CHAPTER TWO: "MORAL DUALISM IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD"
The introductory paragraph to this chapter repeats Johnstone's common theme that Western political leaders and media outlets oversimplified the situation in Bosnia.
"The break-up of Yugoslavia was increasingly represented by the mass media and Western political leaders as a struggle between good and evil. The Manichean approach was suited to mass media simplification. But it also fitted into a disturbing tendency in the United States first of all, increasingly followed by Western Europe, to reduce social and political problems to criminal cases and courtroom disputes."
I won't comment on her attempt to cheapen the work of the International Criminal Justice court as "courtroom disputes." It is telling that she seems to regard the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia as having apparantly been the product of "social and political problems." This is a fairly good insight into her warped reading of evetns.
The first section of Chapter Two begins:
1. MANICHEAN MEDIA
"The easiest way to describe a totally unfamiliar situation in a short time is by analogy to a familiar one. Nothing was more familiar to the Western public of the late twentieth century than Hitler and he Holocaust. Describing an event in these terms could arouse interst and an impression of understanding. It "sells" on news desks. Once the mass media began to treat the Yugoslav conflicts in these terms, likening the Serbs to "the new Nazis," the dynamic became irresistible. Serbs as Nazis, with Milosevic as Hitler, was "the story" that reporters were sent to look for. To succeed, they (or their desk editors) as often as not poured whatever they found into that mould."
This is the first paragraph of section one, "Manichean Media." There are several points worth noting:
1) Was the situation in Bosnia "totally unfamiliar?" What does Johnstone mean by this statement? Is she talking about the ethnic and cultural background in Bosnia? The savagery of the fighting? She does not believe that a genocide occured in Bosnia, so we can rule that out. And she argues throughout the book that the atrocities that so outraged the West were unfortunate but predictable symptoms of a brutal civil war; surely civil wars--brutal and otherwise--are not "totally unfamiliar" to Western correspondants and audiences. The only aspect of the war that she might believe was without precedent and foreign to Westerners would have to be the history of Yugoslavia and its peoples; in other words, this is yet another point in her book where she claims that the situation in Bosnia was culturally unique and unfathomable to outsiders.
2) Nothing was more familiar to Westerners than Hitler and the Holocaust? This is such blandly sweeping statement it almost passes by without calling attention to itself. Almost.
3) Note that the phrase "the new Nazis" appears in quotes. You might wonder who she is quoting. Hard to say--there is not a single footnote to this section. There are some rather strong charges in this paragraph; it would not be asking too much for a cited example or two. And it's not as if she is loathe to cite sources when she finds a quote (often from a source that contradicts her own beliefs) that seemingly bolters her cause. As interesting as her selective use of quotes is, it is at least equally enlightening to note when she does not use them at all.
4) We should not be surprised that she seems to believe the media actually needed a simplistic story line in order to get the public interested. Not that the media did not oversimplify the story; they most certainly did. There are interesting things one could say about that; for example, I have always believed that for all the sympathy most members of the Western media felt for the victims of the Bosnian genocide, all too often they accepted at least some of the logic of the nationalists who started the war. Blame was all too often placed on "the Serbs" instead of on the political and military leadership. Even while the tactics of ethnic cleansing were being condemned, the rationale was all too often implicitly accepted. So one might believe that this is one of those places where Johnstone has unwittingly stumbled onto a valid (if, in her hands, grotesquely overblown) point.
Then next sentence, on the other hand, suggests that her implied point has gone over her own head:
"When in doubt, atrocities were attributed to the Serbs."
So much for nuance. I made this point earlier in another post, but it bears repeating: Johnstone does not object to applying blanket judgements and collective beliefs and actions onto an entire ethnic group, she merely objects to the particular characterizations.
And what are some of these examples of atrocities of questionable authorship being attributed to "the Serbs" by default? Well, this time she DOES have concrete examples. And anybody familiar with the brazen propaganda of the Pale leadership and the thickheaded attempts at even-handed neutrality by the UN in Sarajevo will already be familiar with these incidents: the three 'market massacres' in Sarajevo. Yes, in 2002 she still thought these stories still held up to scrutiny. We'll revisit those episodes and examine what Johnstone tries to make of them in the next post.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Saturday, September 30, 2006
"Fools' Crusade" Chapter Two [1]
After 22 posts, devoted to 40 pages of text (that's 1.8 PPP {'Pages Per Post'} for those of you keeping score at home), I finally was able to bid Chapter One, "THE YUGOSLAV GUINEA PIG," a fond adieu.
Even as I was ripping Johnstone's logic, moral bearings, and selective use of facts to shreds (not that I'm a particularly knowledgable or astute critic; shooting rhetorical fish in a barrel is tedious work but in the case of Balkan genocide deniers, someone's gotta do it), I was repeatedly struck by the impression that the entire chapter had the feel of an extended introduction. So many different themes and arguments were introduced and breezed through, so many assumptions were briefly introduced, and so many premises were referred to, that after going through the entire chapter in detail the reader is bound to expect further elaboration in coming chapters.
After all, Johnstone makes no bones about it--she is going against conventional wisdom in this book. She is making claims that Western governments, Western-dominated international organizations, mainstream media outlets, and the bulk of Western intellegensia colluded either deliberately or by unconscious acceptance of faulty imperialist logic and distorted facts. That's a pretty sweeping claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And yet, as we've seen, she covers a lot of ground in Chapter One. It is not only a matter of questioning the conventional understanding of events, as we have seen--anything more than a cursory reading of her book so far reveals that Johnstone has embraced an ideological framework directly at odds with notions of individual rights, individual identity, and--most notably--individual conscience and responsibility.
Taken along with her blanket dismissal of genocide charges against the Serb leadership, suggestions of fascist conspiracies directly traceable to World War II, implied charges of an Islamic fundamentalist jihad, and a decades-long Western strategy to dismember Yugoslavia, Johnstone's explicit endorsement of the logic of collectivist group identity along ethnic lines and her insistance that international law somehow recogzine the tribalist dismemberment of a multi-ethnic nation-state is staggering; she isnt' merely jousting with conventional wisdom about the Bosnian War, she is refuting the Enlightenment, secular Western tradition.
You would think this would require more than 40 pages.
So I begin Chapter Two--"MORAL DUALISM IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD"--with the expectation that the rest of the book would go on to flesh out the themes and arguments laid out in Chapter One. I have my sources ready (it is worth mentioning again that, by and large, Johnstone relies on the same books and articles I, and most likely anyone reading this blog, have read; her ability to quote approvingly from books such as Silber and Little's Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation while completely ignoring the inescapable conclusions the authors draw is quite amazing). I have my previous posts up on another browser window, since I assume we will be revisiting the same issues, and it wouldn't hurt to have me previous comments handy.
In short, I begin Chapter Two expecting Johnstone to really bring out the big guns. This, I suspect, is where the choir she is preaching to expects to get the payoff. Chapter One was the appetizer; now we're ready for the main course.
It took all of one page before the sinking feeling of deja vu confirmed itself; my hopes that her arguments would become more intellectually vigorous and substantial were cruelly mocked. After drearily trudging my way through the disingenuous, rhetorically muddied, conspiracy-insinuating Chapter One, I had hoped to encounter more full-blown, fleshed-out argument which are at least worth engaging. In Chapter One she had, on occasion, stumbled across a valid point or two; I was hoping to sink my teeth into some of these legitimate points in order to sharpen my intellectual focus and grasp of the events.
