Some good points, some questionable, but it is , overall, a good piece of
reading....
                                AG

> KOSOVO: ON ENDS AND MEANS
>
>
>
> by GEORGE KENNEY
>
>
>
> The spectacle of human beings acting out mindless violence through pack
> behavior instills more terror in the heart than perhaps any other event
> in the natural world. State-directed violence, capable of wielding today's
> deadliest technology, especially evokes nightmarish thoughts about
apocalyptic
>
> ends. But science has not worked overtime to find a satisfactory
explanation
> for collective madness and, not surprisingly, has not produced one.
Literature
>
> and the visual arts have done their best to pick up the slack. William
Golding
>
> articulated our fear of human wilding in Lord of the Flies. George Orwell
> gave the psychology an overt political spin in Animal Farm, as did C.S.
> Lewis from a Christian perspective in That Hideous Strength. Inspiration
> runs the gamut from highbrow to lowbrow. George Romero's film Night of the
> Living Dead belongs to the genre, for example, and is notable for having
> transformed a primordial terror into an image so alien it can be laughed
> away. In reality, though, this fear won't go away. It can't, because we
> all feel a subtle pull of unaccountable madness. And life demands of us,
> some more than others, a relentless struggle to explain these elemental
> experiences for which language apparently has not--yet--acquired the
proper
> constructs.
>
> Noam Chomsky's book The New Military Humanism: Lessons From
> Kosovo, ably demonstrates how far we've come and, inadvertently, suggests
> how far there is to go. Chomsky contends that almost everything you have
> read or heard or seen on television about Kosovo has been a partial truth
> or outright falsehood. For a general readership such an assertion would
> seem like fiction, as if Animal Farm were actually our controlled society.
> And Chomsky goes further, asserting that after NATO's war for Kosovo the
> malicious use of American power has become, more than ever before, the
dominant
>
> fact of international politics. He writes, "It could be argued, rather
plausibl
> y,
> that further demolition of the rules of world order is by now of no
significanc
> e,
> as in the late 1930s. The contempt of the world's leading power for the
> framework of world order has become so extreme that there is little left
> to discuss." The scope and audacity of Chomsky's critique stagger the
imaginati
> on.
> To call it radical practically misses the point. On the one hand we have
> the established media, the respectable community of foreign affairs
analysts,
> the government--and on the other, Noam Chomsky. Assuming he is right, or
> even partly right, a question begs to be asked: How is it possible for
things
> to be so out of kilter? Alternatively, what sets Chomsky's critique apart
> from common conspiracy theories?
>
> Chomsky rather sensibly assembles a thick
> file of facts, carefully documented in endnotes, to buttress his
assertions.
> He weaves these into a highly persuasive big picture of media and
government
> shenanigans. So far, so good. But clearly he is not writing for those who
> are not already interested in his ideas. He meanders, he repeats himself,
> he overindulges his sarcastic streak and he doesn't organize his
arguments,
> at least not so you'd notice; Chomsky needed an editor to impose more
disciplin
> e.
> The reader might imagine herself scouring a beach with a metal detector
> looking for nuggets--of which there are plenty. And when it comes to the
> "How is this possible?" question, Chomsky assumes the reader's more than
> casual familiarity with his voluminous past writings, in particular
Manufacturi
> ng
> Consent (co-written with Edward Herman). In any case, he completely
ignores
> the magnitude of the problem. Marxists, or anarcho-syndicalists--which may
> describe Chomsky's political leanings--or other Old Left activists may
shrug
> this question off, thinking it answered a thousand times before. Others
> are left with a vague and ultimately quite unsatisfying impression that
> somehow it is simultaneously in all these individuals' (reporters,
editors,
> producers, publishers, experts, government officials, military officers,
> etc.) self-interest to deceive the world while behaving badly.
> * * *
>  What's
> missing is a novelist's eye and ear for individual moral dilemmas that
have
> aggregated onto a grand scale, because what Chomsky has gotten ahold of,
> perhaps without realizing it, is the question of evil. Individually, the
> people Chomsky criticizes, or many of them, are not only acting out of
self-int
> erest
> but also know that they are doing something wrong. Lying to the public is
> wrong, their small, insistent voices of conscience tell them. Arbitrarily
> killing innocent people is wrong. Hatemongering in an attempt to vilify
> an entire people (the Serbs) is wrong. When reporters or analysts or
government
>
> officials do these things, they also must work to suppress their voice of
> conscience. Evil, in other words, doesn't need horns and a tail, just a
> bureaucratically structured environment that helps convince people of
their
> false selves. Some notion of morality, or whatever you wish to call it,
> must enter the equation; otherwise Chomsky's masterly descriptions of
group
> psychology gone haywire don't provide any exit. No morality, no choice,
> no redemption. No reform. We will all be stuck living in Animal Farm
forever!
