[lbo-talk] NATO/Kosovo: The Liberal's Favorite War

[Peter Hart Ward]

Compared to (say) the US-backed Indonesian terror in East Timor  
around the same time, the crimes committed in Yugoslavia, as terrible  
as they were, don't count as genocide, unless we seriously diminish  
the meaning of the word. Atrocities were committed on all sides, and  
arguably the worst of these was the Croatian dictatorship's explosion  
of Serbs, a fact omitted from history. Even the ICJ was forced to  
concede that Serbia did not commit genocide, the mass graves have  
never turned up, and no evidence was found suggesting that the  
country was even planning an "ethnic cleansing". As for Srebrineza  
(nothing to do with Serbia and Kosovo regardless, inspite of the fact  
that the massacre was used as a reto-justification for the NATO war),  
the court found that killings were not directed by the Serbian  
government and that, unlike UNPROFOR (who were well positioned but  
refused to intervene), there wasn't a lot Belgrade could have done to  
stop it from happening if they had wanted to.

The KLA were regarded (by UK Times among others) as a bunch of  
narcotrafficking thugs who probably owed their existence to CIA funds  
and arms. Regardless, the bombing of Serbia, targeting civilians and  
civilian infrastructure (as Wesley Clark likes to brag) in flagrant  
violation of the Geneva Convention laws, was supported with  
overwhelming enthusiasm by liberals and opposed, on no principled  
grounds, by conservatives.*

Serbia had a functioning, if corrupt (like all governments I know  
of), government destroyed and has been plunged into lawlessness, and  
Serbs in Kosovo have been rounded up and put in what amount to  
concentration camps. (Even Bosnia-Herzegovina has little in the way  
of government, apparently surviving, to the extent that it does,  
mainly on E.U. handouts--the blue "a gift from E.U." trams you see  
there, e.g.)

The NATO/Kosovo War is not significant because it was particularly  
terrible (Iraq is much worse, of course), it is significant because  
it shows that imperial power-lust is bipartisan. When a country  
defies it's master, the U.S., as Milosovich had the misfortune to do,  
punishment (of the civilians) is in order. (N.B.: The sanctions on  
Iraq that caused about a million "excess" deaths also seems to have  
been a calculated act of terrorism aimed at the civilians.)

It is time to put and end to what Jean Bricmont calls "Humanitarian  
Interventions"; it is time to face up to reality and oppose all  
crimes of State regardless what noble cause they are committed in the  
name of.

If Al Gore, saviour du jour, is seroius about reconciliation of past  
mistakes he should recuse himself to the International Court of  
Justice, along with accomplices Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright,  
to stand trial for war crimes.

*Most of the Kosovo atrocities followed, as predicted, the bombing  
campaign and amounted to about 10,000 deaths. Prior to the war there  
were about 2,000 deaths.

***

Peter Ward
Brooklyn, NY