Alas, no. Chapter One, it turns out, was an introduction to nothing. She already has her cards on the table. In Chapter Two, she simply moves on to the next half-baked, occasionally incompatable mishmash of misused fact and tenuously implied insinuation.
Keep in mind, this book was published in 2002, not 1996. Many of the uncertainties and much of the misinformation that prospered during the chaotic uncertainty of the war has since been cleared up. At least, in the universe you and I live in. In Johnstone's world, fact-gathering and analysis stop wherever is convenient for her thesis.
Which is all a very long, convoluted way of saying this: Johnstone begins Chapter Two with the tired, discredited notion that the most famous and bloody single mortar attacks on Sarajevo were committed by the Bosnian military against its own people.
Yes, she brings these old charges back up, as if they are fresh, unknown to the reader, and unexamined by outside observers. After all the bombast and bluster of the first chapter, THIS is the best she can do. Johnstone has played her game so far as if bluffing is beneath her, clearly implying that she's holding such a great hand there is no need for her to stoop to our level and play the game. And then she shows us what she's got. And it's nothing.
In short, Chapter Two promises to get ugly; I've browsed through enough to note that we will be treated to the revelation that there were no concentration camps in Bosnia and that the allegations of mass rape were fabricated. For all her intellectual posturing, for all her efforts to play the cooly objective "progressive" intellectual, it all boils down to lying through her teeth on behalf of her ultra-nationalist allies. As it turns out, her tediously constructed thesis has leading precisely nowhere; her pedantically footnoted book, cobbled together from a hodge-podge of sources either dishonest or dishonestly used, adds up to less than nothing.
Even as I was ripping Johnstone's logic, moral bearings, and selective use of facts to shreds (not that I'm a particularly knowledgable or astute critic; shooting rhetorical fish in a barrel is tedious work but in the case of Balkan genocide deniers, someone's gotta do it), I was repeatedly struck by the impression that the entire chapter had the feel of an extended introduction. So many different themes and arguments were introduced and breezed through, so many assumptions were briefly introduced, and so many premises were referred to, that after going through the entire chapter in detail the reader is bound to expect further elaboration in coming chapters.
After all, Johnstone makes no bones about it--she is going against conventional wisdom in this book. She is making claims that Western governments, Western-dominated international organizations, mainstream media outlets, and the bulk of Western intellegensia colluded either deliberately or by unconscious acceptance of faulty imperialist logic and distorted facts. That's a pretty sweeping claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
And yet, as we've seen, she covers a lot of ground in Chapter One. It is not only a matter of questioning the conventional understanding of events, as we have seen--anything more than a cursory reading of her book so far reveals that Johnstone has embraced an ideological framework directly at odds with notions of individual rights, individual identity, and--most notably--individual conscience and responsibility.
Taken along with her blanket dismissal of genocide charges against the Serb leadership, suggestions of fascist conspiracies directly traceable to World War II, implied charges of an Islamic fundamentalist jihad, and a decades-long Western strategy to dismember Yugoslavia, Johnstone's explicit endorsement of the logic of collectivist group identity along ethnic lines and her insistance that international law somehow recogzine the tribalist dismemberment of a multi-ethnic nation-state is staggering; she isnt' merely jousting with conventional wisdom about the Bosnian War, she is refuting the Enlightenment, secular Western tradition.
You would think this would require more than 40 pages.
So I begin Chapter Two--"MORAL DUALISM IN A MULTICULTURAL WORLD"--with the expectation that the rest of the book would go on to flesh out the themes and arguments laid out in Chapter One. I have my sources ready (it is worth mentioning again that, by and large, Johnstone relies on the same books and articles I, and most likely anyone reading this blog, have read; her ability to quote approvingly from books such as Silber and Little's Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation while completely ignoring the inescapable conclusions the authors draw is quite amazing). I have my previous posts up on another browser window, since I assume we will be revisiting the same issues, and it wouldn't hurt to have me previous comments handy.
In short, I begin Chapter Two expecting Johnstone to really bring out the big guns. This, I suspect, is where the choir she is preaching to expects to get the payoff. Chapter One was the appetizer; now we're ready for the main course.
It took all of one page before the sinking feeling of deja vu confirmed itself; my hopes that her arguments would become more intellectually vigorous and substantial were cruelly mocked. After drearily trudging my way through the disingenuous, rhetorically muddied, conspiracy-insinuating Chapter One, I had hoped to encounter more full-blown, fleshed-out argument which are at least worth engaging. In Chapter One she had, on occasion, stumbled across a valid point or two; I was hoping to sink my teeth into some of these legitimate points in order to sharpen my intellectual focus and grasp of the events.
Alas, no. Chapter One, it turns out, was an introduction to nothing. She already has her cards on the table. In Chapter Two, she simply moves on to the next half-baked, occasionally incompatable mishmash of misused fact and tenuously implied insinuation.
Keep in mind, this book was published in 2002, not 1996. Many of the uncertainties and much of the misinformation that prospered during the chaotic uncertainty of the war has since been cleared up. At least, in the universe you and I live in. In Johnstone's world, fact-gathering and analysis stop wherever is convenient for her thesis.
Which is all a very long, convoluted way of saying this: Johnstone begins Chapter Two with the tired, discredited notion that the most famous and bloody single mortar attacks on Sarajevo were committed by the Bosnian military against its own people.
Yes, she brings these old charges back up, as if they are fresh, unknown to the reader, and unexamined by outside observers. After all the bombast and bluster of the first chapter, THIS is the best she can do. Johnstone has played her game so far as if bluffing is beneath her, clearly implying that she's holding such a great hand there is no need for her to stoop to our level and play the game. And then she shows us what she's got. And it's nothing.
In short, Chapter Two promises to get ugly; I've browsed through enough to note that we will be treated to the revelation that there were no concentration camps in Bosnia and that the allegations of mass rape were fabricated. For all her intellectual posturing, for all her efforts to play the cooly objective "progressive" intellectual, it all boils down to lying through her teeth on behalf of her ultra-nationalist allies. As it turns out, her tediously constructed thesis has leading precisely nowhere; her pedantically footnoted book, cobbled together from a hodge-podge of sources either dishonest or dishonestly used, adds up to less than nothing.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
"Fools' Crusade" Chapter One [22]
As I have noted, Johnstone chose to end Chapter One with a lengthy, multi-section attack on the SDA and Izetbegovic in particular; the gist of her argument is that Izetbegovic was an Islamic fundamentalist, and that the SDA was a religious party as much as an ethnic one. With nothing but very circumstantial "evidence," she implies (rather than directly charge, which would require contemporaneous evidence) that the government of Bosnia duped Westerners into supporting an attempt to establish an Islamic theocracy inside of Europe.
I think a disclaimer needs to be made here; there are certain unpleasant facts that lend themselves to distortion and disproportionate citation in the hands of those who would smear Bosnian Muslims and the SDA during the war years.
The SDA was a nationalist party, not a religious party, despite Johnstone's efforts to portray it as such (she even refers to it as a "religious party" in this section). Still, it is true that Izetbegovic was more devoutly relgious than the average Bosnian Muslim; it is also true that the party included a hardline faction that sought to 'Islamacize' the party, Bosnian Islam, and the struggle for Bosnia's survival during the war. And during the war, those within Bosnia's Muslim leadership who sought to achieve a more Islamic identity among their community achieved some small successes. Some of this success was reflected in the military, many units of which became more explicitly "Muslim" as the war dragged on.
