Friday 3 July 2015

Response to Ian Williams' exchange with Noam Chomsky regarding Kosovo, humanitarian intervention, and East Timor


In August and September 2009, Ian Williams and Noam Chomsky exchanged articles on the website Foreign Policy In Focus[1] concerning the Kosovo war and NATO military intervention. Here, I would like to evaluate Ian Williams' responses in that exchange.

The articles written by Williams that I will address here are as follows:

  • the article entitled "Ban Ki Moon and R2P", published on the 3rd of August 2009[2]
  • the article entitled "Response to Chomsky", published on the 21st of August 2009[3]
  • the article entitled "Response to Chomsky II", published on the 8th of September 2009[4]

I will use, as my sources for Chomsky's views on Kosovo and related matters, only the following:

  • the text of a lecture entitled "The Responsibility to Protect" given by Chomsky at the United Nations General Assembly on the 23rd of July 2009[5]
  • the first response article Chomsky wrote to Williams, entitled "Kosovo, East Timor, R2P, and Ian Williams", published on the 17th of August 2009[6]
  • the second response article Chomsky wrote to Williams, entitled "Response to Williams", published on the 1st of September 2009[7]
  • Chomsky's 1999 book entitled The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo[8]

It should be stressed that all of these sources pre-date Williams' second and final response article to Chomsky. Needless to say, Chomsky has clarified his views on humanitarian intervention countless times in other books, interviews, articles, and talks, over many decades leading up to the exchange with Williams. I chose these particular Chomsky sources because Williams refers to all of these directly in his articles. For both writers, I have kept purely to the material that is in print.

CONTENTS


1. CHOMSKY'S BASIC PRINCIPLES OF HUMANITARIAN INTERVENTION

To begin with, Williams claims that Chomsky's overall argument "reduces" to the following "basic principles":[9]

  • "If someone other than the United States commits mass murder they did so with American encouragement, and so the guilt is ultimately Washington's."
  • "[If] they [commit mass murder] in response to American actions, [that] either exonerates them or in some way mitigates their crime" (my emphasis)
  • ". . . intervention to stop mass murder is wrong ' particularly if the . . . 'imperialist' powers, are behind it [i.e. behind the intervention]."

Unfortunately, Williams provides no substantive quotes from Chomsky to support these three assertions. I understand that, because the articles are part of a series being exchanged with Chomsky, Williams may not feel obliged to provide detailed references for all claims made. The problem is, when we look at the positions to which Chomsky has committed himself in print, Williams' assertions do not hold up.

Williams' first assertion, that Chomsky regards the United States as being "ultimately" guilty of all mass murders everywhere, can be addressed by looking at what Chomsky's principles are when it comes to morality in human affairs generally:

"to mention a few truisms . . . . first[ly] . . . people are responsible for the likely consequences of their own actions, or inaction. The second is that the concern for moral issues (crimes, etc.) should vary in accordance with ability to have an effect [on the outcome] . . . . A corollary is that responsibility mounts the greater the opportunities, and the more free one is to act without serious cost. Accordingly, responsibility is far greater for privileged people in more free societies than for those lacking privilege or facing severe penalties for honesty and moral integrity [in repressive societies]."[10]

Since the US, by virtue of being the world superpower, has an inordinate "ability to have an effect" on world affairs, its "responsibility mounts" a lot higher over time than it would for relatively powerless states. Guilt then derives from improper action or inaction in this context. It is the burden that comes with privilege. Moral guilt can increasingly be found everywhere in our interconnected world, legal guilt however, is quite another matter, and Williams would do well to appreciate that distinction. The extent to which "American encouragement" or inaction can be applied to draw out American guilt in world affairs is surely not down to Chomsky's 'loaded' scales of morality, it is down to the extent of US diplomatic and military dominance. If we are to philosophically redefine what it means to take honest and appropriate responsibility for actions that it is within one's power to influence, then I would be interested to see what Williams' criteria are for doing so.

