A R C H I V E S
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board
| War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 01/31/03 at 23:46:26 |
| i suggest people look at the truth about U$ war crimes in kosovo and that muslims should not refer to this war as one of liberation but one of U$ sponsored war crimes and aggression In retrospect Noam Chomsky The tumult having subsided, it should be possible to undertake a relatively dispassionate review and analysis of NATO’s war over Kosovo. One might have expected the theme to have dominated the year-end millennarianism, considering the exuberance the war elicited in western intellectual circles and the tidal wave of self-adulation by respected voices, lauding the first war in history fought "in the name of principles and values," the first bold step towards a "new era" in which the "enlightened states" will protect the human rights of all under the guiding hand of an "idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity," now freed from the shackles of archaic concepts of world order.1 But it received scant mention. A rare exception was the Wall Street Journal, which devoted its lead story on December 31 to an in-depth analysis of what had taken place.2 The headline reads: "War in Kosovo was Cruel, Bitter, Savage; Genocide it wasn’t." The conclusion contrasts rather sharply with wartime propaganda. A database search of references to "genocide" in Kosovo for the first week of bombing alone was interrupted when it reached its limit of 1,000 documents.3 As NATO forces entered Kosovo, tremendous efforts were undertaken to discover evidence of war crimes, a "model of speed and efficiency" to ensure that no evidence would be lost or overlooked. The efforts "build on lessons learned from past mistakes." They reflect "a growing international focus on holding war criminals accountable." Furthermore, analysts add, "proving the scale of the crimes is also important to NATO politically, to show why 78 days of airstrikes against Serbian forces and infrastructure were necessary."4 The logic, widely accepted, is intriguing. Uncontroversially, the vast crimes took place after the bombing began: they were not a cause but a consequence. It requires considerable audacity, therefore, to take the crimes to provide retrospective justification for the actions that contributed to inciting them. One "lesson learned," and quickly applied, was the need to avoid a serious inquiry into crimes in East Timor. Here there was no "model of speed and efficiency." Few forensic experts were sent despite the pleas of the UN peacekeeping mission, and those were delayed for four months, well after the rainy season would remove essential evidence. The mission itself was delayed even after the country had been virtually destroyed and most of its population expelled. The distinction is not hard to comprehend. In East Timor, the crimes were attributable directly to state terrorists who were supported by the West right through the final days of their atrocities. Accordingly, issues of deterrence and accountability can hardly be on the agenda. In Kosovo, in contrast, evidence of terrible crimes can be adduced to provide retrospective justification for the NATO war, on the interesting principle that has been established by the doctrinal system. Despite the intensive efforts, the results of "the mass-grave obsession," as the WSJ analysts call it, were disappointingly thin. Instead of "the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect... the pattern is of scattered killings," a form of "ethnic cleansing light." "Most killings and burnings [were] in areas where the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army [KLA-UCK] had been active" or could infiltrate, some human-rights researchers reported, in an attempt "to clear out areas of KLA support, using selective terror, robberies and sporadic killings." These conclusions gain some support from the detailed OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) review released in December, which "suggests a kind of military rationale for the expulsions, which were concentrated in areas controlled by the insurgents and along likely invasion routes."5 The WSJ analysis concludes that "NATO stepped up its claims about Serb ‘killing fields’" when it "saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO’s bombs." NATO spokesman Jamie Shea presented "information" that can be traced to KLA-UCK sources. Many of the most lurid and prominently-published atrocity reports attributed to refugees and other sources were untrue, the WSJ concludes. Meanwhile NATO sought to deny its own atrocities, for example, by releasing a falsified videotape "shown at triple its real speed" to make it appear that "the killing of at least 14 civilians aboard a train on a bridge in Serbia last April" was unavoidable because "the train had been travelling too fast for the trajectory of the missiles to have been changed in time."6 The WSJ analysts nevertheless conclude that the "heinous" crimes, including the huge campaign of expulsion, "may well be enough to justify" the NATO bombing campaign, on the principle of retrospective justification. The OSCE study is the third major source concerning Serb crimes. The first is the State Department’s case against Milosevic and his associates in May; the second, their formal indictment shortly after by the International Tribunal on War Crimes. The two documents are very similar, presumably because the "remarkably fast indictment" by the Tribunal was based on US-UK "intelligence and other information long denied to [the Tribunal] by western governments." Few expect that such information would be released for a War Crimes Tribunal on East Timor, in the unlikely event that there is one. The State Department updated its case in December 1999, with what is intended to be the definitive justification for the bombing, adding whatever information could be obtained from refugees and investigations after the war.7 In the two State Department reports and the Tribunal indictment, the detailed chronologies are restricted almost entirely to the period that followed the bombing campaign initiated on March 24. Thus, the final State Department report of December 1999 refers vaguely to "late March" or "after March," apart from a single reference to refugee reports of an execution on March 23, the day of NATO’s official declaration that the air operations announced on March 22 would begin.8 The one significant exception is the January 15 Racak massacre of 45 people. But that cannot have been the motive for the bombing, for two sufficient reasons: first, the OSCE monitors and other international observers (including NATO) report this to be an isolated event, with nothing similar in the following months up to the bombing; we return to that record directly. And second, such atrocities are of little concern to the US and its allies. Evidence for the latter conclusion is overwhelming, and it was confirmed once again shortly after the Racak massacre, when Indonesian forces and their paramilitary subordinates brutally murdered 50 or more people who had taken refuge from Indonesian terror in a church in the remote