What "programme of military action against the Serbs" ? This is a common non-sequitur of the pro-Milosevic left: that anyone who defends the Bosnian people from genocide must be a supporter of "military action against the Serbs". One could just as easily argue that Chomsky's support for East Timor makes him a supporter of "military action against the Indonesians". I never did support a "programme of military action against the Serbs" - though in retrospect I'm sorry I didn't...
"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."
No more "one-sided" than Chomsky's position on East Timor, Palestine, Turkish Kurdistan, El Salvador, etc...
"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."
Rubbish - mainstream journalists like Misha Glenny, Robert Fisk, David Binder did everything possible to equate the guilt of the different sides, or even to claim that the Serb fascists were the injured party. The "Western media conspiracy to demonise the Serbs" exists only in the minds of the pro-Milosevic leftists and their fellow travellers.
"It was wrong to characterise the civil war as a genocide, since all sides were involved in atrocities"
Yes, and all sides were involved in atrocities during World War 2, but the Nazis still committed genocide.
"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."
Al Qaeda is active on the side of the sectarian-fascist Iraqi so-called "resistance", but that doesn't stop a large part of the "left" from supporting this so-called resistance. Shades of double standards...
Marko Attila Hoare