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ON “COLLECTIVE GUILT”
CIVILIZD LIES AND THEIR BRUTAL
EFFECTS AT HOME AND ABROAD
R. K. Kent
Historian
Carla del Ponte said it. She is not at all after any “collective guilt” assigned to “the Serbs.” The New York Times had a substantial article on “The Hague. It’s a Leader on Trial, Not a People,” (2-17-02) by Barbara Crossette. An immediate question comes to mind. Let us grant the premise but how can the Serb People avoid being tagged with collective guilt when the Tribunal is essentially an endless parade of “testimony” to the “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity and peace” committed by “the Serbs?” Bosnian Muslim women in tears, dead bodies in Kosovo, ethnic Albanians as refugees fleeing Kosovo, destroyed homes and the like being played and re-played, possibly for two years, will “pile” ipso facto “guilt” on the Serb collective, right o wrong. The only possible antidote to this scenario would be for the Tribunal to pay for travel to the Hague (with lodging and food) of tens of thousands of SERB VICTIMS but the Tribunal would never pay for counter-evidence and since “the Serbs” are “not on trial” for “collective guilt” there is no reason to “give Milosevic” more “propaganda” tools. Casuistry is alive and well at the Hague.
Actually, all of this is hardly novel. Crippling economic sanctions punished the Serbs collectively for over a decade while maintaining the first Civilized Lie that the sanctions were not meant to punish the “Serb People” but only to persuade them to topple Milosevic. This came with zig-zags on Milosevic as well . Man of the Year at Dayton. Butcher of the Balkans after showing his teeth to NATO (read U.S.) at Kosovo. In documented fact, the -then Tribunal’s Prosecutor(Arbour) went to Washington, D.C. to obtain PERMISSION to indict Milosevic as a “war criminal.” When the Serbs marched in a cold winter to bring “Slobo” down, Mr. Clinton and Associates decided not to interfere. It was easier to deal with a strong man than with some two dozen “cackling” Serb parties. A “civilized”: silence took the floor.
Electoral Democracy is a pain in the neck when the White House and the Pentagon do not need it. An inverse “yield” comes about when the U.S. supports terrorists against “designated” “enemies” but reacts with its Might against even a whiff of terrorism directed at itself. The more this invisible war on terrorism goes on, amid contradictions in the Balkans and Afghanistan, the more it is becoming apparent that it is not vengeance, it is not even a simple and unavoidable riposte to 9-11 but something ENTIRELY else. It is a war on the vermin who even could come to DREAM to challenge the awesome ARSENAL and CREDIBILITY of the only remaining Super-Power’s Might.
In the Balkans, memories are long and there is no reason why most people who reside in the Western countries should have them as well. In fact, many of the leaders in the West have taken part in the re-writing of contemporary history without undue worry that the publics- at- large will even have a hint at what carving is actually being done on the cadaver of truth. Thus, the next Civilized Lie was that “our” intervention in ex-Yugoslavia was encapsulated in “Humanitarian Concerns.” It was, in reality, an entry meant to transform and save NATO by providing it with an enemy that REPLACED the defunct “Evil Empire.” The SERBS were CHOSEN and all of their local adversaries (for whatever reasons) became automatically “our” “friends” in the application of reasoning- by-analogy that prevailed in Europe’s Middle Ages.
This sequence came also on the heels of the famous Reagan White House “CIVILIZED” lie that it was “imperative and necessary” to “smash” all the lingering neo-Communist regimes of Eastern Europe after an informal “Concordat” with the “Polish Pope.” The IMF went to work in the ex-Yugoslav space in spades, insuring the intra-Republican rivalries and assisting the break-ups. The locally painful, across-the-board, problem was that a new and functioning system was not even remotely in place anywhere. In Serbia (and elsewhere) over one half of the work force happens to (still) be begging for a job. As Max Weber and Werner Sombart have shown, inter alia, the functioning Capitalist societies cannot be created by force-feeding, quickie arrangements and autos-da-fe. Those really hurt translate into workers and the urban middle classes, often the sinews of functioning Democracies. By creating lasting economic and social miseries in the name of “Liberal” Democracy, Western leaders may well be digging that kind of Democracy its lasting grave. So far from the claim of a premature “death of History,” caused by “Liberal” Democracies everywhere, History will bury that particular Ideology as well, just give it enough time. The precedents regarding all Ideologies are simply too heavy and too thick to be “relegated to History.”
When the NATO (U.S.) bombings in Yugoslavia started at the end of March 1999, they began with another Lie, one of a “Virtual War.” There was no Declaration of War from the U.S. Congress. The “air war,” everyone was told, was not a war against the “Serbian People” but only against Milosevic. It did not take long to bring into open view that the very opposite held as civilians and civilian targets were blasted for eleven weeks. One top American General came across magnificently. General Short, who commanded the “air war,” compared the Serbs to a “snake” and said that in order to kill a snake you’ve got to go for its head first. He documented this with three long-range hits of places where Milosevic and his family were supposed to have been but were not. The same General “revealed”( in a moment of candor surpassing his penchant for crude remarks) that “we were out to break the will of the Serbian people.”
So, after years of no collective punishment, no collective guilt
is going to be promoted at all through the so-called International
Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (oops, they will have to change “Yugoslavia”
since it does not exist officially any longer). Anyone who believes that must
believe that Mickey Mouse is a giant rat involved in all the Hollywood
Productions.
History Department.
University of California,
Berkeley, CA.
94720
(510/642-1971)
19.03.2002
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