[lbo-talk] Chomsky on Srebrenica & "genocide"

[Wendy Lyon]

On 11/19/05, Michael Pugliese <michael.098762001 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/19/05, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:3. How the
> fuck do you know what Milosevic did or
> didn't know?
>
>    "The Politics of Serbia in the Nineties, " by Robert Thomas,
> Columbia Univ. Press. Have you read it? I have.
>   "Serpent in the Bosom, " a bio. of Milosevic by Lenard J. Cohen.
> Have you read it? I have. The bio. of Milosevic by Dusko Doder. Have
> you read it? I have. Reports from HRW on the war crimes by Milosevic
> regime. Have you looked at them? Have you listened over the WWW to any
> of the ICTY testimony vs. Milosevic, Mladic, Karazdic, Arkan, Krstic?
> I have.

I've read a number of books on the Balkan wars (apart from Chomsky,
Herman, Johnstone and Michael Parenti) all of which accept the
conclusion that Milosevic is a pig and that the Serbs were responsible
for the greatest number of atrocities.  Nonetheless they also accept
that by the time of Srebrenica, Milosevic wanted an end to the
conflict because of the serious damage it was doing to the rump
Yugoslavia's economy.  Karadzic and Mladic were loose cannons who he'd
long since ceased to have any control over.  I'd be sceptical of
claims that he was "appalled" by the massacre for any sort of moral or
principled reasons, but he would certainly understand that it wasn't
in his interest.