Williams approvingly quotes the following comment made by Chomsky in the book Class Warfare:

"I don't think you can give a general principle about when the use of military force is legitimate. It depends on what the alternatives are. So there are circumstances in which maybe that's just the least bad of the available circumstances. You just have to look at things on a case-by-case basis. There are some general principles one can adhere to, but they don't lead to specific conclusions for every conceivable case."[11]

Despite agreeing with this view, Williams is seen to forget himself later on when he says:

"[Chomsky] evades the core issue [of, when] faced with a recidivist regime massacring civilians, what is the appropriate response of the international community?"[12]

Williams faults Chomsky for "not suggest[ing] how Milosevic's crimes might have been stopped, or indeed whether they should have been" (my emphasis). "Perhaps", Williams speculates, "Chomsky imagines that he can evade his own responsibility with such Pilatean hand-washing". Williams is quick to condemn such evasive behaviour as "spurious" and "disingenuous".[13] Evidently, Williams wrote this regardless of his open agreement with Chomsky's view that one cannot arrive at "specific conclusions for every conceivable case" where "legitimate" "use of military force" is in question. What may work in East Timor, or south-eastern Turkey, may not work in Serbia (see section 4). Williams himself does not presently, and seemingly did not at the time, propose any strategies other than bombing the "recidivist regime" in Serbia, as we shall see below (see section 3). Furthermore, we shall also see that despite not pouring forth ingenious ideas on how to bring down Slobodan Milosevic, Chomsky was cognisant of other atrocities that had already been well underway for many years in US-controlled domains. Chomsky holds that it is proper to try and save lives by reducing participation in one's own ongoing campaigns of violence first, rather than intervening with fresh violence to stop someone else's crimes (see section 4).

Aligning himself with Chomsky, Williams instructs us that, "[l]ike surgery, humanitarian intervention is only to be used as a last resort". It follows then that Williams needs to show us how or why he decided that military force was the "least bad of the available circumstances" in the Kosovo case.[14] Needless to say, it is implied in the Class Warfare extract above that if there is no clear likelihood of reducing suffering by taking military action, it is better to avoid military action altogether. Is it correct to criticise someone for proposing a policy of first do no harm, in situations where there is no clear way to actively reduce suffering?

(return to contents)

2. SERB ATROCITIES BEFORE AND AFTER NATO INTERVENTION

In elucidating his second 'Chomsky principle', Williams affirms that Chomsky "exonerates" "or in some way [seeks to] mitigat[e]"[15] crimes that are undertaken in response to Western action. Williams' ambiguity is quite unhelpful here, he does not describe in which way Chomsky exonerates or mitigates crimes by enemies of the West. Even more puzzling, Williams previously "credit[ed]" Chomsky for "admitting . . . Milosevic's murderous nature", and for admitting that "atrocities had taken place in Kosovo"[16][17]. Leaving aside this disconnect, we can concentrate on the record in print; Chomsky has described Slobodan Milosevic as a "major war criminal" whose indictment at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), was "surely warranted, and in fact long overdue". Indeed, Chomsky regrets that the ICTY indictment was "far too narrow",[18] charging Milosevic primarily for his 1999 crimes in Kosovo, while not determining to any full extent his possible involvement in the "deeply troubled Balkans"[19] over the prior period. Chomsky is therefore clear in his understanding that "Serb atrocities in Kosovo" were "quite real, and often ghastly". This undermines Williams' insistence that "Chomsky persistently evades the issue of the direct responsibility of the regime in Belgrade for carrying out the massacres in Kosovo."[20]

Williams seems to be unsure of Chomsky's exact position on the post-bombing atrocities. Initially, Williams understands Chomsky's position to be: "the NATO air raids on Serbia actually precipitated the worst atrocities in Kosovo"[21] (my emphasis). Subsequently, Williams paraphrases Chomsky's position by stating that Chomsky believes "all the atrocities that followed the bombing are to be attributed to the bombing" (my emphasis). Apparently, Williams declares, Chomsky has committed the "logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc: after this, so because of it".[22] Williams' readers are left to wonder which position truly belongs to Chomsky. In reality, Chomsky categorically does not claim that "all the atrocities" following the bombing were precipitated by NATO intervention, or indeed precipitated by any one actor. Readers should agree with Williams' first formulation; Chomsky merely states that "[a]trocities . . . sharply escalated after the March 24 bombing"[23] and that NATO bombing "precipitated by far the worst of" the atrocities.[24] It would appear that not quoting Chomsky directly has once again led to error and misrepresentation on Williams' part. Whatever remains of the post hoc fallacy is easily answered by observing that Chomsky's case relies not on determining who committed what atrocity in a chaotic theatre of war, rather it is predicated on highlighting the vulgar morality of hypocritical NATO actions that spare little thought for Serbian civil society, and that also effectively rank certain peoples above others in worthiness (see section 4).

