Boris Tadic deserves a lot of respect for doing what no previous Serbian leader was willing to do, turn over the beloved Ratko Mladic, hero to Serbian fascists everywhere. Boris Tadic knew this was political suicide, that the chances his government would fall and that he would never win another election. It would have been easy to do what every leader of Serbia since Milosevic has done, support, hide, compensate and ignore Ratko Mladic as he lived like a free man in Serbia, hiding in plain sight.
For many Bosnian Serbs and their radical supporters the ends justify the means, always have. Ratko Mladic getting his hands dirty by killing thousands of innocent civilians, using rape as a legitimate weapon of war, killing women, children and the elderly. The explanation of killing children has been justified that they too, will one day be old enough to be soldiers. Their preemptive strike against Bosnian and Croat civilians was needed to build their state, as their stated goal laid out in May 1992:
Radovan Karadzic outlined “six strategic objectives” of Serbs in Bosnia: establishing state borders separating the Serbian people from the other ethnic communities: establishing corridor between Semberija and Krajina: establishing corridor to the Drina River valley: establishing border on Una and Neretva rivers: dividing Sarajevo into Serbian and Muslim parts: ensuring access to sea for Republika Srpska. Bosnian Serb assembly votes to create Army of Republika Srpska, VRS, and appoints Ratko Mladic commander. Creating this ethnically pure state and borders means making enemies out of women and children. The best way to prevent their return is to kill, expel, burn and rape, sometimes all four done to the same family. The atrocities done by the Bosnian Serbs during the war couldn't have been done on such a large organized scale without the leadership of the army and the Serbian authorities.
The worst mistake the international community made was rewarding this agression against Bosnia, by threatening air strikes against the Bosnian army 5th Korpus as they moved to the outskirts of Banja Luka in 1995. Giving legitimate authority and rewarding the crimes committed by the Bosnian Serbs gave them the belief that what they did was right. The scale and crimes committed in Bosnia by the Bosnian Serbs were unimaginable, even for the Bosnians who didn't believe before the war such crimes could happen to them. To reward this level of atrocities and crimes and to look the other way and ultimately give them what they wanted a defacto independent state is a crime that cannot be forgiven.
Many of the larger criminals have been caught and punished but the nest lives on. The Serbian war criminals have been rewarded with 50% of the Bosnian territory and a defacto independent state. The opportunity to address this has been missed time and time again and now Milorad Dodik does everything within his power to undermine the Bosnian state and to prove that Bosnian is a non functional state that needs to be dissolved, the last step in the dream of Mladic, Karadzic and Milosevic. So long as the nest exists the supporters of Mladic can justify his crimes committed to make it happen. The eagle who liked to call himself "God" during the war and insisted that others do so as well is gone off to his new home to face justice at the Hague. The time is now for his dream, the nest built upon the bones of 100,000 dead Bosnians needs to be torn down as well. As long as the nest exists the dream of Milosevic, Karadzic and Mladic exists as well...The graveyards, mass graves and lost lives need to be the legacy of the great Serbian war criminals, left as a monument to mans inhumanity towards man and the failure of leadership in the west during the war in Bosnia. Republika Srpska and it's legacy and foundation of crimes needs to be buried forever.
Truth...
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