> As an example of Chomsky's reasoning, we might look at the issue of how
> many Albanians were killed by Serbs, taking advantage of reports that have
> appeared in the press since the book was published, as well as material
> available to Chomsky at his time of writing. This morbid issue of the
death
> toll, by the way, is not one Chomsky tackles head on, but its reportage
> by government and media conforms perfectly to his thesis. As he says,
> It is unusual for the resort to violence to be supported with
argumentation
> so feeble. One might conjecture that advocates of the escalation of
atrocities
>
> in Kosovo [e.g., bombing] recognized at some level that constructing a
justific
> ation
> posed some non-trivial problems. That might account for the outburst of
> virulent race-hatred and jingoism, a phenomenon I have not seen in my
lifetime
>
> since the hysteria whipped up about 'the Japs' during World War II, vermin
> who must be crushed--unlike the Germans, fellow humans who had strayed.
> On March 18, the day the Rambouillet talks broke down, David Scheffer, the
> State Department's ambassador at large for war crimes issues, proclaimed
> that "we have upwards to about 100,000 men that we cannot account for" in
> Kosovo. Depending upon the sophistication of the press organ involved,
this
> statement was variously construed as a warning or, as the New York Daily
> News put it in a headline the next day, 100,000 Kosovar Men Feared Dead.
> The specter of mass murder critically supported public acceptance of NATO
> airstrikes, which began less than a week later, on March 24. After two
months
> of bombing, the Yugoslav regime was still, to the Administration's
deepening
> chagrin, in the fight. By this time there were increasing murmurs of
discontent
>
> in the press regarding the effect of NATO airstrikes on unmistakably
civilian
> targets. Ambassador Scheffer stepped to the plate again in mid-May,
calling
> for "speedy investigations" of war crimes (by Serbs) while now noting that
> "as many as 225,000 ethnic Albanian men aged between 14 and 59 remain
unaccount
> ed
> for." Several wire services quoted him on different days as saying that
> "with the exception of Rwanda in 1994 and Cambodia in 1975, you would be
> hard-pressed to find a crime scene anywhere in the world since World War
> II where a defenseless civilian population has been assaulted with such
> ferocity and criminal intent, and suffered so many multiple violations of
> humanitarian law in such a short period of time as in Kosovo since
mid-March
> 1999." It was a profoundly ignorant remark, of course, but what's
important
> is that the Administration's laserlike focus on allegations and innuendoes
> of genocidal acts securely established the legitimacy of continued bombing
> for an at-that-time unknown, perhaps lengthy period.
>
> Helpfully sensing
> that Washington--Scheffer and a battalion of like-minded flacks--had gone
> too far out on a limb, in June and July the British started publicizing
> their reduced estimate that 10,000 Albanian Kosovars had been killed. For
> whatever reason that number stuck in establishment circles. In fact,
however,
> it appears to be still too many. The actual number is probably somewhere
> in the low thousands.
>
> In mid-July sources from the NATO-led peacekeeping
> force in Kosovo, known as KFOR, were telling the press that of 2,150
bodies
> found by peacekeepers only 850 were victims of massacres. Nevertheless,
> still eager to bolster the Serb=devil argument, National Security Adviser
> Sandy Berger, in an address to the Council on Foreign Relations on July
> 26, poignantly mentioned "the village of Ljubenic, the largest mass-grave
> site discovered so far from this conflict, with as many as 350 bodies."
> Berger may not have been aware that the Italian in charge of the site,
Brig.
> Gen. Mauro Del Vecchio, had told the press several days earlier that the
> exhumation had been completed at the site and that seven bodies had been
> found. All press mention of Ljubenic ceases after that point.
> * * *
>  On
> September 23 El País, a mainstream Madrid paper, reported that
Spanish
> forensic investigators sent to Kosovo had found no proof of genocide. The
> team, which had experience in Rwanda, had been told to expect to perform
> more than 2,000 autopsies in one of the areas worst hit by fighting, but
> it found only 187 bodies to examine. No mass graves and, for the most
part,
> no signs of torture. And when on October 10 other investigators announced
> that no bodies had been found in the Trepca mine complex, long rumored to
> contain as many as 700 corpses, skepticism burst into the open. First out
> of the gate was a Web site called Stratfor.com, a sort of wannabe Jane's
> Intelligence Review, which in a long article concluded that "bodies
numbering
> only in the hundreds have been found," while taking care not to judge the
> final outcome prematurely. Though it raised the right questions,
Stratfor's
> estimate was too low because of sloppy research, something symptomatic of
> much of its work. It was, nevertheless, widely cited. The debate raced
around
> the Internet, popped up in Alexander Cockburn's November 8 Nation column
> (which was recycled as an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times), found space in
> another author's opinion column in the Amsterdam De Volkskrant and then
> emerged as a very lengthy news story in the Sunday Times of London. The
> Sunday Times added an interview with the head of the Spanish team, Emilio
> Perez Pujol, who was "disillusioned" by the "war propaganda machine."
