But right now J. Hoffman (guest post) is too busy smearing Shlomo Sands ('Shlomo the Sandlout' - sounds like something Snoopy the Goon would come up with). As always the comments will be the best part...
They've also got a brand new top banner: a smiling Mooooslim against a background of fiery destruction...
bob smears chomsky and the writer of an lrb article on pol pot etc. i don't know why these people are so keen to pose as leftists and supporters of the two state solution. chomsky and finkelstein both suppport the TSS and chomsky is even anti-BDS. it must be the serious criticism of Israel and the US that they object to.
anyway, go have a look.
"I also asked him why he wrote the book - was it for notoriety or was it for money?
He failed to answer. He also failed to answer Richard Millett who pointed out that Hamas was not prepared to give the Jews any land area (Sand had said that the Jews were allocated too much land by the UN in 1947). Richard was heckled - uproar broke out."
Yeah, Millett, he's real fun too. They roll him out on Press TV regularly. Stuffed shirt third class. Permanently stuck in 'Hamas mode'. Funnily enough you don't hear the Potters complain when some lame duck Zios appear there (Press TV)...
and:
"As Seth Frantzman writes: “If the Jews never really existed then why did Islam and Christianity spend so much time suppressing them?”
And I see there's now a CIFWatch (Cif, NOT Jif!)
Broccoli Bob: Leftist? Attacks on the LRB really are the preserve of the intellectual part of Daily Mail readers, Mad Mellians etc.
Please complete the sentence and discuss.
I get that all the time, too. Seems that if you argue that Jewish history migh be just a tad different, and more in line than reality, than the Zionist stories, you are really exterminating the entire Jewish people. Which, of course, will disappear in a puff of smoke if anybody thinks the wrong thing.
HB did particularly well with their allegation that Seven Jewish Children was antisemitic and he got banned for it. i thought it was poor judgement on his part to do an actual post there but he even got the better of them over that when he did a spoof piece arguing against people singling out the apartheid regime in South Africa.
michael rosen and stephen marks also expose the sheer dishonesty of harrys place often enough by arguing against them directly. mind you, having said all that, i think HP may be in decline now and engage barely functions any more.
if the former, i have just noticed that the two davids - toube and hirsh - no longer post to HP and Engage respectively though i think toube is lucy lips.
if the latter, i don't really know. i wonder if toube realised that his napolean complex was getting too silly. he even posted a youtube video of himself. he also seems to be promoting jews for jesus (or some such) and sparking a boycott of hp in the process and hirsh may have cried off because they are losing the campaign against BDS and have lost it altogether in the UCU. on the other hand hand they could be busy with day jobs.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the slowest of them all [here]?
Well, that would be me and yet I feel positively smarter than Toube, Hoffman and Millett put together. How on Earth did British Zionism last so long? I mean, if it was a 'brand', surely professional marketers would go: 'Aaarghgh! Not like that! That's marketing suicide! Get away! Rip it up and start again!', right?
As a 'brand' it's not only morally bankrupt, it's also sooooo... dunno... uninvitingly 'uncool'...
I think I may just have stumbled on the most extremist religious Zionist (and Kiryat Arba settler...) blog on the entire planet. Please note that I don't believe this guy represents anyone but himself and that it's clear he (?) has 'value' [cough!] only as some kind of an InterWebs circus freak. The blog's so extreme I thought at first it might be a spoof but it's not: it's linked to by some known other extremist elements. I'm not linking but the address is bachazit dot blogspot.com/ (no www). Have fun!
Mission statement:
Welcome to B'chazit, the forum of the Land of Israel loyalist! This blog is committed to exposing the truth that the liberal media does not want you to hear. We unapologetically assert our ownership over all of the greater Land of Israel, while expressing our commitment to our Jewish brothers worldwide. As we stand up for our land and our people, we also recognize the bond of the Jewish people to Western Civilization and we are committed to saving America, the West, and the White Race from annihilation at the hands of Islamofascists, Communists, Liberals, Gays, Negroes, and the hordes of the Third World.
A few headlines in the sidebar:
We stand with White South Africa!
Support The Ulster Paramilitaries!
Kahane Chai training camp. (link to promo video)
JDL training camp (link to promo video)
English Defense League (link)
Thank G-D there are still some sane people in America! Interracial couple denied marriage license in La. (post title of a recent post)
Go, look, see for 10 mins. of comic relief...
?? I don't get you. (1) The post you're talking about only mentions Chomsky in passing. (2) As I said last time I visited, I believe in a one state solution. (3) I don't care whether I come across as a leftist or not. What does leftist mean these days? (4) The post you refer to is also critical of America, although I do see Chomsky's attitude towards America as problematic. See no.4 here.(5) Is it Chomsky's views on Israel that bother me? No, not really. This is the only thing I've ever written about Chomsky's views on Israel. (6)What has Finkelstein got to do with it?