Williams cites, out of context, a "Human Rights Watch [HRW] reported about Serbian government actions in 1998".[25] But the in-text hyperlink he provides is not to the HRW report, rather it is to an article from the Bosnian Institute website, written by Marko Attila Hoare, an academic with a stake in the academic debate on this issue.[26] Hoare cites and quotes from the HRW report in his article but does not provide a link to it. A quoted extract of the report is found in Hoare's article, and is reproduced by Williams in his. Regrettably, the extract does not provide a comparative analysis of casualties and displacement of civilians before and after NATO bombing, which is the crucial comparison to be made. Williams does not comment on the quote from HRW after presenting it, as a result I shall also leave it aside here.

Instead of commenting on the pertinence of the HRW report in his eyes, Williams refers readers to the ICTY testimony of "General [Klaus] Naumann" recorded in 2002, describing a meeting with Milosevic before the NATO intervention, where Milosevic apparently advocated a "'final solution' for the Kosovar[ Albanian]s, invoking the 1946 Drenica massacres . . . [and in those massacres] he obliging[ly] explained, '[w]e got them all together and we shot them.'"[27] Worryingly, these quotes do not appear anywhere on the web page Williams provides as a source for Naumann's statement.[28] The source is a partial transcript of Naumann's testimony at the ICTY, however it remains unclear from where Williams obtained those dramatic quotes about a "final solution" for Kosovar Albanians. In any case, even if we accept that there was Nazi-level genocidal intent on Milosevic's part in the period approaching NATO's decision to bomb, Williams still has not provided any analysis to demonstrate that a NATO military intervention would have alleviated suffering and loss of life in Kosovo. We have no reason to doubt Clark's assessment that Serbian atrocities were consciously precipitated by NATO actions.

Williams denies that the worst of the atrocities followed NATO's air raids, and he says that Chomsky's contrary "claim isn't only untrue but morally unpalatable in its spurious causality".[29] Williams fails to provide any sources to substantiate his claim nor does he engage with the relevant sources Chomsky cites in his 1999 book.

(return to contents)

3. NATO'S DECISION TO BOMB, AND CONSEQUENCES PREDICTED AT THE TIME

The NATO bombing campaign launched on the 24th of March 1999 against Serbia was done, Williams assures us, to "stop massacres", "to stop Milosevic", in Kosovo.[30] Contesting this, Chomsky enjoins that NATO "Commanding General Clark" was informing the press on 19th April that the bombing campaign was "political[ly]" motivated:[31]

"[it] was not designed as a means of blocking Serb ethnic cleansing. It was not designed as a means of waging war against the Serb and MUP forces in Kosovo. Not in any way. There was never any intent to do that. That was not the idea." (my emphasis)

Williams seems content to believe in NATO's benign intentions simply because its leading establishment voices proclaimed that those were their intentions. And even among establishment voices, his engagement is selective, as is apparent by his failure to mention Clark's troubling admission that departs sharply from the official humanitarian ideal. "Clinton's intervention . . . persuaded the Indonesian general's [sic] that the game was up in East Timor. Yes it was long overdue, but it was an American intervention, which deserves some grudging credit." This is how Williams evaluates the East Timor issue: better late than never. But why was it late? Could the West have had other interests besides the self-declared altruistic rescues of the Timorese (done only eventually) and the Kosovar Albanians (done enthusiastically)? Did the Western political and military nexus, together with a subservient media cheering them on, have anything to gain by delaying intervention in East Timor but then chomping at the bit to intervene in Kosovo? Williams does not look to pursue any such questions, and in doing so may cleave towards what Chomsky calls

