"From Enemy Territory" by Mladen Vuksanovic [1]

For a few months in 1992, author Mladen Vuksanovic was trapped in the Bosnian Serb "capital" of Pale, a victim of his refusal to be a "good Serb" and go along with the implementation of ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a fascist mini-state within Bosnia. During those harrowing weeks, he kept a diary of what he saw, heard, thought, and felt as he watched his fellow Bosnian Serbs dedicate themselves to a project of hatred and madness, and as news of the war that project created trickled in. The diary was published in Zagreb in 1997, and an English translation was published in 2004.

From Enemy Territory: Pale Diary offers an eyewitness account of how society became warped in the process of carrying out a genocidal war, of how fascism is implemented at ground level, and how that subsequently warps social relations and personal psyches. I will begin my review in the next post.

"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [12]

Chapter 10: A Loser's Peace
With the international reaction to two well-publicized incidents where large numbers of civilians were killed by mortar fire came the beginning of the end of the war in Sarajevo. Under extreme pressure, even from their Russian allies, the Serb nationalist army finally agreed to pull back their heavy weapons and essentially end the siege in exchange for promises that the Bosnian army would not counter-attack.

But while the shooting, shelling, and killing were over, it would be very wrong to say that life was "returning to normal." What had been normal in prewar Sarajevo was gone. The city, like Oslobodjenje, had survived, but the cost had been high. Many residents had trouble adjusting to postwar life, including the radical reworking of social relations. The rise of the military as an important institution, the replacement of many former residents by conservative rural refugees, and the increasing power of Muslim nationalism and the SDA all contributed to a new social order in which angry teenage gangs roamed the streets and Serbs who had remained loyal to the Bosnian state found themselves being ostracized simply for not being Muslim.

Oslobodjenje continued publication, now increasingly as an opponent of the government rather than a supporter. Ethnic cleansing continued in Serb-held parts of Bosnia. Ethnic separation would not go away once the war ended. Sarajevo, and Oslobodjenje, survived, but the values both had embodied were not so certain to return.

*************

This is the end of the book. There is no epilogue or conclusion, and since the book was published in 1995 it ends before the war--and the final orgy of genocide in eastern Bosnia--did. I regret that this review took so long--the book is actually a brisk and enjoyable read; it's only my own distraction with graduate school and family life which has dragged this out so far. I highly recommend this book to people interested in either life in Sarajevo during the war, or the role of a free press in wartime or when democracy and secular freedom are under attack.

"Sarajevo Daily" by Tom Gjelten [7]

Chapter 5: Hatred

Hatred of the other has to be learned. And even once learned, it needs constant reinforcement. Hatred is a powerful motivating tool if you are willing to accept the consequences, or remain blind to them.

The leadership of the Bosnian Serb separatists desperately needed the outside world to believe that Bosnia was a land riven with ancient, immutable hatreds. To believe so made the war seem inevitable and beyond the scope of international concern. It also legitimized ethnic partition. Many in the international community were willing to oblige; none more enthusiastically than Lewis MacKenzie, who mocked any possibility of a peaceful solution and seems to have arrived in Bosnia with his mind already made up. It is worth noting that Gjelten makes note of the fact that MacKenzie was offered financial compensation by the American advocacy group SerbNet to give two speeches propagating such views to the American public. This book was published in 1995. The only people who ever took MacKenzie at his word on Bosnia in the years since he was there were people who were clearly not paying attention.

The Bosnian government, and the Muslim plurality, just as desperately needed the world to believe that there was a long tradition of coexistence and tolerance in Bosnia. Not a strife-free, utopian paradise like MacKenzie so contemptuously accused those who differed with his "they all hate each other" condemnations, but a land of long-standing intermixing and cultural sharing. It was an argument grounded in both history, and demographic facts--particularly in Sarajevo. It was a compelling argument, and an inspiring one. It should have carried more weight with the Western democracies. But the Bosnian Serbs had tanks, and heavy artillery, and an overwhelming military advantage. If they couldn't find hatred already existing, they would will it into existence with propaganda and violence.

