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by golergka 935 days ago
> your country being under devastating economic sanctions, then bombarded by enormously more powerful armies, then annexing a part of the country

All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties? No war criminals walking around free doing DJ gigs 30 years later?

2 comments

No, none of that is forgotten either. It's hell as far back as anyone alive can remember, from the 90s to the 40s to WWI and the Balkan wars, and all of the fighting with the Ottoman empire throughout the 19th century.

But you knew all of that.

Are you suggesting that because other genocides have happened, the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats is just business as usual?

Perhaps NATO should have just left them to it. Sure, tens of thousands of civilians were killed, but I suppose that pales in comparison to the millions killed in WW2.

> the Serbian ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats

We've just seen a massive, 150k people ethnic cleansing in Nagorno-Karabakh and nobody in the whole world went so far as lifting a finger to stop it. Except Russia, which did lift one of its fingers but that was it.

It happened this autumn.

But yeah, let's pretend that NATO is in business of preventing ethnic cleansings around the world, as opposed to ruining countries it doesn't like for profit. And BTW, what happened to Krajina Srpska?

Sorry, how many died? Where are you getting your figures?

The implied defence of russia is particularly inappropriate, given the russians have raped, tortured, and massacred tens of thousands of Ukrainians just in the past couple of years. If you're taking ethnic cleansing to simply mean displaced, then russia is guilty of ethnic cleansing to the tune of millions of civilians.

Not many has died, but they have all left and have no hope to ever return to their homes. Contrast that to Balkans where a lot of people already returned to their homes, and way more could return if the hatred could be held in check, to which "humanitarian bombardments" history is a huge deterrent.

I'm not talking about defence of Russia, or Serbia, because they needn't one. The USA/NATO need to defend their involvement in civil wars to help one of the sides which make these civil wars worse every single time, as well as making at least one side even more bitter and preventing normalization of affairs for longer.

I, for one, do not want to ever hear any more moral judgements from you. You have no moral basis to have them.

Right now, the US is backing up an ethnic cleansing agent that is IDF, while placing high hopes on ethnic cleansing as a way to resolve the conflict.

I would be very glad to remove my comments if you remove the whole branch of your accusations, which are wildly out of place.

> they have all left and have no hope to ever return to their homes. Contrast that to Balkans where a lot of people already returned to their homes

It's difficult to return to your home when you're dead.

"How many died" and "Where are you getting your figures" are disturbing questions when speaking about ethnic cleansing. These people have had their homes and lives taken away from them.

Like the Ukrainians. Like the Ugandans. Like the Armenians of the early 20th century. Like the Jews. Like the Cambodians. Like the Bosnians. Like the Croats. Like the Serbs.

All of this is history, all of this damages a people and their culture. Let's not put a yardstick next to it to prove how bad things are. Let's remember why these things happened so we don't do them again.

Fair enough, but in that case, why are you replying to me? Shouldn’t you instead be replying to the guy who used whataboutism and compared the deaths of tens of thousands of Bosniaks to the displacement of 150k Armenians?

My comment on the comparison was in response to their comparison.

> given the russians have raped, tortured, and massacred tens of thousands of Ukrainians just in the past couple of years

Sorry, how many died? Where are you getting your figures? (C)

P.S. How does that rape trope in western propaganda manages not to get old? It's basically copypasta.

See also Yemen, the willfull murder of 5% of Iraqs population, etc....
I don't think you're arguing in good faith, but for anyone else that takes this kind of commentary serious:

Take a look at a map. Even if there was political will, "The West" has extremely limited options for military intervention in a landlocked country surrounded by non-aligned states. It's not like the US is going to fly sorties through Iran or Russia. Armenia is in a tough spot.

No, and don't put words in my mouth. There's nothing business as usual about genocide. Neither are the people of the Balkans so flippant, none of this is forgotten. There's an awful lot of talk about "moving on" here, though, which is radically unsympathetic to the people who live across the Balkans who, for the last century, have had their lives and livelihood threatened seemingly every 30 years or so, one way or another.
Not really. Yugoslavia, especially after the end of 50s was pretty decent by standards of socialist countries.
> All of that just out of a sudden, without anything else occurring to trigger these events, right? No genocides, no invasions, no massive civilian casualties?

Do you also support Russia's invasion in Ukraine?

Because you are clearly rationalizing involving a larger military power whose brutality ends up hurting orders of magnitudes more innocent people than the actual bad actors. Thus, bringing ever more people into the cycle of hatered.

Do you really imagine that some random person whose house was bombed and family was killed saying "yeah, that is totally just, thank you, good guys!"

Obviously, they won't.

> Do you also support Russia's invasion in Ukraine?

No, because any Russian claims about civilians attacked in Ukraine are lies. If we lived in an alternative reality where those claims were true, I would support it — but in a much limited capacity. Like an aerial campaign.

> whose brutality ends up hurting orders of magnitudes more innocent people than the actual bad actors

That's patently false. US military involvement in Serbia was limited and hurt much less innocents that would be slaughtered otherwise.

> Do you really imagine that some random person whose house was bombed and family was killed saying "yeah, that is totally just, thank you, good guys!"

That's a tragedy. Why was his family living in a military installation? Whoever settled them there, or set up a military installation under his house is to blame — that's what he should be angry against.

It's like criticising Israel for bombing Hamas installations in civilian areas — that's not the actor who's responsible for breaking the rules or war and resulting casualties.