Finally; the SDA and Izetbegovic reached out to other Muslim countries from the beginning, and these appeals increased as the war went on. The government and the Army of BiH received money and materials from many Muslim governments, including the Wahabbi regime in Saudi Arabia and the theocracy in Iran. Weapons were smuggled in. Finally, a significant number of mujahideen came into Bosnia; many of them were organized into units and incorporated into the Army of BiH.
Mujahideen units were formidable fighters; they were also ruthless and often cruel. Atrocities were committed; these units were infamous for collecting the heads of Serb soldiers. Many of these foreign fighters stayed behind after the war ended, setting up enclaves of Islamic fundamentalism near Zenica. Many others took advantage of lax wartime restrictions to acquire Bosnian passports and new identities. It is known that Al Qaeda had a presence in Bosnia during the war, and afterwords. Saudi money financed new mosques, as well as the teaching of Wahabbi doctrine. Burkas were seen more often on the streets of some Bosnian towns.
---------------------------------
All of the above is true. Those of us who care about Bosnia and the ideals which its sovereignty, history, and culture represent do our cause no service if we do not face up to such incidents, where the government we supported (if Bosnia taught me anything, it is that in some situations, such as genocide, there can be no standing on the sidelines--one must choose) failed to live up to to the standards a secular, multicultural democracy should always abide by.
I do not fear such an accounting; just because the truth is more complicated and less clear-cut than one might first believe does not mean it ceases to be the truth. I knew very little about Yugoslavia, and essentially nothing about Bosnia, when the war broke out. My initial impressions were from CNN reports; at the time, I continued to get the vast majority of my information from the mainstream broadcast and print media. You can easily extrapolate the naivete and crudeness of my understanding of events at the time.
When the NATO war in Kosovo broke out, I found that the situation was different; I was excited that the Milosevic regime was finally receiving serious, sustained military reprecussions; but it was clear that most of the people I knew did not feel the same way. There was no enthusiasm for the war, no sense that a greater wrong was, however imperfectly, being righted. And there were disturbing signs that the campaign to end apartheid in Kosovo was being compromised by the Clinton administrations' politically motivated strategy.
I found myself struggling to articulate a compelling argument in favor of Western intervention in Kosovo; ultimately the discussion would encompass the rest of the former Yugoslavia and the wars that had torn the country apart. I had to revisit events which I understood viscerally but not particularly deeply. I realized I needed to learn more--a lot more--in order to understand the situation.
I'm sure my story is not unique, nor is it very interesting. I shared the above anecdote in order to illustrate that I am the sort of person Johnstone is hoping to rope in; for all her raging at the perfidy of Western elites and politicians, I suspect she knows better. She has, as already noted, read the same books I have, most of which come to very different conclusions than she does, and so she cannot be unaware that the actions actually taken by the U.S. and other Western powers most often did not match the lofty rhetoric and high ideals she disparages throughout this book. She wants to convince the poorly informed reader that he or she was duped into supporting...well, she doesn't really get to that. Western imperialism? The destruction of a successful socialist state? The establishment of an Islamist state in Europe? She alludes to much; she articulates little.
-----------------------------
And so Chapter One sputters to what passes for a conclusion; a grab-bag of implied Islamaphobia, swipes at "illegal arms smuggling" (has she ever mentioned the massive logistical support the Bosnian Serb Army continued to receive from the JNA? Do you really need to ask?), along with a healthy dose of outrage at corruption among SDA elites and their cadres. The facts I listed earlier are, of course, combined with sinister quotes from Islamic supporters of Bosnia, and stories of squalid black marketing, bribery, and other venality.
The hope, I suppose, is to disgust the reader with the whole cause of Bosnia. Johnstone's world is where ideals and moral outrage go to die; there is nothing to believe in here. Rather than rally against real evil, in the form of genocide and institutionalized racism, she would rather look for any flaws in the victim. She prides herself on this; she believes that she is bravely destroying false illusions. But her perception is completely without proportion. In her determination to strip the Bosnian Muslims of any shred of unearned sympathy, she succeeds only in reducing all human endeavors to their worst moments, and all human activities to their basest motives. Like any self-righteous Puritan, she seeks to prove that you are nothing but your worst sins. When the Bosnians cry that they are being wrong, she smugly points at their own shortcomings and says "You see? Your sainthood is unearned." Her obsession with petty legalisms and minor contradictions have led her so far astray, she can no longer see what is in front of her; the large panorama of human suffering and misery is nothing but distant, emotionally overwrought images. She prefers to get up close, and snidely point out where the artist missed a brush stroke.
I think a disclaimer needs to be made here; there are certain unpleasant facts that lend themselves to distortion and disproportionate citation in the hands of those who would smear Bosnian Muslims and the SDA during the war years.
The SDA was a nationalist party, not a religious party, despite Johnstone's efforts to portray it as such (she even refers to it as a "religious party" in this section). Still, it is true that Izetbegovic was more devoutly relgious than the average Bosnian Muslim; it is also true that the party included a hardline faction that sought to 'Islamacize' the party, Bosnian Islam, and the struggle for Bosnia's survival during the war. And during the war, those within Bosnia's Muslim leadership who sought to achieve a more Islamic identity among their community achieved some small successes. Some of this success was reflected in the military, many units of which became more explicitly "Muslim" as the war dragged on.
Finally; the SDA and Izetbegovic reached out to other Muslim countries from the beginning, and these appeals increased as the war went on. The government and the Army of BiH received money and materials from many Muslim governments, including the Wahabbi regime in Saudi Arabia and the theocracy in Iran. Weapons were smuggled in. Finally, a significant number of mujahideen came into Bosnia; many of them were organized into units and incorporated into the Army of BiH.
Mujahideen units were formidable fighters; they were also ruthless and often cruel. Atrocities were committed; these units were infamous for collecting the heads of Serb soldiers. Many of these foreign fighters stayed behind after the war ended, setting up enclaves of Islamic fundamentalism near Zenica. Many others took advantage of lax wartime restrictions to acquire Bosnian passports and new identities. It is known that Al Qaeda had a presence in Bosnia during the war, and afterwords. Saudi money financed new mosques, as well as the teaching of Wahabbi doctrine. Burkas were seen more often on the streets of some Bosnian towns.
---------------------------------
All of the above is true. Those of us who care about Bosnia and the ideals which its sovereignty, history, and culture represent do our cause no service if we do not face up to such incidents, where the government we supported (if Bosnia taught me anything, it is that in some situations, such as genocide, there can be no standing on the sidelines--one must choose) failed to live up to to the standards a secular, multicultural democracy should always abide by.
I do not fear such an accounting; just because the truth is more complicated and less clear-cut than one might first believe does not mean it ceases to be the truth. I knew very little about Yugoslavia, and essentially nothing about Bosnia, when the war broke out. My initial impressions were from CNN reports; at the time, I continued to get the vast majority of my information from the mainstream broadcast and print media. You can easily extrapolate the naivete and crudeness of my understanding of events at the time.
When the NATO war in Kosovo broke out, I found that the situation was different; I was excited that the Milosevic regime was finally receiving serious, sustained military reprecussions; but it was clear that most of the people I knew did not feel the same way. There was no enthusiasm for the war, no sense that a greater wrong was, however imperfectly, being righted. And there were disturbing signs that the campaign to end apartheid in Kosovo was being compromised by the Clinton administrations' politically motivated strategy.
I found myself struggling to articulate a compelling argument in favor of Western intervention in Kosovo; ultimately the discussion would encompass the rest of the former Yugoslavia and the wars that had torn the country apart. I had to revisit events which I understood viscerally but not particularly deeply. I realized I needed to learn more--a lot more--in order to understand the situation.
