Those former left-wing pioneers who founded the neoconservative movement in Washington should not be treated like war criminals or fathers of the ‘new imperialism’. In fact the doctrine should be welcomed and supported by us liberals.
We liberals believe in a society based on liberty, justice and a constitutional government, whether it is in are own country or abroad. But we have struggled since Iraq to maintain the common principles following the Liberal Democrats’ vote against the war. And to hear Nick Clegg at the last conference shun “neo-con wars” was almost unbearable to listen to. Why criticise foreign intervention or the ‘Blair doctrine’ because it is immoral, and then sit along side the new left who support groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah? I fail to understand modern Liberals.
Saddam was a fascist dictator who tortured his own citizens and gave financial support to terrorist organisations that declared war against Israel. Removing him from power benefited the West and the Middle East, even though the planning of the war was a disaster for Iraq and the coalition (but that is a different matter.) Now we are faced with Iran, a theocracy ruled by an undemocratic council and with a poor human rights record towards women, homosexuals and reformists. Will we liberals stand by and allow President Mahmud Ahmadinejad to mock and violate international law once more?
Zimbabwe is another nation, too, which is suffering from the exploitations of a tyrant and requires foreign intervention. South Africa and the African Union have allowed Mugabe to go unchallenged for far too long. Britain would be justified in using military force to remove Mugabe and the people of Zimbabwe would welcome UK action – the Catholic Church of Zimbabwe said Britain would be morally justified – but there is no chance of this because liberals have ruled out the idea of humanitarian intervention. Iraq has allowed the very idea to be seen as imperialistic in nature.
Whether it will be Iran, Zimbabwe, Burma or Sudan, we liberals will continue to play the Iraq card in relation to foreign intervention. The Liberal Democrats have placed themselves in the isolationist field of foreign affairs, which is both tragic and depressing.
That is why I am an independent liberal. My views and beliefs are different to some, and my support for the neoconservative agenda has isolated me amongst liberals. But if the liberalism we hold so dear is based on liberty and democracy, then we of all people have the moral right to spread it.
* Daniel Furr is an independent liberal, not linked to the Lib Dems, currently studying business at Greenwich University. He is also a part time freelance blogger commenting on politics and international affairs.
Editor’s note: ‘The Independent View’ is an occaional slot for non-Lib Dem members to put across their viewpoint. If you’re an LDV-reading non-party member – or if you know someone you think would be a good contributor – and would like to write an article, please do get in touch with the editor at [email protected].
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46 Comments
I agree with the principle that intervention can be justified. As a liberal, I believe that societies run on liberal values are genuinely better than others; I’ve got no time for the moral relativists who tell me that tyrannical regimes where women have no rights and people are tortured or worse are OK, because it’s just the way they do things and their culture has different values to ours.
My objection to the Iraq war (and I believe the objection of many others too) was never that we should approve of the likes of Saddam Hussain.
The problem was always the real likely outcome: hundreds of billions spent, tens of thousands of lives lost, the middle east destabilised, extremist groups enthused and all the rest of it.
Similarly with Zimbabwe, we would have to be pretty confident that the end result would be an improvement before launching military action and I’ve never seen anything that suggested to me that was the case.
Government intervention does not work. As liberals we understand this, and realise that the world cannot have liberal democracy imposed on it by politicians in Whitehall /DC and their armies. The development of liberal environments must, inherently, be bottom-up.
Could you be clearer on what you refer to when you say we “sit along side the new left who support groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah”?
Utter shite.
We don’t align ourselves with the likes of Hamas and George Galloway, and if you can’t see that liberal opposition to invading Iraq is different to far-left opposition to Iraq I wonder what the hell you’re doing here.
The reason you “fail to understand modern liberals” is that you’re not a liberal, modern or otherwise. Go to Harry’s Place.
Afghanistan is “the most important conflict of our generation”.
“The consequences of failure would be devastating”.
This is isolationist, how, exactly?
This accusation of isolationism is being used as an alternative to discussing the actual merits of a particular intervention. Although in most of the examples we don’t have the capacity to intervene and the merits are therefore academic.
