[lbo-talk] Chomsky v Marko

[Michael Pugliese]

The moralizing element from Chomsky and Said was common to many. It seems an
excessively theological attitude to take. It would have meant for example,
the Allies in World War II should have refused to support Stalin when Hitler
attacked him, since the Soviet Union had tainted itself both internally, by
its repressive behavior, and externally by its pact with Hitler and attack
on Finland, the Baltic Republics and Poland.  Indeed, by the same token, the
people of Europe in 1941 should have refused American and British
intervention against Hitler because their motives were impure, as proven by
their behavior in Central America, India, and Africa, not to mention their
commercial interests.
Then there was the geopolitical argument which saw Milosevic as a heroic
stand out against globalization. The IMF, the US, NATO and other partners in
the conspiracy were all thwarting a valiant defender of socialism. The
crudest  version of this was, as usual given by the supporters of former
attorney general Ramsay Clark in the International Action Center, a body
dominated by a post-Trostkyist group, Workers World. "Given the record of
U.S. human rights violations in the world," said IAC's Brian Becker, "can
anyone believe that Clinton, Albright or General Wesley Clark wake up in the
morning asking: 'Is someone suffering somewhere in the world?' No, the
Pentagon is not a human relief agency. And when human rights
are given as a reason for intervention, you can be sure there is another
agenda." That agenda he suggested is "is domination of this key strategic
region as well as setting a precedent for further aggression around the
world." (LA Teach In As reported by Workers World News Service)  Even more
rational commentators saw NATO's "real" purpose as
establishing a new world order by making an example of Milosevic. (It might
be good to cite a few of these IAC documents and/or to provide the unitiated
reader with some background information on IAC and Ramsey Clark. See
refrence to my article on Salon above)
The crude Marxists looked for an economic rationale for NATO intervention.
It was the mines of Kosovo that they were after. When it became clear that
that the mines were not that important - and had already been sold off to
Greek companies, the search for a materialist motive became more frenzied.
Those desperate for a materialist motive usually ended up citing the Caspian
Oil reserves, from which a pipeline would cross Kosovo. There were a few
technical hitches to this - not least the Black Sea which inconveniently
interposes itself between the Caucasus and the Balkans.
In some cases, the clincher was that taking action alienated Moscow. Russia
was as alienated as anyone could be anyway - over a whole range of issues
but above all for losing the Cold War and then allowing the Chicago school
of economists  in
to destroy their economy. However, the effect was that a wide range of
American academic experts on Russia were marshaled on the side of
Milosevic.. Russia, which had
performed almost as egregiously in Chechnya, and had consistently supported
Serbia in Bosnia and Kosovo, was held up to be the diplomatic savior of the
situation.
Then there was the pacifist wing   where American xenophobia could merge
with Americo-phobic leftism, leavened with a few genuine pacifists, with
whom one can sympathize, but with whom one would certainly have sympathized
with more if they had shown any signs of appreciation for the Kosovars'
tragedy. The pacifists and isolationists alike saw no reason for American
troops to die on anyone else's behalf.  The suggestion that people who
enlist in a volunteer army had in some way willfully put themselves forward
for combat was greeted with a sneer of "economic conscription," not so much
pacifists as by apologists for Serbia, who were against any troops fighting
Milosevic, but were quite prepared to conscript others' anti-war tendencies
for their purposes.
Across the left there was, ironically,  a wholesale conversion to a form of
bourgeois legalism. NATO should not take this action because it had not had
the sanction of the UN Security Council. Some of the die-hardest left began
to stop using this when confronted with the inescapable fact that the UN had
authorized Desert Storm and the ensuing sanctions against Iraq - and they
had vociferously opposed both. (Any citations to examples of this? Difficult
to prove a negative, but I think once again the WW  crowd stopped citing the
UN at an early stage - they are big on Iraq)
The national sovereignty of Yugoslavia and Serbia was another concept that
attracted the legalistic left. Strange mystical Serb conceptions of roots
and historical homelands were supported by people who did not in any way see
that this could lead, for example, to a British claim to Calais, Ireland or
the 13 colonies. ((Late but a common thread od discourse, Yu Sovereignty)
The overwhelming  error/mistake on the left? was complete denial. Many
argued that the
massacres of Kosovars were mythical, and that the casualties were simply the
result of Serb anti-terrorist actions against the KLA. Others (and indeed
some of the same people) argued that the massacres did not happen until NATO
started bombing, and that therefore NATO was in some way responsible for the
refugees and the massacres On this view, the West had somehow forced
Milosevic to do what he did in Kosovo.
The IAC cadres announced that to ventilate the concern about this was
to "attack the victim," which was of course Serbia, not the by now
putrescent Kosovars.
I detail all of these contradictory arguments used by different factions of
the left, and sometimes simultaneously by the same people, to illustrate a
point. There were so many left wing factions, each with their own
approaches, which is why I have used broad brush strokes rather than
detailed cataloguing of their positions.

However, one common denominator was that many Left commentaries and
criticisms of the NATO action from the left  expressed little or no concern
about human rights, or at least those of the Kosovars. Their politics was
Procrustean, in that the line came first, and then reality had to extended
or foreshortened to fit it. At one debate during the war at the Brecht
Forum, one of the more engaging speakers candidly said, "I don't know much
about the Balkans, but I'll explain what the line was."
The starting line for most left positions was that whatever the US, and
therefore its surrogate NATO, did was wrong. They then added reasons, or
rather excuses, for their stand. The IAC expressly called for a "class
position." They reasoned that since the US was an imperialist power, whoever
opposed it was "objectively," on the side of progress, while anyone who
impeded the progress of history, like the KLA, was objectively a
reactionary. The Albanians, like the Kulaks of yesteryear were an obstacle
to progress and so not to be mourned too vigorously.

