IMO, the issue is not that the US has a large military. Scale is hard to judge, but the US has a ridiculously huge military. The US military is designed to fight 3 wars at the same time which seems to be vast overkill. The #1 Air Force in the world in term of military strength is US Air Force, #2 Air Force in the world is the US Navy. That's vastly beyond what it takes to deal with local genocide.

PS: Consider the F-15 Eagle introduced in 1976 currently has a world wide 100:0 kill loss ratio in Aerial Combat, that took an insane amount of R&D and training. In fact the production is scheduled to in in 2019. While impressive it's hard to call that anything but overkill.

>Well, but let's talk about the collapse of Yugoslavia for a while and the subsequent genocide in Bosnia. Here was something in Western Europe's back yard, and they were totally impotent, letting genocide happen right before their eyes.

There were totally competent to do whatever they wanted. They just didn't care AND didn't want to step on each others toes, whereas the US didn't mind stepping on their collective toes.

As for the intervention, the US decision makers and military could not care less about stopping the genocide (in the same way they didn't care about "crimes against humanity" elsewhere, or actively helped some in other places when it was convenient, e.g. assisting Suharto, Pinochet, Nicaragua, etc., not to mention their own shit).

It was just a convenient excuse to establish Kosovo as another protectorate in Eastern Europe and give a general signal about their reach in the area.

> There were totally competent to do whatever they wanted.

Since WWII, IIRC, most NATO militaries have been structured (in part originally with US support and in some cases insistence, though the US preference has changed on this, especially since the end of the Cold War) to be dependent on the US as the core of any major operations (this was, IIRC, a substantial issue for the UK, particularly as to the structure of its naval forces, in the Falklands.)

> As for the intervention, the US decision makers and military could not care less about stopping the genocide. It was about establishing Kosovo as another protectorate in Eastern Europe.

Kosovo was the tail end of the breakup of Yugoslavia; it certainly wasn't the motivation for the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which substantially predate the crisis in Kosovo, unless you are suggesting some kind of long conspiracy that even the harshest critics of US policy in the region have never suggested before.

>Since WWII, IIRC, most NATO militaries have been structured (in part originally with US support and in some cases insistence, though the US preference has changed on this, especially since the end of the Cold War) to be dependent on the US as the core of any major operations (this was, IIRC, a substantial issue for the UK, particularly as to the structure of its naval forces, in the Falklands.)

UK, France, Italy, Germany, et al. were more than perfectly capable of winning a war with the tired army of the 1/3 of an ex-socialist Yugoslavia.

>Kosovo was the tail end of the breakup of Yugoslavia; it certainly wasn't the motivation for the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina, which substantially predate the crisis in Kosovo, unless you are suggesting some kind of long conspiracy that even the harshest critics of US policy in the region have never suggested before.

The Kosovo has been a point of interest in the area (and a conflict zone) way before the US intervention in Bosnia-Hercegovina -- even in mid-eighties. Everybody, including "tied" Germany, made its moves, to be a player in the future of Yugoslavia, even before the county dissolved.

And, by the way, 5-10 years ahead are not "long", they're literally nothing much in diplomatic and foreign affairs planning.

The US have a plan for Cuba after Castro dies for decades now (revised to new situations of course), and similar, players in international politics play the long game, including centuries of interventions and moves, all the time.

The "word" genocide is a word so much manipulated by you "humane" Americans "saving the world". You missed a number of genocides commited by the Bosnian Muslims and the UCK rebels financed by the CIA. We have all been fed the one sided story of Srebenitsa about the Serbs commiting "genocide" while it was pure execution of the soldiers who had massacred Serbs in the nearby villages in the first place. Then you send your phony Agelina Jolie to shed tears about the Muslims but no one tear for the Serbs. You hypocrites. Or how Germany, the main US lapdog of Europe, instigated the break up of Yugoslavia. As people, we revolted, but as always the European governments are bought up by the warmongering elite living in your country. I personally have felt what toxic fume tastes like thrown to me by police by protesting in the streets. A fried of mine lost his hearing while protesting. Please don't lecture us. Investigage your wars crimes and stop playing "the saviour". This is not Hollywood. It real life. And you are complicit in every way. But I accept that Europeans are complicing by laying down and letting the steam roller called "US foreing politics" roll over us.

Some of us were protesting the war in Yugoslavia in the streets of our cities.

You seem to imply that the terror in the Balkans was an internal issue, not caused or fuelled by external intervention, or in part armed by western powers. I think the reality is closer to this paragraph from wikipedia[1]:

"The Bosnian government lobbied to have the arms embargo lifted, but that was opposed by the United Kingdom, France and Russia. US proposals to pursue this policy were known as lift and strike. The US congress passed two resolutions calling for the embargo to be lifted but both were vetoed by President Bill Clinton for fear of creating a rift between the US and the aforementioned countries. Nonetheless, the United States used both "black" C-130 transports and back channels, including Islamist groups, to smuggle weapons to Bosnian-Muslim forces, as well as allowed Iranian-supplied arms to transit through Croatia to Bosnia. However, in light of widespread NATO opposition to American (and possibly Turkish) endeavors in coordinating the "black flights of Tuzla", the United Kingdom and Norway expressed disapproval of these measures and their counterproductive effects on NATO enforcement of the arms embargo. Inter Services Intelligence also played an active role during 1992–1995 and secretly supplied the Muslim fighters with arms, ammunition and guided anti tank missiles to give them a fighting chance against the aggression."

A simplistic view that there were evil Serbians and good Bosnians seems a bit naive. I think there are some strong parallels with how the Mujahideen were "good" when fighting Soviet, and are now "evil" when fighting NATO. It's a compelling fiction, but it's not how the real world works. The real world is more like:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DynCorp#Bosnia_incidents

Just moving in with military force and expecting a Hollywood ending is completely unrealistic. How do you stop a genocide in a civil war? By committing genocide against the "offending" party?

And while I opposed the UN/NATO intervention (a landmark bending of the UN charter in favour aggression) your comment also seem to belittle the role of European troops in the peacekeeping effort. I have nothing but respect for those that served, even if I have mostly contempt for the politicians that sent them there.

Lastly, I don't see much point in creating a competition of guilt. As you ask:

> are not European citizens complicit in the genocide that they let happen

Most certainly. We're also complicit in the murder of Iraqi , Syrian, Libyan and Afghan children, as we've been unable to stop the wars our government participates in, for some vague geopolitical agenda. But that doesn't change the fact that the US controls the largest war machine the world has seen, and seem more than willing to wield it with impunity across the globe.

It can be hard to fight off apathy and frustration when you pay taxes to a system that keeps killing (mostly innocent) people for what apparently seems like not very good reason, and perhaps even worse, based on very poor intelligence and complete disregard for history (What, the British were surprised at the situation in Afghanistan, after having been at war there for a hundred years or more? No one reads Kipling any more?).

But just because many things are terrible, doesn't mean one should stop to try to do good. But the opposite, in such times, everyone must do what they can. If everyone does something, then something can be done.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bosnian_War#Warring_factions

In before the "Camp Bondsteel is nothing but a guard post for oil pipelines!" conspiracy theorists...

"Americans have been trained by the media to go into Pavlovian giggles at the mention of the word "conspiracy," because for an American to believe in a conspiracy, he must also believe in flying saucers or, craziest of all, that more than one person was involved in the JFK murder" (Gore Vidal)

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