Timorese village of Liquica. Unlike Racak, this was only one of many massacres in East Timor at the time, with a toll well beyond anything attributed to Milosevic in Kosovo: 3,000-5,000 killed from January 1999, credible church sources reported on August 6, about twice the number killed on all sides in Kosovo in the year prior to the bombing, according to NATO. Historian John Taylor estimates the toll at 5,000-6,000 from January to the August 30 referendum.9 The US and its allies reacted to the East Timor massacres in the familiar way: by continuing to provide military and other aid to the killers and maintaining other military arrangements, including joint training exercises as late as August, while insisting that security in East Timor "is the responsibility of the Government of Indonesia, and we don’t want to take that responsibility away from them."10 In summary, the State Department and the Tribunal make no serious effort to justify the bombing campaign or the withdrawal of OSCE monitors on March 20 in preparation for it. The OSCE inquiry conforms closely to the indictments produced by the State Department and the Tribunal. It records "the pattern of the expulsions and the vast increase in lootings, killings, rape, kidnappings and pillage once the NATO air war began on March 24."11 "The most visible change in the events was after NATO launched its first airstrikes" on March 24, the OSCE reports. "On one hand, the situation seemed to have slipped out of the control of any authorities, as lawlessness reigned in the form of killings and the looting of houses. On the other, the massive expulsion of thousands of residents from the city, which mostly took place in the last week of March and in early April, followed a certain pattern and was conceivably organised well in advance."12 The word "conceivably" is surely an understatement. Even without documentary evidence, one can scarcely doubt that Serbia had contingency plans for expulsion of the population, and would be likely to put them into effect under NATO bombardment, with the prospect of direct invasion. It is commonly argued that the bombing is justified by the contingency plans that were implemented in response to the bombing. Again, the logic is interesting. Adopting the same principle, terrorist attacks on US targets would be justified if they elicited a nuclear attack, in accord with contingency plans — which exist — for first strike, even pre-emptive strike against non-nuclear states that have signed the non-proliferation treaty. And an Iranian missile attack on Israel with a credible invasion threat would be justified if Israel responded by implementing its detailed contingency plans —which presumably exist — for expelling the Palestinian population. The OSCE inquiry reports further that "Once the OSCE-KVM [monitors] left on March 20, 1999 and in particular after the start of the NATO bombing of the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) on March 24, Serbian police and/or VJ [army], often accompanied by paramilitaries, went from village to village and, in the towns, from area to area threatening and expelling the Kosovo Albanian population."13 The departure of the monitors also precipitated an increase in KLA-UCK ambushes of Serbian police officers, "provoking a strong reaction" by police, an escalation from "the pre-war atmosphere, when Serbian forces were facing off against the rebels, who were kidnapping Serbian civilians and ambushing police officers and soldiers."14 For an understanding of NATO’s resort to war, the most important period is the months leading up to the decision. And of course, what NATO knew about that period is a matter of critical significance for any serious attempt to evaluate the decision to bomb Yugoslavia without Security Council authorisation. Fortunately, that is the period for which we have the most detailed direct evidence: namely, from the reports of the KVM monitors and other international observers. Unfortunately, the OSCE inquiry passes over these months quickly, presenting little evidence and concentrating rather on the period after monitors were withdrawn. A selection of KVM reports is, however, available, along with others by NATO and independent international observers.15 These merit close scrutiny. The relevant period begins in December with the breakdown of the cease-fire that had permitted the return of many people displaced by the fighting.16 Throughout these months, the monitors report that "humanitarian agencies in general have unhindered access to all areas of Kosovo," with occasional harassment from Serb security forces and KLA paramilitaries, so the information may be presumed to be fairly comprehensive. The "most serious incidents" reported by the ICRC in December are clashes along the FRY-Albanian border, and "what appear to be the first deliberate attacks on public places in urban areas." The UN Inter-Agency Update (December 24) identifies these as an attempt by armed Albanians to cross into Kosovo from Albania, leaving at least 36 armed men dead, and the killing of six Serbian teenagers by masked men spraying gunfire in a cafe in the largely Serbian city of Pec. The next incident is the abduction and murder of the deputy mayor of Kosovo Police, attributed by NATO to the KLA-UCK (327). Then follows a report of "abductions attributed to the KLA." The UN Secretary-General’s report (December 24) reviews the same evidence, citing the figure of 282 civilians and police abducted by the KLA as of December 7 (FRY figures). The general picture is that after the October cease-fire, "Kosovo Albanian paramilitary units have taken advantage of the lull in the fighting to re-establish their control over many villages in Kosovo, as well as over some areas near urban centres and highways... leading to statements [by Serbian authorities] that if the [KVM] cannot control these units the Government would." The UN Inter-Agency Update on January 11 is similar. It reports fighting between Serb security forces and the KLA. In addition, in "the most serious incident since the declaration of the ceasefire in October 1998, the period under review has witnessed an increase in the number of murders (allegedly perpetrated by the KLA), which have prompted vigorous retaliatory action by government security forces." "Random violence" killed 21 people in the preceding 11 days. Only one example is cited: a bomb outside "a cafe in Pristina, injuring three Serbian youths and triggering retaliatory attacks by Serbian civilians on Albanians," the first such incident in the capital. The other major incidents cited are the KLA capture of eight soldiers, the killing of a Serbian civilian, and the reported killing of three Serbian police. NATO’s review of the period is similar, with further details: VJ shelling of civilian and UCK facilities with "at least 15 Kosovo Albanians" killed, UCK killing of a Serb judge, police and civilians, etc. Then comes the Racak massacre of January 15, after which the reports return pretty much to what preceded. The OSCE monthly report of February 20 describes the situation as "volatile." Serb-KLA "direct military engagement... dropped significantly," but KLA