"The Fall of Yugoslavia" by Misha Glenny [5]

Chapter 3: June-July 1991: State of Independence

This chapter starts off with a trio of vignettes which serve both to illustrate the sad sense of impending doom which hung over Yugoslavia (and of which the rest of the world remained ignorant), and of the fragile beauty of daily life which was about to be desecrated by war.

First Glenny goes to Prague, for the Conference on European Confederation which he describes as "a sop to Eastern European countries." While there, he speaks with the former Croatian Deputy Prime Minister Mate Babic, who turns out to be an astute witness to Franjo Tudjman's governing style. The most interesting observation is this:

"Although he was distinctly no friend of Milosevic, Mate Babic admitted frankly that Serbia had gone further down the road to privitization than Croatia. Tudjman, he insisted, was consciously blocking Croatia's progress in this direction. Let it be remembered that according to President Tudjman, Croatia's moral superiority over Serbia lay in its fervent commitment to free-market economics."

And let it also be remembered that, according to left-wing apologists for the Milosevic regime, Yugoslavia was allegedly destroyed partly because he was courageously defending the socialism of Yugoslavia against the forces of Western neo-liberalism and their capitalist lackeys such as Tudjman.

Glenny also meets Srdja Popovic, a distinguished Serbian liberal journalist from Belgrade, who predicts that war will break out when the republics begin declaring independence.

Then he makes his way from depressing, doom-ridden Belgrade to Prishtina, where he meets Veton Surroi, who proves to be a charming observer himself. The account of this visit largely serves the purpose of allowing Glenny to deal with the subject of Kosovo on the eve of the wars which would, for a few years anyway, push this occupied colony out of sight and out of mind. Glenny does seem to "get it" in Kosovo; he regards it as being an occupied territory, and he notes that few if any Serbs from Serbia have ever been there. He realizes that the presence of the state there is one of racist occupation, and that the Albanians are the victims of oppression. He also feels genuine pity for the Kosovar Serbs, whom he realizes are pawns of the Milosevic regime, which needs them in a perpetual state of fear and insecurity in order to justify the crackdown. Glenny essentially concedes the right of self-determination of the Albanian majority and the case for independence.

Finally, he visits Macedonia, where he dwells a little on the state of the Albanian minority there and the larger issue of Albanian nationalism; he ends up in Skopje as the guest of Macedonian journalist Sasho Ordanoski. They avoid politics, meet a lot of people, and have a wonderful night. It's a lovely scene, one which makes you ache knowing of the deluge which is to come.

And it comes...

"The Destruction of Yugoslavia" by Branka Magas--Part One

Part One: The Kosovo Watershed and its Aftermath (1981-87)

In the short introduction to this section, Magas notes that, with the imposition of martial law on Kosovo in April 1981, "it was clear that the country as a whole had reached a watershed." A member of the Yugoslav Federation was being treated as a hostile, occupied territory, and security forces were firing on demonstrators, the majority of whom were teenagers. She also notes that there was virtually no public protest from the Yugoslav public, even from the editors of the highly-regarded journal, Praxis. Her shame drove her to investigate the situation; her ignorance of Albanian history drove her to research.

Her initial reporting in Kosovo recognized that socio-economic factors, not inherent fascist tendencies as so many Left-revisionists have maintained, were the driving factors behind the rise of Albanian nationalism in Kosovo. She also recognized that Kosovar Albanians, and the left-wing Yugoslav students who for a time supported their cause, were fighting not to destroy Yugoslavia but to establish Republic status for Kosovo.

When she had completed her research on Albanian history, the result was the lengthy 1983 article "Kosovo between Yugoslavia and Albania." This article artfully summarizes the situation for readers unaware of the historical background, Yugoslav constitutional and political structures, and then-current demographic realities, much of which would be very familiar to readers of this blog. However, Magas comes from a Leftist tradition, and she examines events and institutions through that framework.

She notes that Albanians found it necessary to subjugate all other national considerations in the interests of unity in the early days of national development, in light of expansionist pressures from Serbia and Montenegro. Therefore, Albanian nationalism developed a high degree of unity, but at the cost of delaying all other social developments. The 'internal class struggle' was stunted at this early stage of national development.

Also, while most Western observers recognize that the rebirth of Yugoslavia as a federal republic of nations was the creation of Tito and the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (later renamed the League of Communists), it is rarely explained that each individual nation was specifically vested in the new socialist federation by virtue of participation in the revolution and the resistance.

Furthermore, she argues that the failure of the Balkan Socialist Federation, which would have united Yugoslavia with Albania and possibly Bulgaria, was a crucial development in creating the later crisis, by delaying a proper resolution of the status of Kosovo and Yugoslavia's Albanian minority for several years, and finally allowing the province to be subsumed into Serbia, and for the Albanian nationality to acquire what seems to have been second-class status among the nations of Yugoslavia. Other minorities, of course, had a similar status, but the fact that half of the Albanian population was in Yugoslavia made this situation rather different than that of, say, the tiny Bulgarian minority in far eastern Serbia. In short, Tito and the Party leadership kept waiting for the creation of the Balkan Socialist Federation to resolve a number of national and demographic issues, so that no deliberate strategy was instated at the outset of the new political order.

Finally, Magas recognized even then that the "nationalism" which was already infecting Yugoslavia's politics was in large part a creation of decentralization--the bureaucratic elites of the individual republics found that appeals to their respective national majorities were effective tools to mobilize support and deflect criticism. Yet, the future would show that centralization was a devil's bargain, since any attempt to revive the Federal center would in practice strengthen the Serb republic government, which under Milosevic would use "centralization" as a cover for Greater Serb expansionism.

Her fears that the Yugoslav Left opposition were not going to side with the cause of Kosovo turned out, of course, to be well-founded, but while she was perceptive to recognize the danger that the Kosovo situation posed for the future democratization and even survival of the country, it would take some time for the failure of the Left in Yugoslavia to overcome, or even recognize, the dangers of nationalism and centralism to become obvious.

Ultimately, of course, many of the prominent editors of the once-proud Praxis would ultimately disgrace themselves by signing on to an anti-Albanian petition in 1986, as part of the same campaign which produced the infamous "memorandum" from Serb Academy of Arts and Sciences of that same year. In the final article, "Nationalism Captures the Serbian Intelligentsia", she reproduces the anti-Albanian petition mentioned above, and then follows with her September 1986 article "The End of an Era" in which she decries the signing of that petition by three former editors of Praxis, and explains in plain language why the claims of this petition are ridiculous and its demands outrageous and dangerous.

