Jeremy Scahill: Belgrade Riots at U.S. Embassy Prove Our Empire Is a Bipartisan Project

[marmar]

Belgrade Riots at U.S. Embassy Prove Our Empire Is a Bipartisan Project

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet. Posted February 23, 2008.

All of a sudden, DC establishment figures care about "international law" when it suits their interests in Kosovo.




News Flash: The Bush administration acknowledges there is a such thing as international law.

But, predictably, it is not being invoked to address the US prison camps at Guantanamo, the wide use of torture, the invasion and occupation of sovereign countries, the extraordinary rendition program. No, it is being thrown out forcefully as a condemnation of the Serbian government in the wake of Thursday's attack by protesters on the US embassy in Belgrade following the Bush administration's swift recognition of the declaration of independence by the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Some 1,000 protesters broke away from a largely non-violent mass demonstration in downtown Belgrade and targeted the embassy. Some protesters actually made it into the compound, setting a fire and tearing down the American flag.

"I'm outraged by the mob attack against the U.S. embassy in Belgrade," fumed Zalmay Khalilzad,the US Ambassador to the United Nations. "The embassy is sovereign US territory. The government of Serbia has a responsibility under international law to protect diplomatic facilities, particularly embassies." His comments were echoed by a virtual who's who of the Bill Clinton administration. People like Jamie Rubin, then-Secretary of State Madeiline Albright's deputy, one of the main architects of US policy toward Serbia. "It is sovereign territory of the United States under international law," Rubin declared. "For Serbia to allow these protesters to break windows, break into the American Embassy, is a pretty dramatic sign." Hillary Clinton, whose husband orchestrated and ran the 78-day NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999, said, "I would be moving very aggressively to hold the Serbian government responsible with their security forces to protect our embassy. Under international law they should be doing that."

There are two major issues here. One is the situation in Kosovo itself (which we'll get to in a moment), but the other is the attack on the US embassy. Yes, the Serbian government had an obligation to prevent the embassy from being torched and ransacked. If there was complicity by the Serbian police or authorities in allowing it to be attacked, that is a serious issue. But the US has little moral authority not just in invoking international law (which it only does when it benefits Washington's agenda) but in invoking international law when speaking about attacks on embassies in Belgrade.

Perhaps the greatest crime against any embassy in the history of Yugoslavia was committed not by evil Serb protesters, but by the United States military.

On May 7, 1999, at the height of the 78 day US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, the US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese citizens, two of them journalists, and wounding 20 others. The Clinton administration later said that the bombing was the result of faulty maps provided by the CIA (Sound familiar?). Beijing rejected that explanation and alleged it was deliberate. Eventually, under strong pressure from China, the US apologized and paid $28 million in compensation to the victims' families. If the US was serious about international law and the protection of embassies, those responsible for that bombing would have been tried at the Hague along with other alleged war criminals. But "war criminal" is a designation for the losers of US-fueled wars, not bombers sent by Washington to drop humanitarian munitions on "sovereign territory." ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/audits/77546/

[JohnyCanuck]

1. And how about the penchant of the US for taking Al Jazeera offices.

Imagine the song and dance routine we would have to endure from the White House and the US media if the "terrorists" targeted US propaganda outlets like offices of Fux News or CNN.

November 13, 2001 – The U.S. launches a missile attack on Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul, Afghanistan. In making the case that this was a deliberate attack, Al Jazeera’s managing director, Mohammed Jasim al-Ali, says “This office has been known by everybody, the American airplanes know the location of the office.” Although no Al Jazeera staff was hurt in the attack, the building was destroyed and some employees’ homes were damaged. In a letter to Al Jazeera dated December 6, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Victoria Clarke says “the building we struck was a known Al Qaeda facility in central Kabul.”

http://www.journalism.org/node/1530

In April, 2003 reporter Tareq Ayoub was killed when a U.S. missile hit the Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad. Two months earlier, according to documents obtained by the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the network had sent a letter to Victoria Clarke, then U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs in Washington, to alert the U.S. military of the office’s address and map coordinates and to inform them that citizen journalists would be working there. On April 8, according to the report, a single U.S. missile was fired on those exact coordinates, killing Ayoub. That missile strike occurred mere hours before an American tank shell penetrated the Reuters office in the Palestine Hotel, another site designated for journalists, killing a Ukranian cameraman and severely injuring another reporter. Al-Jazeera offices were also bombed in Kabul, Afghanistan in 2001.

http://www.columbiacitypaper.com/2008/1/30/al-jazeera-and-the-politics-of-truth