Thursday, June 09, 2005
From Banja Luka to Fallujah
The still unfolding accounts of the massacre in Fallujah by unembedded reporters like Christian Parenti and Dahr Jamail evoke images from the wanton destruction by troops gone berserk in Bosnia a decade ago. Brutal rape/murders of girls combined with blockades of construction and medical supplies by US and Peshmerga forces, even as typhus and cholera outbreaks erupt due to a nearly total absence of potable water or electricity--let alone food and shelter--begs for UN intervention.
But the blue berets aren't around this time to prevent or arrest some of the worst of the war criminals as they belatedly did in Yugoslavia, and it remains now to the International Criminal Court to try in abstentia those responsible for this tragedy, if only to bring the force of world opinion to bear on the continuing misconduct of the United States. Reading online accounts http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/banjaluka/banjaluka.html by community and religious leaders of the systematic destruction of Banja Luka in 1993-4 is eerily similar to what are now hearing from independent journalists and residents of Fallujah.
Perhaps the Milosevic regime analogy is more appropriate for understanding the Bush administration than the Hitler parallel promulgated by so many in the humanitarian blogosphere. Maybe that's splitting hairs.
But the blue berets aren't around this time to prevent or arrest some of the worst of the war criminals as they belatedly did in Yugoslavia, and it remains now to the International Criminal Court to try in abstentia those responsible for this tragedy, if only to bring the force of world opinion to bear on the continuing misconduct of the United States. Reading online accounts http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/banjaluka/banjaluka.html by community and religious leaders of the systematic destruction of Banja Luka in 1993-4 is eerily similar to what are now hearing from independent journalists and residents of Fallujah.
Perhaps the Milosevic regime analogy is more appropriate for understanding the Bush administration than the Hitler parallel promulgated by so many in the humanitarian blogosphere. Maybe that's splitting hairs.
