"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [13]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

THE RAMBOUILLET FARCE [continued]

The premise of Johnstone's argument is unspoken and apparantly unquestioned--Kosovo was, by all rights, a part of Serbia regardless of demographics, political realities, or even history (unless history is focused solely on early-medieval Serbia). Her objections (which, as always, mirror those of hard-line Serbian nationalists) to the terms of the Rambouillet agreement boil down to this--Kosovo would be free to mostly manage its own affairs even while nominally remaining a part of Serbia, which would have allowed Kosovo to have a vote in Republic (Serbia) and Federation (the "rump Yugoslavia" still existed then) affairs. That this situation was a reaction to the situation on the ground, and recent events, is something she cannot acknowledge, so the reader is left chewing over her resentment at this unfair state without any elaboration on how the international community justified the situation, even to themselves. But then, you don't have to explain all that when you're convinced it's all part of a vast anti-Serb conspiracy.

Her assertion that Serbia would have signed the agreement were it not for the stipulations giving NATO military forces free rein across the republic also hopes to tap into the same vein of credulous outrage.

All this twisting to fit the facts to the master narrative really pays off for Johnstone now--she can easily find quotes to support her assertion that Rambouillet was all about getting NATO into Kosovo because--for very different reasons than she claims--it was. The West had no faith in Milosevic anymore, and if Bosnia had taught the Clinton Administration anything it was that the UN was not the right tool for dealing with him.

You might think that Johnstone would be satisfied with this--for a brief moment, her fantastic storyline has dovetailed with reality; naturally she takes it further. Not merely content to score a point by dryly noting that KLA agreement to the Rambouillet agreement was a necessary precondition for NATO intervention if the highly probable Serbian rejection came about, Johnstone must pretend that this war was the desired outcome. All evidence to the contrary--the US delayed involvement in Bosnia for over three years, even as public outcry grew--means nothing. In her mind, this isn't merely a telling example of the sometimes ugly reality of international diplomacy, but rather is an important clue in unearthing a conspriacy.

And now she takes it even further; at the end of this section, we enter the realm of societal psycho-babble as she proclaims that NATO unleashed "an unprecedented wave of bitter hatred." Stay tuned...

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [12]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

THE RAMBOUILLET FARCE

One of the central tenets of Balkan Revisionism in Kosovo is that the Rambouillet talks were merely a pretext for a NATO invasion. The agreement did not give Kosovo full independence, but certainly would have restored the autonomy it had once enjoyed if not more.

Johnstone regards that all as a charade--a mere excuse to start bombing. She counters with this:

"In any normal negotiation, the long proposal presented by the Serbian government calling for extensive local self-government and guaranteed rights for all ethnic groups would at least have been acknowledged as a basis for discussion."

Note that she refers to the Serbian--rather than the Yugoslavian--government. Mostly, however, note that her analysis fails completely to acknowledge the reality on the ground. Considering that she ignores the Belgrade government's recent track record on dealing with non-Serb ethnic groups, and we are back to the problem I wrote about two posts ago--the difficulty of critiquing an argument which is predicated on completely flawed and distorted premises.

NATO and the West had no reason to take those proposals from Belgrade seriously, yet Johnstone presents them as if their sincerity is an established fact. And then she hits the reader with this:

"The "Rambouillet peace agreement," drafted mainly by State Department official Christopher Hil, was a U.S. ultimatum designed to bring NATO into Kosovo, get the Serbs out, and convince the Albanians to sign."

She is being deliberately vague--the agreement certainly sought to bring NATO into Kosovo (years too late, in my opinion), but claiming that it also sought to get "the Serbs out" only makes sense if we're discussing the military and police forces from Serbia proper. She is attempting to blur the distinction between Belgrade's armed presence, and the ethnic Serb civilians who lived in Kosovo. The latter, of course, were not being targeted for ethnic cleansing by NATO, despite her paranoid insinuation.

In the next post, we will consider her version of events in more detail.

"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Five [11]

CHAPTER FIVE: THE NEW IMPERIAL MODEL

RACAK: CASUS BELLI FOR NATO [continued]

In my review of this section--Johnstone's revisionist history of the Racak Massacre, I was completely remiss in not including this link from Balkan Witness:

Raçak - Mutation of a Massacre

It's a review by Peter Wuttke, translated from German by Mitchell Cohen, of an article by Johnstone entitled "The Raçak Massacre as the Trigger of the War" which she published in 1999. Johnstone worked out the themes and arguments that she regurgitated three years later in "Fools' Crusade". Interestingly, this rather thorough rebuttal was pubished in 1999 as well, yet in the intervening period between the article and the book, Johnstone seems not to have altered her views or have added to the slender "evidence" she relies on. Since 1999, much more information has become available; yet she merely repeats her fanciful claims of conspiracies, planted evidence, espionage by unwitting OSCE obeservers, and so forth.

I have no doubt that Diana Johnstone was aware of this article, any more than I doubt that she is unaware of the growing body of evidence refuting or undermining every point of her argument. She not only remains loyal to her clearly biased and flawed point of view, she does not even engage contrary evidence or arguments. Like any conspiracy theorist, she lives in a closed world where only decontextualized fragments of information which conform to the accepted narrative are allowed to pass through the mental filter.

Please take the time to read this very excellent article, which does a much more thorough job of first documenting, and then refuting, Johnstone's distortion of the factual record.