One’s position on Iraq, of course, is not the acid test of isolationism, but the acid test of whether you are so gung-ho that you will intervene when it does more harm than good.
One word: Kosovo.
I think ‘Cobden’s’ one word summary is the right one.
There are so many issues it’s hard to know where to begin. Here’s an attempt at summary:
1. The problem with Iraq was that (i) it was a war for oil (ii) it was precipitated by our government lying to us (iii) crucually, the aggressors did not plan what to do afterwards. Taking over a country takes a massive investment of time, money and British lives over decades, as Churchill understood when he started to plan the occupation of a defeated German in 1941.
2. Iran is a deeply flawed country but it is also one of the most well developed and stable ones in the region – and it is a democracy of sorts. Most Iranians think their president is a joke and every Iranian, whatever their view, would fight to the death to defend their country against a foreign intervention. That’s a pretty good reason to think twice before committing yet more British lives to the next American misadventure.
3. Zimbabwe is a problem which African countries need to resolve, with European support. For Europeans and Americans to invade an African country would sink the world into a devastating war given our past record therein. The people who would suffer most would be the poor of Zimbabwe.
If you want to see how proper, grown up international relations should work, look at Serbia. I am passionately against that country for its shameful record over the past two decades but I applaud the efforts of the European Union to keep links open with their government throughout this time, with the result that that country is now emerging from pariah status and will eventually join the EU. The hardliners will be sidelined and Serbians will enjoy a prosperous future.
Go back to your ‘independent liberal’ closet and think long and hard before you seek to commit us to decades of war. You might try browsing 1984 as well.
Firstly, dealing with Zimbabwe, Africa has failed to address the problem and have yet again played the colonial card.
[Could you be clearer on what you refer to when you say we “sit along side the new left who support groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah”?]
Sure.
The comment was aimed at the new left, the RESPECT Coalition, who think Hamas and Hezbollah are forces of good. Even though both believe in destorying the West. The anti-war movement has become extremely anti-American and anti-Israeli.
Objecting to the Iraq war and thinking Saddam was “not a problem” is pure appeasement.
The military action in Iraq was not launched on humanitarian intervention grounds, but rather on a reading of the effects of Security Council resolutions from the first Gulf War combined with later resolutions (including 1441).
The attorney general, in his advice to the Prime Minister before the military action, explicitly rejects the notion that the “emerging” doctrine of humanitarian intervention could be invoked: http://tinyurl.com/6hkyyb
On the more general point of whether we should endorse this “emerging” (i.e. in legal terms, non-existent) doctrine of unilateral (non-Security Council approved) humanitarian intervention, the answer should regrettably be no. Not necessarily because it would be a bad idea for ourselves and other European countries to launch such actions (with proper post-War planning, etc), but because it would be another step-back in the prohibition of the use of force and another pre-text for nefarious regimes to employ when they want to invade a neighbouring country.
Specifically on Iran, as Wit and Wisdom points out the country is a democracy of sorts, although certainly not one we in the West would really like to see. The idea of launching military action to overthrow a government which can claim widespread support and is not a threat to the West is nonsensical.
“Objecting to the Iraq war and thinking Saddam was “not a problem” is pure appeasement.”
Using labels like “appeasement” to undermine opponents without engaging in debate on the substance of their argument is a piss-poor attack. Would you like to elaborate?
I don’t see that the Libems can reasonably be criticsed as non-interventionist. The commit war crimes to help Nazis to carry out their openly avowed programme of racial murder, ethnic cleansing, genocide, child sex slavery & the dissection of living humans to sell their body parts. If that isn’t sufficiently opposed to traditional liberalism for you you must be even further to the right of Hitler than they are.
Daniel – thanks for your response.
I do not stand alongside Respect, Left List, STWC, New Respect, Trots & Islamists Unite or whatever these new splinter groups like to call themselves. I just happen to agree with them on one matter alone – western governmental military intervention rarely results in the founding of clean, liberal democracy. In Iraq it has, clearly, failed.
A coincidental overlap on one single issue does not equate to ‘standing alongside’ a certain political group. If it did then I’d likely be ‘standing alongside’ virtually every political group bar the fascists.
