From: Chris Doss <chrisd at russiajournal.com> Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2001 17:10:39 +0300
Talk about a wierd world.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal
Pravda.RU:Main:More in detail
19:35 2001-12-18
AN AMERICAN POPULIST: PRAVDA.RU INTERVIEWS PATRICK BUCHANAN
NATO expansion, Russia's place in Europe, and the coming clash of civilizations: Patrick Buchanan gives an exclusive interview to PRAVDA.Ru
Q. You are known as being a critic of the NATO actions against Yugoslavia during 1999. As you know, the majority of the Russian population was against the war. Many Russians feel as if the Serbs are their "little brothers." In addition, many people here believe that the stories of large-scale "ethnic cleansing" were simply designed to convince the American public to support the actions. Why, exactly, were you opposed to this war?
A. I am well aware of the historic feelings of the Russian people for the Serbs, who are fellow Slavs and Orthodox Christians. Indeed, it was the unwillingness of Russia to permit the Austro-Hungarian empire to crush Serbia, after the assassination of the Archduke in June of 1914, that led to World War I. I opposed the Yugoslav war because I thought it was an unjust war against a small nation that had done nothing to us. Serbia had not threatened us, had not attacked us, and had been our friend and ally in two world wars. Serbs had rescued hundreds of downed American pilots when we were fighting the Nazis. And Serbia had not attacked any NATO nation. Why then did NATO attack Serbia? The U.S. launched a 78-day air war against a nation of ten million, because that nation refused to permit NATO troops to march with impunity across its sovereign territory. As for the allegations of mass atrocities by Serbs, -- that 100,000 Kosovar Albanians had been massacred -- that turned out to have been almost 100% propaganda.
Before our air strikes began, in one year of Serbia's civil war there had been only 2,000 casualties, and 95,000 Kosovar Albanians had gone into exile. Yet, in just one day in our own Civil War, at Antietam, there were 10,000 dead in one day of fighting. Nobody accused us of genocide. Almost all of the ethnic expulsions in the Yugoslav civil war occurred after the U.S. bombing began. Moreover, at the war's end, there were atrocities against Serbs, and 250,000 Serbs were pushed out of their province, and many of their beautiful old churches and cathedrals were smashed. Who has been made to answer for those crimes? No one. Milosevic was a thug, but he did not want war with the United States and it was not our responsibility to remove him. As Lord Byron said, "Who would be free/Themselves must strike the blow."
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