I'm sure my story is not unique, nor is it very interesting. I shared the above anecdote in order to illustrate that I am the sort of person Johnstone is hoping to rope in; for all her raging at the perfidy of Western elites and politicians, I suspect she knows better. She has, as already noted, read the same books I have, most of which come to very different conclusions than she does, and so she cannot be unaware that the actions actually taken by the U.S. and other Western powers most often did not match the lofty rhetoric and high ideals she disparages throughout this book. She wants to convince the poorly informed reader that he or she was duped into supporting...well, she doesn't really get to that. Western imperialism? The destruction of a successful socialist state? The establishment of an Islamist state in Europe? She alludes to much; she articulates little.
-----------------------------
And so Chapter One sputters to what passes for a conclusion; a grab-bag of implied Islamaphobia, swipes at "illegal arms smuggling" (has she ever mentioned the massive logistical support the Bosnian Serb Army continued to receive from the JNA? Do you really need to ask?), along with a healthy dose of outrage at corruption among SDA elites and their cadres. The facts I listed earlier are, of course, combined with sinister quotes from Islamic supporters of Bosnia, and stories of squalid black marketing, bribery, and other venality.
The hope, I suppose, is to disgust the reader with the whole cause of Bosnia. Johnstone's world is where ideals and moral outrage go to die; there is nothing to believe in here. Rather than rally against real evil, in the form of genocide and institutionalized racism, she would rather look for any flaws in the victim. She prides herself on this; she believes that she is bravely destroying false illusions. But her perception is completely without proportion. In her determination to strip the Bosnian Muslims of any shred of unearned sympathy, she succeeds only in reducing all human endeavors to their worst moments, and all human activities to their basest motives. Like any self-righteous Puritan, she seeks to prove that you are nothing but your worst sins. When the Bosnians cry that they are being wrong, she smugly points at their own shortcomings and says "You see? Your sainthood is unearned." Her obsession with petty legalisms and minor contradictions have led her so far astray, she can no longer see what is in front of her; the large panorama of human suffering and misery is nothing but distant, emotionally overwrought images. She prefers to get up close, and snidely point out where the artist missed a brush stroke.
"Fools' Crusade" Chapter One [21]
SACRIFICING PEACE
The first sentence of this section sets the tone:
"Izetbegovic was a man with a cause he considered sacred."
The insinuation that he was a fundamentalist intent of creating an Islamic state is clear; the use of the word 'sacred' has obvious religious connotations. The purpose of this section is to link Izetbegovic and the SDA with worldwide jihadists and Islamists. Izetbegovic was the leader of a nationalist party that appealled to an 'ethnic' group defined by relgion, the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia. Nationalist politics prevailed in the dying years of Yugoslavia. The Muslim-led Bosnia government, desperate to get weapons and aid from any source it could get them, turned to the Muslim world. Bosnia's government accepted any help the Muslim world was willing to offer in their desperate war for survival, and this included several hundred or even several thousand mujahideen.
Johnstone takes these few facts and juggles them fiercely, trying to create the illusion of a developed, cogent arguement. By ignoring both chronology and outside events (there has not been any mention of events in Serbia, both during and immediately prior to the Bosnian elections, for example), she attempts to create the illusion of having uncovered a vast Islamic conspiracy behind the SDA.
For example, she discusses the creation of ethnic Muslim militias in 1991, without context, to develop the illusion that there was a systematic and logistically advanced plan for war by the SDA leadership.
"This involved obtaining money, arms, and volunteers from Muslim countries. In May 1991, ten months before the proclamation of independence that set off civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cengic [an imam who served as deputy defense minister] gave written instructions to SDA party faithful from all over the Republic to form Muslim brigades under the command of General Sulejman Vranja, a Yugoslav army officer still on active duty. Needless to say, this clearly treasonable activity was kept secret at the time."
Needless to say, Johnstone does not discuss the prior development of much larger Serb militias in both Bosnia and Croatia; nor does she discuss the complicity of the JNA in the militarization of Serbian areas throughout those republics long before this May 1991 order. Her disproportionate outrage is not new, of course, but again a reasonably informed reader must balance outrage at her dishonesty with befuddlement at her motives; she has read the same books I have, for example--why does she pretend not to know these things?
She goes on:
"The prospect of war never deterred Izetbegovic. Once the war began, he wanted to keep it going, and even after Dayton, he continued to arm in order to be able to resume it. But there has never been the slightest suggestion by the International Criminal Tribunal that Izetbegovic's declared readiness to sacrifice peace might imply any responsibility whatsoever for the ensuing war."
I wouldn't bother with this lenghty analysis of her work if I didn't think Johnstone was presenting a point of view and an interpretation of events that needs to be addressed and refuted at length; I believe that the cause of Bosnia was one of individual human rights versus collective identity and generational guilt, of civic nationalism versus ethnic nationalism, and of secular citizenship versus tribalism. Still, there are times when I wonder if she isn't just batshit crazy. Simple distinctions sometimes confound her; her failure to grasp the true meaning of 'genocide' might be wrapped up in her inability to distinguish between different levels of war crimes, from isolated incidents carried out by rouge units versus predetermined state policies.
In the above quoted paragraph, I'm not sure if understands that it's not a crime against humanity for a head of state to lead his country in a time of war. His leadership might have been reckless, but Johnstone has been endlessly droning on about international law and other legalities throughout the book; Bosnia-Hercegovina was a UN member state exercising its right to self-defense. Even if you recognized the cause of Serb nationalism as a legitimate grievance, one would then need to concede the fact that the government in Sarajevo was fighting a civil war, which is not banned by any international body. Indeed, the UN has been historically reluctant to intervene in such internal matters, considering such intervention a comprimise of sovereignty. Why Johnstone would expect Izetbegovic to be charged with war crimes for carrying on in a war where his aim was to reestablish control over his own county is impossible to fathom.
She cannot, of course, concede that Izetbegovic and his government were fighting for anything noble--indeed, she charges him with trying to establish an Islamic theocracy at the expense of the Christian majority--so she therefore does not need to consider his reasons for rejecting 'peace' (a peace without justice).
Having breezed through a very truncated history of the SDAs' feeble attempts at self-armament in the months leading up to the war, she skips ahead five years to this scene:
"At Dayton, however, eager to secure a settlement, U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke finally lost patience with Izetbegovic. "If you want to let the fighting go on, that is your right," he told the Muslim leader, "but Washington does not want you to expect the United State to be your air force. If you continue the war, you will be shooting craps with your nation's destiny." Aside from the inappropriate nature of the metaphor (one cannot imagine the auster Izetbegovic "shooting craps" or having any familiarity with such an activity), Holbrookes' warning ironically echoed an earlier warning to Izetbegovic voiced by none other than the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic--the very warning that was cited by the International Criminal Tribunal as the main evidence of Karadzic's intention to commit "genocide" (see Chapter 3)."
Now THAT'S some chutzpah...comparing Holbrooke's diplomatic strong-arming to Karadzic's thinly veiled threats; two very different men with very different agendas in very different situations. And the end result? She suggests that Karadzic's crude threat to exterminate an entire ethnic group was, in fact, nothing but reasonable words of caution to a relgiously motivated, blood-thirsty fanatic.
She goes on. The stage is set for one of the most unfortunate episodes in the war from the Bosnian side; the mujahideen units that fought on the Muslim side, mostly in central Bosnia. This post has grown long enough; perhaps it would be good to save this discussion for the next one, where we will finally put Chapter One to rest.
The first sentence of this section sets the tone:
"Izetbegovic was a man with a cause he considered sacred."