"the familiar doctrine of 'change of course,' which holds that, [y]es, in the past we have erred out of naiveté or faulty information, but now we are returning to the traditional path of righteousness. Examination of the record is nothing more than 'sound-bites and incentives about Washington's historically evil foreign policy,' hence 'easy to ignore,' . . . "[32]

Williams points readers to a 1999 article[33] in which "he [and his co-author] called for intervention but also apparently condemned the form of intervention that President Clinton chose — high-level bombing."[34] This is not what we find in that article however, which is dated 19th April 1999. At the time, Williams was in fact announcing: "the court of international public opinion has implicitly, resoundingly, endorsed military action". When "faced with [the only] two [possible] alternatives: stop the bombing and 'negotiate,' or commit ground troops", NATO "should stop [bombing] only when Belgrade agrees to pull out or is pushed out of Kosovo, if necessary by ground troops." This does not appear to be a "condemn[ation]" of bombing. To be sure, Williams demanded that those calling for "an immediate NATO cease-fire [i.e. not Williams himself] owe the world an explanation of how they propose to stop and reverse the massive ethnic cleansing in Kosovo". Turning to Chomsky, he was, unlike Williams, unambiguously rebuking the "[non-]cogent, often completely irrational" "arguments offered for the bombing" of Kosovo.[35] This is an indication that Chomsky was motivated to speak against NATO intervention on practical humanitarian grounds, rather than, as Williams put it in the 1999 article, objecting due to an "obsessive dogma" of "[o]pposition to US military intervention" at all costs.

Williams chides Chomsky for apparently not appreciating that military intervention by "imperialist" powers is "occasionally beneficial."[36] For this argument to stand, Williams needs to produce relevant examples of Western humanitarian intervention that were justifiable based on information available at the time of the intervention. For his part, Chomsky gives reasons why, for him, Kosovo fails this test — "NATO Commander General Wesley Clark and the White House" "made [a statement] to the press a few days after the bombing began, that Serbian atrocities in reaction to the bombing were 'entirely predictable,' 'fully anticipated,' and 'not in any way a concern of the [NATO] political leadership'". In fact, as early as "several weeks" prior to the bombing, Chomsky cites Clark as informing the White House that 'almost certainly [Serbia] will attack the civilian population [after we bomb Kosovo]' and NATO will be able to do nothing about it."[37] And once the bombing had commenced, Clark submitted that he "fully anticipated the vicious approach that Milosevic would adopt [towards Kosovar Albanians], as well as the terrible efficiency with which he would carry it out."[38]

As is readily apparent from Clark's words, NATO did not expect that massacres would be stopped by its intervention, and indeed was conscious of the likelihood of its actions precipitating massacres. Williams concedes, probably in the context of not reacting quickly enough, that "[o]ne can certainly accuse the West of neglecting the plight of the Kosova[r]" Albanians,[39] but does not engage with Chomsky's point about NATO's immoral calculus involving the perceived risk to civilian lives post-bombing.

Arguing that Chomsky should "quote General Wesley Clark less selectively", Williams asserts: "the general considered that he had good reason to believe that Milosevic was going to kill more [Kosovar Albanians] whatever the response, and wanted to stop him."[40] No direct quote from Clark, or specific source, is given. Even if we assume that the paraphrase is accurate and was made before the bombing began (i.e. and not in a self-serving way after the fact), Williams' point is not clear. If Milosevic was going to kill no matter what, why would bombing Serbia (with a clearly anticipated risk to civilians) "stop him"? Furthermore, "selectiv[e]" quoting notwithstanding, does Williams' quote from Clark actually undermine or change the significance of Chomsky's quote from Clark? In fact, the only significant take-away that I can see is, Chomsky is quoting an establishment source making claims against his self-interest; Clark had every reason not to recognise that his actions would precipitate atrocities. Williams, on the other hand, is quoting an establishment source who is defending his image as a moral actor, most likely after the fact (though again, we do not have a direct quote from Clark that would allow us to step back and examine this chronologically). Readers can decide for themselves which side holds more weight.