attacks on police and "sporadic exchange of gunfire" continued, "including at times the use of heavy weapons by the VJ." The "main feature of the last part of the reporting period has been an alarming increase in urban terrorism with a series of indiscriminate bombing or raking gunfire attacks against civilians in public places in towns throughout Kosovo"; these are "non-attributable," either "criminally or politically motivated." Then follows a review of police-KLA confrontations, KLA abduction of "five elderly Serb civilians," and refusal of KLA and VJ to comply with Security Council resolutions. Five civilians were killed as "urban violence increased significantly," including three killed by a bomb outside an Albanian grocery store. "More reports were received of the KLA ‘policing’ the Albanian community and administering punishments to those charged as collaborators with the Serbs," also murder and abduction of alleged Albanian collaborators and Serb police. The "cycle of confrontation can be generally described" as KLA attacks on Serb police and civilians, "a disproportionate response by the FRY authorities," and "renewed KLA activity elsewhere." In his monthly report of March 17, the UN Secretary-General reports that clashes between Serb security forces and the KLA "continued at a relatively lower level," but civilians "are increasingly becoming the main target of violent acts," including killings, executions, mistreatment and abductions. The UNHCR "registered more than 65 violent deaths" of Albanian and Serb civilians (and several Roma) from January 20 to March 17. These are reported to be isolated killings by gunmen and grenade attacks on cafes and shops. Victims included alleged Albanian collaborators and "civilians known for open-mindedness and flexibility in community relations." Abductions continued, the victims almost all Serbs, mostly civilians. The OSCE report of March 20 gave a similar picture, reporting "unprovoked attacks by the KLA against the police" and an increase in casualties among Serb security forces, along with "Military operations affecting the civilian population," "Indiscriminate urban terrorist attacks targeting civilians," "non-attributable murders," mostly Albanians, and abduction of Albanian civilians, allegedly by a "centrally-controlled" KLA "security force." Specific incidents are then reported. The last NATO report (January 16 - March 22) cites several dozen incidents, about half initiated by KLA-UCK, half by Serb security forces, in addition to half a dozen responses by Serb security forces and engagements with the KLA, including "Aggressive Serb attacks on villages suspected of harbouring UCK forces or command centres." Casualties reported are mostly military, at the levels of the preceding months. As a standard of comparison, one might consider the regular murderous and destructive US-backed Israeli military operations in Lebanon when Israeli forces occupying southern Lebanon in violation of Security Council orders, or their local mercenaries, are attacked by the Lebanese resistance. Through the 1990s, as before, these have far exceeded anything attributed to the FRY security forces within what NATO insists is their territory. Within Kosovo, no significant changes are reported from the breakdown of the cease-fire in December until the March 22 decision to bomb. Even apart from the (apparently isolated) Racak massacre, there can be no doubt that the FRY authorities and security forces were responsible for serious crimes. But the reported record also lends no credibility to the claim that these were the reason for the bombing; in the case of comparable or much worse atrocities during the same period, the US and its allies either did not react, or — more significantly — maintained and even increased their support for the atrocities. Examples are all too easy to enumerate, East Timor in the same months, to mention only the most obvious one. The vast expulsions from Kosovo began immediately after the March 24 bombing campaign. On March 27, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reported that 4,000 had fled Kosovo, and on April 1, the flow was high enough for UNHCR to begin to provide daily figures. Its Humanitarian Evacuation Programme began on April 5. From the last week of March to the end of the war in June, "forces of the FRY and Serbia forcibly expelled some 863,000 Kosovo Albanians from Kosovo," the OSCE reports, and hundreds of thousands of others were internally displaced, while unknown numbers of Serbs, Gypsies and others fled as well.17 The US and UK had been planning the bombing campaign for many months, and could hardly have failed to anticipate these consequences. In early March, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema warned Clinton of the huge refugee flow that would follow the bombing; Clinton’s National Security Adviser Sandy Berger responded that in that case "NATO will keep bombing," with still more horrific results. US intelligence also warned that there would be "a virtual explosion of refugees" and a campaign of ethnic cleansing, reiterating earlier predictions of European monitors.18 As the bombing campaign began, US-NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark informed the press that it was "entirely predictable" that Serb terror would intensify as a result. Shortly after, Clark explained again that "The military authorities fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt, as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out." Elaborating a few weeks later, he observed that the NATO operation planned by "the political leadership... was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP [internal police] forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea." General Clark stated further that plans for Operation Horseshoe "have never been shared with me," referring to the alleged Serb plan to expel the population that was publicised by NATO after the shocking Serb reaction to the bombing had become evident.19 The agency that bears primary responsibility for care of refugees is UNHCR. "At the war’s end, British Prime Minister Tony Blair privately took the agency to task for what he considered its problematic performance."20 Evidently, the performance of UNHCR would have been less problematic had the agency not been defunded by the great powers. For this reason, UNHCR had to cut staff by over 15 per cent in 1998. In October, while the bombing plans were being formulated, UNHCR announced that it would have to eliminate a fifth of its remaining staff by January 1999 because of the budgetary crisis created by the "enlightened states."21 Noam Chomsky is Professor of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA. A political analyst, he is believed to be the most quoted author alive |
| 01/31/03 at 23:57:15 |
| yunus |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 01/31/03 at 23:57:52 |
