Has Post 9-11 Era Given Serbs a Credible Defense?

So the implosion of Yugoslavia happened in large part along sectarian/religious lines, and everyone cast the Serbs as the bad guys, and the Bosnian Muslims as the victims of Serb aggression. Might be true, might not; not getting into that argument right now. However, since 9-11, the dominant narrative among Western nations (most of which are predominantly, if not statutorily, Christian) has been one of resisting the spread of Islamic fundamentalism in its varying guises and forms. Well, backdating that idea to 1991, the Serbs are now trying to claim that they were the leading edge of resistance to this Islamic fundamentalism, and that their genocide in Bosnia was motivated by trying to "protect" the West from the Islamists. At least, that's the claim being made in court by Radovan Karadzic.

Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, charged with the worst genocide in Europe since the Holocaust, testified Monday that his people defended themselves against Islamic fundamentalists seeking to lay claim to Bosnia during the violent breakup of Yugoslavia.
In an opening defense statement at the U.N. war crimes tribunal, Karadzic denied any intention to expel non-Serbs from their homes, and said the Serb objective was to protect their own lives and property.
There was a core of Muslim leaders in Bosnia that was "plotting and conniving," Karadzic told the U.N. war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. "They wanted Islamic fundamentalism and they wanted it from 1991," he said, seeking to trace the origin of the full-scale civil war to the Muslims' rejection of all power-sharing proposals.
"Our cause is just and holy," Karadzic said as he began his two-day statement, relying only on sparse notes. "We have a good case. We have good evidence and proof."
Karadzic, 64, faces two counts of genocide and nine other counts of murder, extermination, persecution, forced deportation and the seizing of 200 U.N. hostages. He faces possible life imprisonment if convicted.
Prosecutors say Karadzic orchestrated a campaign to destroy the Muslim and Croat communities in eastern Bosnia to create an ethnically pure Serbian state. The campaign included the 44-month siege of the capital Sarajevo and the torture and murder of hundreds of prisoners in inhuman detention camps, and culminated in the massacre of some 8,000 Muslim males in one horrific week in July 1995 in the Srebrenica enclave, the worst bloodbath in Europe since World War II.
Karadzic is the most important figure to be brought to trial since former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who died of a heart attack in 2006 before his case was concluded. Karadzic, president of the breakaway Bosnian Serb state, negotiated with diplomats, U.N. officials and peace envoys; he appeared often in the media; and he set the tone and pace of the 1992-95 Bosnian war that killed an estimated 100,000 people.

By: Brant