Fahrenheit 9/11

[Pablo]

You may validly criticse the speed of US intervention (which was, of course, still faster than the non-existent Irish intervention, but it is so easy to blame the Yanks for everything).

It was still a lot better than doing nothing and leaving the USSR, Serbs and Croats wipe out nations....

They like to call themselves the leader of the free world don't they? i very much doubt Ireland could have made a difference to be fair?

i'm talking motives.........they had none to make a speedy intervention

no oil in Bosnia
no jews In bosnia

[Pablo]

That's a bit harsh.

I mean, throughout the 80s people wrung their hands and complained about US intervention in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Panama etc. None of those countries would be famous for their oil reserves or synagogues.

Panama Canal? central america is vital to US interests i.e. trade so it was in their interests to keep central America stable

[Pablo]

But it's easy to knock the US, to say that everytime they intervened they did it for a canal, or oil, or the Jews, or something else.

They still intervened though. And that, particularly in places like Bosnia, makes them at least entitled to faint praise. You say 250,000 died, there were 4 million Bosnian Muslims to go, while Europe sat back and did absolutely nothing - though some like the Dutch soldiers were particularly effective at the doing nothing routine.

I'm not saying the US are great, or even good, but I suspect the absolute inability to accept that late intervention is better than sitting on our collective asses to be prompted by the usual 'US are bad' idea. Maybe we should look at what we did or didn't do before complaining that the US could have moved quicker. I mean, they could've moved quicker against Saddam too and thown him out 10 years ago. Would you have applauded their speed of action had they done so?

i think of America and this is what comes into my head

Isreal
Iraq
9/11
Bin Laden
etc
etc

their policy on all of these topics make me sick

[Pablo]

In your hatred of the US, do you absolve the people who actually planted the bombs and pulled the triggers?

of course not. but what has made large amounts of people go to such extreme measures?

US foreign policy

I know many americans and have relations there and although proudly American, they look beyond the likes of Fox news who brainwash the masses.

Answer me this, why is there so much anti american sentiment in the world right now? and i'm not talking about the middle east here i mean in Europe

[Dricky]

What I find funny is the people shouting that most stuf isn't true in the film and that it is selective.

Sounds like every Holywood film to me.

If the truth won't get that evil man out of the white house then lies may as well.

[Closed Account 2]

So that automatically makes them wrong in Bosnia and Afghanistan?

Afghanistan was wrong IMO because in their desire to "give the USSR its Vietnam", they funded a whole load of radicals who hated the "infidel" West only marginally less than they hated the USSR. Regan should have spotted this when the Mujahideen leader Heytakmar famously snubbed him in Washington (the 1st chapter of the book "The Bear Trap" goes thru all this). The Soviets, or rather their DRA Allies, record on human rights in Afghanistan during the 80s was pretty shoddy, but the people the US were funding and arming had equally bad records, their idea of prisoners of war were beyond a joke. A stupid US senator (who's name escapes me) took great pleasure in describing the infamous "T-Shirt" tourture technique the Mujahideen used and the fact that they used to use Soviet PoWs as the ball in Polo games. The prat was fairly old, hopefully he's dead now.

The US attitude in the Bosnia conflict was to make Serbia out as enemy number one and the Bosnian Muslims out as nothing but innocent victims. The French and even the Brits knew things were not so simple. The US was almost entirely responsible for chucking Yugoslavia/Serbia out of the UN in 1993, which only made the Serbs feel more isolated and internationally pariahed. They refused to consider bombing Bosnian Muslim tanks which the British UN Batallion said were shelling Serb villages near Zenica, yet were more than willing to fly sorties to attack Serb tanks. The US turned a blind eye to all the atroicites committed by the Muslims including the establishment of a camp near Travnik were Serb PoWs and Croat civilians were, in the words of a recently published UN report, "ritually beheaded". The Mujahideen also killed several British Aid workers (eg Paul Goodall) and UN peacekeepers but the US (which I might add had practically no troops on the ground and in harms way) insisted a blind eye should be turned. And theres the whole issue of the Bosnian Muslim army attacking their own civilians to court the media's sympathy, and then there is the whole other issue of Izetbegovic attacking Fikret Abdic (a Muslim commander who signed his own peace treaties with the Croats and Serbs).