Those three--Zaga Golubovic, Mihailo Markovic, and Ljubomir Tadic--responded directly to her article in a letter to the "Editorial Collective" of Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, which had published her article. Their response was lengthy and maintains a tone of exasperated faux-'reasonableness' which would be familiar to readers of Diana Johnstone. And Magas then includes her reply, which is factual, systematic, comprehensive, and devastating. Considering that no small fraction of this blog has been devoted to similar work, I can only admire the completeness and clarity of her deconstruction of such dissembling.

Her concluding paragraph is worth quoting:

"Thus what above all moved me to write 'The End of an Era' was a real concern that, if such well-known socialists as Zaga Golubovic, Mihailo Markovic, and Ljubomir Tadic were to join the nationalist cause, all hope of seeing the emergence of a genuinely democratic alternative to the present quagmire of bureaucratic and nationalist discord would be set back."

We can only wish, too late, that more on the Left had been listening at the time.

UN Mission in Kosova Muzzles Woman's Right Advocate

As if we didn't need another reason to condemn the United Nation's ill-advised attempt to appease Serb extremist sentiment by violating Kosova's sovereignty, the UN is now taking it upon itself to dictate the limits of participation in civil society.

Please read the link at Advocacy Project.

Once again, the UN manages to screw things up in the former Yugoslavia. These people seem positively addicted to partition and capitulation.

"The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins" by Alexandru Madgearu

This book was originally published in Romanian in 2001; the author updated the original text (including information, unavailable in Romanian, he acquired through further research in the years following publication) for this English-language translation, published in 2008.

I did not know exactly what to expect from The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula, although based on the title I was worried that the author would provide an academic foundation for the sort of historic fatalism which is all to often applied to the Balkans. I am happy to report that this is not the case.

To quote the back cover:

"The Balkan Peninsula is often referred to as the "powder keg of Europe," but it is more accurately described as the "melting pot of Europe." In The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula: Their Medieval Origins, Alexandru Madgearu discusses the ethnic heterogeneity in modern-day Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia and traces its history."

Madgearu's thesis is well-developed over five chapters and nearly two hundred pages, but it is essentially this (again from the back cover):

"The Wars of the Balkan Peninsula argues that the current ethnic structure is the basis for the solution of the disputes between the Balkan states and that history should be used to explain, not legitimize, the conflicts."

In the Introduction, Madgearu states that

"The ethnic mosaic is the deepest cause the of the endemic state of conflict in the Balkan Peninsula. It is therefore necessary to clarify the circumstances that led to such an unique ethnic configuration."

It is important to note how he defines the Balkans--he sets the geographic parameters narrower than many--no Slovenia, and he considers his own country, Romania, as being both of and not of the Balkans. His reasons are essentially geographic rather than cultural, which is anything but a random choice, as he notes that:

"The ethnic configuration of the Balkan Peninsula is the result of the interaction of several geographical and historical factors. Although the role of geographical factors in historical processes should not be overestimated, undestanding of geographical determinations is necessary for any historical inquiry into the medieval Balkans."

The geography of the Balkans encourages localism and fragmentation as well as allowing for the survival of displaced cultures by retreat to the highlands, while there are a couple of extremely important routes across the region, the control of which is vital for any attempt at lasting political unification.

Because the book is so dense with information and rich with detail, I will not attempt anything like a thorough synopsis. However, the Table of Contents by itself serves as a useful outline. Below is the complete contents of the TOC, with brief commmentary in brackets after each chapter:


Part I The Past

Chapter 1. The Ethnic Aspects: The Slavization of the Balkan Peninsula - The Expansion of the Albanians - The Vlachs (Aromanians)--A People Without a State - Deportations and Colonizations Made by the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires

[Sketches not only the different ethnic groups inhabiting the region during the medieval period, but also the processes by which different groups moved around within the area, partially but never completely displacing each other, and moving from highland to lowland and from region to region]

Chapter 2. The Political Aspects: The Downfall and Recovery and the Byzantine Domination and the Rise of Bulgaria - The Small Slavic States from the Central and Western Balkans - The Byzantine Offensive (Ninth-Eleventh Centuries) - Pax Byzantina and Centrifugal Trends in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries - The Inheritors of Byzantine Imperialism - The Rise and the Breaking Up of Great Serbia - The Ottoman Conquest - Pax Ottomana

[A political history of the Medieval Balkans as well as periods before and after the Middle Ages proper. Consider the importance of "poles of power" such as the late Roman Empire, the Byzantines, the short-lived Bulgarian and Serbian Empires, and finally the Ottomans. The author stresses that modern nationalist ideologies often base territorial claims on the maximal extent of medieval empires. He also illustrates that medieval societies were built on a variety of ties other than ethnic solidarity, which means that modern nationalist claims for continuity with medieval empires are at the very least flawed, if not misguided.]

Chapter 3. The Religious Aspects: The Confrontation between Rome and Constantinople in the Balkans - The Spreading of Islam in the Balkans: A New Differentiation

[Fairly obvious topic. Recounts in some detail the history of Catholic/Orthodox competition within the region (the lines dividing Rome's sphere of influence from Constantinople's were fluid and far from clear-cut for many centuries--both Bulgaria and Serbia flirted with the Vatican even after conversion). And, of course, the arrival of Islam in the region further stirred the pot.]

Part II The Present. Historical Propaganda and Balkan Nationalist Ideologies

Chapter 4. Theories of Ethnogenesis with Political Implications: The Greeks - The Albanians - The Bulgarians - The Serbs and the Croats - The Vlachs (Aromanians)

[An examination of competing ethnic histories used by different nationalities and ideologies as a way to "prove" the primacy of one's own nationality to a given geographic area.]

Chapter 5. The Legitimation of Expansionism by the Abuse of History: Kosovo--Serbian or Albanian? - The Historical Macedonia--The Apple of Discord among Greece, Bulgaria, and Serbia

[For any student of the Balkans, the general subject of this chapter should be obvious from the title and subtitles alone. This chapter is a very good brief summary of the conflicting arguments for Greater Serbia, Greater Albania, Greater Greece, Greater Bulgaria, and even Greater Macedonia.]

The three chapters in Part I are relatively straightforward and recount in as much detail as the author's knowledge and recent research will allow the facts of the respective matter in some detail. The author has looked into a very fundamental issue in the Balkans--who are the peoples of the Balkans, and where and when did they come from?

Part II is more analytic and critical, as the author admirably takes the penchant among Balkan peoples to abuse the historic past as a way to legitimize contemporary geopolitical ambitions without taking into consideration the very different circumstances of the different eras.