| more by chomsky before the war Spring 1999 "Kosovo: The truth according to Noam Chomsky" The Ecologist Vol. 29, No. 4, July 1999 First appeared in The Activist, June 1999 Interviewed by Patrick Cain QUESTION: Let's define some of the language we are hearing around this war. Can you comment on the use of the terms 'humanitarian crisis', 'genocide', and 'ethnic cleansing' as they are being applied to Kosovo? CHOMSKY: Well, for starters, the concept called 'humanitarian crisis' has a technical meaning, which does not have much to do with what might reasonably be assumed to be the defining criteria of the term. The technical meaning of humanitarian crisis is a problem somewhere that threatens the interests of rich and powerful people. That is the essence of what makes it a crisis. Now, any disturbance in the Balkans does threaten the interests of rich and powerful people, namely, the elites of Europe and the US. So when there are humanitarian issues in the Balkans, they become a 'humanitarian crisis'. On the other hand, if people slaughter each other in Sierra Leone or the Congo, it's not a humanitarian crisis. As a matter of fact, Clinton just refused to provide the relatively puny sum of $100,000 for a peace-making force in the Republic of the Congo, which might well have averted a huge massacre. But those deaths do not constitute a humanitarian crisis. Neither do the many other deaths and tragedies to which the US directly contributes: the massacres in Colombia, for example, or the slaughters and expulsions of people in south-eastern Turkey, which are being carried out with crucial support from Clinton. Those aren't humanitarian crises. But Kosovo is a crisis because it is in the Balkans. Now, the term 'genocide', as applied to Kosovo, is an insult to the victims of Hitler. In fact, it's revisionist to an extreme. If this is genocide, then there is genocide going on all over the world. And Bill Clinton is decisively implementing a lot of it. If this is genocide, then what do you call what is happening in the south-east of Turkey? The number of refugees there is huge; it's already reached about half the level of Palestinians expelled from Palestine. If it increases further, it may reach the number of refugees in Colombia, where the number of people killed every year by the army and paramilitary groups armed and trained by the United States is approximately the same as the number of people killed in Kosovo last year. 'Ethnic cleansing', on the other hand, is real. Unfortunately, it's something that goes on and has been going on for a long time. It's no big innovation. How come I'm living where I am instead of the original people who lived here? Did they happily walk away? QUESTION: So human rights abuses in Kosovo are termed a 'humanitarian crisis ' by the world's most powerful state. But how did we get from that to all-out war? CHOMSKY: Well, let's look at the situation from the US point of view: There's a crisis, what do we do about it? One possibility is to work through the United Nations, which is the agency responsible under treaty obligations and international law for dealing with such matters. But the US made it clear a long time ago that it has total contempt for the institutions of world order, the UN, the World Court, and so on. In fact the US has been very explicit about that. This was not always the case. In the early days of the UN, the majority of countries backed the US because of its overwhelming political power. But that began to change when decolonisation was extended and the organisation and distribution of world power shifted. Now the US can no longer count on the majority of countries to go along with its demands. The UN is no longer a pliant, and therefore no longer a relevant, institution. This proposition became very explicit during the Reagan years and even more brazen during the Clinton years. So brazen that even right-wing analysts are worried about it. There is an interesting article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, an establishment journal in the US, warning Washington that much of the world regards the US as a "rogue super-power" and the single greatest threat to their existence. In fact, the US has placed itself totally above the rule of international law and international institutions. NATO at least has the advantage of being pretty much under US domination. Within NATO there are differences of opinion, so when there was a question last September of sending unarmed NATO monitors into Kosovo, every NATO country (with the possible exception of Britain) wanted the operation authorised by the UN Security Council as is required by treaty obligation. But the US flatly refused. It would not allow the use of the word "authorise". It insisted that the UN has no right to authorise any US action. When the issue moved on to negotiations and the use of force, the US and Britain, typically the two warrior states, were eager to use force and abandon negotiations. In fact, continental European diplomats were telling the press that they were annoyed by the sabre-rattling mentality of Washington. So NATO as a whole was driven to the use of force, in part, reluctantly. In fact, the reluctance increases as you get closer to the region. So England and the US are quite enthusiastic, others quite reluctant, and some in-between. QUESTION: Why was the US so eager to use force? CHOMSKY: The reason is obvious. When involved in a confrontation, you use your strong card and try to shift the confrontation to the area in which you are most powerful. And the strong card of the United States is the use of force. That's perhaps the only realm of international relations where the US has a near monopoly. The consequences of using force in Yugoslavia were more or less anticipated. The NATO Commanding General Wesley Clark stated that it was entirely predictable that the bombing would sharply increase the level of atrocities and expulsion. As indeed it did. The NATO leadership could not have failed to know that the bombing would destroy the quite courageous and promising democracy movement in Serbia as indeed it did; and cause all sorts of turmoil in surrounding countries as indeed it has, though still not at the same level of crisis as Turkey or other places. Nevertheless, it was necessary, as the Clinton foreign policy team kept stressing, to preserve the credibility of NATO. Now, when they talk about credibility, they are not talking about the credibility of Denmark or France. The Clinton Administration doesn't care about those countries' credibility. What they care about is the credibility of the United States. Credibility means fear: what they are concerned with is maintaining fear of the global enforcer, namely, the US. And that's much more important than the fate of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars, or whatever other consequences are incurred. So the US and NATO have helped to create a humanitarian catastrophe by knowingly escalating an already serious crisis to catastrophic proportions. QUESTION: Some people say that unless American soldiers start being shipped home in body bags, there will not be a serious anti-war effort in the US. What is your assessment of that? CHOMSKY: I don't agree with that at all. I mean, look at the history. During the 1980s there was overwhelming opposition to US atrocities in Central America. As a matter of fact, opposition was so strong that the Reagan Administration had to