It is uncontroversial from a proper reading of Chomsky that he disagrees with NATO intervention in Kosovo because it seems to have been undertaken with an informed and callous disregard for civilian lives. NATO's position was immoral. Whether we focus only on what was known at the time, or what is now known with the benefit of hindsight, the decision to bomb seems to have been completely unjustified. Again, it may very well be that there is scarcely a case in all history when military intervention was undertaken for (purely, or even significantly) altruistic purposes. But is it really due to Chomsky rigging the moral game against Western intervention per se, or is it simply a reflection of the way power functions in geopolitics?

While referring to an ICTY decision finding certain "Serb officials guilty" of "criminal enterprise", Williams concedes that

"the NATO bombing provided an opportunity to the members of the joint criminal enterprise ' an opportunity for which they had been waiting and for which they had prepared by moving additional forces to Kosovo and by the arming and disarming process described above ' to deal a heavy blow to the KLA and to displace, both within and without Kosovo, enough Kosovo Albanians to change the ethnic balance. And now this could all be done with plausible deniability because it could be blamed not only upon the KLA, but upon NATO as well." (emphasis in original)

Nevertheless, Williams commends the tribunal for not "blame-shifting" and trying to establish any NATO guilt in this matter. Williams does not address the possiblity of NATO leaders being put in the dock alongside Serb officials; sharing the blame instead of shifting it. Readers can estimate for themselves the integrity of Williams' position regarding legal and moral guilt in this matter.

(return to contents)

4. COMPARISONS: KOSOVO, EAST TIMOR, AND COLOMBIA

"Assessing Humanitarian Intent" is a chapter heading in Chomsky's 1999 book,[41] and a prominent theme throughout his case against the self-proclaimed "ethical foreign policy"[42] of the West. He seeks to perform this assessment by "ask[ing] how the same enlightened states [that were eager to intervene in Kosovo in 1999] behave elsewhere" in the world when faced with comparable atrocities. The very idea of comparing atrocities is deplorable to some, Williams among them, and he readily flags this up. It is disappointing however, that he seeks to attribute such crude comparison tactics to Chomsky. It seems to betray a lack of familiarity with Chomsky's writings — Chomsky is careful to point out that "[n]o two historical examples are quite parallel".[43] Nevertheless, Chomsky is incensed at those who decline to make comparisons supposedly because of disgust at the very idea, but are indeed more than willing to do so in those instances when it would reflect rather more flatteringly upon the West: "[the Serb massacre at] Racak is a serious matter, not to be confused with" other "episode[s]" in the "long horror story" of US/UK support for tyrants worldwide.[44] "[T]he past cannot be permitted to confuse the discussion" at hand, which is Kosovo.[45]

Apparently heedless of such cautionary expressions, Williams nevertheless seeks to admonish Chomsky for comparing the extent of atrocities and death toll between the former Yugoslavia and other troubled regions in the world. Regarding the US-backed Indonesian slaughter in East Timor, Williams writes:

"the numbers do not affect the moral issue at stake. Mass murder is wrong — whoever commits it and regardless of the relative size. Those East Timorese did not die to make a rhetorical rod for ivory-tower polemicists to beat other victims."[46]

I agree, and to the extent of my knowledge, so would Chomsky. It just may also be worth pondering the existence of another "rhetorical rod" associated with this issue. Namely, the aforementioned disgust at the cold comparison of atrocities. A disgust that seems to froth up at just the right moments to obscure any systematic analysis of the repercussions of our foreign interventions.