The simple truth is the US "fought" the civil war in the former Yugoslavia as simple good (Croats and Muslims) - vs - bad (Serbs) war. This notion came a cropper when the Croats and Muslims cancelled their alliance and started to fight each other. The truth (that most UN soldiers on the ground quickly realised) was that every side committed ethnic cleansing and athough one tries to avoid sweeping cliches of generalisation, they were almost as bad as each other. This fact is illustrated by the indictment of all 3 presidents, Tudjman (Croatia), Izetbegovic (Bosnia) and Milosevic (Serbia) were all indicted by the ICC (the 1st 2 are now dead tho). Another fact forgotten in the various histories of the conflict is that most of the Mujahideen responsible for the Muslim atrocities left in 1996 and are now turning up in places like Afghanistan and Chechnya.

Looking at the situation now Bosnia is a failed state kept together by a massive IFOR troop presence. Its outlook as a unified state is not favourable as its population is divided along ethnic lines and in areas where there is a mix (eg Mostar and Sarajevo) there are regular clashes between the inhabitants. The only degrees of assimilation are in small areas between Croats and Serbs, and are largely due to EU pressure on Croatia as terms for its accession into the EU. The latent hatred within the country is sizable and it will descend into chaos once the troops leave. The Bosnian war is in a sort of "suspended animation" and will probably resume within 10 years.

Im not one of this Chomsky-esque lefties who resents every US intervention since WWII, but I think the stuff the did in Latin America was dodgy, and interventions in Afghanistan in the 80s and Yugoslavia in the 90s were at best ineffective/pointless and at worse have spawned a new, worse series of problems for the US. On the other hand I think getting rid of the Taliban (the worst regieme of the C20th) and Al-Qaeda was a smart move in counteracting terrorism. Invading Iraq, the least "Islamist" of the big Islamic countries in the Middle East IMO wasnt a smart move. Especially when theyve not got enough troops in Afghanistan where the real danger lies. I would have been reluctant to invade any country untill Afghanistan was sorted, but if I felt I had to invade one as it were (sorry for putting it in crass terms) then it would have been Saudi Arabia or Iran as these are states which enocurage Terrorism and are clearly trying to get WMDs. I dunno if anyones gonna read all this anyway, but if you want to know why I typed so much on Bosnia its because my MA thesis (which im currently doing) is on it.

PS - I dunno which smartarse tried to make the comment that Ireland did bugger all in Bosnia, well that might be true but if they look up stats on Irelands peacekeeping contributions to the UN im sure they'll find that it has one of the highest levels of contribution (per military personel) in Western Europe. It has regularly sent (and in some cases lost) soldiers to places like the Congo, Southern Lebanon, Somalia and more recently East Timor. Given the size of our country's military, its record on UN contributions puts others like the US to shame.

[Dodge]

Well I for one feel a little more educated now...

[pete]

Seen movie last night & I recommend not to waste your €8 on. Terrible film, amazed how won palm D'Or & think Cannes will forever be devalued now.

A lot of stuff taken from his average Angry White Men book & not a patch on Bowling for Columbine. Too much cheap shots @ Bush with selective editing & too few serious moments. I think suggestions that it will gain votes for Bush are very accurate.

Comes across as "movie" made in a few days but would ahve been ok for tv viewing. Maybe its just that i'd already known about the Florida voting, Arbusto & other failed business, Saudi/Taliban links to Bush clan etc... but very little new in the show.

€60m & counting from US box office probably shows how ignorant of these issues the US public is. Easiest money Moore will ever make.

Good review of movie here which mirrors my opinion of

[Closed Account 2]

Very interesting post. My experience is limited to a trip to Mostar, which is one scary city, but when you see what Serbs and Croats did to that place, when you see the cemetary overloaded with gravestones dated 1993, when you see the posters for the many who still go missing up on every telegraph pole, you might feel that the atrocities of the Bosnian Muslims were not on the same scale as their oppressors

Well when I was there in 2002 I was told Mostar wasnt a safe place to go to... I just stuck to Croatia and then the Serbian bit of Bosnia, around Banija Luka. Thats where most of the "Knin" Serbs (who used to live in the Krijina enclave in Croatia), its a forgotton fact that their forced removal in 1995 marked the largest incident of forced exodus on the continent since the removal of Sudeten Germans.

