Headlines:
- Obama Ups Rhetoric against ISIS
- Greece Votes ‘NO’ to Austerity
- New Evidence Reveals Western Complicity in Srebrenica Massacre
Obama Ups Rhetoric against ISIS
Speaking at the Pentagon, US President Barack Obama said the US would not send additional troops to Syria but would increase support for the country’s moderate opposition.
He added that “an effective partner on the ground” was needed to defeat ISIS. “When we have an effective partner on the ground, ISIS can be pushed back,” Obama said. However, he warned that the campaign against the group would “not be quick”.
This latest protracted speech about the ISIS war, President Obama insisted that the war is continuing to go well, citing thousands of ISIS fighters killed, and talked up escalating airstrikes against ISIS in al Raqqa, insisting that the recent attacks “proved” ISIS would eventually be destroyed. That “eventually” could be a long time, as Obama described the conflict as a “generational struggle” that would be at some unspecified point in the future. In the meantime, it’s all airstrikes, and bragging about body counts.
Pentagon officials, however, say that the basic ISIS war strategy is unchanged, beyond an increase in the number of airstrikes in recent days. Officials continue to maintain that, despite mounting losses on the ground, the existing strategy is the right one. Despite the length of his comments, Obama actually said very little of importance about the war, just rehashing long-standing White House positions that the war is going well enough, irrespective of very visible losses, and that victory is going to eventually happen, even if it is long after his term in office is over.
Greece Votes ‘NO’ to Austerity
Greece voted to reject European demands on Sunday 5 July, for additional austerity measures as the price for providing cash to allow Greek banks to operate. This result was inevitable because the ruling Coalition of the Radical Left, or Syriza party, is ruling because it has an understanding of the Greek mood. The constant scorn and contempt that the European leadership directed at the Greek government convinced the Greeks not only that the scorn was meant for them as well but also that anyone so despised by the European leadership wasn’t all bad. But the most important issue was the European leadership put the Greek voters in a position in which they had nothing to lose. The Greeks were left to choose between two forms of devastation — one that was immediate but possible to recover from, and one that was a longer-term strangulation with no exit.
Europe led by Germany will now need to decide if it can still impose its austerity measures in return for the bailouts for Greece. The sign at the moment appears to be that Germany will only bail out Greece if it accepts stringent austerity measures. So in effect after the referendum we are back in the same situation
New Evidence Reveals Western Complicity in Srebrenica Massacre
The fall of Srebrenica in Bosnia 20 years ago, prompting the worst massacre in Europe since the Third Reich, was a key element of the strategy pursued by the three key western powers –Britain, the US and France. However on its 20th anniversary new research reveals that Britain and the US knew six weeks before the massacre that the enclave would fall – but they decided to sacrifice it in their efforts for peace
Eight thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed over four days in July 1995 by Bosnian Serb death squads after they took the besieged town, which had been designated a “safe area” under the protection of UN troops. The act has been declared a genocide by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague, and the Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadžic and General Ratko Mladic await verdicts in trials for directing genocide. Blame was also been placed on Dutch troops, who evicted thousands seeking refuge in their headquarters, and watched while the Serbs separated women and young children from their male quarry.
But a new investigation of the mass of evidence documenting the siege suggests much wider involvement in the events leading to the fall of Srebrenica. Declassified cables, exclusive interviews and testimony to the tribunal show that the British, American and French governments accepted – and sometimes argued – that Srebrenica and two other UN-protected safe areas were “untenable” long before Mladic took the town, and were ready to cede Srebrenica to the Serbs in pursuit of a map acceptable to the Serbian President, Slobodan Miloševic, for peace at any price.
But as they considered granting Srebrenica to the Serbs, western powers were also aware, or should have been, of the Bosnian Serb military “Directive 7” ordering the “permanent removal” of Bosnian Muslims from the safe areas. They also knew Mladic had told the Bosnian Serb assembly, “My concern is to have them vanish completely”, and that Karadžic pledged “blood up to the knees” if his army took Srebrenica.
But a new investigation of the mass of evidence documenting the siege suggests much wider involvement in the events leading to the fall of Srebrenica. Declassified cables, exclusive interviews and testimony to the tribunal show that the British, American and French governments accepted – and sometimes argued – that Srebrenica and two other UN-protected safe areas were “untenable” long before Mladic took the town, and were ready to cede Srebrenica to the Serbs in pursuit of a map acceptable to the Serbian president, Slobodan Miloševic, for peace at any price. But as they considered granting Srebrenica to the Serbs, western powers were also aware, or should have been, of the Bosnian Serb military “Directive 7” ordering the “permanent removal” of Bosnian Muslims from the safe areas. They also knew Mladic had told the Bosnian Serb assembly, “My concern is to have them vanish completely”, and that Karadžic pledged “blood up to the knees” if his army took Srebrenica.
The shocking findings of high-level willingness in London, Washington and Paris to cede Srebrenica were collated over 15 years by Florence Hartmann, a former Le Monde correspondent, for a book, The Srebrenica Affair: The Blood of Realpolitik. Hartmann worked as a spokeswoman for the prosecutor at the international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia between 2000 and 2006. Her previous book, Paix et Châtiment (Peace and Punishment), published in 2007, carried an account of a decision by the tribunal not to release crucial documents on the massacre to the Bosnian government in its unsuccessful attempt to sue Serbia for genocide at the international court of justice down the road in The Hague. In August 2008, the tribunal indicted Hartmann for breach of confidentiality and summoned her for trial. In September 2009, she was convicted of contempt of court and fined €7,000. She deposited the fine in a French bank account, but the tribunal deemed the money unpaid and sentenced her to seven days’ imprisonment, ordering France to transfer her to The Hague. France refused.