|
Please forward this text or send the
link to a friend.
Subscribe to our
free
newsletter at Emperor’s Clothes ================================================ Email debate between Jared Israel and Noam Chomsky on Yugoslavia I. Introduction: The current misperception of Chomsky as a defender of the Serbs II. The email debate For Emperor's Clothes articles on the break-up of Yugoslavia, go to http://emperors-clothes.com/yugo.htm =============================================== I.
Introduction Recently I've read on Internet discussion lists that Noam Chomsky is being attacked as, of all things, an apologist for Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs. In fact, throughout the Yugoslav conflict, starting with the fighting in Bosnia and continuing through the 1999 bombing of Serbia, Chomsky provided a kind of Left cover for the demonization of the Serbs. During the 1999 bombing, he repeated the standard anti-Serbian description of events with a few changes, creating the impression that he was criticizing NATO. Thus Chomsky had the following exchange on 5 April 1999 (i.e., two weeks into the NATO bombing of Serbia) on Pacifica Radio with Democracy Now reporter Amy Goodman:
Chomsky was, as always,
convoluted, so let me translate. 2) According to Chomsky's fairy tale, the Albanians finally despaired and turned to violence, which was answered by far greater violence on the Yugoslav government side. For an accurate description of what really happened, see the interview with Kosovo historian and Jewish leader Cedomir Prlincevic, “Why Albanians Fled Kosovo During the 1999 NATO Bombing,” at http://www.tenc.net/interviews/keys.htm 3) Chomsky says that in response to the Serbs' supposed greater violence, the West bombed, knowing full well that this would cause the Serbs to react with a reign of terror, murdering and expelling the Albanian population, which is (says Chomsky) what happened. In fact the bombing began months after the Albanian secessionists were routed. It followed the Yugoslav government's rejection of the Rambouillet ultimatum, which would have given NATO direct colonial-type control of all of Yugoslavia. Notice how dishonest Chomsky is. His description of events is (as he states) the same as that of NATO commander Wesley Clark, yet Chomsky strikes a pose of criticizing Western leaders for (supposedly) giving the Albanian secessionists insufficient support when they were (supposedly) nonviolent and (supposedly) inciting Serbian fanaticism with reckless bombing. So he is supporting NATO's line to a T, while posturing as the bitter critic of NATO. Talk about linguistics! Not bad, boss. Democracy Now, which interviewed Chomsky, is listened to by many thousands of people who might have opposed NATO's massive bombing, had Chomsky, the supposed anti-imperialist, not told them, 'NATO is wrong to be bombing those Serbian monsters.' And all the while that Chomsky was using the public's perception that he is a super-anti-imperialist to in fact sell the justification for the war, he was exchanging emails with young people in Serbia expressing sorrow for the bombings. A super hypocrite. I had two email exchanges with Chomsky concerning Milosevic and the Serbs. The first was during the 1999 NATO bombing. I wrote asking Chomsky to speak at one of the weekly anti-war rallies I was helping organize in Boston. I knew of Chomsky from the late 1960s. Back then, I was a leader of Students for a Democratic Society, the student antiwar group, at Harvard. I was friends with one of Chomsky's teaching assistants. We considered Chomsky a political eccentric; in any case he was a minor figure in the antiwar movement, although already important in linguistics. Now, some 30 years later, he was well-known as a political writer, hence my invitation. Chomsky replied that he was booked-up for the indeterminate future. When I wrote Chomsky, I sent him transcripts of German Court and Foreign Ministry documents challenging the charge that Yugoslav forces targeted ethnic Albanian civilians during the 1998 fighting with the Kosovo Liberation Army. I also sent him Slobodan Milosevic's speech from 1989. I made the point that this speech showed that the media was lying outright about what Milosevic had said; clearly they were trying to demonize him. Chomsky agreed. I wrote Chomsky again in September 2000 because I had read on the internet that, in response to someone who supported the NATO line on Yugoslavia, Chomsky had written, "The Milosevic regime has committed many crimes, but one cannot attribute the terrible conditions [in Yugoslavia] completely to its crimes." Our exchange is posted below,
