Cracking The World War III Show:
A War Without Good Guys
by Tapu, Spring 1999

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Tapu, for those of you that do not know nothing of the cracking history, is a living Net-Legend, rumored to be a personal friend of +ORC and known as one of those great (white) Net-wizards that will always come in help for all souls that are lost "in this netherworld of ours" (as Tapu wrote in one of her poems).
I'm glad to publish here a second essay by Tapu (see also tapu1.htm: Tapu's Cracking The Information Curtain, written in October 1998), on the "oncoming thirld world war".
Read and enjoy!


The below is terribly disjointed, but you already said all of the cogent, cohesive stuff in your NATO essay, and it's a disjointed war, anyway.

It sure was sweet of Russia to save the Known World the other day, I think I'll send them a nice card, maybe some fruit.

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Cracking The World War III Show: A War Without Good Guys.



A "terrorist" is a person with whose politics the speaker or sponsoring organization disagrees. A "freedom fighter" or "patriot" is a person with whose politics the speaker or sponsoring organization agrees.

Thus, to Milosovich, both NATO and the KLA are "terrorists," while NATO supporters consider both the Serb army and "Arkan's Tigers" to be "terrorists."

On occasion, some Yugoslav officials have referred to the vast sea of fleeing old ladies and toddlers as "terrorists," while some opposition party politicos in the US agree with Milosovich that the KLA are "terrorists."

I have deliberately avoided any qualifiers about the actions of any of the above-mentioned groups, since that is irrelevant to the orthodoxy of Briefing Room terrorist designation.

Serb police who beat up Kosovars are "brutal thugs," Macedonian police who beat up Kosovars are "suffering under the strain of the influx of refugees that threaten to upset its ethnic balance."

Milosovich's preference that ethnic Albanians live somewhere other than Serbia, and his efforts to achieve it, are "ethnic cleansing." Macedonia's preference that ethnic Albanians live somewhere other than Macedonia, and their efforts to achieve it, are - you got it "suffering under the strain of the influx of refugees that threaten to upset its ethnic balance."

Any civilians killed by Yugoslav forces are de facto victims of a "massacre," a "crime against humanity," or if it's more than 10 or so, "genocide." If NATO bombs blow apart civilians, including women and children, British newspapers scream "I FORGIVE YOU, NATO" in near-second coming type, echoing the astonishing Mr Shea's version of the reaction of a Kosovar matron, swathed in bandages, on learning that her entire family had been blown to bits by a NATO bomb. Of course there is no way to verify Mr. Shea's anecdote, which would have to be second-hand at best, since he has not actually been to the "theatre of operations."

And "theatre" is exactly what the Serb media says it is, asserting that the refugees are in fact paid actors. But to be fair, they only said this after the US said that they bombed the Chinese embassy because their map was old, (The Chinese embassy in Belgrade has been in its present location since 1994, and is clearly marked on tourist maps of Belgrade, available at newsstands worldwide, for about $4 US).

Understandably, Serbia does not want to make itself vulnerable to charges that it is losing the Absurd Press Release War.

One US congresstron, who had obviously done his homework in the area of Belgrade map pricing, blamed the Chinese embassy bombing on intelligence underfunding in the US. With a budget of only $29 million a year, he said, of course they could not buy a new map.

Chinese anger at the bombing was quickly characterized by more than one Washington voice as "manipulative" and "using the situation to try to gain trade advantages."

Last summer, when 2 US embassies were bombed, the US reacted by bombing a medicine factory in the Sudan, and an empty camp in Afghanistan, killing only a few Pakistani night watchmen in the Afghani camp. Neither the Sudanese nor the Afghani military participated in the bombing of either US embassy.

Fravia is correct when he points out that the majority of this war's victims are the very young, very old, and weakest of the civilian population, throughout Yugoslavia.

After 6 weeks of war, it is hard to find a single civilian in Yugoslavia who is not suffering in some way as a result of NATO bombing. It is quite easy to find Serb politicians and soldiers who are not suffering at all.

Blowing up all the bridges on the Danube, rendering it almost innavigable, has done more damage to European merchants outside Yugoslavia than it has to the Serb army, and the ecological damage to the entire eastern half of the continent may not be fully realized for years.

On the other hand, by the Pentagon Bow-Tie King Bacon's own admission, the "campaign" has "not prevented a single act of brutality" to a Kosovo Albanian.

Many refugees say that Serbs drove them from their homes. Some admit that they fled their homes because of NATO bombing, others cite ground battles between Serb and KLA forces. Many say that they support the air strikes, want them to continue, and that they want NATO to send ground troops.

But not one, so far, has said "I was in danger, and NATO saved me."

By the closest to reliable sources that we can get, and those are admittedly few and far between, the consensus seems to be that the bulk of the atrocities, while they may indeed be sanctioned by Belgrade, are in fact carried out by what in the US would be called "gangs."

Few military strategists, of any nationality or allegiance have expressed confidence that destroying Serb TV or a bridge in Novi Sad has a rat's chance in hell of acting as an effective deterrent to some punk in a village in Kosovo who is ripping earrings out of the ears of someone's great-grandmother, or snipping off the fingers of 6 year olds.

A few lonely voices have dared to ask why then, if NATO feels so strongly about this, do they not simply put a stop to it? Surely no one is suggesting that the combined military forces of the United states and 18 European countries are no match for a handful of street bullies?

If Milosovich is indeed the driving power, the mastermind of these atrocities, why is NATO's fury seemingly directed at so many schools and hospitals while Milosovich enjoys greater and more loyal support form Yugoslav citizens than he ever dreamed possible?

Answers to these questions, if there are answers at all, are known to few if any beyond the hushed corridors of State of the various NATO nations.

It must be noted, however, that the occasional troublemaker has pointed out that while Americans may feel for the raped 13 year old, the eye-gouged grandmother, the endless parade of Kosovar suffering that has (at least until it was upstaged by the Chinese guest star appearance) dominated each episode of the World War III Show, when all is said and done, few Americans are willing to bury their own relatives in the name of saving someone else's little sister.

Sending in ground troops would be, to put it simply, too dangerous. This is not our grandfather's World War.

So why not just get rid of Milosovich? In any major urban area in the US, there are any number of people who will be able and willing, and for a very reasonable fee, to deliver him, and Arkan, too, to the border, alive, unharmed, and all dressed up for their trip to the Hague.

This opens an even more unpleasant can of worms. US officials themselves admit that if Milosovich were a war criminal, how would it look for the US to negotiate with him? And they do want the option of negotiating with him. After all, he just might control a good chunk of Europe before too long...

Tapu

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