This is not a surprising position for those who conception of the dialectic
allows no fuzzy logic, no synthesis. In binary Orwellian terms, the world is
divided into good and bad, and East Asia and Eurasia can swap sides in
mid-speech almost, as for example< Saddam Hussein was a tool of imperialism
when he launched his war on Iran, but several million dead later became an
anticolonial hero for attacking Kuwait.

Such conceptions leave little space for individual rights or desires. So
even many who accepted the evil of Milosevic were not prepared to accept
that NATO had the right to intervene under any circumstances. At heart they
subscribed to a doctrine of irredeemable Western fallibility, a sense of the
essential evil of the West, which was stronger than their humanitarian
impulses.
Those of us on the left who supported intervention began with a sense of
history, a concern for human rights, and humanitarian horror at yet another
Milosevic's pogrom. For ten years,  the Serbian strongman had imposed a form
of apartheid on the Kosovar Albanians. For most of the decade he had waged a
cruel and bloody ethnic war against his neighbors in Croatia and Bosnia. He
was now adding genocide to apartheid in Kosovo.
Many of us had called for intervention earlier, at Vukovar, Dubrovnik,
Sarajevo, Srebrenica, because we believed that human rights over-rode
conceptions of national sovereignty. Indeed, we supported intervention in
Rwanda, when as Chomsky and Said pointed out, the US vociferously opposed
and evaded it. We had deplored the way the Americans and British and French
in Bosnia had ignored clear mandates from the United Nations to take robust
action.
The major argument against unilateral humanitarian intervention is a sound
one. It can always be used as a cover for aggressive action, as indeed it
was in Czechoslovakia by Hitler.  This was used by Milosevic in Croatia as
well: the Serbian invasion of the newly independent country was grounded in
the rhetoric of "protection" of the rights of Croatian Serbs. This is a
comment on my part, may be worth mentioning.....If  action against Milosevic
had been initiated by the US, or the US and UK  alone, then there would have
been some serious grounds to protest. However,  in the historical context,
Slobodan Milosevic's regime already stood  condemned as a recidivist ethnic
cleanser and aggressor by the court of  world opinion There were some fifty
UN Security Council resolutions and 150 presidential  statements against
him. A host of General Assembly resolutions had taken him  to task - and
withdrawn delegate rights from his mission to the UN.  Belgrade had
thoughout its wars in Bosnia and Kosovo presented itself as a continuing
bastion of European civilization  against barbaric Muslim hordes, so in a
sense, NATO, with its 17 European members, and  the EU, was a jury of its
peers. They had unanimously condemned him and  supported military action
against his regime because of his behavior in  Kosovo.  Against this was
veto by Russia in the Security Council. When Russia put a resolution
condemning NATO's action in the Security Council, it was trounced by an 11-4
vote. And the same happened in every other UN forum where it was raised.
In short, this was not an unilateral action masquerading as humanitarian. It
was an action that justifiably had the overwhelming support of the world
community. It should have had the support of the American Left, whatever
differences there may have been about the conduct of the war. That so many
on the so-called Left were against it reflects badly on their concern for
human rights, and indeed on the well-springs of their ideology.
To some extent I have been unfair to much of the Left in my associating them
with Ramsey Clark's IAC and the Workers World. However, they had an
influence far greater than their numbers. Just as some quite secular Jews
see the Hasidics as "real" Jews in atavistic way, and even make donations to
their causes, the IAC and their like the Lubavitchers of the Left for many
of the sixties generation who have stayed on the left but regained contact
with the real world. Far too many feel a faint sense of Darkness of Noon,
that they have betrayed the cause, and so are susceptible to the inner
string pulling of the sectarian left, especially over Vietnam, the defining
cause for a whole generation.
For all the faults of NATO intervention it did stop the massacres. It did
return the Kosovar expellees home. It had paved the way, de facto, for an
independent Kosovo, and in contrast to the dire predictions of all who saw
it as weakening the Serbian opposition, the Montenegran and Serbian
opposition seems stronger than ever against Milosevic - albeit still as
reluctant as some of the American Left to acknowledge the enormities
committed in their name against the Kosovars.
It is lonely on the left in fin de siecle America. Socialists are often
multiple members  of  many small   groups, of which even the largest only in
the thousands,  and perhaps in their loneliness unduly tolerant of the
sectarians in their midst. Perhaps, they should perform the same theological
exercise on each other as Chomsky and Said did for the Pentagon. What are
the motives for a socialist group taking a stand in favor of a visible and
proven recidivist mass murderer? If the answer does not include a healthy
respect and concern for individual  human rights and welfare,  -  those who
claim to be associated with the left may wish dissociate themselves.

Note
For an interesting view of the disagreements within Democratic Socialists of
America, one of the few groups that, with fudges, supported the Kosovars,
and gave support to the principle of intervention against Belgrade, while
still arguing about the methods used by NATO, see Socialist Forum, No 29
Summer 1999.

Although I think he was trying to square the circle, I would also recommend
Steve Shalom's articles on ZNet, where he proved that one could oppose NATO
without being an apologist for Milosevic.)