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This piece displays the classic straw man fallacy. Cockburn takes the figur=
e
of 10,000 dead Kosovar Albanians as an official claim of NATO's, sets this
as its evidence of genocide, then subtracts from this figure by claiming
that some notorious alleged massacres did not in fact take place, This
supposedly discredits NATO's justification of the war. Of course Cockburn
does not have the temerity to state that only genocide could justify NATO's
attacks, that mere crimes against humanity are OK; indeed, nowhere does he
actually attempt to define what would constitute "genocide" in Kosovo (this
allows him to move the goalposts if events unfold against him). Instead, he
confines himself to insinuation and innuendo, suggesting fabrication of
Serbian war crimes by NATO to buttress retroactively its attacks on Serbia.
Unfortunately it is Cockburn who is dishonest. He writes:
> In Pusto Selo, villagers said
> 106 had been killed by the Serbs, and NATO rushed out satellite
> photos of mass graves. Nothing to buttress that charge has yet been
> found.=20
The insinuation, of course, is that the villagers and NATO collaborated in
concocting the story. Now, one might immediately object that satellite
photos of mass graves are a little hard to fabricate, and in themselves
contradict his claim that "nothing" buttresses the charges. But the likely
truth, which Cockburn doesn't share with his readers, is that Serbian
security forces exhumed the bodies in the mass graves after the release of
the satellite photos and transported them elsewhere, according to a survivo=
r
of the massacre who was interviewed by Human Rights Watch
(http://www.hrw.org/hrw/campaigns/kosovo98/flash7.shtml#51). His testimony
was "buttressed" by freshly tilled earth at the site of the alleged
massacre.
So who's lying now?
Similar fudging of the facts occurs in his summary of the massacres in
Ljubenic and Kraljan. Cockburn, who near as I can tell has never bothered t=
o
actually travel to the killing fields of Kosovo (preferring instead the
comfortable certainty afforded from the vantage of his farm amid the
potheads of Humboldt County CA), poo-poos claims of massacre because little
or nothing has been found in either place. Here's the LATImes own account o=
f
these and other massacres, based on its own firsthand investigation
(8/8/99):
> "Those who remained say the smoke and the fire never stopped until the Se=
rbs
> left" in June, said human rights activist Tahir Demaj. Seven hundred peop=
le
> were killed in and around Pec, Demaj added--at first in the city itself a=
nd
> then in hunt-and-destroy operations in villages such as Ljubenic and in t=
he
> nearby, aptly named Accursed Mountains.
> There were massacres in which the people simply vanished, like 96 men fro=
m
> Klina, a town of 10,000 people in central Kosovo.
> As Serbian neighbors jeered, the ethnic Albanian population of the town w=
as
> forced out March 30 and sent walking toward Albania. On the way, however,=
they
> detoured to avoid fighting between Serbian troops and the KLA, until abou=
t 400
> of the men found themselves taken prisoner April 1 and held in the mounta=
in
> village of Kraljan. After two days and two nights of ill treatment, the S=
erbs
> decided to let all but 97 younger men go.
> Of them, 96 have never been heard from again.
> The only known survivor, 21-year-old Hysen Krasniqi, stares vacantly as h=
e
> tells the story to The Times: As the other men were taken away, he was pi=
cked
> out with 14 others and led into a garage. There Serbs in yellow uniforms =
stood
> a few yards away and opened fire. Although bleeding in the arm, shoulder =
and
> back, Krasniqi managed to drag himself away.
> "I saw only dead bodies," Krasniqi said. As for the other 82 prisoners, h=
e has
> no idea. The only evidence in Kraljan now is seven circles on the ground =
where
> something has been burned.
Along the way Cockburn tries to construct the standard Chomskyan indictment
of the "liberal intelligentsia" for cheerleading NATO alleged claims of
genocide before and during the Kosovo war. As anyone who actually read the
US mainstream press during this period knows, this is utter nonsense, which
is perhaps why Cockburn cites no particular instances. There was in fact
unusually widespread disparagement of the bases for and legitimacy of the
air strikes from the outset across the entire spectrum of the
"intelligentsia." The Washington Post, for example, was running extremely
skeptical reports about NATO's justifications within days of the first
attacks; for its part, Newsweek gazed into its cloudy crystal ball and came
up with the following deathless cover copy when the war was into its second
week: "How the US blundered into a no-win war." In fact, as near as I could
tell, NATO's defenders in the US press consisted of Joe Conason at the New
York Observer and Ian Williams of The Nation. A formidable phalanx of
propagandists for one's cause, no doubt.