back off and resort to using international terrorist networks like the Contras to carry out its policies. And there were no Americans in body bags then. Today there's strong opposition to US support for Indonesian slaughter in East Timor, and there are no American body bags. If you look at the opposition to the Vietnam War, Americans were of course being killed, but that was by no means the decisive factor. I think that the notion that only dead American soldiers will inspire a peace movement -- in other words, that people are motivated only by self-interest -- is US propaganda. It's intolerable for the propaganda system to concede that people might act on moral instinct, which is in fact what they do. QUESTION: How do you reconcile that view with the fact that, according to polls at least, the majority of Americans would support an escalation of the war, for example, through the deployment of NATO ground troops? CHOMSKY: You have to keep in mind what these people are hearing. The public is getting its marching orders from Washington. And these orders are to disregard all other atrocities, even ones much worse than Kosovo, especially in places where the US is involved. Focus your attention only on this disaster and pretend to yourself that the crisis is all about one evil man who is carrying out genocide. This is what we are being told by our media day and night. It's effective. Most people accept the marching orders. Then they say we've got to do something, like send ground troops. The Pentagon and the European forces are strongly against it, mainly for technical reasons. I mean, it would be a catastrophe. Sounds easy to send ground troops, but think about it. First of all, it would not be easy to get them in, and would most probably take months to get them ready. It would mean facing a major guerrilla war that would probably level the whole region. That's what happens when you send in ground troops and cause greater catastrophes. It would simply escalate the atrocities. QUESTION: What steps do you think people who oppose this war should take now? CHOMSKY: There is no question that people of conscience must take action against this. What can we do to end this war? Same thing as always, there's no magical trick. It requires education, explanation, organising, demonstrating, exerting pressure... all things that we know. And this is very hard to do; it's not like flipping on a light switch. It takes work. |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| Dude |
| 02/03/03 at 12:32:50 |
| I didn't bother reading your book there, but I know your angle. I suppose in your view, NATO should have just allowed the ethnic cleansing to continue. what would you suggest have been done about the crisis in Kosovo? [Edited by Admin.] |
| 02/03/03 at 13:53:38 |
| jannah |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| Dude |
| 02/03/03 at 14:01:01 |
| The above post was edited by admin, because I did blatantly insult you, but one question they deleted that I didn't think should have been was this (I've reworded it so as to not insult you): Give me your opinions, and your thoughts, instead of spewing some of Chomsky's writings. Try thinking outside the box. Do you honesty think war could have been avoided? How, exactly? How is ethnic cleansing to that magnitude ever justified? |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| sofia |
| 02/03/03 at 14:29:09 |
| Dude, Why comment when you haven't read the post on this thread? Read first. No harm in gathering knowledge. Just a suggestion. Peace, Sofia |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| Dude |
| 02/03/03 at 14:36:49 |
| Sofia, This is basically a continuation on a "lively" discussion we started in another thread, that's why. Besides, I've read enough elsewhere to form my own opinions, and I don't particularily respect or like Chomsky. Otherwise, absolutely- no harm, ever, in gathering more. :-X Keep your stick on the ice. ;) |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 02/03/03 at 15:12:37 |
| why dont you read the post and youll find out that the case of serbian ethnic cleansing has not been very well substantiated Why dont you like chomsky he is probably the greatest intellectual critic alive today i would certainly say that he is a thinker that thinks outside the box why do you have to attack me cause you dont agree with me maybe you should try thinking outside of your box |
| 02/03/03 at 15:14:59 |
| yunus |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 02/03/03 at 18:00:23 |
| More about Nato intervention in Kosovo The Current Bombings: Behind the Rhetoric By Noam Chomsky There have been many inquiries concerning NATO (meaning primarily US) bombing in connection with Kosovo. A great deal has been written about the topic, including Znet commentaries. I'd like to make a few general observations, keeping to facts that are not seriously contested. There are two fundamental issues: (1) What are the accepted and applicable "rules of world order"? (2) How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo? (1) What are the accepted and applicable "rules of world order"? There is a regime of international law and international order, binding on all states, based on the UN Charter and subsequent resolutions and World Court decisions. In brief, the threat or use of force is banned unless explicitly authorized by the Security Council after it has determined that peaceful means have failed, or in self-defense against "armed attack" (a narrow concept) until the Security Council acts. There is, of course, more to say. Thus there is at least a tension, if not an outright contradiction, between the rules of world order laid down in the UN Charter and the rights articulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UD), a second pillar of the world order established under US initiative after World War II. The Charter bans force violating state sovereignty; the UD guarantees the rights of individuals against oppressive states. The issue of "humanitarian intervention" arises from this tension. It is the right of "humanitarian intervention" that is claimed by the US/NATO in Kosovo, and that is generally supported by editorial opinion and news reports (in the latter case, reflexively, even by the very choice of terminology). The question is addressed in a news report in the NY Times (March 27), headlined "Legal Scholars Support Case for Using Force" in Kosovo (March 27). One example is offered: Allen Gerson, former counsel to the US mission to the UN. Two other legal scholars are cited. One, Ted Galen Carpenter, "scoffed at the Administration argument" and dismissed the alleged right of intervention. The third is Jack Goldsmith, a specialist on international law at Chicago Law school. He says that critics of the NATO bombing "have a pretty good legal argument," but "many people think [an exception for humanitarian intervention] does exist as a matter of custom and practice." That summarizes the evidence offered to justify the favored conclusion stated in the headline. Goldsmith's observation is reasonable, at least if we agree that facts are relevant to the determination of "custom and practice." We may