Quote of the day
Tam:
It seems some wogs got out of hand and torched buildings on our sovereign soil the other day. Once upon a time this would have been considered casus belli and occasioned parking a dreadnought in the nearest harbor, shelling some buildings, and offloading some marines with Maxim guns to sort the natives out. Instead we’ll wring our hands and ask why they don’t like us.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 am
They don’t like us because we massacred their people for trying to put down an islamic insurrection, and we also did it because our then president was banging a fat chick. The Serbians were the people who rescued our WWII airmen when they were shot down bombing Nazis, and this is how we repay them?? What is “aztlan” tried to break off and China and Russia congratulated them – don’t you think some Americans would be burning their embassies too?
Don’t speak ignorant opinions.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
Don’t come to my blog and tell me not to speak my opinions. Particularly, when I’m quoting someone else.
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:18 am
I’m far from ignorant on the sordid, bloody topic, thanks. Anyone who thinks the Serbs’ hands are clean in those affairs is either ignorant or Serbian themselves.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 pm
Where were the security force Marines? As soon as the protestors breached the embassy they should have been lit up with crew served weapons.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
And anyone who thinks that US has clean hands in Southeastern Europe is fooling themselves as well.
February 22nd, 2008 at 12:43 pm
ParatrooperJJ: The Marines are there to protect the Embassy staff.
If the head of the consulate does not object to the wogs wrecking the place, they will simply move the staff to a more secure location, and protect them.
If they needed to brak out the M-240s to protect the staff, they would have done so.
My guess is that they got into the consulate itself because of a failure of nerve by the cookie pushers.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Reading the article, it looks like the rioters got into the public consular section, but didn’t go into the building far enough to even see the Marines who were guarding the Embassy proper.
The busted in, threw molotovs ( killing one of themselves in the process ), and fled.
I think putting an embassy in a street front office was a mistake … we should have bought a city block and razed it.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I just got e-mail from Belgrade that says that the crowd was mostly drunken supporters of the Red Star football team and a group of ex-Serbian militiamen from Sumadija. The Marines would do them a favor if they shot them. Also, I’ve been to that Embassy. It’s pretty small and where they got in is merely the front of a warren of offices. If they really wanted to cause a stink, they would have to find the CIA station….
Anyhow, everybody here should really like Serbia. Open carry of anything you want, any place you want. It’s like Texas with better food and nicer people.
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Metulj,
We don’t need to have clean hands; we’re the evil imperialistic hegemonic overlords of the 21st Century. Don’t you ever read Democratic Underground? I heard Bush was going to replace “Hail To The Chief” with Williams’ “Imperial March” next week after Cheney crowns him…
February 22nd, 2008 at 1:58 pm
I like Serbia okay, in that I feel no more or less apathy towards it than I do most nations. I just think that when the wogs come to burn your embassy, they should be greeted by rifles fired in volleys. Or maybe fixed bayonets. That’ll learn them.
February 22nd, 2008 at 2:15 pm
What do you expect? We’ve repeatedly sent the message that this sort of behavior is the way to get western nations to start paying attention to your complaints. Heck, it’s exactly the sort of behavior that got the Kosovars their own country.
In the meantime, it would be really silly for us to start a war over an abandoned embassy getting trashed.
February 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Tam: “I like Serbia okay, in that I feel no more or less apathy towards it than I do most nations. I just think that when the wogs come to burn your embassy, they should be greeted by rifles fired in volleys. Or maybe fixed bayonets. That’ll learn them.”
This would be predicated on the mythical belief that the US Embassy is “sovereign American soil.” Attacking or forcefully defending the Embassy would be a bad idea. The Marines mission is to protect the staff, not property. Also, the average Marine contingent at a small embassy like that is no more than 2 platoons. Before Bush’s adventure in Iraq, these guys would have seen little combat, but I’d put 2 platoons of USMC against a larger force of soccer hooligans and drunk pensioners. Still you must understand that the JNA was no bunch of pussies. Serbians shoot their wounded.