Pujol
> says the death toll may never exceed 2,500.
>
> Until recently the International
> Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia kept out of the debate, except
> indirectly in late August when it was quick to deny the figure of 11,000
> dead that Kosovo's UN civilian administrator, Bernard Kouchner, was then
> touting. But on November 10 Carla Del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the
ICTY,
> reported to the UN Security Council that its investigators had found 2,108
> bodies at 195 sites, out of 529 reported locales. Del Ponte cautioned that
> it was an interim figure and that evidence of grave tampering did exist;
> Ljubenic and Trepca sites made notorious in press reports were found not
> to contain masses of bodies. A State Department draft report still set the
> number of likely Kosovar Albanian deaths at "over 8,000."
>  Investigators
> have probably cherry-picked the most likely large mass graves. Serbian
forces
> probably did truck some bodies to Serbia for disposal in, for example,
smelters
> .
> But could that have been more than a couple of thousand, without leaving
> a trail of evidence that has so far not appeared? The press has reported
> on most of the larger graves that KFOR has found. And we know that several
> thousand Albanian Kosovars were taken to Serbian prisons during the war,
> are still being held and are gradually being accounted for. Given the
number
> of ICTY-identified sites and the tribunal's findings so far, a reasonable
> guess of the Albanian dead lies somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000.
> * * *
> By the standards of its own humanitarian argument, Chomsky points out,
NATO
> accomplished nothing or less than nothing. Largely in response to NATO
bombing,
>
> Serbs killed a few thousand Albanian civilians; to even the score NATO
killed
> a few thousand Serb civilians while, incidentally, clocking Yugoslavia's
> economic infrastructure. Chomsky ridicules the notion that bombing was
meant
> to stop the Serbs' forcible expulsion of Albanians or that it did anything
> but accelerate the process--although these expulsions, which were
televised
> around the world, did generate support for NATO's bombing campaign.
Chomsky
> lambastes Administration claims that without bombing, the Serbs would have
> committed more and worse atrocities. He provides important corrections to
> conventional wisdom regarding the Organization for Security and
Cooperation
> in Europe's monitoring mission in place before the bombing,
underappreciated
> by Washington, and he documents Serbia's eagerness to seek a negotiated
> settlement that would have included a substantial international armed
presence.
>
> He also notes, as have several others, that Rambouillet set up a pretext
> for bombing, but then he goes on to describe, as only a handful have, how
> it may well not have been the bombing that led to a settlement but rather
> a significant change in US demands, a more than face-saving compromise
that
> shifted ultimate responsibility for deciding Kosovo's political future
from
> NATO to the UN. Most thoughtful critics of the war--Michael Mandelbaum's
> article this fall in Foreign Affairs comes to mind--unfortunately missed
> this point, which is essential to understanding not only recent history
> but also the ongoing dynamics of Serb-NATO exchanges.
>
> Chomsky speculates
> that Washington initiated the NATO war in order to boost NATO's
credibility,
> not in a positive sense but as an arch-demonstration of power. Serbia,
Chomsky
>
> writes, "was an annoyance, an unwelcome impediment to Washington's efforts
> to complete its substantial takeover of Europe." Furthermore, "as long as
> Serbia is not incorporated within U.S.-dominated domains, it makes sense
> to punish it for failure to conform--very visibly, in a way that will
serve
> as a warning to others that might be similarly inclined." The theme of a
> rogue superpower serves as the basis for many illuminating comparisons
regardin
> g
> US abuse of power, directly or by way of clients, in Vietnam, Laos, El
Salvador
> ,
> Nicaragua, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Palestine, East Timor, Iraq
> and Turkey, to name a few. Given, for example, that US actions have
steadily
> encouraged the Turks to persecute the Kurds, it would be inconsistent,
Chomsky
>
> argues, indeed irrational, to give any credence at all to a general claim
> that US policy is guided by benevolent humanitarian impulses, and the same
> holds for any such claim about Kosovo. One by one his examples could be
> debated separately according to the exigencies of circumstance; taken
together,
>
> they form a damning indictment.
> * * *
>
> In today's world the flip side of
> high-tech bullying is a mad scramble among small states to acquire weapons
> of mass destruction for their own protection. Proliferation, Chomsky
points
> out in an extended aside, will be one of many unpleasant aftereffects of
> NATO's war. With some embarrassment, one wonders whether, after the North
> Koreans sell their missiles and the Russians their bombs, Washington will
> reconsider the gusto with which it launches military operations.