The insinuation that he was a fundamentalist intent of creating an Islamic state is clear; the use of the word 'sacred' has obvious religious connotations. The purpose of this section is to link Izetbegovic and the SDA with worldwide jihadists and Islamists. Izetbegovic was the leader of a nationalist party that appealled to an 'ethnic' group defined by relgion, the Slavic Muslims of Bosnia. Nationalist politics prevailed in the dying years of Yugoslavia. The Muslim-led Bosnia government, desperate to get weapons and aid from any source it could get them, turned to the Muslim world. Bosnia's government accepted any help the Muslim world was willing to offer in their desperate war for survival, and this included several hundred or even several thousand mujahideen.
Johnstone takes these few facts and juggles them fiercely, trying to create the illusion of a developed, cogent arguement. By ignoring both chronology and outside events (there has not been any mention of events in Serbia, both during and immediately prior to the Bosnian elections, for example), she attempts to create the illusion of having uncovered a vast Islamic conspiracy behind the SDA.
For example, she discusses the creation of ethnic Muslim militias in 1991, without context, to develop the illusion that there was a systematic and logistically advanced plan for war by the SDA leadership.
"This involved obtaining money, arms, and volunteers from Muslim countries. In May 1991, ten months before the proclamation of independence that set off civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Cengic [an imam who served as deputy defense minister] gave written instructions to SDA party faithful from all over the Republic to form Muslim brigades under the command of General Sulejman Vranja, a Yugoslav army officer still on active duty. Needless to say, this clearly treasonable activity was kept secret at the time."
Needless to say, Johnstone does not discuss the prior development of much larger Serb militias in both Bosnia and Croatia; nor does she discuss the complicity of the JNA in the militarization of Serbian areas throughout those republics long before this May 1991 order. Her disproportionate outrage is not new, of course, but again a reasonably informed reader must balance outrage at her dishonesty with befuddlement at her motives; she has read the same books I have, for example--why does she pretend not to know these things?
She goes on:
"The prospect of war never deterred Izetbegovic. Once the war began, he wanted to keep it going, and even after Dayton, he continued to arm in order to be able to resume it. But there has never been the slightest suggestion by the International Criminal Tribunal that Izetbegovic's declared readiness to sacrifice peace might imply any responsibility whatsoever for the ensuing war."
I wouldn't bother with this lenghty analysis of her work if I didn't think Johnstone was presenting a point of view and an interpretation of events that needs to be addressed and refuted at length; I believe that the cause of Bosnia was one of individual human rights versus collective identity and generational guilt, of civic nationalism versus ethnic nationalism, and of secular citizenship versus tribalism. Still, there are times when I wonder if she isn't just batshit crazy. Simple distinctions sometimes confound her; her failure to grasp the true meaning of 'genocide' might be wrapped up in her inability to distinguish between different levels of war crimes, from isolated incidents carried out by rouge units versus predetermined state policies.
In the above quoted paragraph, I'm not sure if understands that it's not a crime against humanity for a head of state to lead his country in a time of war. His leadership might have been reckless, but Johnstone has been endlessly droning on about international law and other legalities throughout the book; Bosnia-Hercegovina was a UN member state exercising its right to self-defense. Even if you recognized the cause of Serb nationalism as a legitimate grievance, one would then need to concede the fact that the government in Sarajevo was fighting a civil war, which is not banned by any international body. Indeed, the UN has been historically reluctant to intervene in such internal matters, considering such intervention a comprimise of sovereignty. Why Johnstone would expect Izetbegovic to be charged with war crimes for carrying on in a war where his aim was to reestablish control over his own county is impossible to fathom.
She cannot, of course, concede that Izetbegovic and his government were fighting for anything noble--indeed, she charges him with trying to establish an Islamic theocracy at the expense of the Christian majority--so she therefore does not need to consider his reasons for rejecting 'peace' (a peace without justice).
Having breezed through a very truncated history of the SDAs' feeble attempts at self-armament in the months leading up to the war, she skips ahead five years to this scene:
"At Dayton, however, eager to secure a settlement, U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke finally lost patience with Izetbegovic. "If you want to let the fighting go on, that is your right," he told the Muslim leader, "but Washington does not want you to expect the United State to be your air force. If you continue the war, you will be shooting craps with your nation's destiny." Aside from the inappropriate nature of the metaphor (one cannot imagine the auster Izetbegovic "shooting craps" or having any familiarity with such an activity), Holbrookes' warning ironically echoed an earlier warning to Izetbegovic voiced by none other than the Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic--the very warning that was cited by the International Criminal Tribunal as the main evidence of Karadzic's intention to commit "genocide" (see Chapter 3)."
Now THAT'S some chutzpah...comparing Holbrooke's diplomatic strong-arming to Karadzic's thinly veiled threats; two very different men with very different agendas in very different situations. And the end result? She suggests that Karadzic's crude threat to exterminate an entire ethnic group was, in fact, nothing but reasonable words of caution to a relgiously motivated, blood-thirsty fanatic.
She goes on. The stage is set for one of the most unfortunate episodes in the war from the Bosnian side; the mujahideen units that fought on the Muslim side, mostly in central Bosnia. This post has grown long enough; perhaps it would be good to save this discussion for the next one, where we will finally put Chapter One to rest.
Monday, September 25, 2006
"Fools' Crusade" Chapter One [20]
POLITICS AND RELIGION
Serb nationalists like to claim they were fighting against "Islamic fundamentalism" in Bosnia. More sane observers have found that claim laughably ridiculous on the face of it; Bosnia's Muslims were by and large extremely secular and Western-leaning; the country was democratic in nature; there was no attempt to impose sharia even on the Muslim communities, let alone non-Muslims; the government never sent a single fighter outside of Bosnian soil.
But the Islamaphobes have an ally--Johnstone has found all the pieces she needs to suggest that there was an Islamic conspiracy afoot in Bosnia. Does she put all those pieces together to create a convincing portrait? Of course not--as always, Johnstone links together isolated facts, free of any messy context, and cobbles them together so that mere proximity--in isolation from any mitigating factors, or the accumulated baggage of messy reality--might hopefully imply a cohesive theme.
Actually, Srebrenica Massacre did a fine job of summing up the problems with Johnstone's "arguement" in his comment to the previous post (for some reason, it claims '0 comments,' but all the comments are still there). Izetbegovic published his "Islamic Declaration" in 1970. Johnstone, playing along with her nationalist buddies, works on feeding the implication that it was some sort of Mein Kampf, a blueprint for an Islamic Bosnia.
Innuendo runs deep in this section. Johnstone notes that Izetbegovic, as a decendent of the Muslim upper class of Ottoman Turkey (she playes this card a lot, by the way--comparing the elite status of the SDA leadership to the peasant status of rural Bosnian Serbs):
"...is an heir to a Muslim elite which bitterly opposed attempts by the later Turkish Sultans to make concessions to Balkan Christians in order to preserve Ottoman rule in the Balkans."
It never ceases to amaze me how often, and how blithely, Johnstone will indulge in notions of generational guilt. Compared to implications that modern-day Germany represents resurgent Nazism and that contemporary Croats are all card-carrying Ustasha, holding Izetbegovic accountable for the grievances of 19th Century Muslim elites is relatively minor; still, it's yet another Freudian slip, another indication of how thoroughly she has assimiliated the collectivist logic of generational and tribal identity.