On the other hand, I am glad that I was able to supply you with some laughs, and am sorry that the Davids are currently unable to do so.
You refer to "Chomskyism" as if it means falsely accusing America of various things for which, you claim, it is not responsible. You took a detour from what you were writing in order to do so and you falsely accused the chap whose article you were ostensibly reviewing of saying something he hadn't but that you had. You also provided a link to "Chomskyism" and you have a "previous" blog post on Chomsky pointed to thus: What's wrong with Chomsky.
On the whole, I'm with Otto and Gabriel on the hasbara blogs, although I hope we have more to offer each other than just information. It doesn't do any actual harm to refute their bullshit for the squillionth time, except for the person wasting their life doing it, because there's no audience you can influence there. When it comes to responding to the trolls here or on HB, for instance, on the other hand, there may be an audience that doesn't participate in the discussion and mightn't be familiar with the arguments.
The link to the previous post on Chomsky was there, in fact, because it touched on this issue in relation to Cambodia. I also recommended two pieces by Jenny Diski, but the post was not about Jenny Diski. The post was primarily about Cambodia. It was not a "review" of an article; it was a recommendation with a minor caveat. Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered.
Can you quote chapter and verse where Chomsky actually says that the Serbs and the Khmer Rouge are morally exempt of responsibility? The article you cite is a typical imperial propaganda piece and a smear job, and the fact that you don't see it is quite amazing and telling. Indeed it says everything about you. Have you even ever read Chomsky?
The question re: imperialism is not "who is responsible?" That is a legal question that is defined by the scope of the tribunal in charge. In different tribunals different persons might be found responsible for the same crime. The question that Chomsky asks is 'what is the logic of action of imperialist powers?' Why do they intervene? What governs their decisions to intervene in some cases but not in others? How do they chose sides and how do they decide what to do? And finally, how do they use moral questions about responsibility in furthering their goals?
Now, do you have anything intelligent to say about that? Or are you, like your friends, interested in ridiculing Chomsky with the false accusation that he apologizes for criminals in order to avoid accountability for the actions of your government that result in massive death?
In the case of the Cambodia, the US funded the Khmer Rouge, defended them diplomatically at the UN, and attempted to stop the Vietnamese invasion that ended the genocide. That was in addition to creating the conditions of war that led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. Is it not the case that a limited trial of Pol Pot would fail to discuss these political choices? How does making the point that discussing these points would be a good idea, indeed a moral responsibility for US citizens, count as "excusing" the actions of Pol Pot?
Nah, mine beats yours hands down. I can somehow see this guy, kippeled and perhaps a little pickled on Southern Comfort, charging down the hill of his settlement at some bemused Palestinians, M16 at the hip, screaming 'antiii-Seeemiite sandniggaahhs!' Possibly with a Texan twang... Aaahh, the joys of nationalism...
Interesting article though...
who mostly turn away in disgust, they know a sure loser when they see one.
There's lots I could say in reply, but I'll limit myself to 3 points.
1. Although I would frame it differently, you are right to distinguish between political causality, the logic of state actions, on the one hand, and personal moral or legal responsibility on the other. In my original post, I was focusing very narrowly on one passage where Kurlantzick was talking about a tribunal, and if I read him right, suggesting its scope was too narrow because (perhaps among other narrownesses) it did not include the American bombings in its remit. This suggestion, to me, blurs the line between responsibility and causality in an unacceptable way, and ultimately makes any kind of justice impossible.
2. In my original post, and in my follow-ups to levi in the comment thread, I made it very clear (or at least I thought I did) that America was responsible for a number outrages in SE Asia in that period, some of which should be considered war crimes. I agree, as is obvious from my post and comments, with your description here of America's role. I don't accuse Chomsky, Kurlantzick or anyone else from "excusing" Khmer Rouge crimes. I do accuse Chomsky (and, in that one sentence) of minimising and relativising the Khmer Rouge crimes and of other crimes perpetrated by non-Western states, including the Serbs. I cannot provide "chapter and verse" on Chomsky saying the Serbs and the Khmer Rouge are morally exempt of responsibility, because he does not say that, and I don't claim he did. However, I can provide chapter and verse for him minimising and relativising such crimes. On Cambodia, a simple glance at one of his most well-known books, Manufacturing Consent, is enough: description of the actual genocide as just Phase 2 of a genocidal period, with Phase 1 being the US bombings, a claim that numbers of Khmer Rouge victims have been inflated far beyond their actual number. In Manufacturing Consent, he uses a comparative framework, placing Cambodia and East Timor alongside each other in a perverse moral calculus that reduces the singularity of each awful event to an arithmetic game. This comparative approach returns in his comments on Bosnia, linked to in the Hoare piece I link to: "the crimes in East Timor at the same time. These crimes were far worse than anything reported in Kosovo prior to the NATO bombing, and had a background far more grotesque than anything claimed in the Balkans." This, in my view, is simply not true, but it is the logic of comparison that is morally questionable whether it is true or not. I am not saying that we should not compare crimes, but Chomsky's method, framed by a manichean worldview, is to systematically attempt to show that some crimes are overrated and other crimes are underrated, and this is surely a form of relativising and minimising away the non-Western crimes.
