"Chomsky/Herman/Johnstone on the Balkan conflicts" with a reference to Marko Attila Hoare's (son of Quintin Hoare and Branka Magas, I believe) piece on the 'left revisionists', and its conclusion
"The bitterness of the left-revisionist campaign to deny the genocide in the former Yugoslavia carried out by Milosevic and the Serb nationalists reflects a neo-Stalinist determination to champion Europe's last 'socialist' dictatorship against all the overwhelming evidence of its murderous and corrupt nature."
Maybe some of those in the west who objected to the military campaign against Serbian Yugoslavia and the Serbs of Bosnia were motivated by a positive identification with Serb nationalism, but they were the exception rather than the rule, and Chomsky certainly was not.
Hoare's own identification first with Croatian nationalism, and then opportunistically with Bosnian independence, was so total that anyone who did not embrace his programme of military action against the Serbs was bound to look like an apologist.
Substantially, most critics, certainly Chomsky, were repulsed by the one-sided vilification of the Serbs because of the implication that one would have to support Western military intervention.
Many pointed out that the view propagated in liberal newspapers, most notably the Guardian, significantly ignored evidence of atrocities committed by Croats and Muslims, concentrating exclusively on Serbs.
It was wrong to characterise the civil war as a genocide, since all sides were involved in atrocities, in my opinion, though I don't know whether Chomsky would agree.
The military interventionists case for waging war in Yugoslavia has been gently disintegrating ever since they backed one side in the Civil War. Most pointedly, more people have had their doubts about being whipped into line with atrocity stories after the Iraq war. But the growing evidence that Al Qaeda was active on the Muslim side in the Bosnian war did not help.
Michael is mistaken in thinking that Chomsky has anything to apologise for in his attitude to the wars in the former Yugoslavia.