The Conclusion contains some good final insights, none better than the opening sentences:

"The great obsession of Balkan policy and propaganda was and continues to be ethnic purity (of the Serbs, Croats, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Greeks). This ethnic purity is an illusion in this most mingled European region,the scene of a long series of ethnic and cultural changes, where there are no pure ehtnies and races."

Some of the other points are also interesting. He argues that the intense centralization of Balkan medieval states had a centrifugal effect, where areas on the periphery were pushed away. In Western Europe on the other, fragmented medieval polities slowly evolved towards centralization in a process that favored the development of national identities and ultimately relatively uniform nation-states. It is generally understood that nationalism came late to the Balkans, but often the focus is on the Napoleonic period and later, when Balkans peoples were subsumed in multinational empires. Madgearu's contention that the root cause of stunted Balkan nationalism can be located further back, in the medieval period, is worth considering.

I do have some reservations about this book. The most serious concern is that I am not quite sure what the author believs the solution to Balkan is exactly; his later statement that

"Only the present ethnic configuration could be the starting point for the resolution of the international disputes."

invites more questions than it answers, and some of those questions are troubling.

Still, this book contains the sort of sober, demythologized academic study of the Balkans that we need more of. Finding the explanation for the region's history and ethnic mosaic in specific historical and geographic peculiarities rather than in romantic notions of an impossibly "complex" and romantized region populated by savage, indecipherable others is a step in the right direction.

"Muslim Identity and the Balkan State" ed. by Hugh Poulton and Suha Taji-Farouki

I have read most of the collected essays in this fine collection:

Muslim Identity and the Balkan State

Published in 1997, no doubt some of the data and interpretations are now dated; also, because the status of Bosnia was very much in doubt in late 1996 when this volume was being prepared for publication, the editors chose not to discuss the Muslims of Bosnia. Rather, this book looks at the Pomaks of Bulgaria and Greece, ethnic Turks throughout the Balkans, the Slavic Muslims of Macedonia, ethnic Albanian Muslims in Macedonia, Kosova, and Albania proper, and the Slavic Muslims of the Sandzak.

The book can be read in its entirety, or individual essays can be read independently. For a general reader intersted in gaining a broader perspective on the complexities and varieties of different Muslim communities throughout the region, this book is an easily readable resource.

"Fools' Crusade" Closing Thoughts

Reading "Fools' Crusade" has not been an enjoyable experience, but it has been an enlightening experience--although not, you may be assured, for the reasons author Diana Johnstone intended. I think I understand the motivations behind Bosnian revisionism better than I did before--and they have nothing to do with the truth, or even with defending the cause of Serbian nationalism. As I said before, I don't think Diana Johnstone gives a damn about Serbia or Serbs.

The motivation behind "Fools' Crusade" is simply naked, unrefined anti-Western propaganda. After reading her entire book, painstakingly, and going over each section repeatedly, I detect no other unifying theme. She thinks that her theme is "anti-globalization," yet I have no doubt that Johnstone would be hard-pressed to express what anti-globalization is, other than opposition to alleged American hegemony in the service of global capital.

This is a depressing book, and that is why--Johnstone has no vision of How Things Should Be. Actually, that's not completely accurate, since by reading this book the reader can fairly confidently work out a vision of global order that Ms. Johnstone would approve of.

It would be a world in which the power of the United States and its allies is curtailed at every turn; but various anti-Western rogue nations and petty autocratic regimes are free to act against captive populations at will, and to poison the stability in their regions without fear of reprisal. It is a world in which a vigorous and forceful response by Western-led coalitions to world crises is simply not possible, but instead an ineffective United Nations has a monopoly on the right to intervene in world affairs.

It is a world in which the sovereignty of states is the highest moral good, and trumps the rights and indeed the lives of individuals and populations within a dysfunctional or genocidal nation-state.

It is a world in which the best thing that can be said about a nation's political leadership is that it remains outside of American influence. Where standing up the United States and the West is an automatic good, no matter what atrocities are committed.

It is a world in which competing centers of power are to be applauded, no matter what methods or ruling methods such a challenge to the USA embodies.

We don't have to try very hard to imagine such a world. We don't have to try at all. If you want to see the world as Diana Johnstone thinks it should be, you need only to find images from yesterday's news in Darfur. In the westernmost province of Sudan, a genocide has been carried out under the world's eye; carried out by a regime that knows that the United Nations will always give it one more chance as long as they make token moves and symbolic compromises. A regime that knows that, with Chinese capital behind it, it does not need to kowtow to American pressure or pay lip service to Western sensibilities.

At one point, I believed I would be summarizing this book by saying that it ultimately amounted to no more than a long series of random negatives--that Diana Johnstone knows what she is against, and knows how to take frequent potshots at the West she so clearly despises. But now I see that I was wrong. It was bad enough when I thought this book was simply a reductionist manifesto; a paean to reflexive anti-Americanism. And yet, it's even worse.

"Fools' Crusade" is a book-length attack on secularism, individual rights, and the ambiguities and complexities of truly tolerant and cosmopolitan living. As disheartening and ugly as those sentiments are, the implicit message of the book is even worse. The most damning thing you can say about "Fools' Crusade" is simply to articulate and clarify the implications of her critique. In her turgid chronicle of revisionist lies, we saw all that Johnstone holds in in contempt. In the burning villages of Darfur, we see a terrifying vision of the world ordered as she believes it should be.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [7]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

THREATS ALL AROUND

This is the last section of the book, the final 2-and-a-half pages of this 268 page assault on truth and honest inquiry. We are at the end.

So what is the concluding moment of this meandering, sloppy conglomeration of conspiracy theories, revisionism, anti-Western hysteria, and disingenuous propagation of collectivist/anti-democratic dogma? On what note does she plan to end her book? What does Diana Johnstone think it all adds up to?

Well, as it turns out, it adds up to a post-September 11th world in which the primary threat to world peace and stability turns out to be--the United States of America.

September 11th was merely a pretext for a long-planned extension of American dominance, predicated on the shift in tactics and priorities which she ominously considered (without a word about changing global geopolitical and economic realities) in the previous sections.

Most tellingly, she refers to the planning of neoconservatives and old-line Cold War hardliners within the Bush Administration while implying that this demonstrates a continuation of American foreign policy during the Yugoslav crisis of the Clinton Administration. While there is certainly fertile ground in examining the continuity of American foreign policy across many Administrations, Johnstone is not discussing complex underlying themes here--she specifically uses papers and reports commissioned during the Bush Administration to defend her tenuous thesis. There is little depth, and almost no substance, to her argument.