Julian H wrote: “Government intervention does not work. As liberals we understand this, and realise that the world cannot have liberal democracy imposed on it by politicians in Whitehall /DC and their armies. The development of liberal environments must, inherently, be bottom-up.”
Actually according the liberal ideology the raison d’être of the government is to intervene when some individuals infringe the rights of others.
But it is of course a different matter, whether a government should intervene another government. The risk is that that will set a precedent, and that those governments who are infringing the rights of their citizens feel that they have also a right to intervene a government which doesn’t. And according some old liberal philosophers each country has the government it deserves.
On Zimbabwe, yes Africa has failed abysmally but that still doesn’t justify us sending a gunboat to teach them a lesson.
If you want a proper cause celebre, north eastern Congo is the disaster of all disasters in Africa, where hideous atrocities are taking place and where there is virtually no government. As a good human being I would love us to be able to intervene and stop the terrible acts that arer taking place there but it simply is not possible for us to do so.
The only possible mechanism for stopping violence in countries like Congo is if neighbouring states are willing to lead the way as any intervention is physically impossible if this first stage is not met.
Yes, the world is nasty and brutish and yes we all want to change many situations but we can’t bomb people to the ballot box.
The fundamental, underlying principle of a future LD government should be that we would mind our own business, at every level and in every situation.
Anything can be justified, conditional upon the evidence used in support of the case (please take the ‘dodgy dossier’ as a specific example), but accuracy is the only acceptable measurement, as is always proved with hindsight.
Because I am open to any proposed course of action and prepared to listen I am firmly and distinctly against doctrinaire action.
The ends never justify the means – simply because the means determine what the ends will be.
So, on the terms of the third line of the article I welcome the discussion, but resolutely reject any conclusions that it attempts to make.
“Actually according the liberal ideology the raison d’être of the government is to intervene when some individuals infringe the rights of others.”
Well yes, but in the sense that the purpose is to oversee a strong legal structure and a law which all people are equal in front of (in order to protect individuals’ rights) – rather than arbitrarily deciding to intervene for hubristic purposes.
The most depressing thing about our intervention in Iraq was that anyone who knew anything about the history of the involvement of Britain in the area could pretty accurately predict the consequences of the West deposing Sadam Hussein. Blair and Bush were obviously followers of the Henry Ford school – “history is bunk”, but they were warned what would happen by those who knew their history and they ignored them.
Daniel, I turned 60 this week. I don’t think that age has made me less radical or less angry about the injustices of the world, but perhaps having lived through events that have taken decades to be resolved has made me more pragmatic, and more aware of the long-term consequences of actions.
In the case of a successful ‘intervention’ in Zimbabwe, Iran or Burma will it also be the case that the deposed former leader will be put in front of an indequate kangaroo court, inhumanly executed, all the while being degraded and defiled.
How would this compensate any surviving victims? How would this create peace and reconciliation? How would this promote the civilising effect of universal human rights?
What would this say about us?
No of course they wouldn’t be executed.
They will be poisoned.
That is what we do when it turns out that what the claims our leaders made to be allowed to start bombing turn out to be lies.
We can probably expect Paddy Ashdown to turn up in any court first of all & perjure himeslf in the Nazi cause again.
Friends, LibDems and classical Liberals have always been cautious interventionists; isolationists we never were. There are two separate grounds for intervening in another country:
– because that country is a threat to other countries,
– because that country is damaging its own people more than intervention would.
The Coalition intervened in Iraq on both grounds, but giving the first priority. Our assessment of threat was a bad misjudgement of the evidence. And it now seems probable that our mis-mangement of the intervention has damaged the people of Iraq more than Saddam was likely to have done.
But the mess in Iraq no more establishes the case that intervention is always wrong than the appalling failure of pre-1939 appeasement established an assumption that intervention is probaly the right course.The Liberal stance is and was always that we should be prepared to intervene when one or both of these grounds for intervention were clearly established, to do so under such international law as exists, and only to risk intervention when we are confident that we have the means to deliver our objectives and avoid widening conflict.