This section goes on for three pages, dredging up quotes from this document without a whiff of context; that she fails to mention he did not include Bosnia itself in his vision of a truly Islamic world should surprise you not at all. Nor should it amaze that, even if you take her carefully chosen quotes at face value, Izetbegovic failed miserably as a champion of Islamic world conquest--one quote from his book warns of the failure to adequately prepare for seizing power; being adequately prepared to take power by force was most certainly not a vice of the SDA under Izetbegovic.
After several paragraphs of carefully decontextualized quotes and random bits of innuendo posing as analysis, she starts the penultimate paragraph with this curious quote:
"If "fundamentalism" can be defined as basing an entire social and political order on religion, then Izetbegovic was indeed a "fundamentalist." "
Yes, and if "my wife" can be defined as "Salma Hayek," then I'm married to one of the most caliente women in Hollywood. I guess once you've redefined "genocide" you've pretty much got carte blanche to redefine terms at your leisure.
This paragraph-from-an-alternate-universe continues thusly:
"Izetbegovic's demand for an Islamic state once Muslims are a majority of the population deserves attention, since demographic changes in Bosnia-Herzegovina were moving toward a Muslim majority. Did fear of this prospect help drive non-Muslim citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina into the arms of nationalist Serb and Croat parties? Whether or not such fears were groundless, the question needs to be raised."
[underlined text was italicized in the original]
One waits for Johnstone to begin quoting from SDA statements and party platforms calling for an Islamic state in Bosnia; she does not, of course, because she has no such documentation. Instead, she has a book written 20 years prior (republished in 1990, she ominously notes) as her sole source for these 'demands.' Thus she implies that this urbane, educated, pro-Western man was a raging fundamentalist seeking to reimpose sharia on the decendents of the same Balkan Christian peasants his ancestors lorded over.
Such fears were groundless, although they were certainly fueled by racist propaganda coming from the nationalist leaders Johnstone has allied herself with. The specter of Muslim hordes out-breeding the scared Christians of Bosnia was a scenario dreamed up by the most extreme elements of the SDS; and here we have Johnstone giving creedence to them. The question that REALLY needs to be asked is this: Has this woman no shame?
Serb nationalists like to claim they were fighting against "Islamic fundamentalism" in Bosnia. More sane observers have found that claim laughably ridiculous on the face of it; Bosnia's Muslims were by and large extremely secular and Western-leaning; the country was democratic in nature; there was no attempt to impose sharia even on the Muslim communities, let alone non-Muslims; the government never sent a single fighter outside of Bosnian soil.
But the Islamaphobes have an ally--Johnstone has found all the pieces she needs to suggest that there was an Islamic conspiracy afoot in Bosnia. Does she put all those pieces together to create a convincing portrait? Of course not--as always, Johnstone links together isolated facts, free of any messy context, and cobbles them together so that mere proximity--in isolation from any mitigating factors, or the accumulated baggage of messy reality--might hopefully imply a cohesive theme.
Actually, Srebrenica Massacre did a fine job of summing up the problems with Johnstone's "arguement" in his comment to the previous post (for some reason, it claims '0 comments,' but all the comments are still there). Izetbegovic published his "Islamic Declaration" in 1970. Johnstone, playing along with her nationalist buddies, works on feeding the implication that it was some sort of Mein Kampf, a blueprint for an Islamic Bosnia.
Innuendo runs deep in this section. Johnstone notes that Izetbegovic, as a decendent of the Muslim upper class of Ottoman Turkey (she playes this card a lot, by the way--comparing the elite status of the SDA leadership to the peasant status of rural Bosnian Serbs):
"...is an heir to a Muslim elite which bitterly opposed attempts by the later Turkish Sultans to make concessions to Balkan Christians in order to preserve Ottoman rule in the Balkans."
It never ceases to amaze me how often, and how blithely, Johnstone will indulge in notions of generational guilt. Compared to implications that modern-day Germany represents resurgent Nazism and that contemporary Croats are all card-carrying Ustasha, holding Izetbegovic accountable for the grievances of 19th Century Muslim elites is relatively minor; still, it's yet another Freudian slip, another indication of how thoroughly she has assimiliated the collectivist logic of generational and tribal identity.
This section goes on for three pages, dredging up quotes from this document without a whiff of context; that she fails to mention he did not include Bosnia itself in his vision of a truly Islamic world should surprise you not at all. Nor should it amaze that, even if you take her carefully chosen quotes at face value, Izetbegovic failed miserably as a champion of Islamic world conquest--one quote from his book warns of the failure to adequately prepare for seizing power; being adequately prepared to take power by force was most certainly not a vice of the SDA under Izetbegovic.
After several paragraphs of carefully decontextualized quotes and random bits of innuendo posing as analysis, she starts the penultimate paragraph with this curious quote:
"If "fundamentalism" can be defined as basing an entire social and political order on religion, then Izetbegovic was indeed a "fundamentalist." "
Yes, and if "my wife" can be defined as "Salma Hayek," then I'm married to one of the most caliente women in Hollywood. I guess once you've redefined "genocide" you've pretty much got carte blanche to redefine terms at your leisure.
This paragraph-from-an-alternate-universe continues thusly:
"Izetbegovic's demand for an Islamic state once Muslims are a majority of the population deserves attention, since demographic changes in Bosnia-Herzegovina were moving toward a Muslim majority. Did fear of this prospect help drive non-Muslim citizens of Bosnia-Herzegovina into the arms of nationalist Serb and Croat parties? Whether or not such fears were groundless, the question needs to be raised."
[underlined text was italicized in the original]
One waits for Johnstone to begin quoting from SDA statements and party platforms calling for an Islamic state in Bosnia; she does not, of course, because she has no such documentation. Instead, she has a book written 20 years prior (republished in 1990, she ominously notes) as her sole source for these 'demands.' Thus she implies that this urbane, educated, pro-Western man was a raging fundamentalist seeking to reimpose sharia on the decendents of the same Balkan Christian peasants his ancestors lorded over.
Such fears were groundless, although they were certainly fueled by racist propaganda coming from the nationalist leaders Johnstone has allied herself with. The specter of Muslim hordes out-breeding the scared Christians of Bosnia was a scenario dreamed up by the most extreme elements of the SDS; and here we have Johnstone giving creedence to them. The question that REALLY needs to be asked is this: Has this woman no shame?
"Fools' Crusade" Chapter One [19]
She's baaaaaaaaaack!
I rushed through the end of Chapter One before returning my previous copy. In this post, I'll just cover anything I skimmed over, and then in the next post I'll start Chapter Two.
Remember folks--I'm reading Johnstone so you don't have to!
------------------------------------
I'll try not to choke on my own bile and return, just for a second, to where I basically left off; in the section entitled "Ideals versus facts", the title of which neatly encapsulates the snide tone of Johnstone's cherry-picking of conspiracy-friendly, decontextualized facts. This was the section in which she claims that the genocide in Bosnia simply didn't happen.
The games she plays with conflicting casualty rates is simply astounding. It is hard not to understand that death tolls during the war were inexact--for one thing, press access to areas of Republika Srpska was limited; for all of Johstone's laments about how much the Western media covered the war, most of the ethnic cleansing occured off-camera. Nor should it be surprising that the Bosnian government used the biggest figures it could get away with in order to stir up international outrage. Not to defend that practice, but it strikes me as disproportionate to focus your outrage on inflated civilian death tolls when civilian deaths were a deliberate aim of Bosnian Serb tactics.
Here's the concluding paragraph of this paricularly loathsome section:
"What was being destroyed in this "genocide" was not the Bosnian people, who despite undeniable hardships and heartaches--yes, and despite Srebrenica--have survivied, although widely dispersed. What was being destroyed was the Western intellectual's multicultural dream. Meanwhile, by readily believing the worst horror stories, they exacerbated hatred on all sides and helped to destroy the Yugoslavs' multicultural reality."