Anyone familiar with American foreign policy since the 9/11 attacks doesn't need this book to be reminded of the "Bush Doctrine" and it's emphasis on preemptive military actions and renewed commitment to using American military power.

She says:

"Power has its own momentum. Whatever the declared motives, the war against Yugoslavia served as an exercise in the destruction of a country."

And so, on the very last page of her book, Johnstone makes it clear that she hasn't a clue. Yugoslavia was destroyed, all right, but it wasn't NATO aggression that killed it. In the end, this book isn't about Bosnia, or Kosovo, or the plight of the misunderstood Serbs, or Yugoslavia at all. It's about a knee-jerk, irrational hatred of the West and the United States in particular, with Serbs being used merely as props and their alleged tragedy as a convenient tool with which to berate the Western world and it's tradition of individual liberty and secular freedom. I very much doubt that Johnstone cares much about the true plight of contemporary Serbs at all.

After 268 pages, the book peters out on a tired note of knee-jerk anti-Americanism and stale anti-imperialist demagoguery. The mass of footnotes and bibliography that follows only serve to detail and document the vast amount of effort that went into this dishonest and pointless book; a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing but the stubborn prejudices of an ossified ex-radical and her detachment from reality.

-------------------

And so, my months-long slog through "Fools' Crusade" has come to an end. I have a few closing thoughts on the book, which I'll post next time. And then, it will finally be time to put this book aside for good.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [6]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

NATO'S BIRTHDAY PRESENT

In this section, Johnstone notes that NATO's 50th anniversary celebration was held during the Kosovo War. The organization adopted a new strategic concept, an attempt to adjust to new post-Cold War realities--in her telling, this was all a cover to increased US hegemony and imperialism. She claims that these three elements of the strategic concept prove US dominance of the alliance:

1. Nuclear Weapons. She claims that the plan ended any hopes of nuclear disarmament by committing the alliance to maintaining their stockpiles. The proliferation of nuclear weapons by non-NATO countries is not discussed here--apparently, only the US is responsible for nuclear arms control

2. Interdependence. This "point" is all about circular reasoning--the link between the US and Europe proves US dominance because the US is the dominant power in the alliance, and that dominance is proved by the link between the US and Europe. Or something like that. The mere involvement of the US is, it seems, enough to prove the worst of intentions.

3. Military action outside of the NATO theater. It is true that NATO is evolving into a regional and even global police force. I, for one, would love to see NATO troops in Darfur. Johnstone is having none of it, of course--the sovereignty of smaller nations like Sudan is more important than asking the hard questions about who will enforce international standards of human rights in a dangerous world.

She ends by noting that NATO now considered their security risks to be terrorism, organized crime, and so on, rather than the Soviet threat. She really seems to believe that NATO has no business redefining its mission even though the Soviet threat, it is safe to say, had already vanished.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [5]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

GLOBALIZATION'S FIST

Another one-page section, and easily summarized--the "fist" in the title is the US military. To quote the end of the first paragraph:

"The night fireworks over Baghdad in 1991 and over Belgrade in 1999 were displayed on television screens all around the world was [sic] a reminder of what happens to designated "rogues". "

The connection between Milosevic and Saddam isn't novel to Johnstone--Saddam himself spoke on in support of his fellow genocidal tyrant. The linkage is revealing, however--both dictators certainly fought against American imperialism in order to defend the sovereignty of their states. It is kind of Johnstone to provide such frequent and blatant reminders of her priorities.

The second and final (and long) paragraph implies that aggressive actions by the United States serve to keep other nations in line. She claims that the bombing of Yugoslavia served to intimidate Bulgaria and Romania into complying with the requirements of NATO membership against the wishes of their populations, as if the leadership of those two nations weren't already clamoring to join the Western club. She claims that NATO membership serves mainly as a guarantee that a nation will not be the victim of NATO aggression in the future; I cannot imagine what NATO might have bombed Bulgaria for in 1999, but I suppose there's an oil well somewhere she could blame it all on.

She ends by pointing out that NATO member Turkey gets away with numerous human rights violations against the Kurds. A fair point, except that she both ignores the real pressure placed on Turkey over the years--but even so, this would not be the only double-standard the United States has held regarding its strategic allies. Which does not excuse the hypocrisy, but complaining about the hypocrisy raises this point--which is worse, the hypocrisy of not taking action in Turkey, or the hypocrisy of taking action in Yugoslavia? Johnstone and other critics of American interventions love to point out inconsistencies, but she and most other like-minded scolds consistently fail to articulate what exactly the fault is. If the United States sometimes fails to insist on civilized and humane treatment by other countries, is that a reason to condemn the US when they do?

My question from the previous post still stands--what would Diana Johnstone's response be to unilateral American military intervention in Darfur? I very much doubt she could articulate a reasonable and coherent response to that hopeful scenario.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [4]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

2. THE REAL EXISTING NEW WORLD ORDER

In which Johnstone deliberately mixes different uses of the same word:

"Another irony is that the crusade against "nationalism" in Yugoslavia was led by the United States, which has no qualms about pursuing its own national interest with the clamorous support of a population whose flag-waving nationalism has no rival in contemporary Europe, or perhaps even in the world."

There is, I am sure, a distinction to be made between Fourth of July fireworks and cornball Stars-and-Stripes patriotism on the one hand, and a nationalism based on mythic blood-purity with religious connotations on the other. Pity Johnstone can't see it.

From there, she segues into a discussion of globalization as American hegemony in disguise, in that the supplanting of the traditional nation-state by international institutions such as the IMF and GATT are bound to be American-dominated and/or in sync with American interests. What she envisions, apparently, is a world in which the USA retains its sovereignty and everybody else loses theirs. Or, if not everybody else, then the "smaller nations" of the world. By which I doubt she means Luxembourg or Andorra; but most certainly means authoritarian, anti-Western holdouts such as Milosevic's Serbia. Once again, Johnstone puts the sovereignty of the state above the welfare of individuals.

We're deep in conspiracy land now--international finance is the primary tool by which imperialist America dismantles the sovereignty of other nations and eliminates rivals to the "New World Order" that she would like to believe has been at the forefront of American planning since George Bush Sr. made that phrase infamous. She would like very much for the reader to believe that is all part of some sinister, well-designed, masterfully implemented policy directed from the shadowy backrooms of the American Empire, out of sight of the clueless flag-waving hicks.