Because they didn't just need to convince the outside world. They needed to convince the people of Bosnia, Serbs and non-Serbs alike. It wasn't enough to win territory; the Muslims needed to leave and never come back. The culture of this new Bosnia--a Bosnia devoid of that special ethnic and religious mix which made the country what it was--needed to be cleansed just as thoroughly as the demographic map needed to be. Mosques needed to be dynamited and bulldozed from memory. Orthodox priests needed to sanctify racial violence and ethnic segregation. Bosnia's Nobel-Prize winning author Ivo Andric needed to be remembered for the violence he wrote about, but not the historical continuities which framed that violence. Remember the hatreds he described, but forget that the Bridge over the Drina was, indeed, a bridge that connected people to each other.

Keep teaching that hatred, because otherwise ordinary Serbs might forget it and make the unforgivable error of thinking that they can trust their neighbors and stand by their fellow Bosnians. Oslobodjenje was targeting because it was a symbol of the cosmopolitan tolerance which Sarajevo represented; both needed to be destroyed. The Serbs who stayed in Sarajevo, the Serb reporters who continued writing for its beloved newspaper, were obviously failed Serbs. How could they be otherwise? They had failed to learn to hate.

Perhaps the Bosnian Serb leadership got to them too late. That mistake was not repeated with at least one 12 year-old Serb boy in the newly-cleansed town of Hadzici. Echoing the same sentiments of thousands of Bosnian Serbs who had learned how to hate, he told a reporter "I do not miss my Muslim classmates one bit. It has been explained to me that while we were playing together, they were actually plotting behind my back."

Gjelten lets that boy have the last word in this chapter on "Hatred." And so shall I.

"Nationalism and Ethnic Violence" by Greenhaven Press [8]

Chapter 4: Should Nations Intervene in Ethnic Conflicts? [continued]

Nations Should Not Intervene in the Balkans

There are only three essays in this section. The second is actually the transcript of Senator John McCain being interviewed by reporter Major Garrett. The general tone of McCain's argument--and his superficial knowledge of the situation--can be garnered from his answer to the very first question:

"Garrett: You oppose limited U.S. military involvement in the Balkan civil war. Tell us what you hope will be the result of following the policy you support. What do you hope U.S. action or inaction will have accomplished?

McCain: I hope the result would be the civil conflict in what was Yugoslavia that has been going on for at least 700 years will be at a very low point, that the boundaries will have been stabilized, and that sanctions, embargoes and other measures will bring about a dramatic reduction in the slaughter. That's what I hope would happen. I am by no means convinced that that would be the case."

Well, what is there to say? "700 years" Senator McCain? Really? That's your "analysis" of the situation.

But in fairness to McCain, we all know that this line of "ancient hatreds" was the excuse of first resort for so many Western policy makers during the Balkan wars. It was just sad that so many in the media swallowed this line without complaint. 700 years, of course, is the maximum time one could say that Islam has been in the Balkans, so one wonders if the implication is that the Bosniaks brought their troubles onto themselves by becoming the 'other'. Were Croats and Serbs getting along famously before then? And who were the Bosniaks prior to conversion anyway, Senator McCain?

These are rhetorical questions of course, because I presume all regular readers of this blog not only have answers, they also have some understanding of how problematic the premise is--who were "those people" seven centuries ago? These are lazy assumptions, easily dismantled, and it's depressing that for the most part, the media allowed politicians and military "experts" to use such facile reasoning as an excuse to duck our moral and international legal obligations.

The third essay is by Misha Glenny, and is entitled "Foreign Military Intervention Would Fail." While his tone is fairly reasonable through most of the essay, and he approach to the issue is to consider the political and military realities as they existed in May of 1993 (I can't blame him for not being able to see ahead in time to the forced Croat-Bosnian Government alliance, so his claims that the logistics of actually arming the Muslims cannot be dismissed as a cop out), it is hard to shake the nagging sensation that he is simply playing Whack-a-Mole with any possible scenario. He never once suggests a possible remedy for any of the complications he has cobbled together. Nor does he suggest any alternate to military intervention; his only "solution" is to write in favor of the UN "safe areas" which he freely acknowledges is hardly a noble or just solution. But, he seems to say, absolutely nothing can be done; Clinton does not have a coherent policy for intervention, so why try and formulate one? It's hopeless! The neighboring countries are worried about wider instability? It's hopeless! And my favorite--the Serbs are not cowards just because they've been waging war against unarmed civilians with heavy artillery. No, no--they're extremely tough and fearless killing machines; you don't want to mess with those guys!