Regrettably, Williams then proceeds to assert, without any factual basis, that Chomsky "precludes" action in the Balkans because of Western culpability with respect to East Timor.[47] This is untrue. Chomsky precludes military action that is reckless of human suffering and loss of life, in the Balkans, or anywhere else (see section 1). Chomsky's sole reason, as far as I can see, for introducing other atrocities into the Kosovo conversation is to highlight the hypocrisy of those "New Humanists" who discovered their passion for human rights while looking at Kosovo, and not while looking at East Timor. I can find nothing to suggest that Chomsky would "preclud[e]" a hypocrite of East Timor from taking responsible action in Kosovo to benefit the people on the ground, once again, the question is whether we can benefit people on the ground, not if we should do so at all. Chomsky acutely observes that

"any serious assessment of the self-congratulatory rhetoric will ask how the New Humanists behave when faced, at the very same time, with comparable or worse atrocities that they could reduce or terminate easily and costlessly, merely by withdrawing their participation in them. In these cases . . . attention to U.S./U.K. crimes 'wouldn't improve the lot of a single Kosovo Albanian,' and therefore is a proper object of derision and scorn."[48] (my emphasis)

Williams quotes Chomsky as observing: the "humanitarian crisis [in Kosovo] . . . [is] the kind you can find all over the world". In Williams' view, this equates to an "insouciance" about the suffering of people in Kosovo.[49] This is a non sequitur. Williams himself agrees with Chomsky that a "case-by-case" approach is necessary in dealing with crises all over the world. It may very well be that case A was insoluble, while other case B offered easy opportunities for the reduction of suffering there. Continuing the hypothetical, Chomsky would be quite justified to advocate caution and hesitation in action over case A, while simultaneously advocating immediate action in case B. This does not mean that Chomsky is "disdaining the views of the victims" of case A.

It seems to be an intense focus for Williams that Chomsky's morality is fundamentally dependent upon the nature of the perpetrator and their political alignments. I cannot find cause to agree with this. Williams himself is in open accord with, and quotes from, Chomsky's words in print saying that his moral guide for evaluating any action is the likelihood of alleviating human suffering. It could not be stated any clearer. Williams seemingly finds it painful to appreciate the possibility, backed by evidence, that NATO intervention in Kosovo might have been a criminally reckless undertaking from the outset. Hence, he cannot see why a self-described humanitarian like Chomsky could possibly oppose it in the face of obvious Kosovar Albanian suffering.

Compounding his misrepresentations, Williams writes that he would never regard "the crimes of the United States, whether in East Timor or in Cambodia . . . [as] in any way excus[ing] or mitigat[ing] the crimes of the Indonesian military or the Khmer Rouge",[50] but claims that Chomsky does endorse such a mitigation. No evidence is provided.

In seeking to undermine Chomsky's call for caution regarding military intervention in Kosovo, Williams refers to his own "frequen[t]" interviews with "East Timorese leader Jose Ramos-Horta" "over the years of the Timorese struggle", in which Ramos-Horta called "for intervention both in Kosovo and in his own country". No specific source or quote from Ramos-Horta is given. As Williams presents it, there is no reason to think that Ramos-Horta would disagree with Chomsky in this matter. Both are in favour of intervention in order to reduce suffering, the question is how to do so. A direct quote from Ramos-Horta specifying the type and extent of intervention he advocated in Kosovo would have been useful — would it necessarily have been NATO intervention? Ramos-Horta is also quoted by Williams as saying intervention would be necessary "precisely to redress the actions of previous American interventions."[51] With the US being a leading member of NATO, it remains to be seen whether Ramos-Horta would have advocated NATO bombing of Serbia. Further gainsaying Williams' line of argument, Chomsky quotes[52] from the "declaration" of "the first-ever meeting of the South Summit of 133 states", representing the "traditional victims" of Western imperialism, "convened in April 2000 . . . surely with the bombing of Serbia in mind", that rejected "the so-called 'right' of humanitarian intervention", not finding for it any "legal basis in the United Nations Charter or in the general principles of international law." He also mentions that "Nelson Mandela was particularly harsh in his condemnation" of this right to intervene, though with no direct quote provided.

Concerning the question of intervention in East Timor, Williams writes:

"Chomsky quite rightly raised the question of why there was no intervention in East Timor or why the UN stood by as Israel attacked Lebanon and Gaza."[53]

Chomsky responds by saying that he "did not" "raise that question". Indeed, he says it "would have been outlandish" for him to have done so. "The question doesn't arise," Chomsky says, "and for a simple reason: [t]he United States and United Kingdom had been intervening for decades, providing decisive support for [those] atrocities"[54] (my emphasis). Williams does not seem willing to appreciate that there is a level of culpability here beyond simple bureaucratic or moral inertia.