unedited. *** II. Email Debate between Noam Chomsky and Jared Israel ============================================ First Letter from Jared Israel to Noam Chomsky ============================================ Dear Noam, Your continuing demonization of "the Serbs" is appalling. I thought you were too-little-too-late, conceding US guilt and Yugoslav innocence one step behind media-admitted facts - but now, it appears, you trail further, falling behind even the ICTY. Your "lack of time" to speak at the Boston antiwar demonstrations to which I invited you 16 months ago takes on a different significance in light of the statements you have issued during and since the bombing. The tragedy is that with your influence on young people you could have encouraged the creation of a protest movement, instead of throwing cold water on the antiwar impulse by parroting NATO in the guise of criticizing NATO with your "NATO is even worse than the Serbs" nonsense. Jared ============================================ From Noam Chomsky To Jared Israel 5 September 2000 ============================================ Dear Jared, I think you are aware of the fact that in the past 10 years the Milosevic regime has committed many crimes. The statement you quote is from a forum, where I rejected the charges made by a questioner against the Milosevic regime. In that context there is no need whatsoever to add an essay documenting every factual statement that is made. Noam
5 September 2000 ============================================ Dear Noam, In a message dated 09/05/2000 3:22:12 PM Eastern Daylight Time, you wrote:
"The fact that"? Who said it was a fact? You construct a sentence that asserts as given the truth of the very thing which in my note I said was a lie. Clever. Noam, I have been reading your stuff for a long time and I am not a dope. I am "aware of the fact" that you have repeatedly charged Milosevic AND "The Serbs" with criminal actions, e.g., atrocities against civilians. Your sentences are routinely constructed so as to assert the truth of your charges, despite no proof. Your writing has "in fact" had a negative effect on the left, such as it is, cooling antiwar passions and hindering the creation of a serious antiwar movement. The burden of proof cannot be escaped by tricky wording or sloppiness. I repeat, what crimes has Milosevic committed in Kosovo, Bosnia, Croatia? Date or dates, place or places. Details. Prove the credibility of your sources. I think you just parrot what's written in the mass media. Jared ============================================ From Noam Chomsky to Jared Israel
============================================ Dear Jared, Apologies. I didn't realize you thought that Milosevic's regime was alone in the world in not having committed many crimes. If you think I'm going to take time to discuss this topic with you, think again. There are serious things to do. Noam
From Jared Israel to Noam
Chomsky ============================================ Dear Noam, Yesterday you wrote me:
What's the point of the sarcasm, Noam? You cannot avoid the serious questions I and others have raised about your writing on Yugoslavia by resorting to mockery. Your writing is full of explicit accusations such as: ""By summer [1998], the KLA had taken over about 40 per cent of the province, eliciting a vicious reaction by Serb security forces and paramilitaries, targeting the civilian population." (Al-Ahram, June 2000, my emphasis) Obviously you are not talking about every government in the world. You are claiming that the Yugoslav government made certain choices. That is, faced with an isolated terrorist group (which the KLA was until after the onset of NATO bombing convinced key Albanian clan leaders that the KLA had the full support of NATO) - given that the Yugoslavs were faced with an isolated terrorist gang the Yugoslavs could a) do everything possible to avoid civilian casualties or b) take it out on civilians, thus guaranteeing support for the KLA. The Yugoslav Army has an unusual history. Its doctrine is based on the expectation of conducting a mass-based resistance to a new attack from the West, an attack which they anticipated for 50 years. This army studied the tactics of conducting a war of resistance. Now whether one likes or dislikes armies per se, this particular army grasps the key role played by popular support (and antagonism!) in warfare. Why would they make such a stupid mistake as to target the civilian population when they were fighting a (then) isolated gang of dope smuggling fascists? Moreover, as you have known for a year, the antiwar movement possesses a number of documents from the German Courts and Foreign Ministry, documents produced in response to the requests by Kosovo Albanians to receive the status of political refugees. The German courts studied the situation in Kosovo and ruled in every case that there was no evidence - none - that the Yugoslav Army targeted civilians. The Humanitarian Crisis was manufactured by Western officials and the mass media to justify Western demands that the Yugoslav special troops leave Kosovo - Yugoslav territory. All this was known to you a year ago. Every website that opposed the bombing of Yugoslavia featured those documents. I believe