BALKAN WITNESS
Articles on the Kosovo Conflict:
Deniers of Serbia's War Crimes
Last modified May 10, 2008

It is no surprise that the regime of Slobodan Milosevic and its propagandists sought to deny or justify its war crimes against the peoples of Kosovo and Bosnia. It is shameful, however, that various Western commentators who claim to be progressives have repeated these lies and justifications - even after many of them have been disproved. In this absurd spectacle they rationalize the destruction of villages and populations thought to harbor “terrorists” – the very actions that the movements against the wars in Vietnam and Iraq have so vigorously opposed.

In this section we examine the misrepresentations of some of these commentators.

BOSNIA - Trnopolje and Srebrenica - moved - click here

Articles regarding the death of Slobodan Milosevic: Marjorie Cohn minimizes the crimes of Milosevic and misrepresents Yugoslav history. Response by Roger Lippman March 17, 2006 Media Lens misuses sources to argue that British media were "filled with hundreds of claims of genocide in Kosovo." The article goes on to give a distorted version of the background of the Kosovo war. Response by Roger Lippman April 3, 2006 "Patient: S. Milosevic." Reporter, a Dutch television-program, has published the entire medical file of Slobodan Milosevic on its website. The site contains internal memos from the ICTY, correspondence between his attending physicians, brain scans, hearing tests, lab results, medicine charts, and the medical examiners' report. Milosevic and his son wanted his medical file to be made public. June 2006

 

Noam Chomsky: In a 2006 interview with the New Statesman, Noam Chomsky, if he is quoted accurately, makes an egregiously false statement about the 1999 Kosovo war. Speaking of Serbian actions in Kosovo, Chomsky says that "there were terrible atrocities, but they were after the [NATO] bombings." Chomsky’s ethical and political failure is tragic for those of us who agree in substance with many of his positions on US foreign policy, most notably the catastrophe in Iraq. By legitimizing historical deceit and diminishing the sufferings of the Bosnians and Kosovars, he only succeeds in causing moral and political confusion where authentic principle and political clarity are most needed.    Response by Roger Lippman, June 21, 2006    Response by Michael Bérubé, June 22, 2006    Response by David Watson, June 23, 2006    Response by Oliver Kamm, June 2006. Refutes Chomsky's reference to a British parliamentary inquiry.   In writings and interviews, Chomsky misrepresents the statements of a former high Clinton State Department official on the causes of the Kosovo intervention. Click here for several discussions of this issue.   Chomsky has expressed his support for one of the most notorious Serbian ultra-nationalist war criminals facing the Hague Tribunal, Vojislav Seselj, who set up paramilitary groups to accomplish the annihilation of Kosovo Albanians and Bosnian Muslims. (See his party's Program for "Cleansing" Kosovo, 1991 and Program for a Greater Serbia Theocracy, 1996.) Chomsky appears at the top of a list of Seselj's foreign supporters. (Scroll down, to find Chomsky in the company of such genocide apologists as Edward Herman, Sara Flounders, and David Peterson.) Seselj says he expects to pay for the services of famous experts, including the US intellectual Noam Chomsky. When Seselj's Serbian Radical Party held a rally in Belgrade in December 2006 demanding Seselj's release, Noam Chomsky sent a letter of support that was read aloud at the event. See reports: in English   German   Italian   In April 1999, Chomsky and others signed a manifesto entitled "Academics Against NATO's War in Kosovo." For critical comments on Chomsky's statement, see the response by Igor Korsic of the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

The Left Revisionists An extensive review of a broad array of those on the Left who downplay the violence and suffering involved in the wars in the former Yugoslavia and shift the blame to the Western alliance. Among those discussed are Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, Michael Parenti, Michel Chossudovsky, Diana Johnstone, Mick Hume, John Pilger, Harold Pinter, and Jared Israel. By Marko Hoare, November 2003

Nothing Is Left A review of several books covering the former Yugoslavia, by authors Philip Hammond, Edward Herman, Michael Parenti, Diana Johnstone, Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, and Kate Hudson. By Marko Hoare, Bosnia Report, October-December 2003

Srebrenica and the London Bombings: The ‘Anti-War’ Link This article examines what unites the left-wing and right-wing deniers of Serbia's war crimes. Includes discussion of Edward Herman, Justin Raimondo, Nebojsa Malic, Neil Clark, Tariq Ali, and others. By Marko Hoare, July 23, 2005

Edward S. Herman: Click here

Ramsey Clark: The war criminal's best friend By Ian Williams, Salon, June 21, 1999
Ramsey Clark regards Milosevic favorably, and comparable to Saddam Hussein: "History will prove Milosevic was right." (March 17, 2006)

Neil Clark: Monty Python and the Balkan Islamofascist division A review of Clark's shoddy activities in support of Milosevic. Clark's claim that the late Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic was a supporter of the SS in Bosnia during World War II is demolished in this article. By Marko Hoare, November 22, 2007

Michael Parenti: Parenti's book To Kill a Nation is reviewed by Kirk Johnson, beginning June 2007 (start towards the bottom of the page, and work upwards). Several installments, linked from the cited page.

Diana Johnstone: Johnstone's article "Srebrenica Revisited," is reviewed by Eric Gordy, October 13, 2005. Raçak - Mutation of a Massacre This review of a Diana Johnstone article shows that she uncritically repeats Serbian government propaganda on Racak, and that her work is characterized by missing evidence, a paucity of sources, the spreading of untruths, and conspiracy theories. By Peter Wuttke, November 18, 1999 (Newly translated from the original German, March 2002.) Diana Johnstone's Fools Crusade is reviewed by Kirk Johnson, 2006. Several installments, linked from the cited page.