also bear in mind a truism: the right of humanitarian intervention, if it exists, is premised on the "good faith" of those intervening, and that assumption is based not on their rhetoric but on their record, in particular their record of adherence to the principles of international law, World Court decisions, and so on. That is indeed a truism, at least with regard to others. Consider, for example, Iranian offers to intervene in Bosnia to prevent massacres at a time when the West would not do so. These were dismissed with ridicule (in fact, ignored); if there was a reason beyond subordination to power, it was because Iranian "good faith" could not be assumed. A rational person then asks obvious questions: is the Iranian record of intervention and terror worse than that of the US? And other questions, for example: How should we assess the "good faith" of the only country to have vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on all states to obey international law? What about its historical record? Unless such questions are prominent on the agenda of discourse, an honest person will dismiss it as mere allegiance to doctrine. A useful exercise is to determine how much of the literature -- media or other -- survives such elementary conditions as these. (2) How do these or other considerations apply in the case of Kosovo? There has been a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in the past year, overwhelmingly attributable to Yugoslav military forces. The main victims have been ethnic Albanian Kosovars, some 90% of the population of this Yugoslav territory. The standard estimate is 2000 deaths and hundreds of thousands of refugees. In such cases, outsiders have three choices: (I) try to escalate the catastrophe (II) do nothing (III) try to mitigate the catastrophe The choices are illustrated by other contemporary cases. Let's keep to a few of approximately the same scale, and ask where Kosovo fits into the pattern. (A) Colombia. In Colombia, according to State Department estimates, the annual level of political killing by the government and its paramilitary associates is about at the level of Kosovo, and refugee flight primarily from their atrocities is well over a million. Colombia has been the leading Western hemisphere recipient of US arms and training as violence increased through the '90s, and that assistance is now increasing, under a "drug war" pretext dismissed by almost all serious observers. The Clinton administration was particularly enthusiastic in its praise for President Gaviria, whose tenure in office was responsible for "appalling levels of violence," according to human rights organizations, even surpassing his predecessors. Details are readily available. In this case, the US reaction is (I): escalate the atrocities. (B) Turkey. By very conservative estimate, Turkish repression of Kurds in the '90s falls in the category of Kosovo. It peaked in the early '90s; one index is the flight of over a million Kurds from the countryside to the unofficial Kurdish capital Diyarbakir from 1990 to 1994, as the Turkish army was devastating the countryside. 1994 marked two records: it was "the year of the worst repression in the Kurdish provinces" of Turkey, Jonathan Randal reported from the scene, and the year when Turkey became "the biggest single importer of American military hardware and thus the world's largest arms purchaser." When human rights groups exposed Turkey's use of US jets to bomb villages, the Clinton Administration found ways to evade laws requiring suspension of arms deliveries, much as it was doing in Indonesia and elsewhere. Colombia and Turkey explain their (US-supported) atrocities on grounds that they are defending their countries from the threat of terrorist guerrillas. As does the government of Yugoslavia. Again, the example illustrates (I): try to escalate the atrocities. (C) Laos. Every year thousands of people, mostly children and poor farmers, are killed in the Plain of Jars in Northern Laos, the scene of the heaviest bombing of civilian targets in history it appears, and arguably the most cruel: Washington's furious assault on a poor peasant society had little to do with its wars in the region. The worst period was from 1968, when Washington was compelled to undertake negotiations (under popular and business pressure), ending the regular bombardment of North Vietnam. Kissinger-Nixon then decided to shift the planes to bombardment of Laos and Cambodia. The deaths are from "bombies," tiny anti-personnel weapons, far worse than land-mines: they are designed specifically to kill and maim, and have no effect on trucks, buildings, etc. The Plain was saturated with hundreds of millions of these criminal devices, which have a failure-to-explode rate of 20%-30% according to the manufacturer, Honeywell. The numbers suggest either remarkably poor quality control or a rational policy of murdering civilians by delayed action. These were only a fraction of the technology deployed, including advanced missiles to penetrate caves where families sought shelter. Current annual casualties from "bombies" are estimated from hundreds a year to "an annual nationwide casualty rate of 20,000," more than half of them deaths, according to the veteran Asia reporter Barry Wain of the Wall Street Journal -- in its Asia edition. A conservative estimate, then, is that the crisis this year is approximately comparable to Kosovo, though deaths are far more highly concentrated among children -- over half, according to analyses reported by the Mennonite Central Committee, which has been working there since 1977 to alleviate the continuing atrocities. There have been efforts to publicize and deal with the humanitarian catastrophe. A British-based Mine Advisory Group (MAG) is trying to remove the lethal objects, but the US is "conspicuously missing from the handful of Western organisations that have followed MAG," the British press reports, though it has finally agreed to train some Laotian civilians. The British press also reports, with some anger, the allegation of MAG specialists that the US refuses to provide them with "render harmless procedures" that would make their work "a lot quicker and a lot safer." These remain a state secret, as does the whole affair in the United States. The Bangkok press reports a very similar situation in Cambodia, particularly the Eastern region where US bombardment from early 1969 was most intense. In this case, the US reaction is (II): do nothing. And the reaction of the media and commentators is to keep silent, following the norms under which the war against Laos was designated a "secret war" -- meaning well-known, but suppressed, as also in the case of Cambodia from March 1969. The level of self-censorship was extraordinary then, as is the current phase. The relevance of this shocking example should be obvious without further comment. I will skip other examples of (I) and (II), which abound, and also much more serious contemporary atrocities, such as the huge slaughter of Iraqi civilians by means of a particularly vicious form of biological warfare -- "a very hard choice," Madeleine Albright commented on national TV in 1996 when asked for