3. Yes, in answer to your question, I am quite familiar with his work. I have not been keeping up with it, but I own several of his books and he has, over the years, been extremely significant for my political development, as an influence and an inspiration. It is because of this, and his influence on many other people I relate to, that I react to his negative traits so strongly and perhaps disproportionately.
"I was completely captivated from the moment I picked up your book until I set it down. Some day I intend on reading it"
Noam Chompsky, his toothier brother.
First I'm confused about Bob. Is Bob who wrote the comment above, in which he concedes that Chomsky never excused the Serbs or the Khmer Rouge and never exempted them from responsibility for the horrible crimes they committed, the same Bob who linked approvingly to an article that made exactly that very odious, false and outrageous claim about Chomsky? If not, can the real Bob please stand up? If yes, can the split personality Bob figure out who he is?
Then, I'm really confused about some of the things you say. When you say that "Chomsky's method, framed by a manichean worldview, is to systematically attempt to show that some crimes are overrated and other crimes are underrated," are you saying that in fact, it is not true that some crimes are overrated and other crimes are underrated? Are you claiming that in your opinion, the Western media covers conflicts impartially and describes atrocities committed by the US and its allies generally in the same way as it covers atrocities and crimes committed by regimes deemed hostile by Washington? Or is it that you find fault with Chomsky's claim that the bias is "systematic"? Do you think it isn't? What is your model of the way Western media coverage of conflicts in which the Western powers are implicated?
When you say that extending the tribunal to include US bombing makes justice impossible, can you explain why? Is there a set amount of justice in the world so that spending any of it on Kissinger's victims would mean there wouldn't be enough justice for Pol Pot's? Or do you think hearing evidence about Kissinger's secret war in Cambodia in Hall A107 would so confuse the jurists trying to sentence Pol Pot in room M62 that they would botch the proceedings irredeemably?
Could you explain how appointing a tribunal with, for example, a mandate to examine and prosecute all alleged crimes against humanity committed within Cambodia's borders from 1969 to1978 would be minimizing the crimes against humanity committed in Cambodia after 1975? Or is it simply that caring for Pol Pot's victims exhausts your compassion? If there is a rule there that I'm missing about what crimes should be prosecuted and what crimes shouldn't, could you spell it out?
Now you say that you think that the US should be held responsible for "outrages," some of which could be war crimes. Can you share with us your informed estimates about the number of people who died as a result of Pol Pot's violence and the number of people who died from the bombing of Cambodia by the US that would justify the distinction between "genocide" and "outrage, possibly war crimes"? Is there any other qualitative distinction that you think is more important than these numbers?
Now, you say that the expression "phase II" of the genocide minimizes Pol Pot crimes. Can you explain the logic? According to the principles set at Nuremberg, even if Pol Pot were able to produce an official letter from Nixon ordering him to kill a million people, he would be just as guilty and just as deserving of a death penalty as if he were acting completely independently. So how is pointing out that people in Cambodia began dying violently in large numbers six years before Pol Pot started killing them enthusiastically (and with US diplomatic and financial support) minimizing his crimes? Does pointing out that a "war crime" happens during war minimizes it? Do war crimes only count if they come out of the blue? Do you think telling the story of World War II "relativizes and minimizes" the crimes of the architects of the "final solution?" Explains what about providing a full account of the horror experienced by the people of Cambodia between the collapse of the monarchy and the Vietnamese invasion is shortchanging some of the victims of that period.
One more question, when you say that "In Manufacturing Consent, he uses a comparative framework, placing Cambodia and East Timor alongside each other in a perverse moral calculus that reduces the singularity of each awful event to an arithmetic game," are you aware that Chomsky doesn't write a history of global atrocities but a political science model for explaining the editorial decisions of Western media? I'm sure you are because you read the book. So tell me. How do you suggest one studies how Western media deals with different events except by comparing how it deals with one event to how it deals with another? There are historians who write about history comparatively. For example, I have on my desk a book that compares South African Apartheid to the U.S. South. Chomsky doesn't use a "comparative framework." A comparative framework is one in which, for example, you compare the US media's coverage of Vietnam to the Russian media coverage of Afghanistan. When you study the media, comparing how the media reports on A to how the media reports on B is not a comparative study of A vs. B. It is the basic and in fact only way to figure out the logic of media coverage. If you have another way, please share it with us, as you may have stumbled on a real and rare innovation in research methodology. So according to you, trying to figure out how the media work is a "perverse media calculus", because each covered event is "singular." Could you explain how that works? Do you think, for example, that it would be perverse to study racial bias in police murder investigations because such a study would deny the singularity of each murder victim?