Meanwhile, the estimable Cockburn's own publication Counterpunch gleefully
predicted that Kosovo was turning into NATO's own "Vietnam quagmire",
exactly one week before Serbia's abject capitulation. (As famous last words
go, this ranks up with George Will's confident pronouncement the day the
Berlin Wall fell: "The wall will remain.") Conason himself had the pleasure
of dishing crow to Cockburn, Will, William Safire and the rest of the
defeatist press after Serbia's withdrawal
(http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/1999/06/15/slobodan/index.html) But
being a pundit means never having to say you're sorry, as Cockburn's latest
column demonstrates. Responsibility is something you preach, not practice.
One final note: Cockburn is in no position to sneer at the reckless abuse o=
f
"genocide" as a rhetorical tool of propaganda. There has hardly been a Thir=
d
World conflict in the last 20 years that Cockburn has not called
"genocidal", as long as the US or its client was on the wrong side of the
body count. So to suddenly find Cockburn getting sniffy about the precise
contours of Yugoslavia's crimes is rather like listening to Pat Buchanan ge=
t
hoity toity about the civil rights of fugitive Nazi war criminals. (In this
connection it's interesting to note in passing the close correspondence
between the use of evidence by Holocaust revisionists and that by Cockburn
in this article.)
So how massive were Serbia's crimes? No one yet knows. But here are
preliminary estimates from the unimpeachably cautious Amnesty International
<http://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1999/EUR/47010699.htm>, unmentioned by
Cockburn no doubt for the noblest of motives:
> =B3Disappeared=B2 and abducted in Kosovo province
>=20
>=20
> Since 1991 Amnesty International has documented and campaigned against th=
e
> widespread and systematic violations and abuses of human rights perpetrat=
ed by
> all parties to the conflicts in the successor states of the former Yugosl=
avia.
> Amnesty International has strongly opposed the killings, torture, rape an=
d
> forced expulsions which have occurred throughout the region. The organiza=
tion
> has campaigned intensively in support of the relatives of the tens of
> thousands of =B3disappeared=B2 and abducted persons throughout the former
> Yugoslavia.=20
>=20
> =A0=A0=A0=A0Amnesty International has urged the national authorities in the regio=
n to
> cooperate with the various international mechanisms set up to deal with t=
he
> thousands of cases of =B3disappeared=B2 and abducted persons in the former
> Yugoslavia. The organization has also urged the international community t=
o
> ensure that adequate resources are made available for this task.
>=20
>=20
> =B3Disappeared=B2 and Abducted in Kosovo province
>=20
> The human rights situation in Kosovo province has been of concern to Amne=
sty
> International for over 10 years. (See Kosovo: A decade of unheeded warnin=
gs:
> Amnesty Internationals concerns in Kosovo: May 1989 - March 1999, Volume =
One:
> AI Index EUR 70/39/99 and Volume Two: EUR 70/40/99) Over the last two yea=
rs
> Amnesty International has intensified its campaigning effort in response =
to
> the escalation of human rights violations perpetrated by FRY forces again=
st
> the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo province. Amnesty International
> estimates that during this period approximately 4,000 ethnic Albanians be=
came
> the victims of =B3disappearances=B2.
>=20
> =A0=A0=A0=A0Since the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) withdrew=
from
> Kosovo province in June/July 1999, human rights violations perpetrated by=
FRY
> forces have ceased. However, the fate of the thousands of ethnic Albanian=
s who
> =B3disappeared=B2 before and during the NATO intervention in the province is =
still
> unclear and new human rights abuses, including the abduction of Serbs, Ro=
ma
> and ethnic Albanians go on.
(Emphasis added.)
I'll leave it to the more adept apologists for terror on this list to
minimize and excuse these figures.
