Five years ago, NATO bombers that terrorized Serbia kept above 15,000 feet in fear of ground defenses, which had downed many drones, cruise missiles and even a couple of aircraft (including the famous F-117 Stealth).
In two weeks, the Serbian military will destroy the last of its shoulder-launched anti-air missiles, under a program quietly initiated last year and funded by the US government, announced Reuters today.
An anonymous military source told Reuters that Serbia wants to “show [its] goodwill and readiness to reduce the risk of [missiles] falling into the hands of terrorists.” In other words, they got paid to disarm, and thought this would be a good opportunity to suck up to the Empire some more, and damn the consequences. All that drivel about terrorists would make sense if only US troops did not shelter a terrorist regime in Kosovo, part of Serbian territory illegally occupied by NATO since June 1999.
There’s some idiot-talk about getting rid of these missiles because one Yugoslav export to Iraq (from back in the 1980s) was used to shoot down a US helicopter recently. Well, so? Destroying Serbia’s missiles won’t eliminate them from the hands of Iraqi partisans, only make it that much less likely that Serbians will be able to defend themselves in case the Empire decides to bomb them again. And having committed an act of naked aggression with impunity once (Kosovo 1999), there is nothing to stop the US and NATO from doing it again. Look at Iraq, after all.