First I'm confused about Bob. Is Bob who wrote the comment above, in which he concedes that Chomsky never excused the Serbs or the Khmer Rouge and never exempted them from responsibility for the horrible crimes they committed, the same Bob who linked approvingly to an article that made exactly that very odious, false and outrageous claim about Chomsky? If not, can the real Bob please stand up? If yes, can the split personality Bob figure out who he is?
The purpose of my blog is not to put across some unified, total, perfected analysis of the world, but to think things through and maybe provoke others to do so. So, yes, I have a split personality, but don’t we all? Unless we are Marxist-Leninist vanguard parties with party lines on absolutely everything. Or Noam Chomsky.
I don’t agree with everything I link to, and in fact rarely agree 100%. So, for example, the Kurlantzick article that started this off, I agree with 99% and briefly set out the minor quibble.
The Hoare article I link to with the word “Chomskyism” does not, however, actually say that Chomsky excused the Serbs or Khmer Rouge (does it even mention the latter?) but rather says that Chomsky minimises their responsibility by placing it within a logic of tendentious comparison and tendentious “causality”.
Then, I'm really confused about some of the things you say. When you say that "Chomsky's method, framed by a manichean worldview, is to systematically attempt to show that some crimes are overrated and other crimes are underrated," are you saying that in fact, it is not true that some crimes are overrated and other crimes are underrated? Are you claiming that in your opinion, the Western media covers conflicts impartially and describes atrocities committed by the US and its allies generally in the same way as it covers atrocities and crimes committed by regimes deemed hostile by Washington? Or is it that you find fault with Chomsky's claim that the bias is "systematic"? Do you think it isn't? What is your model of the way Western media coverage of conflicts in which the Western powers are implicated?
Yes, some crimes are overrated and some are underrated, and by different people. Some people use Darfur to deflect attention from Palestine, while others foreground Palestine while ignoring Chechnaya, Tibet, the Uighars and so on. And no one seems interested in Guinea. The Western media has its favourite crimes, and these are partly structured by the factors Chomsky describes so well, the interlocking of the media with the military-industrial complex; the bias is indeed partly systematic as Chomsky says. But that doesn’t explain why the Western media is so obsessed with Israel-Palestine; that requires a different explanation, for which I’m afraid I have no “model”. What I am objecting to in Chomsky is his Manichean worldview, in which the West never does anything good and the bad things the non-West does are always relatavised away by his tendentious comparisons and “root causes”.
When you say that extending the tribunal to include US bombing makes justice impossible, can you explain why? Is there a set amount of justice in the world so that spending any of it on Kissinger's victims would mean there wouldn't be enough justice for Pol Pot's? Or do you think hearing evidence about Kissinger's secret war in Cambodia in Hall A107 would so confuse the jurists trying to sentence Pol Pot in room M62 that they would botch the proceedings irredeemably?
Could you explain how appointing a tribunal with, for example, a mandate to examine and prosecute all alleged crimes against humanity committed within Cambodia's borders from 1969 to1978 would be minimizing the crimes against humanity committed in Cambodia after 1975? Or is it simply that caring for Pol Pot's victims exhausts your compassion? If there is a rule there that I'm missing about what crimes should be prosecuted and what crimes shouldn't, could you spell it out?
The reason I don’t think the tribunal should be extended to the US bombing is because they are two different crimes. That’s all. It would not serve justice. Different crimes are different. Isn’t that obvious?
Now you say that you think that the US should be held responsible for "outrages," some of which could be war crimes. Can you share with us your informed estimates about the number of people who died as a result of Pol Pot's violence and the number of people who died from the bombing of Cambodia by the US that would justify the distinction between "genocide" and "outrage, possibly war crimes"? Is there any other qualitative distinction that you think is more important than these numbers?
It’s not just about the numbers, although numbers are important. Chomsky likes to play with numbers, claiming that more people died in East Timor than in Kosovo, for example. My understanding is that around 1.7 million died under Pol Pot out of a population of around 7 million, and that the deaths were basically deliberate. Many were killed by hand (100s of 1000s, if not over a million), while others were starved because they were considered sub-human (the slogan was "To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss"). A summary of different estimates is here: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/
...t2.htm#Cambodia. This is a genocide, and should be tried as such. This is what the Tribunal should be all about. The Tribunal should also hear about how the American government, under Nixon (advised by Kissinger) and then under Carter (advised by Zbigniew Brzezinski), as well as the Chinese government, actively supported the regime, and therefore were complicit in the genocide.
