OK so I lied in my last blog, I'm not finished ranting about the wars ten years ago. I admit that I didn't fully understand all the players (Serbs, Croats and Slavs) when all this took place but I do remember trying to establish a bad guy. The media seemed to serve up Milosevic on a sliver platter and while I'm certainly not advocating his innocence, he was just the only one who survived long enough to have charges brought against him.
So for all of you who were either too young to remember, didn't get past WWII in history class or were just as confused as I was, here's a brief recap.
Back when Hitler conquered this part of the globe, before the Greatest Generation got their medals and before anyone gave two shits about Eastern Europe, you have five types of people (comprised of 3 religions - Catholics, Muslims and orthodox, and 2 ethnicities) inhabiting the land who had been conquered by nearly as many cultures as the Polish (though France still holds the record for sheer number of times beaten). When the Nazis established law here the Croats (Catholics, who as history tells us, were ALWAYS on the moral side of the issue) saw it as an opportunity for a little autonomy and supported the new rulers. When Hitler showed them his plans for changing the landscape, they were all for it. Anywhere from 25k to 300k were exterminated.
After the Allies saved everybody's ass, we started drawing up new countries. Grand decisions like Iraq, Israel and Yugoslavia were created.
The Iron curtain falls, Yugoslavia becomes a communist satellite and Titto came to power. I remember hear about what a controversial guy he was. Here was his great achievement - keeping five factions from killing each other. Wanna guess how he did it - ding, ding all the people who said despotism, come on down!
Seriously, the guy was a class-A douche bag. People disappearing and shit - really nasty stuff. People here have a short-term memory. Kinda like Russia does now. Everyone likes Putin because he keeps his foot on the neck of the separatist. They forget he's quickly eroding their civil liberties - take note Patriot Act supporters.
Regardless, after Titto dies shit goes crazy. The Serbs gain the upper hand in 1991, and figure it's payback time for the heinous shit the Nazis/Croats pulled and 6,000 people end up disappearing. Guess where they found them (hint: it wasn't Barbados). It was mass graves
Fighting continues. In 1995 the Croats set up "rape camps" (think Auschwitz but instead of crematoriums, there is a fresh platoon of pissed of soldiers...oh, and they only interned women...yep you are on the right track). Lucky for them, we had a president at the time that gave a damn about other things that didn't concern oil and sent ol' Wes Clark to drop some "war kisses" for about 2 months. Because the US was involved in a military expedition, it got press. Because it got press, people started hearing about all the nastiness. The residents took a cue from Germany in 1948 and said, "Wait, we didn't know they were doing that stuff" and quickly ousted Milosevic. He died in prison. The official cause was heart failure. We all know it was assassination.
So, after all that reading, you wanna know who the bad guys were, right? THEY ALL WERE! All of them did unimaginable, horrible, things to one another. It doesn't matter who did it first or who did it worst/best. Everyone over here deserved a BIG time out!
Instead, everyone pretty much goes about their business. There are now five countries where there was once one - all drawn on religious and ethic lines. Bosnia's having the hardest time apparently because of the heavy mix of the five.
Croatia is looking into being admitted into the EU be they're being told to piss off until they hand over the war criminals.
I like the fact that they can forgive and forget but I don't think we need 6 million dead before we start calling something what it is - systematic extermination of a race or people, i.e. holocaust. The fact that 90 percent of the people reading this (including yours truly up to 48 hrs ago) didn't put all of this together, or know all the details is pretty alarming. Do we need to lose troops to take notice? Does Brat Pitt have to go to Africa and hold a bloated baby before we even consider doing something in Dar Fur?
OK, enough - for now. I'm not promising anything. I'm sure I'll revisit this the more I think about it.
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