Unless, of course, it's time to rattle some sabers and kick some ass. Then it's time for the military to put some muscle behind this imperialist project--the subject of the next section of the book.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [3]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

PARTNERS IN CRIME

The "partners" in the title of this section refer to the NATO allies allegedly duped into cooperating with the United States; the "crime" refers to the plot to "destroy Yugoslavia." If that seems more than a little off, wait until you read the opening sentence:

"The NATO war against Yugoslavia might be studied by ethnologists as a contemporary example of the familiar role of blood rituals in sealing the unity of groups."

Feel free to re-read that sentence again; I'm sure most of you experienced some sort of double-take. I certainly did. Please note--I am not discounting the possibility that modern nation-states are incapable of participating in pre-modern rites and rituals. There are continuities of human existence and human societies which can and should humble the hubris of contemporary humanity. That is not the point--the point is more specific--is this true? I think that anyone with even a shred of respect for the facts and the truth knows that the answer is 'No'.

This imagined blood ritual, Johnstone believes, bound the NATO countries into a collusion with an aggressive United States "even if they secretly knew better." She compares this enforced, guilt-ridden solidarity to the racist imperial ideologies of the 19th Century.

Having established the self-evident truth of this thesis in her own mind, Johnstone then proceeds to detail a "dangerous precedent" set by NATO involvement in Yugoslavia. She goes so far as to call this delusional pattern a "formula for transforming contemporary internal conflicts into pretexts for military intervention." The "formula" is as followed [each point is the first sentence from the original text; this is all quotes]:

1. Economic "reforms" weaken the state.
2. The weakening of the central state aggravates ethnic or regional particularities and conflicts.
3. The ethnic troubles are interpreted as a "human rights crisis."
4. The United States and/or NATO go to war to resolve the alleged "human rights crisis."
5. The resulting chaos is turned over to an "International Community."

If you have been following me through the preceding 261 dreary pages, you can fill in the rest of the text on each point (each are a short paragraph). We have already seen this entire "argument" developed at length throughout this book. There is no point in slogging our way through her twisted logic and revisionist retelling one more time; instead, ask yourself one question--what would Johnstone's reaction be if the United States and NATO did what should have been done years ago, and gone into Darfur to put a stop to the genocide there? Would she apply the same "formula" to a Western-led intervention to save the impoverished black Muslims of western Sudan?

Here's hoping we find the answer soon, by the way.

The section closes with a long paragraph that asserts that:

"The unilateral procedures adopted by NATO for Yugoslavia amounted to asserting a Western monopoly on determining what is a "humanitarian catastrophe" and what should be done about it. A genuine, unquestioned humanitarian emergency could be dealt with legally through the United Nations."

The first sentence involves an odd sort of circular reasoning--there is apparently something wrong with Western societies determining how they interpret and respond to global events. The second sentence is, of course, highly ironic given the counterproductive and anemic actions of the United Nations in Bosnia, Rwanda, and now Sudan. While Johnstone parses factually unsubstantiated hypothetical situations and abstract legalisms, people continue to die under the watchful eye of the "lawful" United Nations.

The section ends with Johnstone asking:

"What is to stop a ruthless group, ready to sacrifice some of its own people to reach its goals of taking power over a territory, from staging fake massacres in order to gain the prinze of being able to "use NATO as its air force"?

No bonus points for whoever guesses what she's implying here. General MacKenzie and her should do lunch sometime.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [2]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

MEMBERS OF THE CLUB

This section is one page long. Just enough time for us to learn that, apparently, Italy violated its own constitution in order to join in the NATO war against Yugoslavia. How true this is, I cannot say. However, she is convinced that this is damning evidence that the war provided the United States the opportunity to establish hegemony over the EU through NATO.

The Italian PM at the time was a Communist, by the way--this is proof that the Western Left had been completely suckered in. This is a nice touch--Johnstone has actually had very little to say about interventionist left/liberals; this allows her to dismiss them out of hand. They were thoroughly duped, you see.

This is a short post. It was a short section. There isn't much more to say.

"Fools' Crusade" Postscript: Perpetual War [1]

POSTSCRIPT: PERPETUAL WAR

1. THE IDEALIZATION OF WAR

In some chapters and sections of this book, it is necessary to read a few sentences before the first fallacy rears its head. No such trouble this time around--the "Postscript" kicks off with this blatant disregard for reality:

"One of the great ironies of the Yugoslav intervention is that this operation, hailed by its ideological champions as uniting Europe around a noble cause, was an episode in the ongoing drive by the United States for supremacy over Europe as well as over the United Nations."

Well, that's just not true. Not at all. The United States, as any reasonable observer of the war knows, was more than happy to stand aside and wait for newly unified Europe to take the lead.

And wait. And wait some more.

As for the United Nations, since Johnstone has had not a word to say about the UN and its shameful record in Bosnia, there is little to say here. Or rather, there is a great deal to say here, but since the UN has been a minor--or even an off-stage--character in her alternate version of events, this is not the place for it. (I do hope to discuss the United Nations and its role in Bosnia in a future review or project).

She is correct to note the the United States helped push Boutros Boutros-Ghali out and Kofi Annan in, but what of it? Does she expect the reader not to realize that the members of the Security Council wield a great deal of clout within the Secretariat? Is this supposed to shock us?

She claims that the United States used the war as a pretext to "assert both U.S. dominance over the European Union through NATO, and NATO's dominance over the United Nations," which would be a fascinating and controversial thesis if she only had a single shred of evidence to support it. So much of this book has been along that same line--Johnstone connects some carefully selected dots and firmly declares that they lead to some apparently self-evident conclusion she never bothers to explain or verify. Again--conspiracy theories.

At least she has a new bogeyman--rather than the Trilateral Commission, we get the "International Community," which she refers to by the initials 'IC'. She compares the 'IC' to an "English gentlemens' club," an exclusive and privileged group of nations able to call the shots without having to spell the rules out. Not a bad metaphor, and maybe not even completely off-base, but what of it? Johnstone is good at finding little inconsistencies in order to criticize the way things work; she's not so good when the time comes to suggest a better (and even remotely feasible or realistic) alternative.

But again, this would be the time to bring up the role of the UN in Bosnia, a subject she has assiduously avoided. NATO has replaced the UN in some roles; it did brush the UN aside in Bosnia. Explaining why would require a closer look at the United Nations in the post-Cold War age of genocide. A perfunctory look would be an improvement.