The UN was set up principally to deliver a framework of law in which intervention on the first ground could take place. It is slowly coming to accept that its mandate also covers intervention on the second ground. But the UN was also established on the presumption that the risk of widening conflict makes intervention a course of last resort.
Intervention does not always have to wait for formal UN support. Going after the Taliban in Afghanistan for their harbouring of Osama Bin Laden was immediately supported by a wide range of countries, including Iran. There was a consensus that the case was made.
What intervention does have to wait for is international acceptance of the case for it. If we cannot convince others, the first question we should ask ourselves is whether our case is as strong as we thought it. Second, we have to remember that action without general international acceptance of the need for it will damage in some degree the the international institutions which are likely to prove very valuable to all of us in the long run: is action now worth that?
And since the liberal objectives never include running other people’s countries, we should always plan how we will get out of the picture and let the locals run their own show their way. Not easy, as the Congo, Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan etc. illustrate.
I’m afraid, Daniel, that liberal interventionism is a very long, damnably slow, horribly hard haul; but it is the only way for us to go.
Sometimes interventions work and is justified and others it isnt and definatly is not. For example, I have always been against the Iraq war but would have no problem supporting a UN force with a limited mandate (not for regime change) in Burma.
Regime change rarely works and 9 times out of 10 I would be against it. Iraq is the classic example of a war started for the wrong reasons, conducted wrongly and after victory was achieved the mistakes have continued to flow – directly from the naive interventionist view that troops would be welcomed with laurels of flowers not by bitter resistance to what is an occupation. If people think the price is shockingly high now then I think they are in for serious surprises because i think it will be years before the full price is paid….
I am sorry but the view that the best way to spread liberal democracy is through regime change by military force is totally imperialist. Empires and imperialists have always cloaked their deeds with words about a ‘civilizing mission’ so i really dont see what makes ‘neo-cons’ any different.
The first obvious thing to point out is that the policy of invading Iraq failed. Previously Iraq was a totalitarian state, and now it is a failed state. As a failed state, it is even worse for the people who live there than how it was before.
There is no point in doing something if it is not going to work. There is an equally good human rights case for invading China, but it would be a mad thing to do.
The invasion of Iraq had no chance of success. The very idea that the US of all countries could possibly know how to run a country with a radically different culture and history was absurd. It was based of Francis Fukuyama’s concept of the “end of history”; that ideological conflicts had ended and liberal democracy and free market capitalism had triumphed. Neo-Conservatives believed that the US model of government was the only viable alternative to the previous dictatorship, and that a grateful people would naturally support that. We now know how wrong they were.
The irony of the failed policy in Iraq is that it is now less likely that the US will intervene elsewhere; it lacks the means to do so.
It is far from clear what the US intends to do about Iran, they have been dithering for a long time now. I suspect we shall have to wait until after the US elections and into next year. I do not think they will be stupid enough to invade, but it looks likely they will bomb the place, “to smithereens” as Hilary Clinton nicely put it. I wonder if our US cousins are under the dillusion that bombing people is some kind of therepy, because somehow they imagine that something good will come out of this.
The terrible truth is that this is a time of declining power in the west. Emerging powers like China, India and Russia do not automatically sympathise with a human rights agenda. Things will continue to happen that we as liberal loathe, and there is little we can do to stop them.
The author could do with reading Paddy Ashdown’s book, “Statecraft” where he discusses these things.
The best way to improve conditions is to set a good example. Leadership is something else which will be vindicated through hindsight after the final curtain has fallen.
It was not necessary to invade Iraq, and it is proving impossible to occupy and reconstruct her. We may or may not have had the best of intentions, but still, it is clear there has been many violations.
Various parties (the league of democracies?) may argue it is expeditious to mount an expeditiary force elsewhere, but that will never represent the whole story.
We can repeat our mistakes, or we can learn from them.
The position under international law (the UN Charter) is that apart from defencive wars (which can stretch quite a way eg the Afghan war is defencive since they were aiding our former friends in al Quaeda) is a specific right to intervene to stop genocide. Genocide itself having a formal definition. Any war fought outside these parameters is, by definition, a war crime thus the wars against Yugoslavia, the current Iraq war & an attack on Burma were crimenal acts.