So you see, what happened in Bosnia wasn't a genocide, because not every single Bosnian was killed; they were merely "widely dispersed" after some "hardships and heartaches." And the real culprits in stirring up the killing weren't far-right nationalists or the brutal paramilitaries who inflicted the majority of those 'hardships'--no, it was those clueless Western intelllectuals who made everything worse. Why couldn't they have stayed out of it?
Unbelievable.
------------------------
IZETBEGOVIC: ISLAMIC HERO OF THE WESTERN WORLD
As for Johnstone's take on Izetbegovic; if you know anything at all about the SDA, you know that it was a Muslim nationalist party, and that its behavior during the war was not always laudable. And, if you know anything about Izetbegovic, you know that he was more religious and 'orthodox' a Muslim than the majority of Bosnian Muslims.
But Johnstone is forever tilting at the windmills of shallow media coverage as if she's the only one who 'gets it.' Deliberately confusing public statements with actual policy decisions is her stock in trade.
Izetbegovic probably wasn't the best leader; he certainly had his shortcomings. That one of those shortcomings was that he spectacularly FAILED to prepare for war is a fact Johnstone steers well clear of. It's amazing how much blame she appears to be preparing to heap on the ethnic leader who was NOT arming for civil war.
She concludes this short section with a paragraph discussing the election deal made with Fikret Abdic, who actually won more votes. The deal was somewhat fishy; later events would show that Abdic would not have been the man any sensible person would want leading Bosnia, but nevertheless he did win the most votes among Muslims. At any rate, here's Johnstone on Izetbegovic:
"This was supposed to be a shared presidency, to be rotated annually between a Muslim, a Serb, and a Croat. But Izetbegovic proved immovable."
It should go without saying that the reason Izetbegovic didn't step aside for a Serb might have had something to do with the civil war that raged for nearly all of his time in office. Johnstone, as usual, doesn't expect her narrative to slavishly follow the chronology of real-world events; she just floats above the time-space continuum at her leisure, lighting down whenever she spies a stray fact, incident, or quote which might pretty up the stories she keeps telling herself.
--------------------------
Actually, I realize I breezed through quite a bit of the end of this chapter. The above, one-page section is just the opening salvo on a sustained 10-page attack on Izetbegovic, his leadership, the SDA, and, implicitly, the 'Muslimness' of Bosnia's largest ethnic group. It deserves more attention. So, lucky reader, we're not quite through with Chapter One. More next time.
I rushed through the end of Chapter One before returning my previous copy. In this post, I'll just cover anything I skimmed over, and then in the next post I'll start Chapter Two.
Remember folks--I'm reading Johnstone so you don't have to!
------------------------------------
I'll try not to choke on my own bile and return, just for a second, to where I basically left off; in the section entitled "Ideals versus facts", the title of which neatly encapsulates the snide tone of Johnstone's cherry-picking of conspiracy-friendly, decontextualized facts. This was the section in which she claims that the genocide in Bosnia simply didn't happen.
The games she plays with conflicting casualty rates is simply astounding. It is hard not to understand that death tolls during the war were inexact--for one thing, press access to areas of Republika Srpska was limited; for all of Johstone's laments about how much the Western media covered the war, most of the ethnic cleansing occured off-camera. Nor should it be surprising that the Bosnian government used the biggest figures it could get away with in order to stir up international outrage. Not to defend that practice, but it strikes me as disproportionate to focus your outrage on inflated civilian death tolls when civilian deaths were a deliberate aim of Bosnian Serb tactics.
Here's the concluding paragraph of this paricularly loathsome section:
"What was being destroyed in this "genocide" was not the Bosnian people, who despite undeniable hardships and heartaches--yes, and despite Srebrenica--have survivied, although widely dispersed. What was being destroyed was the Western intellectual's multicultural dream. Meanwhile, by readily believing the worst horror stories, they exacerbated hatred on all sides and helped to destroy the Yugoslavs' multicultural reality."
So you see, what happened in Bosnia wasn't a genocide, because not every single Bosnian was killed; they were merely "widely dispersed" after some "hardships and heartaches." And the real culprits in stirring up the killing weren't far-right nationalists or the brutal paramilitaries who inflicted the majority of those 'hardships'--no, it was those clueless Western intelllectuals who made everything worse. Why couldn't they have stayed out of it?
Unbelievable.
------------------------
IZETBEGOVIC: ISLAMIC HERO OF THE WESTERN WORLD
As for Johnstone's take on Izetbegovic; if you know anything at all about the SDA, you know that it was a Muslim nationalist party, and that its behavior during the war was not always laudable. And, if you know anything about Izetbegovic, you know that he was more religious and 'orthodox' a Muslim than the majority of Bosnian Muslims.
But Johnstone is forever tilting at the windmills of shallow media coverage as if she's the only one who 'gets it.' Deliberately confusing public statements with actual policy decisions is her stock in trade.
Izetbegovic probably wasn't the best leader; he certainly had his shortcomings. That one of those shortcomings was that he spectacularly FAILED to prepare for war is a fact Johnstone steers well clear of. It's amazing how much blame she appears to be preparing to heap on the ethnic leader who was NOT arming for civil war.
She concludes this short section with a paragraph discussing the election deal made with Fikret Abdic, who actually won more votes. The deal was somewhat fishy; later events would show that Abdic would not have been the man any sensible person would want leading Bosnia, but nevertheless he did win the most votes among Muslims. At any rate, here's Johnstone on Izetbegovic:
"This was supposed to be a shared presidency, to be rotated annually between a Muslim, a Serb, and a Croat. But Izetbegovic proved immovable."
It should go without saying that the reason Izetbegovic didn't step aside for a Serb might have had something to do with the civil war that raged for nearly all of his time in office. Johnstone, as usual, doesn't expect her narrative to slavishly follow the chronology of real-world events; she just floats above the time-space continuum at her leisure, lighting down whenever she spies a stray fact, incident, or quote which might pretty up the stories she keeps telling herself.
--------------------------
Actually, I realize I breezed through quite a bit of the end of this chapter. The above, one-page section is just the opening salvo on a sustained 10-page attack on Izetbegovic, his leadership, the SDA, and, implicitly, the 'Muslimness' of Bosnia's largest ethnic group. It deserves more attention. So, lucky reader, we're not quite through with Chapter One. More next time.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
McCain/Dole Editorial: Heed the Lessons of Srebrenica
I read this article when it first came out, and was waiting for it to be archived on WashingtonPost.com, but today I received it from the Center For Balkan Development e-newsletter I subscribe to. Please keep in mind this was a published editorial in the Washington Post, in case you decide to cite it.
A good reminder of why people like me continue to dwell on the war in Bosnia--there were lessons in that war the world needs to take to heart.
---------------------------------------
Rescue Darfur Now
Washington Post, September 10, 2006
By John McCain and Bob Dole Sunday
In 1995, the writing was on the wall. The conflict in Bosnia was escalating. Tens of thousands of civilians had been driven from their homes and were trapped in places the United Nations had designated as "safe areas," including Srebrenica. Only a few hundred poorly equipped U.N. peacekeepers stood between those civilians and Bosnian Serb forces. The Serbs had signaled their defiance of the United Nations, their disdain for diplomatic overtures and their determination to advance on the safe areas and finish the job of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. All the makings of a massacre were present, and, before the eyes of the world, that is what unfolded. Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were systematically killed at Srebrenica, and history has judged severely those policymakers who failed to heed the warning signs of mass murder.
