Why Bosnia Matters 6 - Christopher Hitchens

Here Christopher Hitchens lectures on the failure of the international community to deal with the Bosnian crisis. It should be noted that this speech was given on Mar 4 1994, while the Bosnian war was still going on, and more than a year before the Srebrenica massacre.

Hitchens' position on the matter is clear the international community (e.g. UN, NATO, and US forces) should use military force to intervene in the region and prevent genocide. Eventually there was an intervention, but not until aproximately 200,000 were killed.

I have set this speech to vaguely relevant images.

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• United
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• Bosnia
• Serbia
• Kosovo
• Hitchens
• Chomsky
• war
• crimes
• genocide
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[laggynewbie]

thanks for uploading

[lord69z]

all the people who think Hitch is some kind of Neo-con should watch this.

[phinny5608]

Some prescient words toward the end.

[Indul1]

@CosmosLoyal Yes, but his view in light of the Milosevic trial is no different from this...take the 24 Jan 2004 exchange between Sarinic and Milosevic...Sarinic was present at the so called carve up between Slobo and Tudjman...here he claims that though Tudjman made no reference to any agreement to divide with Milosevic he asserts that Milosevic was a party to it..it's 100% his assertion............

[CosmosLoyal]

Indeed the tapes also reveal the messianic crackpot Tudjman admitting to Croat war crimes inside Bosnia and a wishto reverse the 1995 agreement. As for what was so special about Bosnia, it seems you are making the common mistake of treating demagogic nationalist maniacs as rational actors. 15 wars in the world worse? That must make the victims of ethnic cleansing feel a whole lot better. That statement is another in a long list of vomit inducing apologias for the murder of defenceless civilians.

[CosmosLoyal]

@Indul1 How on earth could Hitchens follow the trial of Milosevic when this recording is from 1994? What he does say here, is that at any rate there certainly was an agreement made in Graz between the Bosnian-Serb, Radovan Karadžić, and the Bosnian-Croat, Mate Boban, to carve up Bosnia. Given the revelations in the Tudjman tapes that Milosevic and Tudjman enjoyed a very close relationship, it seems no stretch of the imagination to posit that they acted in the same manner as their proxies.

[GreenGravity1]

@Indul1 yeah but many people died there for no reason

[Indul1]

Did Hitchens follow the trial of Milosevic? No i would not imagine he did judging by his claims that Milosevic and Tudjman divided Bosnia between the two (they did not, its a media speculation for which no evidence exists). Bosnia...What was so special about it...a warzone in Europe...that was the big deal...Boutrous Ghali said they were 15 wars in the world worse than this one !

[bademoxy]

even militant serbs i know who fought in this conflict agree that the region was better off under tito(who i think was actually croat) and his secular state. too bad tito didn't groom a carbon copy replacement for himself before he passed.

[typacsk]

You apparently didn't listen to the rest of the lecture.

1. He claims that Croatia had political support from Germany, whereas Bosnia was generally left on its own. Whether that's true, or whether Hitchens spoke out during the siege of Vukovar, is left "as an exercise to the reader."

2. One could make a good argument that Tudjman and Milosevic were more similar than they were different--and Hitchens does admit that a leader does not represent an entire country.

[SwampAshHSS]

interesting rebuttle?....or not? what r u talking about.

[bluntman007]

Yes, because you're that different. Stop denying History.