This is supposed to be some kind of insult, I guess - although I don't quite understand it. Those on the left who support Diana Johnstone's writings explain very clearly what they are talking about - I cannot detect any preprogrammed "bot" activity here ...
On December 8th 2002, George Packer wrote the following in a New York Times Magazine article titled "The Liberal Quandary Over Iraq":
"Why there is no organized liberal opposition to the war?
"The answer to this question involves an interesting history, and it sheds light on the difficulties now confronting American liberals. The history goes back 10 years, when a war broke out in the middle of Europe. This war changed the way many American liberals, particularly liberal intellectuals, saw their country. Bosnia turned these liberals into hawks. People who from Vietnam on had never met an American military involvement they liked were now calling for U.S. air strikes to defend a multiethnic democracy against Serbian ethnic aggression. Suddenly the model was no longer Vietnam, it was World War II -- armed American power was all that stood in the way of genocide. Without the cold war to distort the debate, and with the inspiring example of the East bloc revolutions of 1989 still fresh, a number of liberal intellectuals in this country had a new idea. These writers and academics wanted to use American military power to serve goals like human rights and democracy -- especially when it was clear that nobody else would do it."
If George Packer's assertion is true, and I believe it is, then it becomes necessary to revisit the Yugoslavia events in the light of everything that has transpired over the past decade. As we move inexorably toward permanent warfare, naked imperialist rule and growing repression at home, the "turn" on the part of a broad sector of the left -- symbolized by Christopher Hitchens's mutation -- needs to be examined with a cold, clinical eye. The "humanitarian intervention" themes that were first raised on behalf of Bosnia crop up repeatedly. Not only were they used as an excuse to make war in the Balkans on two occasions, they have been used twice in Iraq as well. ...
http://www.swans.com/library/art9/lproy04.html
Diana Johnstone on the Balkan Wars
by Edward S. Herman
Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions (Monthly Review Press, 2002) is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the causes, effects, and rights-and-wrongs of the Balkan wars of the past dozen years. The book should be priority reading fOn the other hand, any attempt to counter the official/media team's claims and supposed evidence was quickly interpreted as apologetics. This is hardly new. In each U.S. war critics of U.S. policy are charged with being apologists for the demonized enemy—Ho Chi Minh and communism; Pol Pot; Saddam Hussein; Arafat; Daniel Ortega; Bin Laden, etc. The demonization of Milosevic was in accord with longstanding practice, and the charge of apologist for challenging the official line on the demon was inevitable for a forceful challenger. What is perhaps exceptional has been the extensive acceptance of the party line among people on the left, with, among others, Christopher Hitchens, <2> Ian Williams and the editors of The Nation in its grip. In These Times rejected first hand reporting from Kosovo by Johnstone, their longtime European Editor, when it diverged from the line of their more recent correspondent, Paul Hockenos, whose connections with the establishment included a stint as the spokesperson and media officer for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina, acting as an occupying power in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, and an affiliation with the American Academy in Berlin, whose chairman and co-chairman are Richard Holbrooke and Henry Kissinger. <3>or leftists, many of whom have been carried along by a NATO-power party line and propaganda barrage, believing that this was one case where Western intervention was well-intentioned and had beneficial results. An inference from this misconception, by "cruise missile leftists" and others, is that imperialism can be constructive and its power projections must be evaluated on their merits, case by case. But that the Western intervention in the Balkans constitutes a valid special case is false; the conventional and obvious truths on the Balkan wars that sustain such a view disintegrate on close inspection.
(...)
... any attempt to counter the official/media team's claims and supposed evidence was quickly interpreted as apologetics. This is hardly new. In each U.S. war critics of U.S. policy are charged with being apologists for the demonized enemy—Ho Chi Minh and communism; Pol Pot; Saddam Hussein; Arafat; Daniel Ortega; Bin Laden, etc. The demonization of Milosevic was in accord with longstanding practice, and the charge of apologist for challenging the official line on the demon was inevitable for a forceful challenger. What is perhaps exceptional has been the extensive acceptance of the party line among people on the left, with, among others, Christopher Hitchens, <2> Ian Williams and the editors of The Nation in its grip. In These Times rejected first hand reporting from Kosovo by Johnstone, their longtime European Editor, when it diverged from the line of their more recent correspondent, Paul Hockenos, whose connections with the establishment included a stint as the spokesperson and media officer for the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe Mission to Bosnia-Herzegovina, acting as an occupying power in northern Bosnia-Herzegovina, and an affiliation with the American Academy in Berlin, whose chairman and co-chairman are Richard Holbrooke and Henry Kissinger. <3>
(...)
Johnstone contends that the United States was a participant in the Balkan wars for a number of reasons, including the desire to maintain its role as leader of NATO and to help provide it with a function on its 50th anniversary year (celebrated in the midst of the 78-day bombing war in April 1999); if Germany and others were going to intervene in Yugoslavia, the United States would have to enter and play its role, and incidentally show that in the use of force it was still champion. The United States was also helping itself in its Bosnian intervention by demonstrating its willingness to aid Muslims, contradicting its image as anti-Muslim, and solidifying its relationship with Turkey and other Muslim countries helping in the Bosnian war. It was also positioning itself for further advances in the region with a major military base in Kosovo and new clients in an area of increasing interest with links to the Caspian basin. The humanitarian motive was contradicted by inherent implausibility and by the nature and inhumanitarian results of the U.S. and NATO intervention.
http://www.monthlyreview.org/0203herman.htm
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