Mr. Makara,
I am aware of what was done to the Krajina Serbs by Tudjman and his army. Some of my family are among the Serbs expelled from Krajina, although we don't know where they are since they were driven from their homes by the Croatian army.
As for the crimes of the Ustashe State during World War II, you are absolutely right. Those crimes were wicked and there is no possible way to explain the true horror of what the Ustashe did.
And you are right about the "rat lines" smuggling the Ustashe criminals to the West. One of the worst criminals, Arturkovic, was even sheldered for decades in the U.S.
All that is true. If you know of any living members of the Ustashe, I will join you, full heartedly, in tracking them to the end of the earth until they are prosecuted, as the Klarsfelds and Simon Wiesenthal have tracked Nazis. If you know of anyone involved in the rat lines, I will be happy to join you in denouncing that person.
And you are right about certain Croat leaders, including Tudjman, who have engaged in denial of the extent of the Ustashe genocide, and other Croat leaders and clerics, particularly in Herzegovina, who openly revere Ustashe leader Ante Pavelic, one of the most brutal war criminals in human history. All this I agree with you about, except for your generalizations that imply all Croats are Nazis. Not all Croats were Ustashe and not all Croats today support the Ustashe wing of the Croatian government.
But where we do disagree very strongly is on Mladic's betrayal of the Krajina.You don't seem to understand the role General Mladic played in the fall of Krajina. Or perhaps you do understand and won't admit it to yourself. Let me explain as clearly as I can what I mean.
1) On July 11, 1995, the United Nations, with Britain, France, Germany, and Russia in control, handed over the "Safe Haven" of Srebrenica to Mladic. The UN and NATO powers had made it clear for months they intended to give Srebrenica to Mladic. U.S. Secretary of Defense Perry announced that the U.S. would not defend it. British General Rose and French General Janvier made it clear the UN would not use its mandate to defend the safe havens.
2) All Mladic had to do was accept this "gift" of Srebrenica, and later Zepa, without egregious atrocities, and he would have been set to complete the humiliation of NATO and gain control of most of Bosnia.
3) What did he do instead? He set out on one of the most egregious programs of mass butchery in modern human history. That is not in the press. It is in the the words of the justices at the International Tribunal, who are now hearing evidence against Mladic. After detailed evidence of the exterminations, a justice stated:
"These are truly scenes from hell, written on the darkest pagest of human history."
4) Mr. Makarov, when someone hands you a gift like Srebrenica, the last thing you want to do is humiliate the gift-giver. Never spit in the face of someone who is giving you a gift. Never. By engaging in this mass slaughter, which accomplished no military objective whatsoever, Mladic humiliated the West which had given him the Safe Haven, and forced Clinton, Major, and Chirac to save face.
5) After Srebrenica, it was clear that Western policy was changed. Chirac and Clinton joined Major in London and after a strategy session, the Croat army began its offensives. The green light for the Croatian invasion of Krajina was on. But it still needed a pretext.
6) Mladic seems to have totally disregarded the people of the Krajina. He MUST have known that by attacking Bihac and by getting the Krajina Serb army to attack Bihac, he was going to provoke a Western green light to Tudjman. Any child could have known that. After what Mladic did to his captives at Srebrenica, there is no way NATO could have turned over Bihac to him. It was politically impossible.
7) So Mladic pushed a reluctant West into action and Tudjman was told he could invade Krajina. Now despite your excuses, Mladic had signed an agreement with the Krajina Serb army for mutual integration and mutual cooperation. The Krajina Serb army always cooperated when the Bosnian Serb army wanted it. Yet when the Croat army attacked Western Slavonia, Mladic did nothing. Then when it attacked Krajina, Mladic did nothing. And Radovan Karadzic, as Croatian troops were driving the Serb population out of Western Slavonia, why Karadzic was in a hair parlor having his hair done up, as reported in the Serb journal Vreme.
8) What is evil? After the Holocaust, some scholars tried to define a kind of unusual evil. Most evils are done out of self-interest, are forms of robbery and plunder. But there is a worse evil, where the perpetrator becomes so fixated on the evil, he loses track of his own self interest. Thus the German army at the end of WW2 allowed crucial rail lines to be tied up with trains full of Jews being sent to Auschwitz.
9) When Mladic was given Srebrenica by the UN and NATO, he had all of Bosnia under his guns. Krajina was still under Serb military control. Within a few months, not only had the Croatian army driven Serbs out of Krajina, but Mladic had lost much of Bosnia as well.
10) For what? Because he wished to indulge a blood lust by having a slaughter of historic proportions, of no military value whatsoever? Why didn't he simply keep the Muslim men as captives and allow International Red Cross inspections? Why the big slaughter? Was it worth it, Mr. Makarov? Was the pleasure of slaughering thousands of human beings take captive from Srebrenica worth it?
I don't think anyone can say it was worth it. It gained nothing for Mladic militarily. It was purely self-destructive evil, and ultimately destructive of the people Mladic claimed to be protecting.
11) And when you read the descriptions of Ustashe atrocities that fill you with such rage, I suggest you then read the indictments of Goran Jelisic, Zeljko Meakic, Dusan Sikirica, and Dragan Nikolic (commanders of the four worst concentration camps of the Republika Srpska), and Mladic. The activities, the bestialities, the atrocities, the cruelities, the unspeakable crimes, the horror is all the same. Only the religion of the perpetrators has been changed.
12) Try to realize that the people being tormented at Omarska, Keraterm, Susica, and Brcko-Luka, and the people being exterminated from Srebrenica, were not Ustashe of WW2. They were people, mostly decent human beings, that had been living in peace with their Serb neighbors for forty years. They were human beings, just like the human beings tortured and slaughtered by the Ustashe in WW2. Every bit as human.
I have met some of their family. They are not Ustashe killers or some kind of Islamic fundamentalists freaks as advertised by supporters of the Republika Srpska. They are human beings, and most of them, Mr. Makara, are as innocent as the Serbs slaughtered by the Ustashe were innocent. (There was one fundamentalists Muslim at Srebrenica, a bandit and accused war criminal named Naser Oric, but Oric abandoned Srebrenica before its fall and was not among those Mladic exterminated).