Over 150,000 people probably died in the US bombing, and much of that bombing was indiscriminate. This is a war crime, which should be tried as such. American geo-political power, of course, makes it unlikely there will ever be a proper accounting for this. Data released by the Clinton administration makes it clear that the war crimes began under LBJ and not under Nixon/Kissinger, as was previously thought, but the most lethal period was under Nixon. Kissinger should, in my view, should serve several life sentences for this and the other war crimes in which he was involved.
Now, you say that the expression "phase II" of the genocide minimizes Pol Pot crimes. Can you explain the logic? According to the principles set at Nuremberg, even if Pol Pot were able to produce an official letter from Nixon ordering him to kill a million people, he would be just as guilty and just as deserving of a death penalty as if he were acting completely independently. So how is pointing out that people in Cambodia began dying violently in large numbers six years before Pol Pot started killing them enthusiastically (and with US diplomatic and financial support) minimizing his crimes? Does pointing out that a "war crime" happens during war minimizes it? Do war crimes only count if they come out of the blue? Do you think telling the story of World War II "relativizes and minimizes" the crimes of the architects of the "final solution?" Explains what about providing a full account of the horror experienced by the people of Cambodia between the collapse of the monarchy and the Vietnamese invasion is shortchanging some of the victims of that period.
Calling the US bombings Phase 1 of a genocide is inaccurate, because the bombings were something else. This is like calling the Allied revenge on Germany after 1918 “Phase 1” of the Holocaust. Calling it “Phase 1” is not “telling the story”; it is obscuring the story. Each crime was singular, and to blur them together insults the victims of both.
One more question, when you say that "In Manufacturing Consent, he uses a comparative framework, placing Cambodia and East Timor alongside each other in a perverse moral calculus that reduces the singularity of each awful event to an arithmetic game," are you aware that Chomsky doesn't write a history of global atrocities but a political science model for explaining the editorial decisions of Western media? I'm sure you are because you read the book. So tell me. How do you suggest one studies how Western media deals with different events except by comparing how it deals with one event to how it deals with another? There are historians who write about history comparatively. For example, I have on my desk a book that compares South African Apartheid to the U.S. South. Chomsky doesn't use a "comparative framework." A comparative framework is one in which, for example, you compare the US media's coverage of Vietnam to the Russian media coverage of Afghanistan. When you study the media, comparing how the media reports on A to how the media reports on B is not a comparative study of A vs. B. It is the basic and in fact only way to figure out the logic of media coverage. If you have another way, please share it with us, as you may have stumbled on a real and rare innovation in research methodology. So according to you, trying to figure out how the media work is a "perverse media calculus", because each covered event is "singular." Could you explain how that works? Do you think, for example, that it would be perverse to study racial bias in police murder investigations because such a study would deny the singularity of each murder victim?
In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman do compare the media responses, but they also compare the events being reported on. When they do that, they minimise the crimes involved in Cambodia in order to say that East Timor was as bad or worse than Cambodia. To do this, they claim that the numbers involved in Cambodia are far lower than they actually were (in the link above, you will note that their estimate is around half anyone else’s estimate
- I follow Prof Chomsky's reasoning ok in this.
If it wasn't for the genocidal bombing of north-east Cambodia by Nixon-Kissingers secret and illegal 'Menu' bombing campaign then there would have been no Khmer Rouge in the way it emerged from that very area - these people emerged so traumatised from their experiences at the hands of America's B52s they went on a genocide spree of their own.
...they minimise the crimes involved in Cambodia in order to say that East Timor was as bad or worse than Cambodia. To do this, they claim that the numbers involved in Cambodia are far lower than they actually were (in the link above, you will note that their estimate is around half anyone else’s estimate
- Calculating numbers involved in genocides is fraught with difficulties, but especially in Cambodia, where there was little in the way of independent reporting or sources of independent information for the obvious reason that foreigners, and the like, would have met a grisly fate at the hands of the Khmer rouge.
I believe this is the latest scholarship -
Bombs Over Cambodia
New information reveals that Cambodia was bombed far more heavily than previously believed
by Taylor Owen and Ben Kiernan
Walrus
Oct 2006(?)
What Chomsky and Herman do say is that the numbers involved in the Phase 1 of the Cambodian genocide will be minimised because those are the crimes directly attributable to the US 'secret' bombing campaign - and that the crimes associated with Phase 2 of the Cambodian genocide will be magnified becuase these crimes are attributable to the official enemy at the time, the Khmer Rouge.
Prof Chomsky compares the fate of the victims of East Timor during the illegal Indonesian occupation to that of the victims of the Nazi Holocaust. Which I think is about right because, like the Jewish victims of the Nazis, a third of the East Timor population was murdered.