--=20
Tresy Kilbourne
Seattle WA
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<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Re: [CHOMSKY] [Fwd: WHERE'S THE EVIDENCE OF GENOCIDE OF KOSOVAR ALBA=
NIANS? - The LosAngeles Times]</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
This piece displays the classic straw man fallacy. Cockburn takes the figur=
e of 10,000 dead Kosovar Albanians as an official claim of NATO's, sets this=
as its evidence of genocide, then subtracts from this figure by claiming th=
at some notorious alleged massacres did not in fact take place, This suppose=
dly discredits NATO's justification of the war. Of course Cockburn doe=
s not have the temerity to state that only genocide could justify NATO's att=
acks, that mere crimes against humanity are OK; indeed, nowhere does he actu=
ally attempt to define what would constitute "genocide" in Kosovo =
(this allows him to move the goalposts if events unfold against him). Instea=
d, he confines himself to insinuation and innuendo, suggesting fabrication o=
f Serbian war crimes by NATO to buttress retroactively its attacks on Serbia=
.<BR>
<BR>
Unfortunately it is Cockburn who is dishonest. He writes:<BR>
<BR>
<TT>> In Pusto Selo, villagers said<BR>
> 106 had been killed by the Serbs, and NATO rushed out satellite<BR>
> photos of mass graves. Nothing to buttress that charge has yet been<BR=
>
> found. <BR>
</TT><BR>
The insinuation, of course, is that the villagers and NATO collaborated in =
concocting the story. Now, one might immediately object that satellite photo=
s of mass graves are a little hard to fabricate, and in themselves contradic=
t his claim that "nothing" buttresses the charges. But the likely =
truth, which Cockburn doesn't share with his readers, is that Serbian securi=
ty forces exhumed the bodies in the mass graves after the release of the sat=
ellite photos and transported them elsewhere, according to a survivor of the=
massacre who was interviewed by Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org/hrw/=
campaigns/kosovo98/flash7.shtml#51). His testimony was "buttressed"=
; by freshly tilled earth at the site of the alleged massacre.<BR>
<BR>
So who's lying now?<BR>
<BR>
Similar fudging of the facts occurs in his summary of the massacres i=
n Ljubenic and Kraljan. Cockburn, who near as I can tell has never bothered =
to actually travel to the killing fields of Kosovo (preferring instead the c=
omfortable certainty afforded from the vantage of his farm amid the potheads=
of Humboldt County CA), poo-poos claims of massacre because little or nothi=
ng has been found in either place. Here's the LATImes own account of these a=
nd other massacres, based on its own firsthand investigation (8/8/99):<BR>
<BR>
> <FONT FACE=3D"Helvetica">"Those who remained say the smoke and the =
fire never stopped until the Serbs <BR>
> left" in June, said human rights activist Tahir Demaj. Seven hund=
red people <BR>
> were killed in and around Pec, Demaj added--at first in the city itsel=
f and <BR>
> then in hunt-and-destroy operations in villages such as Ljubenic and i=
n the <BR>
> nearby, aptly named Accursed Mountains.<BR>
> There were massacres in which the people simply vanished, like 96 men =
from <BR>
> Klina, a town of 10,000 people in central Kosovo.<BR>
> As Serbian neighbors jeered, the ethnic Albanian population of the tow=
n was <BR>
> forced out March 30 and sent walking toward Albania. On the way, howev=
er, they <BR>
> detoured to avoid fighting between Serbian troops and the KLA, until a=
bout 400 <BR>
> of the men found themselves taken prisoner April 1 and held in the mou=
ntain <BR>
> village of Kraljan. After two days and two nights of ill treatment, th=
e Serbs <BR>
> decided to let all but 97 younger men go.<BR>
> Of them, 96 have never been heard from again.<BR>
> The only known survivor, 21-year-old Hysen Krasniqi, stares vacantly a=
s he <BR>
> tells the story to The Times: As the other men were taken away, he was=
picked <BR>
> out with 14 others and led into a garage. There Serbs in yellow unifor=
ms stood <BR>
> a few yards away and opened fire. Although bleeding in the arm, should=
er and <BR>
> back, Krasniqi managed to drag himself away.<BR>
> "I saw only dead bodies," Krasniqi said. As for the other 82=
prisoners, he has <BR>
> no idea. The only evidence in Kraljan now is seven circles on the grou=
nd where <BR>
> something has been burned.<BR>
<BR>
</FONT>Along the way Cockburn tries to construct the standard Chomskyan ind=
ictment of the "liberal intelligentsia" for cheerleading NATO alle=
ged claims of genocide before and during the Kosovo war. As anyone who actua=
lly read the US mainstream press during this period knows, this is utter non=
sense, which is perhaps why Cockburn cites no particular instances. There wa=
s in fact unusually widespread disparagement of the bases for and legitimacy=
of the air strikes from the outset across the entire spectrum of the "=