To understand why some Serbs are acting the way they are is to understand duplicitous, capricious, and often psychotic Great Powers and Western Powers foreign policy toward what is essentially a small landlocked country with no strategic interest other than the most powerful one: Emotion. Russia isn’t backing Serbia. Putin just wants leverage over the Caucasus. He will sell Serbia down the river thereby reinforcing Serbia’s “We are Victims!” myth.* The policy back in 1991 to be hands-off in the Balkans has just created even more of a mess. See Putin wants Abkhazia and Ossetia to break away from Georgia, thereby ensuring Russian control over natural gas flowing from Central Asia. The justification for Abkhazia and Ossetia to do this is Kosovo independence. So why is Putin siding with Serbia? Well, he knows that the deal is done in Kosovo, so he plays the fear-of-a-third-Balkan-War card while he starts maneuvering in the Caucasus. If the UN, US or EU screams foul about the break up of Georgia, he will just toss Kosovo back at them.
Tam: “We don’t need to have clean hands; we’re the evil imperialistic hegemonic overlords of the 21st Century.”
No. We pick and choose our little petty fights over pure economic interests, not colonial desire for cheap labor to extract resources. If Iraq were an imperialist action, we would have enslaved Sunnis with the Mehdis as their masters without batting an eye. That’s how the British did it. As far as imperialists go, the US are the worse of the post-medieval period. Whenever one of the old 60s trained professors I work with starts up on American imperialism, I remind that the US is so bad at imperialism that we couldn’t hold on to the Philippines.
*Another reason people here should sympathize with the Serbs.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Um, it’s not a myth, it’s a stone-cold fact, dumbass.
Under international law, diplomatic missions enjoy an extraterritorial status and thus, although remaining part of the host country’s territory, they are exempt from local law and in almost all respects treated as being part of the territory of the home country.
As the host country may not enter the representing country’s embassy without permission, embassies are sometimes used by refugees escaping from either the host country or a third country.
We have every right to mow them down where they stand when they attack.
February 22nd, 2008 at 5:54 pm
“Under international law, diplomatic missions enjoy an extraterritorial status and thus, although remaining part of the host country’s territory, they are exempt from local law and in almost all respects treated as being part of the territory of the home country.”
“in almost all respects treated” is not the same as “is.” So, you agree with my assertion. I never said that Marines couldn’t do whatever they needed to do. They sure as hell can’t spray down the crowd from the windows or they would have.
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:39 pm
Sorry, my response was to Tam. Uncle, I do suppose you deserve some admonishment too.
It’s not right they burned down our embassy, but it’s not right for us to destroy their military and bomb their families for no good reason either.
I thought being a conservative was about live and let live. The Serbs have been our allies, and then clinton murdered their families, and then now bush stabs them in the back? “But were so big and tough we don’t need any allies to occupy an ass-backward ,piss-poor, country full of wife beaters”
Hrm…..I wonder what the forum warriors would do if southern california was ‘liberated’ into the new country of ‘aztlan’ and China and Russia applauded them in their show of ‘democracy.’ While I’m positive none would have the balls to burn down those respective embassies, you’d probably bitch a lot on the tubes about doing it….
February 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
Once upon a time this would have been considered casus belli and occasioned parking a dreadnought in the nearest harbor, shelling some buildings, and offloading some marines with Maxim guns to sort the natives out.
We ain’t got them. The ones we have are in Iraq and Afghanistan dealing with real casi belli — you know like airplanes being flown into buildings? And with a revolutionary Muslim nation in Europe we better be getting us some more because we’ll be needing them soon.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:40 am
Just to keep the air clear here, the marines are there to protect the “stuff” NOT the “staff”.
That said, the precedent of mobs breaking into (US)embassies and our response being to do nothing about it goes back a pretty good ways, which may be why it happens on occasion.
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:59 am
NK,
Uhhhmmmm just how many Iraqis were involved in that planes flying into buildings episode? Last I checked the terrorists were primarily Saudi Arabians. Not sure how that incident got stuck on Saddam. As I recall the alleged Causus Belli was a fear over WMDs, many of which had already been used on the Kurds.
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:56 am
I won’t contradict you, Gregg, because the fact remains that our fighting military is spread very thin these days, for either good or bad reasons. We just don’t have the capability to do what Tam says. Were Russia to call our bluff and send a few divisions of “military advisors” to help Serbia pacify Kosovo there is no way we could oppose them in a non-nuclear war.