Mediating Denial Martin Shaw reviews Phillip Hammond and Edward S. Herman's anthology Degraded Capability: The Media and the Kosovo Crisis. Shaw analyzes distortions by Diana Johnstone, John Pilger, Mick Hume, and others. June 2000

John Pilger: 'Random Brutality' and the Denial of Genocide John Pilger erects a smokescreen of abuse and distortion, but fails to defend his contemptible excuse that Serbian atrocities in Kosovo were products of 'random brutality' rather than genocidal planning. By Martin Shaw, November 22, 1999
John Pilger and the Tasmanian Genocide Pilger falsely claims that no mass graves of Albanian victims of Milosevic’s regime have ever been found. By Marko Hoare, December 14, 2007

Fairness and Accuracy in Media: FAIR Misrepresents the Racak Massacre In claiming that there is “new evidence casting doubt on claims that the bodies were civilian victims of a massacre,” Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting endorses a biased and error-filled article on Racak. FAIR misrepresents the position of Dr. Helena Ranta, the forensic pathologist who investigated the Racak massacre. FAIR's article is at odds with substantial previous (and subsequent) credible documentation on the Racak incident. By Roger Lippman, April 30, 2001

Project Censored: Dubious Sources: How Project Censored Joined the Whitewash of Serb Atrocities Their coverage of Kosovo and Bosnia lacks historical perspective and relies on biased, discredited sources. By David Walls, May 2, 2000 (Revised for publication in New Politics, Summer 2002)

Project Censored Whitewash Debate Walls' article elicited commentary from Bogdan Denitch and critical re­sponses from Peter Phillips, Diana Johnstone, and Edward S. Herman & David Peterson. Each critical response is followed with a reply from Walls. New Politics, Winter 2003

William Blum Denies Serbian Atrocities in Kosovo In his book Rogue State,  Blum, a member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosevic, repeats a theme common among uninformed commentators and Serbian apologists: that Serbian atrocities against Kosovo Albanians began only after the NATO intervention. This article offers extensive documentary refutation of Blum's position. By Roger Lippman, July 3, 2002.

Alternative Press Review: Counter-Spin as Useful Idiocy The author, borrowing Lenin’s phrase, takes on the “useful idiots” on the Left, including those who deny the existence of Serbian killing camps in Bosnia or even the massacre at Srebrenica. His prime target in this article is the Alternative Press Review's apologetics for Slobodan Milosevic. By David Watson, Fifth Estate, Fall 2002.

The Kosovo Verification Mission at Racak A summary of the events surrounding the Racak massacre and its investigation. Concisely refutes some of the inaccurate statements of Diana Johnstone, Philip Hammond, Edward Herman, and David Peterson. By Alex J. Bellamy, 2002

"Yugoslavia: The Avoidable War" This propaganda film by George Bogdanich paints the '90s genocide as a misunderstanding caused by poor public relations, and bases its key conclusions on interviews with a collection of crackpots and racists. Reviewed by Joshua Tanzer, Offoffoff.com, March 2002.

Tariq Ali, editor of the anthology Masters of the Universe? NATO’s Balkan Crusade. Reviewed by Ian Williams, in More Agitprop than reasoned argument. Bosnia Report, July-September 2000.

Susan Woodward Woodward’s book Balkan Tragedy shows how easy the passage is from identification with the centralized Yugoslav state and Army to support for Serbian nationalism. Her apologies for the Serbian side contrast with her treatment of Croatia and Slovenia. Reviewed by Marko Attila Hoare, April 1996, Bosnia Report.

Peter Handke A prominent defender of Slobodan Milosevic, the Austrian writer spoke at Milosevic's funeral in Belgrade, in March 2006. The Apologist, commentary by Michael McDonald, The American Scholar, Spring 2007.
 

Frozen in time, like prehistoric insects caught in an amber bubble of cold-war reflexes, the unreconstructed Left remains fixated on NATO and Western imperialist warmongers as the only threat facing humankind that they are prepared to resist. Barely half a century after World War II, the living dead of the Left are no longer capable of recognizing either fascism or genocide as the enemy.           From comments by Andras Riedlmayer, April 1, 1999

 

BOSNIA Trnopolje and Srebrenica Moved - click here

Sadly, the so-called radical movement is losing its sense of complexity, of history, of ambivalence, and ultimately its own humanity. Most ostensible oppositionist discourse on the Balkans, from the hard Marxist left to the independent socialist left to even many anarchists, has sunk to a duckspeak of conspiracy mongering and holocaust denial, or to the nostrums of diplomatic conflict-resolution, or to crass and aggressive apologetics for mass murderers. Readers who think this characterization an exaggeration will have to judge for themselves. They can only do so by studying the matter in depth, since leftist magazines and internet sites are a cesspool of misinformation, where one can find myriad examples of holocaust denial from leftists and rightists - it is a kind of a red-brown front, in fact - that Serb concentration camps never existed, or that the Bosnians "bombed themselves" in Sarajevo, or that the mass execution of thousands of men after the fall of the Srebenica enclave was a "hoax." And some leftists are even circulating a petition to free poor old Slobodan Milosevic (while demanding the head of Pinochet). One has to find this depressing in part because some of these people have had reasonable things to say about US support for dictatorships abroad, global capitalism, and other important related issues, and so they now function either to recruit the naturally skeptical into a counter-cult with its own authoritarian mystifications, or they simply discredit worthy opposition altogether through a kind of Gresham's law by which healthy ethical reasoning is driven out by paranoia and dogmatism. Any radical movement serious about changing life, whether or not it can do anything in the near future about the social crises it faces, must never allow itself to become a purveyor of lies. As Theodor Adorno put it in Minima Moralia, "The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us." We have no choice but to demystify so-called demystification. David Watson, in the Fifth Estate, winter 2002