Which leads up back the first essay, a truly loathsome work of paleoconservative libertarianism from Murray N. Rothbard, in a piece ("Don Non Intervene Against the Serbs") that is not nearly as clever or insightful--or anywhere near as amusing--as the self-regarding author seems to think it is. It is, however, a dandy example of how inadequate Libertarianism is as a guide to foreign policy, and a helpful reminder that paleoconservatism is, at heart, anti-democratic and racist. To the core.

Rothbard is not subtle; he begins his critique of intervention by claiming that modest steps--such as bombing--won't work, so therefore it will only be a matter of time before Clinton nukes Belgrade. If case you're wondering how somebody this dense gets published, I should point out that Mr. Rothbard writes for the Rothbard-Rockwell Report. Why the editors chose to include this piece of drivel is beyond me.

Why will any Western military intervention fail? Because:

"...the Serbs are a magnificently gutsy people, a "primitive" folk who don't give a tinker's dam for "world opinion," the "respect of the international community," and all the rest of the pretentious can that so impresses readers of the New York Times."

With friends like these, the ten million-plus individual human beings in this world who happen to be Serb don't need enemies.

At any rate, one of the things Rothbard admires so much about these mythical primitives he fantasizes about is their disdain for "world opinion." Which is another way of saying they are the farthest thing from being a cosmopolitan people. Which, in Rothbard's dingy little world is a great compliment.

His rant about the situation in Bosnia--and the actions of the "pro-war Left" (the fact that humanitarian liberalism was liberal makes it a de facto evil in the paleoconservative world)--is little more than incoherent rambling laced with a healthy degree of ignorance. I won't insult the readers intelligence by dealing with the specifics, but suffice it to say that the old "Bosnia is an artificial country/Bosniaks are not a real nationality" is front and center.

But Rothbard at least has integrity--he explicitly states that the Greater Serbia project is "perfectly reasonable." And he assures the reader that "ethnic cleansing" just sounds bad in translation--after all, the Serbs don't want to kill the Muslims and other non-Serbs on the land they're taking, they just insist that they leave and never come back--what could be more "perfectly reasonable" than that.

Rothbard also dismisses the atrocities of mass rape by noting that "..I don't want to disillusion any tender souls, but almost all victorious troops through history commit systemic rapin' and lootin' of the vanquished." Yes, the apostrophes are in the original. I guess that's his way of making a "tough point." The systemic nature of the rape camps in Bosnia means nothing to him.

Also, forget trying to understand this situation, fellow Americans:

"American meddling is made even more futile by the fact that it is impossible for Americans to understand, not only those fierce rivalries, but the tremendous sense of history they all possess. How can Americans, who have no historical memory whatever and scarcely remember when Ronald Reagan was president, possibly understand these peoples of the Balkans, to whom the great 15th century battle against the invading Turks is as real, nay more real, than yesterday's dinner?"

One feels dirty just reading this anti-humanist sludge. I feel civilization shaking under my feet when I read such collectivist, tribalist, racist nonsense. And it gets even worse--Rothbard not only repeats the discredited belief that the Bosniaks are descended from the Bogomils, he even claims that the Bogomils were truly evil heretics and--and we're getting into "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" territory here:

"...there is much evidence that the Muslims still practice their Bogomil rites in secret, engraving its symbols on their tombstones."

What, no blood of Christian babies in their cevapcici?

Throw in the usual canards about the Serbs failing to be good Nazis, unlike the Croats and the Bosniaks in World War II, and that about wraps up this despicable piece of proto-fascism. Rothbard concludes by gloating, with bloodthirsty relish:

"Frankly, in any kind of fair fight, my nickel is on the Serbs. Every time. And, by the way, if you were caught in an ambush, wouldn't you love to have a few Serbs on your side?"

Serbs--the Rottweilers of the human race, brought to you by Murray Rothbard.

Shame of the editors of this volume for bringing this piece of filth to a wider audience. Shame on Greenhaven for lending legitimacy to such an obviously hate-filled windup. This was not an essay, it was a provocation, and a poorly written and woefully uninformed one at that.

"Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict" from Greenhaven Press [7]

Chapter 4: Should Nations Intervene in Ethnic Conflicts? [continued]

There are four essays in the 'pro' section ("Nations Should Intervene in the Balkans"). The first essay, "NATO Should Intervene in the Balkans", by Paul C. Warnke, gets it right; NATO has the ability to intervene and should do so, by taking firm military measures to force the aggressors to stop. The third essay, "The United States and NATO Should Intervene in Kosovo" by Bujar Bukoshi, also hits the mark, and I give the editors some credit for including this essay in 1994, a half decade before the Kosovo War when most casual Western observers didn't understand the connection. Had the author's words been heeded, the KLA might never have come into being and Kosova might not be saddled with the baggage that organization brought with it. The fourth essay, "Limited Military Intervention in Bosnia May Be Necessary" by John Roach might seem timid and halfhearted, but it is worth noting that the author was the archbishop of Minneapolis and was speaking in agreement with the official Vatican line. His argument is that intervention in Bosnia would have met the "just war" criteria the Church believes in, and that is actually a very strong argument in favor of intervention.

However, the second essay is problematic. Entitled "Use Military Force to Partition Bosnia", the authors John J. Mearsheimer and Robert A. Pape take an approach that was depressingly familiar at the time--they accept the logic of Serb nationalism while deploring its tactics. Their sympathies are with the Muslim plurality, but their solution is simply to dismember Bosnia as the Serb nationalists wanted to, only on different terms. Their plan would have "awarded" the Muslims 35% of Bosnia, and the Serbs 45%. This, the reader is assured, is perfectly reasonable.

In a short section entitled "Interest in Partition", the authors actually admit that this option is exactly what the Serb nationalists want, only with territorial concessions, while opining that "a multiethnic Bosnia must now have little appeal" for Muslims, after admitting that they have steadfastly argued in favor of a multiethnic state.

What is more remarkable is that while their plan would have restored easten Bosnia to Muslim control--an area which was mostly Muslim-majority prior to ethnic cleansing--it would give the Bihac region--another area of overwhelmingly Muslim majority--to the Serbs, and force the Muslims there to move to the Muslim ministate in the east. With friends like these, the Muslims of Bosnia did not need enemies.

The rest of this essay is concerned with the military and logistical details of this plan. To be fair to the authors, they do acknowledge the moral shortcomings of this plan. They also acknowledge that the rump Bosnian Muslim state would be much weaker than its neighbors, particularly Serbia, and they argue that in order for this plan to be viable NATO must take this vulnerable state under its wings. They also do not engage in false equivalencies, and it is clear that their sympathies are with the Muslims and that their plan is guided by political realities (i.e, what Western countries are willing to actually do). I don't want to smear them unfairly.

Perhaps this article, then, can best serve as an example of how the inaction of the West had made such a morally reprehensible policy proposal--using Western force to complete the work of third-rate Balkan fascists--into a reasonably argued least-worst scenario.

"Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict" from Greenhaven Press [6]

Chapter 4: Should Nations Intervene in Ethnic Conflicts?

It should be obvious by now that there is a fatal flaw in the premise of this book--the distinction between genocide and "ethnic violence" (which is never clearly defined to my liking) is never made. I'm not sure the editors even recognize that genocide is more than merely "ethnic violence" on a wide scale.

The introductory section of this chapter, "Intervention in the Balkans: An Overview", was not written by the editors themselves but rather excerpted from a publication by the "Friends Committee on National Legislation", a Quaker committee devoted to social and political issues. With all due respect to this organization, it is odd, and a little disheartening, to see the editors avoiding the task of framing the discussion in this chapter and providing background and context for the essays to follow.

One already knows where the "Friends" are coming from within the first paragraph, in which the violence in the Balkans is described as "senseless killing"; a product of "complex situations" in which we can't "categorize those involved in the conflict into victims and executioners or judge them as good or evil." The conclusion is that "[t]aking sides will not make things better. We are challenged to remember that every person is a holy place."

This, of course, is sanctimonious nonsense. The issue isn't really about judging people as evil or not, but their actions--and then holding them accountable for those actions. And sometimes, this will require vigorous and aggressive action.

After this dreadful opening, they really have nowhere to go but up and they mostly do--after a laundry list of "queries for policy makers considering what actions to take in the former Yugoslavia"; a predictably "neutral" list of peace-without-justice measures shot through with a healthy dose of false equivalency. One of the 'queries' is about that Jimmy Carteresque phrase "Conflict Resolution", one of the lamest and most pathetic responses to genocide one can muster.

