If we in the West use any kind of punishment other than straightforward imprisonment, it will legitimize the ugly brutal things that the less savoury regimes of this world get up to, and strengthen the hands of those who use state killing and torture to repress.
Completely agree.
The fault lays with the UN
Yes. It was chance that the Dutch were there at the time, could have been troops from any nation. The UN rules of engagement and lack of air support played a massive role in the massacre. The Canadians who were in charge of the area before the Dutch withdrew because they said the policy of maintaining the safe haven was unsustainable.
Gone out fighting!
“Why didn’t the Dutch repel them?
There were just 400 lightly armed Dutch infantry – no match for thousands of Serbs backed by armour and artillery. The 10sq km area was impossible to defend with small arms and so few troops. That said, the Dutch denied Bosnian Muslim fighters the return of weapons they had surrendered to the peacekeepers, although they could not have defended Srebrenica for long in the face of a concerted attack.
Instead, the Dutch Commander, Colonel Ton Karremans, urged the Bosnians to withdraw from defensive positions south of Srebrenica where he believed that Nato aircraft would soon be launching air strikes against the advancing Serbs. But the air strikes never came and the Serbs took 30 Dutch soldiers hostage.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-big-question-why-are-dutch-soldiers-being-sued-for-the-massacre-at-srebrenica-849944.html
Nothing except enjoy a nice drink, apparently.
I’m reading that as “I don’t have a clue what they could have done”.