Here's the last paragraph in full:
In Manufacturing Consent, Chomsky and Herman do compare the media responses, but they also compare the events being reported on. When they do that, they minimise the crimes involved in Cambodia in order to say that East Timor was as bad or worse than Cambodia. To do this, they claim that the numbers involved in Cambodia are far lower than they actually were (in the link above, you will note that their estimate is around half anyone else’s estimate). Once the claim that Cambodia wasn’t so bad is shown to be wrong, then the comparative framework they choose for the reportage becomes weaker. In other work, Chomsky moves away from the analysis of reportage, and a consistent pattern emerges, one in which any almost mention of a crime not perpetrated by the West is immediately contextualised with a tendentious comparison. You can see this, for example, in his treatment of the former Yugoslavia, where again he downplays the numbers killed in explicit comparison with East Timor (again: he compares the numbers killed, not the reportage).
Really? Here is what the article you quote says:
1) Chomsky claims that the bombing precipitated ‘by far the worst’ of the atrocities, but what precipitated the bombing ?
The answer is that the NATO bombing of Serbia in March 1999 was precipitated by Belgrade’s rejection of the Rambouillet Accords. Belgrade was aware that rejecting the Rambouillet Accords would precipitate Serbia being bombed by NATO, but rejected them nevertheless. By Chomsky’s own logic, therefore, Serbia’s own actions precipitated the NATO bombings, and were consequently responsible for those bombings. Since, according to Chomsky, the bombings led to the atrocities, that means that Serbia was responsible for the atrocities after all.
What Chomsky would like us to believe, is that if a US or NATO action produced a predictable Serbian response, then the response was the fault of the US/NATO. But if, on the other hand, a Serbian action produced a predictable US/NATO response, then the response was still the fault of the US/NATO. This is self-evidently a case of double standards.
In case you fail to notice the obvious, the premise in the quote above is that the sum of the responsibilities of NATO and Belgrade is 1. If one blames NATO for anything, that would imply that Belgrade is off the hook for the same. This is facetious to the point of idiocy. If a hostage situation ends with the hostages being murdered, does questioning the performance of the police imply excusing the actions of the hostage taker?
Then, of course, this facetious argument clearly implies that Chomsky argues against Belgrade being responsible for the killing (Either A or B are responsible but not both. B is responsible, therefore A is not responsible) This, by your own admission, is false. And this is one of the main points of the article. I assume you'd agree that accusing anybody falsely of apologizing for mass murderers is odious. You rant for ever about your quibbles about the ethical failures of Chomsky's less than perfect turns of phrase or comparisons while you link approvingly to a smear job based on logic worthy of a pre-schooler. What about your ethics? Not to mention your judgment.
Now, let's put the idiocy aside and concentrate on what really matters. Were NATO's actions in the former Yugoslavia consistent with a "responsibility to protect" civilians from predatory state actions, or where they governed by another logic, on the basis of which the safety of the Bosnian population was sacrificed for more important considerations?
This is a serious question. You can argue about it with Chomsky. Maybe Chomsky is wrong. Maybe his evidence is not convincing. By all means argue. But I do note that the people you refer to do everything to avoid discussing this question. Do you wonder why? Why do they pretend that it is about taking sides for or against Milosevic? This is demagoguery of the lowest kind, intended to paint those who raise uncomfortable questions about official behavior as depraved monsters. This is the theme of Ann Coulter and her friends, "if you question our actions, you give comfort to the enemy." And this is the caliber of the material you bring for "thinking things through."
But on to what really matters. I was profoundly ambivalent about the NATO actions. The genocide needed to be stopped, but I was not sure then and am not sure now what the right thing to do was stop it. We do, as humans, have a responsibility to protect people from genocide. Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell is very good on this issue.
I'm not sure what the "more important considerations" you are pointing to might be. I think it is hard to fit the bombings into the Chomskyite/anti-imperialist analysis. I had another look at the Chomsky piece Hoare links to, and to the original Chomsky paper to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, and I cannot see exactly why he thinks NATO acted.
I'm afraid I'm probably going to leave it here for now, as I've had a long week at work. I might check in after the weekend.
Given that the Rambouillet accords contained several clauses - those relating to the Serbian economy and about NATO personnel occupying the whole of Serbia, not just Kosova - they would be rejected by any sovereign state, and the reason for the failure of Rambouillet lies with NATO, not Serbia, and the pendulum of moral responsibility, if that's what this game is about, swings back onto the NATO side.
'Chomsky says the NATO bombings "precipitated" the genocide, which is morally and intellectually spurious.'
However, historically Chomsky's interpretation is an accurate picture of events, given the difference between the level of violence in Kosova before the consumption of bombing by NATO, and that after. Now it's possible that the Serbian military would have escalated the level of violence in Kosova without NATO intervention, but this presumption would be impossible to prove, given that plans such as 'Operation Horseshoe' alleged to prove the Serbian intent were shown to be fraudulent.
