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Comment by fuoqi | Hacker News Reader

I wonder about his opinion regarding the US-NATO invasion of Yugoslavia in which christian Serbs got bombed into stone age to protect muslims and change state borders in the middle of Europe by force.

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Ugh, such a cringeworthy and blatant lie. Serbia raged wars to prevent former Yugoslavia’s states gaining independence. They committed war crime such as the Srebrenica massacre. 8,000 Bosnian civilians were killed there by Serbians under UN’s watch. And not just Muslims Bosnians, many Croatians were the victims of the war as well. 13,000 civilians were killed in the Kosovo war, including more than 10,000 Albanians. Compared that to 500 Serbian civilians killed by NATO’s bombing.

The are actually two Serbian states: the independent Serbia with Belgrade as it’s capital and Republika Srpska (a constituent state in Bosnia and Hercegovina).

While I’m not denying that there was some collusion between the two, they largely operated as independent entities. The Srebrenica massacre was perpetrated by Srpska forces while the war in Kosovo was waged by Republika Srbija which as a separate event that happened a few years later.

And let’s not pretend that local Serbians weren’t also targets of ethnic cleansing during both conflicts (no I’m not trying to imply in any way that I support what Serbian armies died because of that)

The Serbs had bad PR at the time, having been seen to be responsible for some pretty awful things. I'm not saying they didn't do them, I'm emphasising that it depends on whether the west sees you as a bad guy like Saddam. Only after the bad guy level does it matter who you actually are in terms of proximity to Western culture. The Nazi regime were also Christian bad guys.

The media apparatus of the west can turn any people into its justified enemy; Christian or not - it really doesn’t matter once the machine gets rolling.

There was definitely some Christianity amongst the Nazis. I'm fairly certain that Hitler, and most of the leadership, were atheist. Modern Nazis are definitely very Christian.

Not taking sides, I am atheist but not a Nazi. I just don't think saying Nazis were Christians is necessarily correct.

Are you sure it doesn't work the other way around? That is, first the United States government (usually it's them, after all) decides you're getting hit with a war, and then you're portrayed as a bad guy, worse than Hitler, a threat "our democracy" and to all life on the planet — and the people eat it up, put the Ruritanian flag on their profile pictures, and "stand with Ruritania," because we'll fight the bastards to the last Ruritanian. And then we fund the bad guy to fight for us in our next conflict against the real villain.

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