I found the following posting by Charles S Young extremely convincing

> Paul Phillips suggests that the media has essentially fabricated the 
> portrait of Serbian aggression against muslims, and that this gives 
> advantage to some American plot in Yugoslavia.
> 
> I've spent my adult life opposed to much of U.S. foreign policy, but I 
> don't see the evidence here for manufactured serbian aggression, as 
> opposed to real aggression.
> 
> What exactly is this American plan for exYugoslavia?   I've read nothing 
> but vague, fanciful suggestions that there must be a plot in there 
> somewhere.  What's the plan, and what's the EVIDENCE of the plan?
> 
> Phillips quotes Amnesty International as saying rapes and atrocities are 
> being committed by both sides.  We would expect nothing else.  Paul -- 
> what does your Amnesty source say about the *proportion* of atrocities 
> committed by both sides?
> 
> Phillips states some atrocity reports were inaccurate.  We would not 
> expect all reports to be accurate.  The bulk of reports say Serbs have 
> the upper hand militarily and are pressing it, and that the Muslims are 
> the losers, so we would expect more crimes to be committed against 
> Muslims.  To suggest otherwise requires either a great body of evidence 
> no one else has seen, or great conspiratorial imagination.
> 
> The U.S. media does not naturally side with Muslims over Christians.  
> What is this overarching hegemonic imperative that compells the media to 
> support the muslims?  In the Vietnam war, the civil religion of freedom 
> and the hysteria of anticommunism had a systematic mind-bending effect on 
> the media and many peoples perceptions of the nobility of the cause.  I 
> see none of this mythology greatly apparent in Bosnia.  It is seen as 
> distasteful anarchy in some forgotten corner of Europe. Sketch for us 
> this great ideological blinder that creates such wrong reporting.  
> Something a little more concrete than that catch-all incantation, service 
> to U.S. capital.
> 
> Until I see evidence, not rhetoric, to the contrary, I think these 
> defenses of the Serb war represent the crudist caricature of progressive 
> thought: if Washington is doing it, it must be wrong.  Let's proceed from 
> the situation there, not from what Washington is doing.  Last I heard, it 
> wasn't just the U.S. press that was reporting Serbs beseiging Sarajevo.
> 
> Another of Paul's verbal acrobatics just came to mind -- he stated the 
> media was ignoring examples of Muslim ethnic cleansing.  This is a misuse 
> of terminology.  Ethnic cleansing is a specific term used by Serb 
> chauvanists to gain support.  Muslims I'm sure have killed civilians.  
> But the specific term "ethnic cleansing" should not be applied to Muslims 
> unless you present EVIDENCE that this terminology is being introduced 
> into Bosnian nationalist discourse.  There's a great difference between 
> fighting a war and occassionally committing civilian atrocities, and 
> having a developed ideology of racial superiority.  I think Paul's post 
> displays more serbian agenda than evidence.
> 
> The U.S. involvement in the region seems more marked by hesitation than 
> anything else.  I think Washington would prefer the issue went away.  
> They want an orderly new order and no doubt wish the serbs and muslims 
> acted more like Poles and East Germans.  
> 
> I'm happy to find evil motives on the part of Washington.  Just give me 
> an explanation why the West would give a *shit* who won.  I'll consider 
> it, but give me a reason.  I think the West's actions are best explained 
> by the preference for order, not some vague plot to favor one side.
> 


Neri Salvadori

Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche            TEL. (39)(50)549215
Universita' di Pisa                           FAX: (39)(50)598040
Via Ridolfi 10, i56100 PISA (Italy)           e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Reply via email to