Evidently, Chomsky is urging us to recognise that "intervention" does not only mean military or diplomatic efforts to stop atrocities, it can also signify long-term support for atrocities. Williams, appearing to have missed this point entirely, claims in his response:

"Chomsky says that 'it would have been outlandish' to raise that question of intervention in East Timor, and I did not do so.' [sic] In fact, he did, in The New Military Humanism, where he complains that 'no call has been heard from the New Humanists for withdrawal of Indonesian military forces or for sending a meaningful UN observer force.'"[55]

Williams has misunderstood the issue. Chomsky is responding to "the question of why there was no intervention in East Timor" (my emphasis), to which he answers: that is nonsensical; there was prolonged, decisive intervention by the West in support of Indonesia, so it would be wrong to think there was no intervention and to start calling for one. Williams wrongly understands this to mean that Chomsky denies ever having called for any intervention at all to stop the atrocities in East Timor, which is plainly untrue.

Contesting Chomsky's claim in 1999 that the "New Humanists [i.e. Western intellectuals and politicians] . . . exerted no pressures on Indonesia"[56] to withdraw its forces from East Timor, Williams asserts that "there were many such calls, in response to which the Australians — with a fairly dire record of their own in East Timor — did intervene." This point is let down by poor sourcing. Williams does not say when these "calls" were made, by whom, or to what extent. Moreover, he does not attempt a comparison between the strength of the Western calls for intervention to stop Milosevic, and the strength of the "calls" he suggests were made for helping the Timorese. In failing to do so, he misses Chomsky's central point: the duplicity on the part of Western intellectual opinion regarding 'important' and 'unimportant' atrocities.

To give a flavour of the Western-supported acts that were passed over in the media and in intellectual discourse in order to marshall public opinion for an attack only against Serb atrocities, Chomsky gives the following descriptions:

"One instructive case is Colombia, through the 1990s the scene of the worst humanitarian crisis in the Western hemisphere . . .

As the bombing [of Serbia in 1999 began], the [US] State Department released its [yearly] report for Colombia . . . 2-3000 killed, 300,000 new refugees, about 80% of massacres (where there is credible evidence) attributed to paramilitaries and the military, who, for years, have used the paras approximately as ABRI does in East Timor and the Serb military did in Kosovo. . . .

. . . in Colombia these atrocities are not new . . . they are added to an annual toll that has been much the same . . . for many years. . . . The refugee total is estimated by Church and other human rights groups at well over a million, mostly women and children . . ."[57]

"Colombia became the leading Western Hemisphere recipient of U.S. arms and training as violence increased throughout the '90s. . . . [this caused] 'appalling levels of violence' . . . . Currently U.S. military aid continues to be 'used in indiscriminate bombing' and other atrocities . . ."[58]

The record Chomsky reviews is as horrific as it is shameful. We have left out in this treatment the "NATO-oriented Turkish armed forces" "responsible for savage ethnic cleansing and other atrocities against the Kurds", surely the case most instructive of hypocritical Western leaders preaching saintly humanitarian ideals in the 1990s.[59]

(return to contents)

5. NOTES

[1] Institute for Policy Studies. Foreign Policy In Focus. [Online]. Available from: http://fpif.org/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015].

[2] Williams, I. Ban Ki Moon and R2P. Foreign Policy In Focus. [Online] 3rd August 2009. Available from: http://fpif.org/ban_ki_moon_and_r2p/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. Hereafter referred to as Williams, Ban Ki Moon and R2P, FPIF.

[3] Williams, I. Response to Chomsky. Foreign Policy In Focus. [Online] 21st August 2009. Available from: http://fpif.org/response_to_chomsky/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. Hereafter referred to as Williams, Response to Chomsky, FPIF.

[4] Williams, I. Response to Chomsky II. Foreign Policy In Focus. [Online] 8th September 2009. Available from: http://fpif.org/response_to_chomsky_ii/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. Hereafter referred to as Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF.