intelligentsia." The Washington Post, for example, was running extremel=
y skeptical reports about NATO's justifications within days of the first att=
acks; for its part, Newsweek gazed into its cloudy crystal ball and came up =
with the following deathless cover copy when the war was into its second wee=
k: "How the US blundered into a no-win war." In fact, as near as I=
could tell, NATO's defenders in the US press consisted of Joe Conason at th=
e New York Observer and Ian Williams of The Nation. A formidable phalanx of =
propagandists for one's cause, no doubt.<BR>
<BR>
Meanwhile, the estimable Cockburn's own publication Counterpunch gleefully =
predicted that Kosovo was turning into NATO's own "Vietnam quagmire&quo=
t;, exactly one week before Serbia's abject capitulation. (As famous last wo=
rds go, this ranks up with George Will's confident pronouncement the day the=
Berlin Wall fell: "The wall will remain.") Conason himself had th=
e pleasure of dishing crow to Cockburn, Will, William Safire and the rest of=
the defeatist press after Serbia's withdrawal (http://www.salon.com/news/co=
l/cona/1999/06/15/slobodan/index.html) But being a pundit means never =
having to say you're sorry, as Cockburn's latest column demonstrates. =
Responsibility is something you preach, not practice.<BR>
<BR>
One final note: Cockburn is in no position to sneer at the reckless abuse o=
f "genocide" as a rhetorical tool of propaganda. There has hardly =
been a Third World conflict in the last 20 years that Cockburn has not calle=
d "genocidal", as long as the US or its client was on the wrong si=
de of the body count. So to suddenly find Cockburn getting sniffy about the =
precise contours of Yugoslavia's crimes is rather like listening to Pat Buch=
anan get hoity toity about the civil rights of fugitive Nazi war criminals. =
(In this connection it's interesting to note in passing the close correspond=
ence between the use of evidence by Holocaust revisionists and that by Cockb=
urn in this article.)<BR>
<BR>
So how massive were Serbia's crimes? No one yet knows. But here are prelimi=
nary estimates from the unimpeachably cautious Amnesty International <htt=
p://www.amnesty.org/ailib/aipub/1999/EUR/47010699.htm>, unmentioned by Co=
ckburn no doubt for the noblest of motives:<BR>
<BR>
> =B3Disappeared=B2 and abducted in Kosovo province <BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> Since 1991 Amnesty International has documented and campaigned against=
the <BR>
> widespread and systematic violations and abuses of human rights perpet=
rated by <BR>
> all parties to the conflicts in the successor states of the former Yug=
oslavia. <BR>
> Amnesty International has strongly opposed the killings, torture, rape=
and <BR>
> forced expulsions which have occurred throughout the region. <I>The or=
ganization <BR>
> has campaigned intensively in support of the relatives of the tens of =
<BR>
> thousands of =B3disappeared=B2 and abducted persons throughout the former =
<BR>
> Yugoslavia. <BR>
</I>> <BR>
> =A0=A0=A0=A0Amnesty International has urged the national authorities in the re=
gion to <BR>
> cooperate with the various international mechanisms set up to deal wit=
h the <BR>
> thousands of cases of =B3disappeared=B2 and abducted persons in the former=
<BR>
> Yugoslavia. The organization has also urged the international communit=
y to <BR>
> ensure that adequate resources are made available for this task. <BR>
> <BR>
> <BR>
> =B3Disappeared=B2 and Abducted in Kosovo province <BR>
> <BR>
<I>> The human rights situation in Kosovo province has been of concern t=
o Amnesty <BR>
> International for over 10 years. (See Kosovo: A decade of unheeded war=
nings: <BR>
> Amnesty Internationals concerns in Kosovo: May 1989 - March 1999, Volu=
me One: <BR>
> AI Index EUR 70/39/99 and Volume Two: EUR 70/40/99) Over the last two =
years <BR>
> Amnesty International has intensified its campaigning effort in respon=
se to <BR>
> the escalation of human rights violations perpetrated by FRY forces ag=
ainst <BR>
> the ethnic Albanian population in Kosovo province. Amnesty Internation=
al <BR>
> estimates that during this period approximately 4,000 ethnic Albanians=
became <BR>
> the victims of =B3disappearances=B2. <BR>
> <BR>
</I>> =A0=A0=A0=A0Since the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) w=
ithdrew from <BR>
> Kosovo province in June/July 1999, human rights violations perpetrated=
by FRY <BR>
> forces have ceased. <I>However, the fate of the thousands of ethnic Al=
banians who <BR>
> =B3disappeared=B2 before and during the NATO intervention in the province =
is still <BR>
> unclear</I> and new human rights abuses, including the abduction of Se=
rbs, Roma <BR>
> and ethnic Albanians go on.<BR>
(Emphasis added.)<BR>
<BR>
I'll leave it to the more adept apologists for terror on this list to minim=
ize and excuse these figures.<BR>
-- <BR>
Tresy Kilbourne<BR>
Seattle WA<BR>
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