[lbo-talk] Chomsky v Marko

M.A. Hoare mah20 at cam.ac.uk
Sat Nov 19 13:25:46 PST 2005



> Marko writes of "the Clinton-Major policy of appeasing Milosevic's Serbia
> ", but between March 24th and June 8th 1999, Nato forces, backed by
> President Clinton bombed Belgrade every night, in a campaign aimed at
> Slobodan Milosevic.

Yes, just like Britain bombed Hitler's Germany after having appeased it for years. And subsequently, Britain and the US invaded Saddam's Iraq after having spent years arming and supporting Saddam. And they went after Osama bin Laden despite the prior alliance between the US and the Islamists against the USSR in Afghanistan.

The difference is that the pro-Milosevic left has something of a blind spot where the prior Western support for Milosevic is concerned.


> But even Major considered that "Milosevic was the driving force" behind
> the conflict. (Autobiography, 546).

This just shows what a hypocrite Major is; he was Milosevic's most important foreign collaborator.


> I think the point is that Marko considers anything less than outright
> attack as appeasement.This is the smear implicit in Marko's
> argumentation. If you do not endorse his programme of action, then you
> are by definition on the other side. That is the kind of demand for
> obedience that puts Marko outside of the ordinary rules of debate, it
> seems to me.

No, I consider the military and political support given by the Western alliance to the Serb aggression in Bosnia to be "appeasement".

I've no idea what alleged "programme of action" of mine Heartfield is referring to - perhaps he has imagined one ? But let's spell this out for him: there were honourable people in the 1990s who opposed Western military action against Serbia; and there were honourable people who supported it; but all honourable people recognised the crimes that Milosevic's forces were carrying out. "On the other side" were people who denied or defended these crimes. If Heartfield can't understand the difference between opposing Western military intervention and apologising for Milosevic's crimes, he should perhaps take a course in elementary logic.

Heartfield's confusion may be linked to the fact that he writes for 'Spiked-Online', the successor to the pro-Milosevic rag-sheet Living Marxism - happily buried by its own lies. Living Marxism never condemned Milosevic's crimes, and never condemned the arms embargo with which the Western powers strangled Bosnia. Douglas Hurd took a leaf from Living Marxism's book, when he complained, in a speech during the Bosnian war, that the Western media was excessively focussed on Bosnia and was neglecting other deserving conflicts across the globe. So that was the Living Marxism version of "anti-imperialism" - being in total agreement with the British Conservative government.


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