[5] Chomsky, N. The Responsibility to Protect. [Lecture] United Nations General Assembly. 23rd July 2009. Text of lecture available from: http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20090723.htm [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. Hereafter referred to as Chomsky, The Responsibility to Protect, UNGA Lecture.

[6] Chomsky, N. Kosovo, East Timor, R2P, and Ian Williams. Foreign Policy In Focus. [Online] 17th August 2009. Available from: http://fpif.org/kosovo_east_timor_r2p_and_ian_williams/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. Hereafter referred to as Chomsky, Kosovo, FPIF.

[7] Chomsky, N. Response to Williams. Foreign Policy In Focus. [Online] 1st September 2009. Available from: http://fpif.org/response_to_williams/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. Hereafter referred to as Chomsky, Response to Williams, FPIF.

[8] Chomsky, N. The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo. [Paperback] London: Pluto Press; 1999. Hereafter referred to as Chomsky, The New Military Humanism.

[9] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[10] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 39.

[11] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Williams, Ban Ki Moon and R2P, FPIF, op. cit.

[17] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[18] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 85.

[19] Ibid., p. 3.

[20] Ibid., p. 16 for the Chomsky quote about ghastly atrocities. See Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit., for the persistent evasion quote.

[21] Williams, Ban Ki Moon and R2P, FPIF, op. cit.

[22] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[23] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 34.

[24] Chomsky, The Responsibility to Protect, UNGA Lecture, op. cit.

[25] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[26] Hoare, M.A. Noam Chomsky and genocidal causality. Bosnian Institute. [Online] 31st August 2009. Available from: http://www.bosnia.org.uk/news/news_body.cfm?newsid=2624 [Accessed 3rd July 2015]. For more on Hoare, see David N. Gibbs' article on 7th April 2014 in Counterpunch, available from: http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/04/07/is-kingston-university-london-becoming-a-mccarthyite-institution/ [Accessed 3rd July 2015].

[27] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[28] International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, witness examination court transcript on Friday 14th June 2002, pp. 7051-7158. Available from: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/020614ED.htm [Accessed 3rd July 2015].

[29] Williams, Ban Ki Moon and R2P, FPIF, op. cit.

[30] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[31] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 28.

[32] See Williams, Response to Chomsky, FPIF, op. cit., for the quote about Clinton persuading the Indonesian generals. For a discussion of the unofficial, and likely true underlying reasons behind NATO intervention (political, economic, and military) in the Balkans and elsewhere, see Diana Johnstone, Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions, [Paperback] London, Pluto Press, 2002, pp. 230-233, 248-249, 256-269. See Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 4 for the following quote about the familiar foreign policy doctrine.

[33] Denitch, B. & Williams, I. The Case Against Inaction. Nation. [Online] 19th April 1999. Available from: http://www.thenation.com/article/case-against-inaction [Accessed 3rd July 2015].

[34] Williams, Response to Chomsky, FPIF, op. cit.

[35] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 87.

[36] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[37] Chomsky, Response to Williams, FPIF, op. cit.

[38] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 21.

[39] Williams, Response to Chomsky, FPIF, op. cit.

[40] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[41] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 38.

[42] Ibid., p. 44.

[43] Ibid., p. 49.

[44] Ibid., p. 47.

[45] Ibid., p. 38.

[46] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[47] Ibid.

[48] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 48.

[49] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[50] Ibid.

[51] Ibid.

[52] Chomsky, The Responsibility to Protect, UNGA Lecture, op. cit.

[53] Williams, Ban Ki Moon and R2P, FPIF, op. cit.

[54] Chomsky, Kosovo, FPIF, op. cit.

[55] Williams, Response to Chomsky II, FPIF, op. cit.

[56] Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., p. 47.

[57] Ibid., p. 49.

[58] Ibid., pp. 50-51.

[59] Ibid., pp. 7-8. For background see, inter alia, Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?: My Encounters with Kurdistan, [Hardback] New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1997. Additionally, see the sources apart from Randal cited in Chomsky, The New Military Humanism, op. cit., ch. 3, n. 26.

(return to contents)

No comments:

Post a Comment