that even the Z website, stronghold of Serb bashing within the antiwar movement, posted those documents. Why then, a year after the end of the war, after Carla Del Ponte admitted in mid November that they had found a grand total of 2108 bodies whose identities were unknown - that is, that these bodies, which they allegedly found, could be anyone - why did you write in June, 2000 that the Yugoslav Army targeted Albanian civilians? This is not a trivial matter, Noam. And this is only one of the times you made statements which uncritically parroted what we have been told by the Western media. This particular statement was written in an Arab publication - particularly harmful since the Western media tries to convince Arabs of the lie that "the Serbs" are anti-Muslim bigots. You say: <<If you think I'm going to take time to discuss this topic with you, think again. There are serious things to do.>>. What could be more serious than whether Yugoslavia has committed serious crimes of war? What could be more serious then whether you have, in fact, publicly lied with the effect of discouraging action by antiwar activists? A year ago you sent me the following email post:
Now Noam, if you knew way back then that demonizing Milosevic is critical in order to maintain public support for the attack on Yugoslavia, why have you persistently demonized him and the Serbian people and Yugoslav army? For example, during the bombing you wrote: "The bombing was then undertaken under the rational expectation that KILLING and refugee generation would ESCALATE as a result, as indeed happened, even if the scale may have come as a surprise to some, though apparently not the commanding general. " (This is from a piece you wrote and posted in May, 1999 on the Z website, my emphasis) I have done text analysis of several of your articles about Yugoslavia and the above excerpt demonstrates a technique you employ over and over. In brief, you attack the Yugoslavs in the guise of either defending them or attacking NATO. Thus, here you say that the NATO commanding general obviously knew how terribly the Serbs would react. Posing your point in this form seems to be a criticism of NATO; this lends it credibility on the left. But what you are really doing is taking the "commanding general's" statement - that the bombing DID precipitate escalated Serbian atrocities - as axiomatic: true without requirement of proof. Indeed, you assert the truth of NATO's charge in passing, using it as the basis of your false criticism of NATO. Now, your claim to fame is media criticism. You opposed the Vietnam War. Why does an antiwar activist, who studies the media, and who knows - who has told me he knows - that demonization "is critical in order to maintain public support for" the attack on Yugoslavia - why does such a person fail to even question - even question! - the anti-Yugoslav news reports? Why? Why, during the bombing and since, have your statements even at times lagged behind what we are reading in some of the mass publication newspapers? (This is the case with the Al-Ahram article which was contradicted by the German Court and Foreign Ministry documents over a year ago!) If these are trivial questions then what is serious? Jared *** At that point Chomsky responded, in an email that I have unfortunately misplaced, that he had learned that I'd posted our correspondence to an email discussion list, and he refused to continue an exchange with someone who had no respect for privacy, or words to that effect. Chomsky then wrote a letter to one Andrej, my opponent on said email list - I think it was called the Crash List - attacking me, and Andrej proceeded to post Chomsky's response on the list. So much for respecting privacy... Here's what Chomsky wrote, courtesy of Andrej.
Noam Chomsky to Andrej ============================================ Dear Andrej, If you'd like my advice, you're wasting your time writing to [Jared] Israel. I suppose I can't criticize you for being too polite (though it's true) because I am too. These people are worse than "not helpful." That goes back a long time. And completely beyond any rational discussion. Noam ***** My comment: Regarding this, one might
argue that Professor Chomsky's responses to me do not constitute the
limit of "rational discussion."
Donate to Emperor’s Clothes ============================================== At Emperor’s Clothes we get all our funding from our readers. If you find our work useful, and you can afford to make a donation, please do. Our ability to pay for research tools and other expenses depends on you. Every donation helps, whether it is $5, $50 or $500. Thank you! Our best is yet to come. Here’s how to make a donation: * Using
PayPal * By credit card at
our
secure server Thank You! *** For Emperor's Clothes articles on the break-up of Yugoslavia, go to http://emperors-clothes.com/yugo.htm
Please forward this text or send the
link to a friend.
Emperor’s Clothes |