As advocates of military action in Bosnia, we will never forget those terrible days. We remember that when the United States and its allies did finally act, military intervention saved countless lives. And all of us pledged anew that, should such a situation again unfold, we would do things very differently.
Today, the Darfur region of Sudan faces its own Srebrenica moment.
The scale of human destruction thus far in Sudan has been staggering. Already, more than 200,000 civilians have been killed, with perhaps 2.5 million forced into squalid camps. This catastrophe is the result of a directed slaughter perpetrated by the Sudanese government and allied Janjaweed militias.
Faced with its moral responsibility to act, the U.N. Security Council has adopted a resolution that would replace a courageous but inadequate African Union force with a much larger U.N. force empowered to protect civilians. Last week, the Sudanese government not only rejected the resolution but demanded that the African Union withdraw from the country, leaving civilians vulnerable. Meanwhile, government forces have launched a major offensive in Darfur to finish off any rebel forces there, pushing tens of thousands more civilians into the camps.
As with Srebrenica in 1995, the potential for further mass killing in Darfur today is plain for all to see. All the warnings have been issued, including one from the United Nations that the coming weeks may see "a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale." What remains unclear is only whether the world has the will to impose an outcome on Sudan different from that which unfolded so tragically in Bosnia. Make no mistake: At some point we will step in to help victims in Darfur and police an eventual settlement. The question is whether the United States and other nations will act now to prevent a tragedy, or merely express sorrow and act later to deal with its aftermath.
Urgent action is required in the coming hours and days.
First, the United States should reject out of hand Khartoum's demand that the African Union force leave and should insist that it stay, with broad international support, until the introduction of a robust U.N. force in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1706.
Second, the United States should call on the European Union to impose financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership and to pursue the immediate imposition of similar sanctions by the U.N. Security Council.
Third, NATO should immediately establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur to ensure that Khartoum ends its offensive military flights and bombing raids, as the Security Council has already demanded.
Fourth, the United States should intensify efforts to persuade U.N. members to commit troops and funds for the U.N. force in Darfur, and it should develop plans for U.S. logistical support. The administration should push the United Nations to draw up firm plans for the entrance of a robust force into Darfur and contingency plans for the force to enter without Sudanese consent.
Fifth, U.S. and allied intelligence assets, including satellite technology, should be dedicated to record any atrocities that occur in Darfur so that future prosecutions can take place. We should publicly remind Khartoum that the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes in Darfur and that Sudanese leaders will be held personally accountable for attacks on civilians.
Finally, the United States should increase pressure on countries friendly to Khartoum -- and particularly our allies in the Arab League -- to abandon their support for Sudan's refusal to accept the U.N. force.
Some of these steps would be dramatic and difficult. But the circumstances imposed on the people of Darfur are likewise dramatic and difficult. And so would be the consequences of inaction: a humanitarian disaster that the world will in any case have to address; a massive and possibly permanent population of refugees dependent on international support; a conflict spreading to neighboring countries with prospects for settlement even more remote; and a permanent stain on our conscience.
Throughout the world, people of conscience were shocked by and ashamed of our failure to stop the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. We must not repeat these mistakes. In Darfur, the moment of truth is now.
John McCain is a U.S. senator from Arizona and Bob Dole was a longtime senator from Kansas and the 1996 Republican presidential nominee.
A good reminder of why people like me continue to dwell on the war in Bosnia--there were lessons in that war the world needs to take to heart.
---------------------------------------
Rescue Darfur Now
Washington Post, September 10, 2006
By John McCain and Bob Dole Sunday
In 1995, the writing was on the wall. The conflict in Bosnia was escalating. Tens of thousands of civilians had been driven from their homes and were trapped in places the United Nations had designated as "safe areas," including Srebrenica. Only a few hundred poorly equipped U.N. peacekeepers stood between those civilians and Bosnian Serb forces. The Serbs had signaled their defiance of the United Nations, their disdain for diplomatic overtures and their determination to advance on the safe areas and finish the job of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. All the makings of a massacre were present, and, before the eyes of the world, that is what unfolded. Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were systematically killed at Srebrenica, and history has judged severely those policymakers who failed to heed the warning signs of mass murder.
As advocates of military action in Bosnia, we will never forget those terrible days. We remember that when the United States and its allies did finally act, military intervention saved countless lives. And all of us pledged anew that, should such a situation again unfold, we would do things very differently.
Today, the Darfur region of Sudan faces its own Srebrenica moment.
The scale of human destruction thus far in Sudan has been staggering. Already, more than 200,000 civilians have been killed, with perhaps 2.5 million forced into squalid camps. This catastrophe is the result of a directed slaughter perpetrated by the Sudanese government and allied Janjaweed militias.
Faced with its moral responsibility to act, the U.N. Security Council has adopted a resolution that would replace a courageous but inadequate African Union force with a much larger U.N. force empowered to protect civilians. Last week, the Sudanese government not only rejected the resolution but demanded that the African Union withdraw from the country, leaving civilians vulnerable. Meanwhile, government forces have launched a major offensive in Darfur to finish off any rebel forces there, pushing tens of thousands more civilians into the camps.
As with Srebrenica in 1995, the potential for further mass killing in Darfur today is plain for all to see. All the warnings have been issued, including one from the United Nations that the coming weeks may see "a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale." What remains unclear is only whether the world has the will to impose an outcome on Sudan different from that which unfolded so tragically in Bosnia. Make no mistake: At some point we will step in to help victims in Darfur and police an eventual settlement. The question is whether the United States and other nations will act now to prevent a tragedy, or merely express sorrow and act later to deal with its aftermath.
Urgent action is required in the coming hours and days.
First, the United States should reject out of hand Khartoum's demand that the African Union force leave and should insist that it stay, with broad international support, until the introduction of a robust U.N. force in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1706.
Second, the United States should call on the European Union to impose financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership and to pursue the immediate imposition of similar sanctions by the U.N. Security Council.
Third, NATO should immediately establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur to ensure that Khartoum ends its offensive military flights and bombing raids, as the Security Council has already demanded.
Fourth, the United States should intensify efforts to persuade U.N. members to commit troops and funds for the U.N. force in Darfur, and it should develop plans for U.S. logistical support. The administration should push the United Nations to draw up firm plans for the entrance of a robust force into Darfur and contingency plans for the force to enter without Sudanese consent.
Fifth, U.S. and allied intelligence assets, including satellite technology, should be dedicated to record any atrocities that occur in Darfur so that future prosecutions can take place. We should publicly remind Khartoum that the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes in Darfur and that Sudanese leaders will be held personally accountable for attacks on civilians.
Finally, the United States should increase pressure on countries friendly to Khartoum -- and particularly our allies in the Arab League -- to abandon their support for Sudan's refusal to accept the U.N. force.
Some of these steps would be dramatic and difficult. But the circumstances imposed on the people of Darfur are likewise dramatic and difficult. And so would be the consequences of inaction: a humanitarian disaster that the world will in any case have to address; a massive and possibly permanent population of refugees dependent on international support; a conflict spreading to neighboring countries with prospects for settlement even more remote; and a permanent stain on our conscience.
Throughout the world, people of conscience were shocked by and ashamed of our failure to stop the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. We must not repeat these mistakes. In Darfur, the moment of truth is now.
John McCain is a U.S. senator from Arizona and Bob Dole was a longtime senator from Kansas and the 1996 Republican presidential nominee.
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