'The genocide needed to be stopped'
Anyone who continues to insist the events of April-June 1999 in Kosova were 'genocide' seriously undermines their own credability. There was neither genocidal intent on the part of the Serbian forces, nor genocidal practice in the field. What did occur was a counter-insurgency operation against the KLA (themselves eager ethnic cleansers) which targeted their real or potential civilian supporters. If the Serbian operations in Kosova were genocide, then by this interpretation, the USA was guilty of genocide in Indo-china several times over, and not merely the 'outrages' you ascribe to it above.
Can't argue with that. If you're not smart enough to understand why more than one party can be held responsible for different aspects of the same case of harm, I can only offer you my sympathy. But in the sincere hope of reaching out to the "pre-school left" in general, to which you obviously belong, I'll try again with some homier analogies. If Ken the sixth-grade bully sets fire to your house, and you call the firefighters, and they arrive to the scene drunk, run over and kill your dog, then douse the fire with their beer cans instead of connecting the fire hydrant, do you think it might be permissible for you to hold the mayor accountable for you no longer having a house, or would that in your opinion constitute apologizing for arsonists? Do you get it now, or do I need to add pictures?
Chomsky says the NATO bombings "precipitated" the genocide, which is morally and intellectually spurious.
And why would that be so? Let's get some data. How many Kosovars were murdered by the Serbian forces after the bombing started? Here is HRW: according to the best study they trust, in addition to the 850,000 displaced
...approximately 10,500 Kosovar Albanians were killed between March 20 and June 12, 1999, with a 95 percent confidence interval from 7,449 to 13,627. ( http://www.hrw.org/sites/ default...En_Combined.pdf p. 434)
How is that in comparison to the deaths that took place before March 20 (when the NATO bombing began)? According to the media reports,
...by March 1999, the combination of fighting and the targeting of civilians had left an estimated 1,500–2,000 civilians and combatants dead. (p. 110)
Le'ts me translate it for pre-schoolers. There was no genocide in Kosovo before the bombing, nor was there systematic ethnic cleansing. There was a ruthless, violent war of the kind that is familiar to us from Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, Afghanistan and other places, a war of a regular army against an armed insurgency. The war was certainly brutal and criminal, but not particularly violent in comparison to other "assymetric wars". Here HRW's summary of large scale human right abuses in the Kosovo conflict before the bombing began. In Drenica, 84 people killed, February 1998. May - June June, 30,000 driven out of their villages, numerous dead involving armed conflict with the KLA, 250,000 internally displaced, 100 disappeared, 500 imprisoned on terrorist charges, thousands of villages attacked, many burnt down. The worst single incident involved the killing of 21 Kosovars in late spetmeber ( p.49) let's continue to 1999. February, fighting continues between KLA guerrilla and Serbian army and police. January 15, massacre in Racak, 45 Albanians killed. Note that this toll for two years is roughly what Israel achieved in a one month invasion of Lebanon. No doubt these are terrible crimes that ought to be prevented or at least punished, but is this your definition of "genocide"? I have yet to hear you supporting a peaceful boycott of Israel to pressure it to stop the periodic massacres of Palestinians, let alone allow the refugees and internally displaced Palestinians back, yet you were "profoundly ambivalent" about the use of massive bombing that directly killed 500 civilians for the purpose of stopping a "genocide" that consisted, even according to the hostile media accounts in the West, in a combined death toll, on both sides, of both civilians and combatants, of 1,500-2,000 persons (see footnote 4, chapter 4)? Do you have any standard at all, or do you just invent it all as you go?
The worst violations of human rights happened after the bombing began (for the record, as HRW concludes, the Serb campaign started when the monitors were recalled, in preparation for the bombing). That Chomsky claim is pretty much a hard Fact isn't it? Let's see what HRW has to say about the causal relation.
While the government campaign seems to have been an attempt to crush the KLA, it clearly developed into something more once the NATO bombing began.With a major offensive underway, then-Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic took advantage of the NATO bombing to implement a plan to crush the rebels and their base of support among the population, as well as forcibly to expel a large portion of Kosovo’s Albanian population. No one predicted the speed and scale of the expulsions. Within three weeks of the start of NATO bombing, 525,787 refugees from Kosovo had flooded the neighboring countries, according to the United Nation High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). All told, government forces expelled 862,979 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, and several hundred thousand more were internally displaced, in addition to those displaced prior to March 1999.More than 80 percent of the entire population of Kosovo—90 percent of Kosovar Albanians—were displaced from their homes.
So HRW agrees with Chomsky, not only did the worst human right violations in Kosovo happen after the bombing started, but the NATO offensive was a key causal link in the chain of events that led to them. I'm sure saying that is really depraved. please call HRW to complain.
special note for pre-schoolers. This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a claim that the perpetrators are any less guilty.