I cant really comment on the exact scale of each side's atrocities as I dont know anything like enough. Also certain regions of the former Yugoslavia such as the Croat-Serb border (Eastern Slavonija) by Vukovar havent really been investigated by anyone. Your probably right to say in terms of volume the Bosnian Muslims didnt do as much as the other two, but the impression I get is the barbarism involved their crimes (although it was probably not Bosnians but Arab-Afghan Mujahideen who actually did them) certainly seems unsurpassed. I know at the end of the day a murder is a murder etc, but the actions of Kubura's infamous "7th Muslim Brigade", who basically beheaded civilians (see here, here) is IMO on of the most barbaric-natured acts that took place in the former Yugoslavia. Im probably going to get slated for linking to this article from the Singapore times which cites a CIA operative as saying Islamic extremists use and record beheadings as a propaganda tool. Most war criminals tend to try and cover-up their war crimes but these fundamentalists actively brag about/flaunt them. As an aside it is videotapes of these beheadings of Serbs that have been circulated by nutters like Abu Hamza (like theyve done with stuff from Chechnya and the beheadings of the contractors in Iraq). A private investigator, Glen Jenvey, discovered this and passed the evidence on to the FBI leading to the current extradition case.

I don't understand the reference to Abdic who I thought was convicted in a £200 million fraud, who spent much of the war in Croatia and who faced a warrant from an EU country for allegedly taking £5.8 million in bribes to get realtives out of the warzones and to EU countries. I certainly get the feeling you are not a fan of Ed Vulliamy's Seasons in Hell.

Ive not read Vulliamy's book, but the stuff about Abdic is from reading books by Glenny and General Rose. From what I understand Abdic won Bosnia's elections and enjoyed support in 1990 from Muslims, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia. However, he stepped aside and let the more radical Izetbegovic become the leader of Bosnia. Abdic was then unhappy when the war in Bosnia broke out and declared a seperate "Republic of Western Bosnia", he signed peace treaties with local Serb and Croat commanders and for a while his republic, to the north of Bihac, was the most peaceful part of Bosnia. However Izetbegovic decided that Abdic had "sold out" and sent the Bosnian 5th Army to "win back" Bihac.

I don't knock the bravery of the Irish troops, but the farce that is UN military intervention.

I agree, but it seems the general opinion of most countries is "something must be done" when they see things like Ruwanda, Bosnia etc. It's an understandable reaction but its impossible for most countries to do anything. If they act outside of the UN its almost always seen as illegitimate (eg Iraq now), even if they act with approval from the UN but under a non-UN command structure (eg Kosovo (NATO led)) then it still has hints of illegitimacy. The only recent crisis which has been resolved without a significant UN presence was Gulf War I (the "Desert Storm" one of 1990), tho even then the size of the coalition caused problems. Different members wanted to accept Saddam's surrender at different times (most of the Arab Coalition members just wanted Saddam out of Kuwait, the Brits and some other European militaries wanted Saddam to be totally defeat and Schwarzkopf (head of US military) didnt really know what he wanted).

These sort of crises need UN involvement to appear legitimate, in effect this means UN troops on the ground. That is 99% of the time a recipe for disaster as the UN's rules of engagment are pretty shoody (their have to be practically dead before they can return fire) and often the UN troops lack the infrastructure to perform their mission. UN troops dont have access to intelligence so spend most of the time on recon trying to establish whats going on and who is where. Then there is the whole other factor of troop contributing countries being willing to sacrifice their soldiers in missions that dont effect their country. People are starting to ask questions like why should we send "our" troops to sort out the problems between countries X and Y., this is especially true of the talk of say EU troop intervention in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict where neither side seems to be genuinely interested in peace.

[Dodge]

Rather than read the review that agrees with pete, why not read 177 of them (82% positive) at Rotten Tomotoes

[tiktok]

or those at metacritic where it scored 67%, a reasonably good average.

typical review seems to be, with agree with the message, however we knew most of it already and we didn't particularly like how it was presented, pretty much sums up my opinion of him. I admire what Moore has achieved, but there's a lot of questions regarding the level of spin in his films, some of it is downright lies , but he's effective.

hope to see it at the weekend.