One of the basic beliefs defining liberalism is acknowledging the equal legal rights of small nations under both equity & international law. Since the “Liberal Democrats” are actively in favour of big countries bombing hospitals in little ones to enforce the Nazi doctrine of racial genocide there is no possibility of any member of the party honestly describing their party as “liberal”. The BNP may make such a claim, no honest LD can.
Neil Craig proves once more that the Lib Dems made the right decision in kicking him out, & are better off without him.
Geoff-
Hillary made that comment when responding to a hypothetical of Iran nuking Israel. It is not on to be taking things out of context. And your derisive comment about ‘our US cousins’ is a little idiotic too. I don’t think anyone was complaining when they were halting genocide in Kosovo. And, lastly, Fukuyama’s the End of History has been regarded as post-Cold War hubris for some time. I would imagine that most neocons would look to their own cannon of Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz.
Strength i never denied it. Clearlyu being a liberal my membership was incomptible with what the party leadership wants. that was exactly my point.
Steve if you have any evidence that genocide was happening in Kosovo then you were duty bound to give it to the ICTY when they were “trying” Milosevic, since they had none. Why didn’t you?
In any case the claim that NATO “halted” genocide in Kosovo cannot be honestly maintained by anybody who believe Serbs to human beings. The genocide of Serbs continued under NATO rule. You will wish to withdraw that claim if you are not commited to the racial belief in Untermensch. If not those on this thread who are will.
Daniel: “Objecting to the Iraq war and thinking Saddam was “not a problem” is pure appeasement.”
By that argument, wasting resources on the invasion of Iraq when the Burma regime was at the time and is now worse and committing more atrocities is a greater “appeasement” and therefore supporters of the Iraq war, having discredited the doctrine of liberal internationalism that I, alongside Paddy Ashdown and many notable party high-ups, subscribe to, are culpable for the current mess in Burma having tied up troops in a war that sould, by any measure of humanitarian intervention requirements, have been much lower down the priority list.
Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo were all good, justified interventions (if badly done at times), and Paddy’s stance on the Yugoslav crisis was one of the issues that first attracted me to the party.
Iraq was a disgrace, badly thought out, badly planned, badly timed and with no clear purpose or objective. Because of Iraq, the basic principle of intervention is now discredited and another humanitarian intervention will now be much much harder to argue for.
There are isolationists within the Lib Dems, just as there are within all mainstream parties. To try to link a justified objection to a specific action to support for whatever the SWP is calling itself this week devalues your argument and destroys your point.
Mat if you say that the genocide, ethnic cleansing, child sex slavery & disection of living teenagers we have brought about in Kosovo is a good thing then you are, by definition, a Nazi with nothing whatsoever in common with liberals.
Clearly you will only be welcome in an openly racist Nazi party which is what the “Liberal Democrats” have become.
MatGB,
good is OK, but it isn’t good enough. Good diplomacy ought to obviate the need for intervention at an earlier stage – all intervention is an admission of failure, be that complacency or of avoidable mistakes.
Neil Craig does have a point in what he says, but he makes it badly and he loses support for straying into personal judgements and ideological definitions.
Unfortunately it is a big messy world out there, so we won’t ever please all of the people all of the time and decisions will still have to be made.
Mr Craig, I am fully aware of the crimes that have occured in Kosovo, both before and after the internation intervention, and your attempt to label everyone a “nazi” based upon a rather strange definition of the word that seems to be completely detached from common usage does your argument no favours whatsoever.
No “side” within the Yugoslav breakup can reasonably be said to be “good guys”, but some were more bad than others. Tudjman’s overt fascism was nowhere near as bad as Milosovic’s xenophobic nationalism, both should be condemned, but your support for the then Serb “side” and dismissal of the crimes they committed while in control of Kosovo belittles any valid point you may have had.
Do feel free to reaquaint yourself with the definitions of National Socialist doctrines and then try to come up with a label that isn’t completely spurious when you want to launch ad hominem attacks rather than address actual points made?
If you can’t actually address substantive points without insults, don’t expect any further replies to your comments from me.