her reaction to the killing of half a million Iraqi children in 5 years, but "we think the price is worth it." Current estimates remain about 5000 children killed a month, and the price is still "worth it." These and other examples might also be kept in mind when we read awed rhetoric about how the "moral compass" of the Clinton Administration is at last functioning properly, as the Kosovo example illustrates. Just what does the example illustrate? The threat of NATO bombing, predictably, led to a sharp escalation of atrocities by the Serbian Army and paramilitaries, and to the departure of international observers, which of course had the same effect. Commanding General Wesley Clark declared that it was "entirely predictable" that Serbian terror and violence would intensify after the NATO bombing, exactly as happened. The terror for the first time reached the capital city of Pristina, and there are credible reports of large-scale destruction of villages, assassinations, generation of an enormous refugee flow, perhaps an effort to expel a good part of the Albanian population -- all an "entirely predictable" consequence of the threat and then the use of force, as General Clark rightly observes. Kosovo is therefore another illustration of (I): try to escalate the violence, with exactly that expectation. To find examples illustrating (III) is all too easy, at least if we keep to official rhetoric. The major recent academic study of "humanitarian intervention," by Sean Murphy, reviews the record after the Kellogg-Briand pact of 1928 which outlawed war, and then since the UN Charter, which strengthened and articulated these provisions. In the first phase, he writes, the most prominent examples of "humanitarian intervention" were Japan's attack on Manchuria, Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler's occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia. All were accompanied by highly uplifting humanitarian rhetoric, and factual justifications as well. Japan was going to establish an "earthly paradise" as it defended Manchurians from "Chinese bandits," with the support of a leading Chinese nationalist, a far more credible figure than anyone the US was able to conjure up during its attack on South Vietnam. Mussolini was liberating thousands of slaves as he carried forth the Western "civilizing mission." Hitler announced Germany's intention to end ethnic tensions and violence, and "safeguard the national individuality of the German and Czech peoples," in an operation "filled with earnest desire to serve the true interests of the peoples dwelling in the area," in accordance with their will; the Slovakian President asked Hitler to declare Slovakia a protectorate. Another useful intellectual exercise is to compare those obscene justifications with those offered for interventions, including "humanitarian interventions," in the post-UN Charter period. In that period, perhaps the most compelling example of (III) is the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in December 1978, terminating Pol Pot's atrocities, which were then peaking. Vietnam pleaded the right of self-defense against armed attack, one of the few post-Charter examples when the plea is plausible: the Khmer Rouge regime (Democratic Kampuchea, DK) was carrying out murderous attacks against Vietnam in border areas. The US reaction is instructive. The press condemned the "Prussians" of Asia for their outrageous violation of international law. They were harshly punished for the crime of having terminated Pol Pot's slaughters, first by a (US-backed) Chinese invasion, then by US imposition of extremely harsh sanctions. The US recognized the expelled DK as the official government of Cambodia, because of its "continuity" with the Pol Pot regime, the State Department explained. Not too subtly, the US supported the Khmer Rouge in its continuing attacks in Cambodia. The example tells us more about the "custom and practice" that underlies "the emerging legal norms of humanitarian intervention." Despite the desperate efforts of ideologues to prove that circles are square, there is no serious doubt that the NATO bombings further undermine what remains of the fragile structure of international law. The US made that entirely clear in the discussions leading to the NATO decision. Apart from the UK (by now, about as much of an independent actor as the Ukraine was in the pre-Gorbachev years), NATO countries were skeptical of US policy, and were particularly annoyed by Secretary of State Albright's "saber-rattling" (Kevin Cullen, Boston Globe, Feb. 22). Today, the more closely one approaches the conflicted region, the greater the opposition to Washington's insistence on force, even within NATO (Greece and Italy). France had called for a UN Security Council resolution to authorize deployment of NATO peacekeepers. The US flatly refused, insisting on "its stand that NATO should be able to act independently of the United Nations," State Department officials explained. The US refused to permit the "neuralgic word `authorize'" to appear in the final NATO statement, unwilling to concede any authority to the UN Charter and international law; only the word "endorse" was permitted (Jane Perlez, NYT, Feb. 11). Similarly the bombing of Iraq was a brazen expression of contempt for the UN, even the specific timing, and was so understood. And of course the same is true of the destruction of half the pharmaceutical production of a small African country a few months earlier, an event that also does not indicate that the "moral compass" is straying from righteousness -- not to speak of a record that would be prominently reviewed right now if facts were considered relevant to determining "custom and practice." It could be argued, rather plausibly, that further demolition of the rules of world order is irrelevant, just as it had lost its meaning by the late 1930s. The contempt of the world's leading power for the framework of world order has become so extreme that there is nothing left to discuss. A review of the internal documentary record demonstrates that the stance traces back to the earliest days, even to the first memorandum of the newly-formed National Security Council in 1947. During the Kennedy years, the stance began to gain overt expression. The main innovation of the Reagan-Clinton years is that defiance of international law and the Charter has become entirely open. It has also been backed with interesting explanations, which would be on the front pages, and prominent in the school and university curriculum, if truth and honesty were considered significant values. The highest authorities explained with brutal clarity that the World Court, the UN, and other agencies had become irrelevant because they no longer follow US orders, as they did in the early postwar years. One might then adopt the official position. That would be an honest stand, at least if it were accompanied by refusal to play the cynical game of self-righteous posturing and wielding of the despised principles of international law as a highly selective weapon against shifting enemies. While the Reaganites broke new ground, under Clinton the defiance of world order has