>
> A less
> tangible but no less important logical consequence of NATO's unprovoked
> assault on Yugoslavia is the dangerous precedent this sets for
international
> law. Chomsky says that
>
> in the real world, there are two options: (1) Some
> kind of framework of world order, perhaps the U.N. Charter, the
International
> Court of Justice, and other existing institutions, or perhaps something
> better if it can be devised and broadly accepted. (2) The powerful do as
> they wish, expecting to receive the accolades that are the prerogative of
> power.
>
>
> This is quite right. More specifically, what the world has now
> is, on the one hand, the Westphalian system as it evolved after 1648, with
> its core insight that sovereign states must mind their own business when
> it comes to each other's internal affairs, and, on the other, the notion
> that some doctrine of moral imperatives (or the illusion of such) may
justify
> intervention. The two views are mutually exclusive, notwithstanding recent
> efforts by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and others to meld them. Even
> the systems of discourse these paradigms employ to justify themselves
operate
> on entirely different levels. The Westphalian view is pragmatic, rational,
> concerned with avoiding war; humanitarian interventionism is
quasi-religious,
> unapproachable except through belief. Choosing between them depends upon
> how one feels getting out of bed. Except now the world learns that it
doesn't
> have much of a choice--we're taking a giant leap backward, some 350 years.
> One can, perhaps, define modernity as the evolution of the awareness and
> appreciation of individuality. In this matter, "humanitarian intervention"
> represents a significant leap backward. Arguing, in extreme form, not only
> a right but a duty to intervene, it rejects the gray area of international
> humanitarian law that applies to individuals, as practiced, say, by the
> International Committee of the Red Cross. Neutrality is out, while
co-belligere
> ncy
> is in. The first to suffer will be individuals who otherwise may have had
> recourse to some limited, painstakingly created international protections.
> It's worth recalling that the humanitarian interventionist argument has
> its modern roots in the Biafra crisis of the late sixties. Francophone
groups
> in particular, and those who would form Doctors Without Borders, argued
> that aid agencies had to take sides. France, of course, wanted to take
sides,
> in part to secure lucrative oil-lifting rights. For its own reasons the
> United States decided to take sides in Yugoslavia. The trend is clear
enough:
> We are moving from somewhat successful efforts to moderate or defuse
violence,
>
> efforts based on enlightened notions of individual rights, toward
approving
> and channeling violence for group ends.
> * * *
>
> But let's face it, most people
> who observed the Kosovo conflict didn't suspect they might themselves be
> victims of a massive government and media disinformation campaign.
Moreover,
> a theoretical or comparative argument wouldn't have seemed particularly
> persuasive coming from the initiated, who themselves rightly remain
puzzled
> about whether or how to vest abominable government misbehavior with a
collectiv
> e
> conscious volition. No, the thing that got people's attention was that
those
> articulating the policy seemed to enjoy just a little too much the misery
> they were causing. The twitchy rantings of US Gen. Wesley Clark, the NATO
> supreme commander. The snide egoism of Madeleine Albright's amanuensis,
> Jamie Rubin, and his puckish NATO counterpart, Jamie Shea. What a cast of
> characters! What an extravaganza! A small group at the pinnacle of power
> set out capriciously to destroy a small country, succeeded and relished
> every minute of it. The public recognized the smell of evil. How many
kids,
> indeed, did NATO kill?
>
> In fact, there was quite a lot of dissent brewing
> about the war. Even the mainstream media voiced doubts. Chomsky barely
mentions
>
> this, doesn't make anything of it and maybe wasn't aware of it except
unconscio
> usly
> in a feeling of reproach: the public coming to the right conclusions for
> the wrong reasons. Nevertheless, there were hopeful signs of a nascent
antiwar
>
> movement, one that could have taken to the streets in large numbers if the
> war had continued. This suggests that establishment power has real limits,
> that the public has a moral sense of fair play--you could have read that
> into news from Seattle lately, too. People knew that Kosovo was not an
immacula
> te
> mistake: The war sprang from a series of bad decisions, and different
decisions
>
> could have cut it off. There was a way out, after all.
>
> Chomsky's splendid
> critique demands attention for many reasons, but above all for the
questions
> in it he already thinks answered. How could this happen? Can't we devise
> laws to regulate properly the conduct of foreign policy? Why do
intelligent
> people in the press tell one another lies? How do we know, really, when
> we're doing something wrong? Chomsky, described by the science writer
Martin
> Gardner as a "mysterian"--that is, one who believes we never will have
answers
>
> to explain human consciousness or the creative powers of the human
mind--may
> think not all these questions are worth asking; that only macro-policy and
> global effects deserve investigation. True, by their nature, questions of
> practical ethics have no definitive answers. Human beings will continue
> asking them, though, because we know from experience that in different
historic
> al
> times and places asking about the right moral procedure leads to better
> and better approximations of the truth, and because it is in our genes to
be ve
> ry afraid of what may happen if we don't.
>
>
>
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