OK, but they were planning a genocide, weren't they? Here is HRW, p. 59:
Media reports later claimed that the Austrian government had warned NATO before the bombing that a large-scale Serbian offensive was in preparation. The allegation was repeated two weeks into the bombing by the German government, which said that Operation Horseshoe—a plan to expel Albanians from Kosovo—had been drafted six months prior to the air war.82 A retired brigadier general in the German Army, however, later stated that the claims of a plan were faked from a vague intelligence report in order to deflect growing criticism in Germany of the bombing.
Blimey! It's getting more and more Interesting. But wait, surely, nobody can blame NATO for every far-fetched and unpredictable result of their diligent attempt to protect civilians, can they? Well, first, there is the fact that HRW devotes a whole chapter to violations of international humanitarian law by NATO forces, leading to 500 civilian casualties. You'd think that a military campaign to protect civilians would not be using cluster bombs. But then, that is because you are not a NATO commander. They have a different concept of "humanitarian." Then, there is the issue of predictability. It seems the "pre-school" left is particularly incensed with the fact that Chomsky repeatedly quoted Gen., Wesley Clark. The latter asserted that that the violent Serb action was "entirely predictable." The Italian Prime Minister at the time even predicted 3-4 hundred thousand refugees. Even the New York Times says that
while it was widely expected that NATO bombing would prompt retaliation against the Kosovo Albanians, officials said there had been no predictions that Mr. Milosevic would try to empty the province of them, as he has done. ( http://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/1...ml? pagewanted=8 )
To conclude, officials claim that they were taken by surprise by 10,000 killed, and by the fact that refugees were eventually twice the number expected. How many Albanians did they consider a fair price to pay for taking Milosovic out, when, according to the NYT itself, the Rambouillet deal was rejected by the KLA as well as by Milosevic? There's a lot to chew here, because clearly what was happening in Kosovo should have been unacceptable, just as what is happening in Gaza should be, but unfortunately isn't, unacceptable. Unfortunately, the only matter the pre-school left cares about is sanctimonious condemnations of anyone who doubts the wisdom of entrusting NATO with the job defending human rights.
I notice that in your long and well-researched reply, Gabriel, you do not actually take up my query about what you describe as "what really matters". Why is it that, in your analysis, the great powers, the imperialists as you would put it, did absolutely nothing to intervene to stop the deaths in Bosnia between 1992 to 1995, yet they acted in Kosovo in 1999? It seems to me that this cannot be explained solely by the analysis which you and Chomsky promote, an analysis based solely on the realpolitik of imperialism.
I am gratified to see the way you treat Gaza and Lebanon in this post, as examples of assymetric warfare from a regular army against an armed insurgency, and use the comparison to downgrade Milosovic's violence. I may be wrong, as I don't spend that much time here, but that struck me as pleasantly un-characteristic of the JsF norm, which is to use only the most inflated comparisons (e.g. Judeo-nazis) to talk about Israel's actions. This reminds me that I have at times used hyperbole for polemical purposes, and should not. "Genocide" is too important a word to use lightly, and my knowledge of Kosovo is much less than my knowledge of Cambodia or even Bosnia, so perhaps I should have trod more carefully.
I should also be clear that I don't think that the NATO strategy was the right one. Cluster bombing was wrong, they miscalculated the risks, and they did not fulfull their "resonsibility to protect". Even Marko Hoare condedes those points. As I said before, I was ambivalent at the time and remain so.
My feelings then were informed by the experience of seeing the West stand by doing nothing in the 1992 to 1995 period when ethnic cleansing was occuring in Bosnia. In Bosnia, with some exceptions (exceptions which Chomsky, I should say, treats rather lightly), the slaughter was often carried out in the tens and not in a either a mechanised industrial way, as in the Shoah, nor in a well-planned simultaneous mass killing, as in Rwanda. But it occured nonetheless, and it was deliberate, and it was planned. By 1999, we were seeing the same process unfolding in Kosovo. I am not claiming that there was a carefully drawn up month by month operational plan drafted by the Serbs; I am saying they were part of a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing.
So Racak, which you mention, may have only had 45 people killed, but its population dwindled from August 1998 to January 1999 from 2000 to 400.
Similarly, you talk about a two year period, but the fact that there was a slow build up for two years surely was part of the justification as it began to escalate, and, as your figures show, it was escalating, with the heavier casualities beginning early in 1998 and stepping up through the summer, Autumn and Winter.
This slow escalation was despite and not because of anything NATO did. The West's ineffectiveness in Bosnia, and its prevarication as it watched events unfold in Kosovo in 1998, were part of the calculation Milosovic made, that he could get away with producing the facts on the ground, as it were, of an Albanian-free Kosovo, through killings and by driving the population away. Genocide had not occured when the NATO bombs began falling, but it was underway.
So, to repeat and conclude, the way NATO acted in 1999 was quite possibly wrong. But NATO is not responsible for what the Serbs were doing.
Hey, we can't all join the NATO peacekeeping force, like you did.
If it's not important enough for you to do anything except shoot your mouth off about, it's not important to me, Bob-o.
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