She closes this brief section by claiming that the US coerced other NATO countries into taking military action in Kosovo in order to simultaneously deceive them into believing they were equal partners in NATO even as diplomacy was "abandoned" against Milosevic, leaving the military option--which, she correctly notes, would be dominated by the United States--as the only one left.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [20]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

[Some concluding thoughts]

The book Fools' Crusade consists of an introduction, a short conclusion (which I will begin to briefly consider in the next post), and five rather long chapters. Two of these five chapters amount to little more than sustained and relentless (although not focused or persuasive) attacks on a nationality. Chapter Four searched far and wide across the history of ethnic Germans in order to bolster claims that Yugoslavia was destroyed partly as a result of resurgent Prussian/Hapsburg hegemony. And now Chapter Five, which dispenses with the relative calm and moderation of the preceeding anti-German screed in order to indulge if naked bigotry. She is not the slightest bit subtle about this--Albanians, we are assured, are a hateful, uncivilized people who are unable to restrain their bloodlust against Serbs when incited by outsiders. Like wild animals, they simply cannot resort to reason or empathy.

What to say? There is no rational response to much of what Johnstone says in this chapter. It is not enough to point out how flawed, dishonest, and selective her use of facts is. It is not enough to point out how biased she is when choosing who to belive and who to doubt. Throughout the entire book, Johnstone has operated from the premise that ethnic groups are homogenous, static, and clearly defined. Furthermore, she accepts as a given that they have collective identities and qualities which transcend temporal and spatial divides. By the end of the book, this troubling subtext has become explicit and even central to her argument. The first three chapters of Fools' Crusade centered on a simplisitc critique of Western hegemony and American foreign policy along with a distorted history of events in the former Yugoslavia, all mixed with a healthy dose of conspiracy mongering.

But here, we've had little more than crude, quasi-fascist race-baiting. It was not fun reading this chapter. What is truly depressing is to realize that she felt obliged to write it. The tiresome dreariness of her worldview almost makes me feel sorry for the woman.

----------

Coming up next--the exciting Conclusion to Fools' Crusade.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [19]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

4. DEMOCRACY IN THE NEW WORLD ORDER

I don't like sanctimony in any form, so I will concede Johnstone's right to make the following comparison:

"Just as the medieval Crusades were proclaimed from churches, the 1999 crusade against the Serbs was proclaimed from the holiest of contemporary sites, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, by James Hooper, executive director of the Balkan Action Council."

I will only ask the reader to ponder that sentence for a moment. Reflect on the true nature of the Crusades. Consider the motivations behind them. Call to mind the disastrous and violent consequences on not only Muslims, but also Eastern Christians and Jews. And then read that sentence again. Ask yourself what sort of person would engage in such grotesque hyperbole.

If you, the reader, honor my above requests, you will have given this metaphor much more serious thought and honest reflection than Johnstone obviously did--she moves right along as if this incredulous, shameless parallel needs no qualification or substantiation. My previous post made note of how unremittingly hateful and vile the tone of Chapter Five had become. The bile seems to permeated all her faculties--here, near the end of her book, any pretense to balance and fair-minded concern for the welfare and safety of all Balkan peoples has been abandoned. This book, championed by Edward Herman as the work of a preeminent left-liberal commentator on the Balkans, finishes as a race-obsessed, conspiracy-minded screed against just about anybody and everybody non-Serb.

But anyway--the ostensible point of this section is the allegedly bogus nature of the democracy being supported in the former Yugoslavia by the West. She quotes the above-mentioned James Hooper in order to show that the West was really out to replace Milosevic by extreme measures, as a way to discredit his regime and, you might be sure, the socialist system.

That this was all a plot and not an even semi-sincere effort to rid Serbs of a noxious dictator is clear to Johnstone, as she points out in this quote:

"Had Milosevic been a genuine dictator, he would simply have arrested dissidents and stayed in office."

Is it any surprise that Johnstone dropped hints in the previous chapter that she considered the "takeover" of East Germany by West Germany to have been unfair and unjust?

It is not enough to glibly claim that Milosevic was a democrat; she needs to smear the actual democratic opposition in Serbia, as well. Once again, Johnstone the pro-Serbian Nationalist is a piss-poor friend to actual Serbs. She derides Zoran Djindjic as "notoriously opportunistic and unpopular" and portrays the idealistic Serbian youth movement Otpor as simplistic tools of of the West. That Otpor could have been both a simplistic movement accepting aid from the West and a legitimate voice of Serbian youth is, apparently, not a possibility.

So when Milosevic tried to hold on to power after his electoral failure versus Kostunica, this was all just cynical Western ploys to stage an unnecessary overthrow in order to justify the subsequent handover of Milosevic to the Hague by the Kostunica government. The same free and fair election which Milosevic did so well in was, apparantly, open to manipulation by the West.

The situation was more complicated than I am allowing here, no doubt. I have no doubt that there is a kernel of truth to many of the allegations she makes; armed gangs bused in to storm the parliament building, etc. But it hardly matters--she has no use for nuance and balance, so why bother trying to engage her warped and biased views in honest debate? There was much violence and uncertainty during the overthrow of Milosevic, and many of the actors on both sides were undoubtedly unscrupulous. One can acknowledge such details by way of adding the complexity, or selectively marshal them as a way to discredit the truth altogether. Guess which approach she takes?

So the moral of this final section is this--Milosevic was a democrat who was betrayed by a weary populace no longer willing or able to stand up to Western imperialists, stripped of power by a Western-backed opponent who controlled the streets with a pseudo-movement of callow youths fed on superficial Western iconography and monetary support, and finally turned over to international justice as a scapegoat so that his nation might appear sufficiently contrite. The idea that the man who controlled Serbia's formidable police and security apparatus was a helpless victim of spray paint-wielding youths would be laughable if Johnstone didn't seem so dourly earnest about it. She truly believes the man was a martyr.

And so Chapter Five--and this book, except for the 10-page postscript--end with this nauseating bit of drama:

"It was not enough to bomb Serbia and detach part of its territory. The Serbian people must be made to believe--or to pretend to believe--that they deserved it. The crime must be made to fit the punishment in the New World Order."

Johnstone's contempt for ordinary people and for the messy ambiguities of real life are mind-numbing. I did not quote the comparison between the fate of Milosevic and Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu, another socialist who was betrayed by a bogus mob. It's no use trying to guess at her motivations for sympathizing with such monsters. If you have been following my review of this book even superficially, you will be all to aware of what dark and nihilistic views are inevitable when one follows such twisted logic.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [18]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

3. THE TRIUMPH OF HATRED [continued]

I should note that we are only 16 pages from the end of the book. Perhaps that explains the unabashed crudeness of her anti-Albanian ranting at this point. Or perhaps this is merely the logical and inevitable culmination of just over 250 pages of tribalism, groupthink, collective guilt and the crudest strain of ultra-nationalism. It is possible that this is what happens when an unreconstructed ideologue of the Old Left, grasping for an anti-Western horse to hitch her wagon to, accepts the logic of a slightly older and far more primitive form of collectivism. This, then, is what passes for "progressive" in the moral universe of Edward Herman, Michael Parenti, Noam Chomsky, and our own Diana Johnstone.

