ICTY’s new hypocrisy

The Hague Inquisition convicted Bosnian Serb General Stanislav Galic Friday, of “command responsibility” in the siege of Sarajevo. According to BBC, Galic was found guilty of “murder” (?) and “infliction of terror,” and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
I lived in Sarajevo during the war, in the Muslim-held part of the city, and experienced first-hand many of the attacks for which Galic is accused. I agree that their objective was to terrorize civilians, and thus put pressure on their government (Izetbegovic) to negotiate a peace. But how is this different from “bombs for peace” pursued by NATO?
Remember, these are people who decided NATO didn’t commit any war crimes in 1999 simply because NATO told them so. The only difference between terrorizing civilians and targeting infrastructure in Sarajevo (1992-95) and Serbia (1999) is that the former was done by the Bosnian Serbs (declared a priori evil) and the latter by NATO (forces of goodness, by own definition). There’s the old double standard again. Continue reading “ICTY’s new hypocrisy”

Antiwar.com Blog Nominated for Weblog Award — Vote Now

Antiwar.com’s Blog has been nominated for the WizBang Weblog Awards.

Half of the categories are denoted by evolutionary state. We are in the category of Best Crawly Amphibians Ecosystem Level Blog, which is the lower end of the evolutionary scale (not an insult, we are new).

People can vote multiple times in each category, but no more than one vote per 12 hours.

Update: We are now in second place.

For what it’s worth, check it out and vote for us.

I also urge a vote for Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo in the Best Liberal Blog category, and in the Best Overall Blog category.

How to Blog Like the Big Boys

Saddam’s former translator gives us another justification for the war:

‘He wrote in a hurry. It was as if he had all these ideas he just wanted to get out and his formal pronouncements weren’t enough.’ To express even the simplest ideas, Saddam used a convoluted style full of subclauses, superfluous adjectives and boring digressions. ‘It was virtually impossible to translate into English because I had to chop up these endless sentences. Let’s just say Saddam was no Naguib Mahfouz.’

Indeed.

Miscellaneous

*Two great articles to be read in tandem: David Isenberg on the militarization of civil society, and historian Edmund Morgan on Gore Vidal’s America. Includes this definition of “democracy” from Vidal:

[A] word that appears nowhere in the American Constitution, or, indeed in our lives except as an occasional rhetorical flourish when we are up to mischief in foreign lands.

*The Cato Institute makes itself useful for a change: Jim Powell rebuts neocon plutocrat Conrad Black’s coddling of FDR.

*Justin has more on the Neal Boortz/Libertarian convention fiasco. It’s not too late to write Nancy Neale at convention@hq.LP.org or torchess@austin.rr.com and protest, even if you’re not a Libertarian. In fact, since Boortz’s inclusion seems to be based entirely upon his perceived ability to reach a wider audience, a backlash by non-Libertarians might do some good.