Oranjepan, comments crossed over—you’re correct, of course, diplomacy is always the best option, and direct military intervention must always be a last resort. But it is an option that we cannot afford to completely abandone, even after the horrible mistake that was (and is) Iraq.
Mat I have previously asked for evidence of atrocities carried out by Milosevic here & no attempt has been made to produce it. This is because it is an outright lie.
You accuse Milosevic of “xenophobic nationalism” yet Lord Owen testified at his “trial” that he was neither. It would be wrong of me, without evidence, to accuse you of personally raping children rather than merely being enthusiastic for the practice, because I have no evidence of you doing so. How very much worse is it of you to make such acusations when either (if you know anything of you pontificate) you know it is a lie or, if you know nothing, you have not even attempted to verify the lies you tell.
The National Socialiosm you claim authority to discuss was a doctrine that said that slavic peoples, jews & gypsies were not human “Untermensch”. It is a doctrine which alone can explain anybody who says that the atrocities stopped with the NATO takeover. It is a matter of record that Mr “overt fascism” Tudjman was a Nazi officer, Izetbegovic our Molem friend was an SS auxiliary, & several ,of our friends in the KLA were too – all in units so obscene that even other German oficers complained that they were giving the SS a bad name – & that all 3 were publicly committed to genocide before the western powers in general & the LibDems under Nazi Ashdown as flagbearers went to asist them.
I am therefore exageration in not the slightest detail in saying that the LibDem party has knowingly & deliberately assisted people they knew to be Nazis in the paractices of genocide, child sexual enslavement & dissection of teens to sell their body parts to our hospitals, That is what Ashdown perjured himself for & that is what the party indubitably stands for. For you to say that the open practice & commitment to genocide of the Nazi Tudjman is more worthy than the open commitment to peace, democracy & multiculturalism of Milosevic proves that I am being perhaps overly moderate in accusing you & the party of merely being racist Nazis.
I do not think anybody can honestly accuse anybody in the BNP of having done anything 1,000th as murderous & pro-Nazi as everyone in the LibDems.
If you can produce no evidence then you owe an unlimited apology to Milosevic, a man whose boots racist Nazis like you are unfit to lick. I await your evidence.
MatGB, Neil does use strong emotive language, doesn’t he?
Is he in opposition to the people who make mistakes, or the mistakes themselves, I wonder?
I find it hard to agree with his absolutist line – a bit of reconciliation and forgiveness is always available, but it’s gotta be matched by contrition.
What bitter irony that we should have a lickspittle apologist for somebody like Milosevic accusing the Liberal Democrats of being ‘apologists’ and ‘Nazis’. I knew and used to work with a Kosovan who was very good-natured despite the forces of that man butchering his family. Pathetic, truly pathetic.
Onto the more substantive points. I agree that intervention is not something that we can completly abandon though it must always be a) always the last resort and b) judged on the merits of the individual case. B is the one most often forgotten I think.
Geoff is right about the declining power of the West and I think it is ironically Iraq and the failure of its intervention that has set the seal on this. It might not be altogether a bad thing if multilateral institutions are reformed and strengthened.
I have never licked spittle, no nor “apologised” for Milosevic.
Darrell if you have any evidence then produce it. If you have not & have the remotest shred of human decency you will apologuise. My suspicion is that you have neither. Saying that you knew a “Kossovan” (I suspect you mean Albanian) whose entire family were murdered proves nothing. Presernt the evidence that you are not lying & why did you not present it to the Milosevic “trial”.
There have been many many cases where such allegations were made & proven to be lies. This story sounds no more credible than the stories your mentor Goebbels told of the Jews.
The fact is that the Lib Dems are undeniably a party which supports Nazism by engaging in racial genocide, child rape & the disection of living “Untermensch”. That does not make them fit to lecture to the Burmese let alone bomb them.
Darrell, I think the decline of the west was the reason neo-liberals were desperately in favour of a ‘preventative’ war like Iraq mk2.
It was intended as a show of strength, but has been a demonstration and cause of weakness – economically, militarily and diplomatically.
The neo-liberal camp (Blair, Kouchner…) is still in the ascendancy, but is fighting an increasing war from a position of declining strength.