"For the NATO powers, all this incitement to hatred was ephemeral war propaganda and could soon be forgotten. The effect on the peoples involved was much more damaging. Portraying the Serbs as inhuman could only further enflame a much more passionate and dangerous hatred: the hatred of the Albanians towards the Serbs. Albanian Kosovars could no longer resist the most extreme Albanian racist incitement against Serb neighbors when the greatest world powers, the United States and Germany, endorsed the view that Serbs were wicked people, plotting genocide.

"The double standards of the NATO powers enforced the tendency of the Albanians themselves to say and believe the worse of the Serbs."

It goes on like that a little longer, but the perceptive reader should already be shaking his or her head at statements such as "the tendency of the Albanians themselves to say and believe the worse of the Serbs."

There is really nothing to say. Once one has accepted the premise of collective identity and both collective and generational guilt, unsubtle bigotry such as the comments quoted above are inevitable.

It is interesting again to note how Johnstone views the people of the Balkans--almost as animals, responding unthinkingly to outside stimuli they are helpless to resist and incapable of analyzing.

We are then treated to a litany of stories about the fate of ethnic Serbs stranded in Kosovo after the KLA came to power. There is no defense for the atrocities meted out by KLA members and other ethnic Albanians. I condemn any and all actions of terrorism, revenge, and retributive violence. It is tragic that, as in the Krajina in Croatia, ethnic Serb civilians were abandoned by Milosevic, left to the mercy of vindictive forces, and mostly ignored by a Western media which all too often portrayed the crises in the former Yugoslavia as black-and-white struggles between ethnic groups. The tragedy for these forgotten Serbs is that, all too often, the people speaking on their behalf are people like Diana Johnstone.

We then are informed that the mass graves discovered in Kosovo after the war contained "only" a few thousand bodies. Again, Johnstone puts the word "genocide" in quotes, illustrating that she either truly doesn't understand how broad the definition of the word is or doesn't care. Or, more likely, deliberately wants to mislead the reader. For the honest, inquiring, and at least slightly informed reader, she has long since ceded the benefit of the doubt.

The section ends with a pastiche of the troubles wracking the region post-war. There is no denying that the situation in Kosovo was, and remains, troubling--the ascendancy of the thuggish KLA was no victory for secular civic society. The afore-mentioned revenge killings against ethnic Serb civilians were loathsome acts, no matter what the motivations were. And the ongoing criminalization of society threatens the very fabric of society. If Johnstone is truly concerned about the future of the Western Balkans, she has stumbled across a very good subject.

The fate of Kosovo and of the peoples living there is a matter of contemporary concern--Kosovo is in the news a lot right now, and if the proposed independence goes through I fear the news will become much grimmer. There are many issues at play in the region, and many underlying causes for the brittle state of civil society at the moment. But Johnstone is not interested in such complexities; nor is she interested in appreciating the diversity of viewpoints and experiences such a cultural crossroads is bound to contain. For her, it's all about hatred--a hatred which is carried in the genes or in the blood or maybe only in the cultural zeitgeist of one group. She complains hysterically about an alleged Western plot to smear all Serbs as genocidal monsters. Now she tells us that Albanians are chronic, unyielding haters who are helpless to control their homicidal passions when provoked. What does she think should be done with them? She leaves that point eerily unanswered.

------

That concludes my critique of this meandering slab of bigoted invective. There is one more short section before Chapter Five plods to an end. And then a ten-page conclusion.

Believe it or not, I only have 13 pages to go before I am finally finished with this horrible, hateful book. The finish line is in sight!

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [17]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

3. THE TRIUMPH OF HATRED [continued]

Just about everyone, it seems, was a propagandist for NATO--even Professor Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, chair of Holocaust studies at Harvard. His call for a thorough overhaul of Serbian culture is presented as if he were an important policy maker instead of an academic giving his point of view. In a chapter full of quotes pulled helter-skelter from out of context in order to create a portrait of monolithic Western opinion on the matter, the three paragraphs she dedicates to his comments are perhaps the unintentional highlight, revealing just how wide she threw her net in an effort to garner enough quotes to fill her quota.

Then Johnstone returns to her favorite sport--boxing with strawmen. Western exposes of Serb military tactics and reports of Bosnia-style concentration camps are examples of Western observers who

"...passed along to the public any wild tale portraying the Serbs as monsters."

even though the quotes she present do no such thing. This is a revealing slip--she is so wrapped up in condemning entire groups of individuals on the basis of their supposed collective identity that she cannot avoid taking the comments of others in the same light. So, therefore, denunciations of actions by the political leadership in Belgrade and of the Serb military forces become, in her mind, attacks on all Serbs. Her analysis of the situation is hampered by her own tribalist, anti-individualist mentality.

Again, I could start a fairly active blog devoted to little else but NATO hypocrisies, blunders, and missteps in the former Yugoslavia; if Johnstone were interested in an honest assessment of the West's muddled handling of the crises of the 1990s I might be more inclined to rebut some of her insinuations. But that is all they are--she gathers disparate information and presents it as "evidence" without ever articulating what it might be evidence for. Initial reports of atrocities were often inaccurate and distorted, it is true. It would not have been very hard to follow up on some of the more extreme claims repeated by some Western observers. She does no such thing.

And what about all those thousands of Albanian refugees? Wouldn't their testimony be of some use in interpreting events at the time? Don't be silly--as we shall see in the next post, they were too filled with insane hatred to be trusted.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [16]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

3. THE TRIUMPH OF HATRED [continued]

Johnstone now details what she says were the changing motives behind the war:

"What were the true objectives of the NATO war against Yugoslavia? How did the means employed correspond to those objectives?"

These are worthwhile questions, and worthy of serious analysis and sustained study. Johnstone gives them all of one page, just enough to time to present of motley assortment of quotes from various sources, some of whom actually having been directly a part of the NATO effort.

Johnstone has set her sights low--the Kosovo War was a tough sell to an indifferent public, and often the rhetoric of Clinton Administration officials and even the President himself chose sloppy hyperbole over reasoned argument. When you also consider the political compromises that hampered war planning and restricted the options open to General Clark, the reasons for rhetorical vagueness were multiplied.