The next few pages provide a synopsis of events in the region over the preceding few years, and there is little here which is objectionable or controversial. However, the "overview" concludes with a section entitled "Warnings About Intervention", in which we learn that intervention might be bad because it would put UN peacekeepers at risk (Adam Le Bor and David Rieff would get a kick out of that), and in the very last paragraph we learn that "crimes against humanity are apparently occurring on all sides of the battle lines."

The words "genocide" and ethnic cleansing" do not appear in this introductory piece at all.

Foreign Affairs Article on Ethnonationalism and Partition

The cover story from the latest issue of Foreign Affairs magazine explains much less than it promises:

Us and Them
The Enduring Power of Ethnic Nationalism by Jerry Z. Muller

Muller is certainly not defending ethnic bigotry or other prejudices, nor is he calling for ethnic partition as a desirable result; I certainly don't want to imply any dubious motives or beliefs on his part. However, if Muller possesses any particular expertise or wisdom in the admittedly broad area of inquiry, I see little evidence here.

Before I criticize the article's weaknesses, I should acknowledge the strengths Muller possesses. He certainly knows the sweep of modern European history well, and understands that forced population transfers and worse have been an integral part of the creation of modern European nations. His initial argument--that ethnonationalism is a more powerful and deeply-rooted force than Americans have often understood--is persuasive. He is absolutely right to note that dismissals of ethnonational identity as a "construction" are misleading, since what gives ethnic nationalism its power is the perception of legitimacy.

However, the conclusion he draws--that a humane, internationally sanctioned partition might be the least-worst option in certain cases--seems very rushed, and ill-supported by the preceding pages. Explaining that forced population tranfers and genocide have generally accompanied the creation of relatively homogenous nation-states in the past does little more than illustrate a prior disregard on the part of the international community to assume any responsibility for the rights of affected individuals.

Ultimately, Muller can only lamely conclude that the separation of ethnic groups within a multiethnic state, while an expensive undertaking, will ultimately be less expensive than humanitarian intervention, and will lead to greater stability. Some of the points he raises are worth further exploration--the idea that Western Europe has enjoyed peace and stability at least partially because the work of "partitioning" ethnic groups into their own nation-states should not be dismissed out of hand, even though I remain unconvinced. But the concluding thoughts on partition seem hasty and almost predetermined.

"Terrible Fate" by Benjamin Lieberman [1]

TERRIBLE FATE: Ethnic Cleansing In The Making Of Modern Europe

Although only part of one chapter is actually about Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia, this book provides a fresh and useful new perspective on the Balkan wars of the 1990s.

Benjamin Lieberman has written an important if flawed work. He covers a wide canvas--muck of Central Europe, Eastern Europe, including the Balkans, the Caucasian Mountain region, and much of the Middle East. This enormous region encompasses the lands of the former Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Russian Empires. Lieberman describes broad patterns as, over a period of roughly 200 years, nation-states were carved out of the areas opened up by the retreat, decay, and collapse of those three multi-ethnic empires. The rise of nationalism spurred the creation of national identities among the many peoples within those empires, who most often lived intermingled amongst many other peoples with similar aspirations. At the same time, the expansion of the Russian Empire into the Caucasus region led to the earliest known examples of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing, as the Imperial government sought to gain control over restive people in distant frontier lands.

In Lieberman's telling, the Balkan wars were then merely one of the latest tragic chapters in a long history. One interpretation of events is that nationalist Serbs were guilty of utilizing 19th Century ideology and tactics in the late 20th Century.

This is "big history" and Lieberman deserves a great deal of credit simply for recognizing that there was a dark, unifying theme to state formation in the wake of empire collapse in this large area. His genius is to see the big picture; very little, if anything, in this book is really new, although naturally many national histories do their best to airbrush their past.

It is worth mentioning that Lieberman is not a fatalist--while his history does a reasonable job of placing modern incidents of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia and elsewhere into a larger historical perspective, he does not therefore throw up his hands; nor does he excuse the actions of the perpetrators by placing their actions 'in context.' On the contrary--he seems to believe that understanding the history of ethnic cleansing, and seeing it as a historical process related to prior conditions and not without precedent will make more likely the prospect of proactive action by the international community. Lieberman wants the world to stop treating man-made catastrophes as unstoppable, indecipherable tragedies of almost natural provenance. By illustrating the commonalities between the Bosnian case, the Armenian genocide, and other similiar atrocities, we can get past the confusing fog of "historical complexities" which anti-interventionists always throw up in order to convince the outside world that interference would be pointless. Forget the details, Lieberman almost seems to be saying--we've seen it all before.

