Picture the United States as a murderer (it shouldn’t be difficult). Uncle Sam murders someone, the evidence is overwhelming, witnesses abound, he confesses, and it’s even caught on video. But Uncle Sam won’t be tried for murder — he’ll be celebrated as a champion of human rights and democracy instead.
This is the United States’ interventionist and murderous foreign policy M.O. transparently veiled as “US diplomacy”.
How does the US get away with it? Because the prosecution (the world) allows the defendant (the US) to conduct its own murder investigation.
US diplomacy chooses a victim, commits murder, installs its own witnesses, accuses and convicts someone else of the crime, then celebrates US interventionism and mass murder as “US diplomacy spreading democracy and human rights”.
The cycle:
US diplomacy chooses a country to be its next victim, commits mass murder through (choose one or more): invasion, war, proxy war, bombs/drones, sanctions, uprisings, coups, stoking of civil war. Next, it creates a team of witnesses including: “civil society organizations” to feign grassroots origins (yet are fully and publicly US-funded), US “think-tanks” issuing State Department approved “facts”, American media and American-funded and pressured/threatened local media, and the US-installed local regime itself. Accusations are then levelled against [insert current US enemy here] and that enemy is convicted of the USA’s crimes, then the West celebrates US interventionism and mass murder as “US diplomacy spreading democracy and human rights”.
The analogy of a firefighter starting a fire then putting it out in order to be celebrated as a “hero” would have applied, but the US continues to pour fuel (or drop bombs…see above) on the fire to inflict maximum damage.
In addition to mass murder, the US also employs other tactics to ensure that the target country’s citizens are stripped of their most basic of human rights — all in order to achieve its foreign policy goals of establishing US hegemony. Sometimes it alternates between mass murder and other methods.
Macedonia and Macedonians have experienced them all.
Following World War II, the US (and UK) bombed Macedonian civilians (my family included) in Aegean Macedonia (annexed by Greece after Macedonia’s partition in 1913), despite all of Macedonia being an Ally in both world wars. Why? In order to aid Greece’s ruling (and Nazi-supporting, British Royal family-backed) fascists in their quest to eradicate Macedonia and Macedonians — because it suited US foreign policy.
The US followed up with decades of support for our oppressors — including arming terrorists to start a war in the Republic of Macedonia— with a huge ramp-up of attacks on our ethnic identity and independence in the past several years. They overthrew the government, installed a dictator, brutally suppress dissent, and order and enable physical attacks, threats, blackmail and incarceration of Macedonians throughout the entire region.
Why? To appease our oppressors — who still want us eradicated — in order to force Macedonia into NATO (with the prerequisites that our country be forcibly renamed, our identity changed, and history erased), all for the sake of US hegemony, of course.
Specifically, it was one of the USA’s favourite partners in crime, Greece, that had made these demands in exchange for lifting its veto of Macedonia’s Western-imposed NATO membership bid, so the US decided to “end the Macedonia name dispute” (read: try to end Macedonia) in support of its “strategic partner”, Greece, and its newfound claim to the name “Macedonia”.
The shocking irony is that Greece used to deny the very existence of all of Macedonia (partitioned in 1913 among Serbia [now the independent Republic of Macedonia], Greece, Bulgaria and later, Albania), it fiercely suppressed any use of the “M” word, and it brutally tried to wipe out any trace of Macedonia and Macedonians, including mass murder, terror and expulsion. Suddenly, in 1988, defying all logic, Greece had the audacity to begin claiming Macedonia’s name, and following the US diplomacy handbook to a tee, Greece demanded Western adherence to its new propaganda policy. The West, of course, happily followed along.
What could have the United States and its Western minions done about the “name dispute” instead? They could have easily pointed to any international human rights convention, defended Macedonia’s right to self-determination, and admonished Greece for violating the West’s much-celebrated, often-ignored “Western values”, but no — US diplomacy dictates that the oppressor, not the oppressed, be aided.
Former Greek Prime Minister Constantine Mitsotakis, even admitted in 1995 that Greece initiated the so-called “name dispute”, and that it had nothing to do with Macedonia’s name, but everything to do with hiding Greece’s policy of denying the existence—and cultural genocide—of the large Macedonian minority within Greece’s borders.
But the so-called “name dispute” and related mass human rights violations were framed by the West as “diplomatic disputes” and the forced changing of Macedonia’s name, identity, and history were hailed as “huge successes”.
US diplomacy, once again, dictates that it and its strategic partners’ vast array of anti-Macedonian tactics, including mass murder, systematic human rights abuses, and cultural genocide be viewed as masterclasses in democracy and human rights.
Think of an individual murderer executing the above. Would you condone it? No. So don’t condone these actions on a US-executed exponential scale.
Bill Nicholov, President
Macedonian Human Rights Movement International
Macedonian Human Rights Movement International (MHRMI) has been active on human and national rights issues for Macedonians and other oppressed peoples since 1986. MHRMI advocates for the return of Macedonia’s name and human rights for oppressed Macedonians in the Balkans. For more information: 1-416-850-7125, info@mhrmi.org, www.mhrmi.org, twitter.com/mhrmi, facebook.com/mhrmi, instagram.com/MacedonianHumanRights #OurNameIsMacedonia