Which doesn't excuse the confusion. But Johnstone is not interested in even understanding the complexities and contradictions of the NATO approach to the war or the political leadership's varied responses. She needs the reader to believe that the Kosovo War was a fiendishly executed finale to a well-orchestrated and long-running Western conspiracy to destroy Yugoslavia, and the fact that the Western world obviously edged itself into the war unenthusiastically after four years of mostly avoiding involvement in Bosnia isn't going to stop her. The murkiness around the war must--in her mind--reflect a desperate spin to confuse and mislead the public.

It isn't just American political leaders who get quoted--Johnstone quotes from Newsweek magazine as if all outlets of the American print media are part and parcel of this vast conspiracy. As usual, she finds stories and reporting from the American mass media oversimplifying the issues and call them "NATO propaganda."

Much media coverage from the time was over-the-top. I still cringe when I read or hear knee-jerk "Nazi" or "Hitler" parallels. They are sloppy and generally obscure the particulars of the situation rather than illuminating it. But, again, Johnstone is not interested in helping to bring the issue into focus. She merely wants to throw dirt in the reader's eyes.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [15]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

3. THE TRIUMPH OF HATRED [continued]

In light of my previous posts regarding the difficulty of finding any reality-based ground on which reason might find purchase in this section, I plan to just breeze through and make note of some "highlights."

-------------

The revisionism embodied in the final paragraph of the preceding section had so much momentum, it carried without pause into the very first sentence of this one:

"The fact that Albanians had invited foreigners to bomb their country was certain to stir violent resentment among Serbs. Some of this resentment found expression in acts of violence against Albanians."

Do tell, Ms. Johnstone. It takes very little study on the matter to learn that the violence committed against Albanians was not only systematic but also committed not by local Serbs lashing out against their treacherous neighbors but by well-armed and--more crucially--well-prepared--Serb paramilitary and police forces. Whatever tenuous connection to reality existed in Johnstone's critique have been all but severed. She is acting as an out-and-out propagandist, lying at will.

It gets worse--she assures the reader that it was NATO that made the already bad relations between Serbs and Albanians go from bad to "hopeless." Not the eight years of martial law, not the years of an ever-spiraling cycle of increasingly violent and savage resistance met by ever-harsher, ever more vindictive collective punishment.

No, it was all NATO's fault:

"The main psychological effect of the war was to endorse Albanian hatred of Serbs, recognize it as justified, and give free rein to subsequent persecution of Serbs as "revenge." "

And so we discover that the victims were really the perpetrators, and that they committed their crimes simply out of "hate." It is not enough for Johnstone to completely rewrite history--she must demonize an entire ethnic group. It takes an enormous amount of chutzpah to write a sentence like that.

And yet she goes on--after claiming that there was no way to know the 'real' reasons refugees were fleeing Kosovo in droves since you would have to either believe "NATO and its Albanian allies" or the Serbian government claims that people had been ordered to leave their homes by the KLA (it never seems to occur to her to ask the refugees themselves--of course, they were all hateful Albanians, anyway), she even describes the Serb forces fighting the KLA as being "determined to root out the traitors who were helping guide the NATO air strikes." Johnstone is, of course, betting on her reader being ill-informed since the NATO air strikes were originally very limited in scope. NATO didn't widen the target field until Serb forces demonstrated that they weren't going to stop forcing Albanians to leave.

Johnstone downplays the reality of ethnic cleansing with a callousness that is stunning. She assures the reader that Kosovo is a small republic which "one can drive across it in about two hours"; she mentions nothing about the confiscation and destruction of Albanian IDs, passports, and other documentation; and she even provides a military justification for the practice of ethnic cleansing by way of explaining why the fighting was so intense near the Albanian border:

"Serb forces had strategic reasons to clear the area of Albanians who could assist infiltration of arms and fighters from Albania."

The woman is a moral vacuum; the fate of hundreds of thousands of frightened civilians driven from their homes by violence and terror and stripped of the documentation to prove who they were and where they lived--all this is portrayed as nothing more than a temporary relocation in order to avoid widespread skirmishing. The fact that there were Albanian villagers to welcome NATO troops when they arrived somehow, in her warped view, validates her thesis.

More next time...

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [14]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

3. THE TRIUMPH OF HATRED

This is one of the longer sections of the entire book--over nine pages--apparently because Johnstone needs to further illustrate what a hate-filled, bloodthirsty savages Albanians are, and to thoroughly document NATO guilt in unleashing such monsters of any civilizing constraints.

The tone of this section was established at the end of the previous section ("The Rambouillet Farce"):

"The result was predictable and certain: streams of refugees, material devastation, innocent people killed, wounded and bereaved, homes and livelihoods lost. A less visible but equally disastrous consequence of this US-NATO decision to "solve" the Kosovo problem by war was an unprecedented wave of bitter hatred. In the name of "human rights" and "humanitarianism", hatred triumphed in Kosovo."

Where to start? This "result" was inevitable? The bloodshed in Kosovo was the fault of NATO for setting off a chain reaction of unavoidable bloodshed and revenge? Are we to address matters of geopolitical crises with crude, broad mass psychology?

The difficulty in finding any spot grounded in fact has become almost too much by this point--there is almost no point in addressing Johnstone's argument here because she is so far adrift from reality. The facts are plain, and well-documented--the campaign of ethnic cleansing that Serb military and police forces unleashed after the NATO bombing was systematic and well-coordinated; the logistical planning involved in that gruesome endeavor was immense. The idea that there was anything spontaneous about that shock campaign of ethnic cleansing is simply absurd. But by claiming that this was, indeed, the case, Johnstone also reveals an interesting premise underlying her arguments--that the peoples of the Balkans are somehow not responsible for their actions, good or bad. The Albanian resistance was, she assures the reader, nothing but an expression of the ingrained violence and hatred embedded in the Albanian soul, unleashed by Western sponsors. And the carefully orchestrated violence of Serbian paramilitary forces acting in a coordinated fashion in hundreds of villages across Kosovo? Simply a natural, uncontrolled response to NATO meddling.

And so sophisticated Diana Johnstone, who constantly scolds ignorant Westerners for their naive failure to grasp the complexities and subtleties of Balkan peoples essentially treats the various ethnic groups as unthinking, unreflective herds who respond en masse to outside stimuli. I've said it before and I'll say it again--those hardline Serb nationalists who have embraced Johnstone as an ally would do well to reconsider. Their sympathetic Western ally has some curious ideas about them.

---------------

Enough digression. It is enough to to have read the final paragraph of the previous section (quoted above) in order to set the stage for Part 3, "The Triumph of Hatred." We will begin quickly summarizing and considering that lengthy piece of spiteful revisionism beginning in the next post.