Diplomacy towards China and the emerging powers (re UN/regional/international oversight, disaster management and humanitarian relief, sporting diplomacy etc) is proving more successful in integrating them into the global democratic system by liberal conversion, rather than the neo-liberal insistency of imposed conclusions.
I will apologise Neil the day hell freezes over…you started it by branding the Lib Dems supporters of Nazism….
Oranjepan – I think you are right and I would agree that the neo-liberal approach has in fact hastend the decline of the West….
I think there are limits to what this kind of approach will achieve and there comes a time when the people in those countries need to make the strides forward neccessary and the international community needs to be ready to support them….
Darrell the difference is that I put up evidence & you didn’t. If my assertion, that the Lib Dems actively supported Nazis in the practice of genocide, child sex slavery & dissecting living humans for their organs is proven true then no apology is needed for saying so.
You on the other hand have clearly lied when you said I “apologised” for Milosevic & have made no attempt to justify your attacks factually. Therefore, if you had any integrity, you would wish to withdraw or justify them without prompting.
On a broader level it is noticeable that of the probably over 1,000 readers of this site not one (not even among the MPs who voted for war in the certain knowledge it was being fought not to stop genocide but to assist it) has attempted to produce any fact based refutation of what I have writen. This (& I have seen the same elsewhere) shows that no such refutation is possible & that all those with any knowledge of the subject are perfectly well aware that they personally are genocidal Nazi war criminals guilty of crimes that make Fred West look decent. Those with no knowledge of the subject protect their ignorance assiduously which is not much better.
“You accuse Milosevic of “xenophobic nationalism” yet Lord Owen testified at his “trial” that he was neither.” and while you have waxed lyrical about the problems Kosovo undoubtably has not once have you mentioned the brutal ethnic cleansing committed by the Serbs against the Kosovars….those two things make you an apologist for Milosevic because you only ackowledge the crimes of one side….
If you want evidence maybe you would like to talk to my old friend who saw his family butchered…no serious person doubts the crimes the Serbs committed…
Neil Craig,
Evidence provides proof. What you wrote was, by your own admission, therefore not evidence.
It was definitely something, but I’m still searching for the best word.
Suggestions would be welcome.
Neil,
war creates casualties on all fronts and it takes time to confront this and come to terms with it.
I suggest in this conflict your balance was your principle casualty.
Please understand that in order to move forward it is often useful to take a step back.
At the moment this discussion is becoming increasing intractable, which helps only our common enemies.
Neil Craig: I’ve moderated the last comment from you as in it you accused another commentator of murdering and raping a child. If you have any evidence to back-up your claim, I’d suggest you report it to the police.
So thats what it sinks too.
Well then Mark lets se if (A) you accept my post without the bit you alleged was the reason for censorship & (B) you retroactively censor the liar who said worse of Milosevic?
————————
In 4 1/2 years of “trial” heavily funded by NATO it proved impossible to find any actual evidence against Milosevic with the single exception of General Wesley Clark, NATO chief & US presidential candidate, saying that, for no discerable reason Milosevic had approached him at an international conference & admitted to it. A couple of minutes later he said, still on oath, that there were no links whatsoever between NATO & the KLA.
I have already asked you to explain why you (or your invisible friend) did not present your “evidence” at the “trial”.
I do not have any reason to believe that you are being more honest than the esteemed Nai Clark. Your refusal to produce evidence on the grounds that “no serious person” disagres is exactly the same as Hitler’s assertion that nobody disagreed about how the Jews were kidnapping & killing blonds & indeed that is exactly the level on which you put yourself.
Your claim that the Serbs engaged in “brutal ethnic cleansing” in Kopsovo is, of course an obscene racist Nazi lie told by an obscene racist Naiz apologist for an obscene racist Nazi party. The fact is thatproportionately more Serbs than Albanians fled Kosovio DURING the war which proves, beyond any honest doubt that itb was not the Serbs but the NATO bombers which was doing the cleansing.
Darrall the term “apologist” means somebody who apologises. Your claim that I am an apologist therefore represnts merely the very highest standard of honesty of which ………you are capable.