become so extreme as to be of concern even to hawkish policy analysts. In the current issue of the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, Samuel Huntington warns that Washington is treading a dangerous course. In the eyes of much of the world -- probably most of the world, he suggests -- the US is "becoming the rogue superpower," considered "the single greatest external threat to their societies." Realist "international relations theory," he argues, predicts that coalitions may arise to counterbalance the rogue superpower. On pragmatic grounds, then, the stance should be reconsidered. Americans who prefer a different image of their society might call for a reconsideration on other than pragmatic grounds. Where does that leave the question of what to do in Kosovo? It leaves it unanswered. The US has chosen a course of action which, as it explicitly recognizes, escalates atrocities and violence -- "predictably"; a course of action that also strikes yet another blow against the regime of international order, which does offer the weak at least some limited protection from predatory states. As for the longer term, consequences are unpredictable. One plausible observation is that "every bomb that falls on Serbia and every ethnic killing in Kosovo suggests that it will scarcely be possible for Serbs and Albanians to live beside each other in some sort of peace" (Financial Times, March 27). Some of the longer-term possible outcomes are extremely ugly, as has not gone without notice. A standard argument is that we had to do something: we could not simply stand by as atrocities continue. That is never true. One choice, always, is to follow the Hippocratic principle: "First, do no harm." If you can think of no way to adhere to that elementary principle, then do nothing. There are always ways that can be considered. Diplomacy and negotiations are never at an end. The right of "humanitarian intervention" is likely to be more frequently invoked in coming years -- maybe with justification, maybe not -- now that Cold War pretexts have lost their efficacy. In such an era, it may be worthwhile to pay attention to the views of highly respected commentators -- not to speak of the World Court, which explicitly ruled on this matter in a decision rejected by the United States, its essentials not even reported. In the scholarly disciplines of international affairs and international law it would be hard to find more respected voices than Hedley Bull or Louis Henkin. Bull warned 15 years ago that "Particular states or groups of states that set themselves up as the authoritative judges of the world common good, in disregard of the views of others, are in fact a menace to international order, and thus to effective action in this field." Henkin, in a standard work on world order, writes that the "pressures eroding the prohibition on the use of force are deplorable, and the arguments to legitimize the use of force in those circumstances are unpersuasive and dangerous... Violations of human rights are indeed all too common, and if it were permissible to remedy them by external use of force, there would be no law to forbid the use of force by almost any state against almost any other. Human rights, I believe, will have to be vindicated, and other injustices remedied, by other, peaceful means, not by opening the door to aggression and destroying the principle advance in international law, the outlawing of war and the prohibition of force." Recognized principles of international law and world order, solemn treaty obligations, decisions by the World Court, considered pronouncements by the most respected commentators -- these do not automatically solve particular problems. Each issue has to be considered on its merits. For those who do not adopt the standards of Saddam Hussein, there is a heavy burden of proof to meet in undertaking the threat or use of force in violation of the principles of international order. Perhaps the burden can be met, but that has to be shown, not merely proclaimed with passionate rhetoric. The consequences of such violations have to be assessed carefully -- in particular, what we understand to be "predictable." And for those who are minimally serious, the reasons for the actions also have to be assessed -- again, not simply by adulation of our leaders and their "moral compass." |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| Dude |
| 02/03/03 at 18:09:49 |
| How about in your own words, Yunus? You fail to step up to the plate and answer the question. [Edited by Admin] |
| 02/04/03 at 02:58:35 |
| jannah |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 02/03/03 at 18:19:16 |
| what is your question? if you read the article your questions about the ethnic cleasing will be answered do u want me to abridge what chomsky says and put it inot my own words |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| Dude |
| 02/03/03 at 18:29:26 |
| [quote]Do you honesty think war could have been avoided? How, exactly? How is ethnic cleansing to that magnitude ever justified? [/quote] Answer, in your words please. |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| BroHanif |
| 02/03/03 at 18:34:17 |
| I think this is turning into a local spitting match. Lets not get too personal. Hanif |
| NS |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| Dude |
| 02/03/03 at 18:59:09 |
| Let’s not forget, this is just lively discussion. Nothing more, nothing less. Yunus has implied some things I strongly disagree with, and I’m asking him to justify his position. I don’t want any more posting of books written by Chomsky, Starsky, Jovanosky, or any other “sky”…I just want him to explain in his own words how he thinks war could have been avoided, and how, exactly is ethnic cleansing to that magnitude ever justified. That’s all. Over and out. |
| 02/03/03 at 19:03:07 |
| Dude |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 02/03/03 at 19:06:26 |
| ill answer your question but at what "magnitude " were terrorist acts carried out in kosovo and by who the serbs or the kla? Further terrorist acts against civilians is justified by the US in many instances just look at colombia nicaragua el salvado turkey etc etc why dont you want any more postings by chomsky ? [Edited by Admin] |
| 02/04/03 at 03:06:40 |
| jannah |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| yunus |
| 02/04/03 at 00:14:18 |
| its called negotiations the US should try it sometime instead of domination it would probably save the lives of tens of thousands of people.You never answered my questions further your case for ethnic cleansing is not well substantiated you would know that if you actually bothered to read the article and not be [influenced] by coporate media [Edited by Admin] |
| 02/04/03 at 03:08:31 |
| jannah |
| Re: War in Kosovo liberation or aggression? |
|---|
| bhaloo |
| 02/04/03 at 02:03:15 |
| [slm] This thread is now locked. I'm really surprised at what happened here, why do I feel like I'm in the playground of some elementary school? ??? Please when posting try and post like an adult and discuss things with good manners with one another. |
Madinat al-Muslimeen Islamic Message Board |