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Western powers stood silently by while Croatia was attacked
By Hilda Marija Foley | Published  01/6/2008 | Letters to the Editors | Unrated
People are still influenced by those maligning Croatia
Western powers stood silently by while Croatia was attacked

To: claude@monthlyreview.org
Monthly Review
Date: Thu, 3 Jan 2008
Subject: "the dismantling of Yugoslavia" article

Dear Mr. Misukiewicz,

Unfortunately I just had the chance to read this article recently, so my response is quite late. Still I find the need to correct some of the false assumptions in the very long article, as it would be impossible to cover them all.

Sincerely,

Hilda Marija Foley
North Tustin, CA

Monthly Review
Oct. 2007, volume 59, No. 5

Regarding:  "The Dismantling of Yugoslavia" - a Study of inhumanitarian Intervention" by Edward Herman and David Peterson

By now, 17 years after the wars in former Yugoslavia, one could assume that most people interested in its history would have come to the same and correct conclusion as to who started the wars - which undeniably are the Serbs in their goal to achieve a "Greater Serbia". Indeed the "Greater Serbia" idea is over one century old and Serbs still cherish it. Only persons who have no knowledge of the full history of Yugoslavia and its peoples from the day it was established in 1918, and/or are influenced by what was fed to them through the many decades of Serb propaganda and  maligning of Croatia, could still fall for their lies.

Just the opposite to your assertion, that it was "the downplaying of external factors that drove the Yugoslavia breakup", there was actually a lack of "humanitarian intervention and the right and responsibility to protect". As a matter of fact, the Western powers stood silently by while Serbia attacked Croatia, in many ways some of them even encouraging it. "A tsunami of lies" were not dished out by the authors you mentioned in your article, as  they were honest and on the spot observers, like Danner, Roy Gutman, Tim Judah, Ed Vulliamy, etc.

It is an undeniable historical fact that Serbs subjugated the Croats and Slovenes after they  agreed to join then them in the new country of "The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" in 1918, after the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The Serb soldiers immediately marched on Croatia's capital  Zagreb as "conquerors", shooting and killing many civilian protesters in the main square and continued with this harsh policy of subjugation from the first day. Shortly after the assassination in 1928 of the three Croatian representatives in the Parliament in Belgrade, the Serb king Aleksander declared a Royal Dictatorship in renamed the country "Yugoslavia " in 1929. This caused bitterness and opposition that culminated in the rise of the Pavelic Ustasha movement and the bitter conflict in WWII.

The Ustashas took advantage of the German and Italian armies conquering the Yugoslav army in 1941 by declaring an independent Croatia. Croatians welcomed their independence after nine centuries of waiting, but not the fact that it made them part of the Axis, and  only some 2% of the population supported the Ustasha and their Axis alliance. Croatia became a puppet regime, subjected to Germany and Italy.

At the end of WWII Tito and his communists came to power in  Yugoslavia, which included again all the former parts. To use the old saying, Croatia fell from the frying pan into the fire. The same routine of Serb subjugation, with added communist zeal continued, with hundreds of thousands of Croatians opposing communism killed in prisons and  concentration camps in Yugoslavia and even abroad.

This is the true history of Yugoslavia in a nutshell. There was no "outside influence" causing the breakup, if anything, the western powers did everything in their power to prevent it even though all the former communist states were falling apart around them peacefully. Also in spite of the fact that the Yugoslav Constitution of 1974 gave Croatia the legal right to secede and the people in 1990 in the first multi party elections and in 1991 in a plebiscite overwhelmingly voted for independence from Yugoslavia. The aggression by Serbia using the then still Yugoslav army followed immediately. The rest should be known to you if you ignore the Serb propaganda from that point on.

Sincerely,

Hilda Marija Foley
North Tustin, CA

Formatted for CROWN by   Marko Puljiæ
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  • Comment #1 (Posted by an unknown user)

    Dear Ms Foley,
    Thank you for your article. You are a very, very precious woman.
     
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