20 years ago today - Siege of Sarajevo begins

[Ed Anger]

Great White played there.

[grumbler]

Hey now!  We did institute an arms blockade which prevented the Bosniacs from buying weapons to defend themselves.  That was something.  Without our contributions I doubt such a long siege would have been possible

Yeah, you fucked that up. I was never sure what you were thinking, given that the Serbs had inherited most of the Yugoslavian Army's weapons.

Still, don't blame yourselves for the length of the siege.  It didn't last so long because the Bosnians couldn't get weapons; it lasted so long because the Serbs didn't want to take the city.

[Valmy]

Yeah, you fucked that up. I was never sure what you were thinking, given that the Serbs had inherited most of the Yugoslavian Army's weapons.

  Hopefully next time the government will not listen to 14 year olds in determining policy.

[grumbler]

  Hopefully next time the government will not listen to 14 year olds in determining policy.

Technically, the UN isn't a government.

Plus, the arms embargo was imposed by the UN before there even was a Bosnian state. Where the US government fucked up was in not simply observing that the state to which the arms embargo applied was the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which at that point consisted of Serbia, Kossovo, Vojvodina, and Montenegro only.  All the US black ops to get arms to the Bosnian government were unnecessary, except as a sop to the Brits, French, and Russians.  None of the latter deserved soppng, in my opinion.