CNN Worked with Army PsyOps Group During Kosovo War (2000) | Hacker News Reader

CNN Worked with Army PsyOps Group During Kosovo War (2000)

theguardian.com

30 pointsmanjana7 comments

Looking back, it wasn't a time when there seemed to be a big ideological axe to grind, and Clinton was pretty hesitant to get involved in anything abroad that could affect the economy. They were just trying to avoid getting criticized for letting another genocide happen under their noses in the former Yugoslavia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_policy_of_the_Bill_Cli...

Seems plausible that it might have been just as banal as the army claims it was.

it wasn't a time when there seemed to be a big ideological axe to grind

So, neoliberal intervensionism and bombing for human rights happened in a vacuum?

There has never been a time when people did not have ideological axes to grind and this period was one of the launching pads for the Project for a New American Century.

If you had to assign percentage contributions to decision-making by the Clinton Administration regarding western intervention in Kosovo, where would you put them:

% decision due to horrified peers and constituents pressuring the President to do something to stop another potential genocide

% decision due to Neoliberal puppetmasters playing 3D chess

1. 10 2. 90

https://www.amazon.com/Fools-Crusade-Yugoslavia-Western-Delu...

Fair enough.

Diana Johnstone has an interesting take on the situation. It is a fringe opinion, however, and I default to the simpler, more widely-held narrative of what took place. It's just supported by more journalists who were there, and it lines up with my heuristics regarding the behavior of the US government (the Clinton administration in particular).

Yugoslavia Death of a Nation https://www.amazon.com/Yugoslavia-Death-Nation-Laura-Silber/...

The Fall of Yugoslavia: The Third Balkan War https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Yugoslavia-Third-Balkan-Revised/...

The Death of Yugoslavia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Yugoslavia

Are you claiming that those references support the idea that Bill Clinton's administration acted motivated primarily by humanitarian motivations unalloyed with the longstanding desire (and repeated demonstration¹) of the United States to systematically destroy all oppositions to its control of most of the world's economy?

That seems like a "fringe" opinion to anyone that has looked in even a half-objective manner at the easily available history.

1. https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/interventions/

Yep. I do claim it.

Clinton did not want to get dragged into a potential quagmire in the former Yugoslavia.

Sometimes the United States does things to systematically destroy opposition to its control of most of the world's economy.

Kosovo wasn't one of those times.

I poked through Zoltan's stuff, but I don't see anything that makes any attempt to look at internal decision-making by the Clinton Administration during the period.

This Brookings article, however specifically addresses internal decision-making by the Clinton Administration during the period:

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/decision-to-intervene-how...

If you CTRL-F to "Why was the summer of 1995 any different?" There's a paragraph that explicitly addresses the key elements to Clinton's decision to pursue an interventionist policy in the former Yugoslavia.

If you are concerned that the Brookings Institution may be a biased source of information, I welcome you to review it's rating on Media Bias/Fact Check: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/brookings-institute/

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