While not fatalistic, Lieberman is also reasonably pessimistic about the possibilities to undo the damage of ethnic cleansing once the deed is done. As he convincingly argues, reconciliation and repatriation need to occur while survivors are still alive, and after a meaningful justice process has been put into place. One tragic reason why his book is so important is that the frequent atrocities he recounts have, most often, defined the current demographics and geopolitical divisions of Europe and the Middle East. Ethnic cleansing works. The landscape he surveys is quite expansive, and across the vast majority of it populations are less intermixed and more homogeneous than they were two centuries ago.

In the case of Bosnia, it's 15 years too late for the international community to heed the warnings of this book, but it is not yet to late to heed this final cautionary note--the gruesome work of Mladic, Karadzic, and company is not yet ossified. The window is closing, but not yet shut.

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

I have two issues with this book, one minor and one not so minor. Firstly, such a book cannot help to avoid a rather summary approach to the subject matter--Lieberman cast his net wide, and since this is the book's strength it would be unfair to point out that it is also a weakness. Still, it must be noted that Lieberman is mostly interested in documenting this process, not in analyzing it. At the end, I felt I had received a great panoramic view of one of the darkest aspects of modern history, but I did not feel I had delved very deeply into the subject matter. A couple of chapters felt a little rushed and perfunctory, as if he was merely trying to cover all bases. This should not discourage the interested reader--specialists are free to enrich the broad canvas Lieberman has nobly traced with finer detail.

My other reservation concerns the unfortunate distinction Lieberman makes between 'ethnic cleansing' and 'genocide'. It is a common misconception among the general public that genocide refers solely to Holocaust-scale campaigns of absolute extinction. Both Parenti and Johnstone utilize the deceit of raising the genocide bar far too high. Considering the subject matter, it is to be expected that Lieberman should have understood the fallacy of this viewpoint; instead, he seems to have accepted it (although, unlike Johnstone and Parenti, he does not excuse ethnic cleansing for being "not quite genocide"). Lemkin is only referred to once in the entire book; the genocide treaty is never referenced in the book, nor is the accepted definition from that treaty. Lieberman, unfortunately, seems to have written this entire book on a misconception.

Most troubling is that he even recognizes that the phrase "ethnic cleansing" was introduced into the popular lexicon by Serb fascists during the war; yet, rather than seeing it for the sinister euphemism it is, he apparently accepts the term--and the false distinction it makes--at face value. This is the most serious flaw in this otherwise quite admirable and worthy book.

"To Kill A Nation" by Michael Parenti [14]

CHAPTER FIVE: CROATIA: NEW REPUBLIC, OLD REACTIONARIES

[continued]

After three pages of "context," Parenti is finally ready to discuss contemporary events. Sort of.

"Between 1991 and 1995, the army of the newly proclaimed Croatian republic conducted its own ethnic cleansing operation, replete with rapes, summary executions, and indiscriminate shelling, driving over half a million Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatia, including an estimated 225,000 Serbs from Krajina in August 1995 during what was called "Operation Storm." The resistance of the Krajina Serbs was broken with assistance from NATO war planes and missiles. "We have resolved the Serbian question," crowed Tudjman in a speech to his generals."

This paragraph is all the space that Parenti devotes, out of nine pages, to the four years of actual military conflict on Croatian soil during those four years. That's it. No mention of Vukovar, Dubrovnik, or of the actions and policies of the breakaway Knin regime. This paragraph is all we get.

He devotes roughly the same amount of space to the revival of the kuna as the unit of currency (after claiming that the new government was "set up with the help of NATO's guns") and the checkerboard emblem, which he falsely describes as a Ustashe symbol, even though he then acknowledges that the design was a traditional Croat design. The Ustashe, it should be noted, added a large "U" to that design. He is correct that the revival of such symbols, combined with the sinister and vulgar rhetoric coming out of Zagreb, was certain to send ominous signals to non-Croats (primarily Serbs) in Croatia; were his account not so one-sided and myopic he might have created the opportunity for substantive debate rather than hysterical incitement.

And so it goes; a dreary accounting of some of the gruesome and despicable acts of Tudjman's regime and it's heinous appeals to implicitly or even explicitly fascist sentiment. All of which deserve serious attention, but in a measured, balanced fashion. Parenti mixes various ugly details without discrimination or context. He makes claims such as "Serb-hating was abundantly evident during Tudjman's reign," a typical example of Parenti's tendency to wallow in rhetorically heated phraseology.

In the end, Parenti implies that Tudjman was a tool of Western financial powers, who gutted his own economy and poisoned his society with resurgent fascism, leaving his nation an economic and social wreck with nothing to show but the blood on its hands. People who have visited the Croatia of today might have a very hard time recognizing the country they see with the grotesque nation of Parenti's imagination. And concerned observers who would like to focus more attention on the sins of the HDZ during the war most likely will wish Parenti had turned down the intensity of his outrage a few notches, so that the rest of us can hear ourselves think.

"To Kill A Nation" by Michael Parenti [12]

CHAPTER FOUR: CROATIA: NEW REPUBLIC, OLD REACTIONARIES

Anyone who takes up the cause of Bosnian mulit-ethnic nationalism and who defended efforts to maintain the territorial integrity of the Bosnian state during the war of aggression maintained by Belgrade's proxies must, at some point, come to grip with the problem of Croatian nationalism as practiced and exploited by Franjo Tudjman and the HDZ in both Croatia and Bosnia.

I am not for one second suggesting that any sort of equivalence can be drawn--as loathsome as the rhetoric used by the HDZ leadership, including Croatia's wartime leader, there was clearly never any systematic, prewar planning for large-scale ethnic cleansing. Comparisons between the numbers of Krajina Serbs who fled in the wake of "Operation Storm" (over 200,000 people, at least a third of the entire prewar population of Croatian Serbs) and the Muslims of the Drina valley in eastern Bosnia are not as damning as Parenti, Johnstone and others would like us to believe since they substitute quantitative data for qualitative information.

However, the following points are not in doubt, and should not be downplayed by anyone who wants to lift the cloud of disinformation from the Bosnian war:

1) Franjo Tudjman was a genuine nationalist.
2) The HDZ was a hardline nationalist party that utilized extreme propaganda and worse, aimed at non-Croats--primarily ethnic Serbs.
3) The HDZ in Hercegovina often acted in bad faith, and the attempt to set up the statelet of "Herceg-Bosna" was little different, in rhetoric or in substance, from the efforts to create Republika Srpska by force.
4) "Operation Storm" was an often brutal operation that favored vengeance against the Serb civilians of the breakaway Krajina republic at the expense of justice and fundamental respect for human rights.

I could list more, but hopefully any informed reader will already know what I am trying to convey. Downplaying the sins of nationalist Croats simply because the HDZ has much less blood on its hands, and because the Croat republic was at a distinct disadvantage at the onset of war in terms of military and infrastructural resources only leads to further obfuscation. And, it should be noted, it provides ammunition for those like Parenti, who wish to create a bogus case for equivalence.

The case of Croatian nationalism and the darker motives of the Tudjman regime merit serious attention. Such concerns will inform my review of Chapter Five, in the next post.

"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" Chapter Five [4]

THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

2. VICTIMS AND VENGEANCE

Johnstone treats us to a little sociology by way of an introduction; here we are informed that Albanian society--being traditional in nature--is prone to ideals of vengeance. She quotes sources calling Albanians as having a "culture of hatred" and a "culture of spite." The focus on blood feuds and tribal concepts of honor underlines this introductory paragraph.

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THE MYTH OF THE SERBIAN MEMORANDUM

Four pages in which Johnstone argues that the infamous memorandum of the Serbian Academy has been completely misconstrued by anti-Serb Croats and Albanians. It wasn't, she assures us, any sort of manifesto, certainly not one advocating ethnic cleansing. An argument that she bolsters by:

1) claiming that the authors were sincerely, and without guile, merely addressing the underlying weaknesses of post-Tito Yugoslavia; and
2) ignoring the context in which the memorandum was written.

The entire section consists of little else; one is either willing to suspend disbelief and believe her, or one is not. I don't feel compelled to give her interpretation the benefit of the doubt. At any rate, we already know who she finds blameless. What is of interest in this chapter is the venom she directs at ethnic Albanians; we will get there soon enough.