over Kosovo and East Timor.

Somewhat old, but an interesting read. I edited quite a bit of it that can be found at the links below.

“Ban Ki Moon and R2P”
By Ian Williams
http://www.fpif.org/articles/ban_ki_moon_and_r2p

Quote :

"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. However, he claimed that the NATO air raids on Serbia actually precipitated the worst atrocities in Kosovo. This latter claim isn't only untrue but morally unpalatable in its spurious causality, like claiming that the British air raids on Germany precipitated the Nazi gas chambers. But at least Chomsky admitted that atrocities had taken place in Kosovo, which is much farther than some of his would-be acolytes have gone. It also begs the question: Does Chomsky want international action to stop atrocities in Gaza, the Congo, or situations like Timor, or is he only opposed to 'Western' interventions?"

“Kosovo, East Timor, R2P, and Ian Williams”
By Noam Chomsky
http://www.fpif.org/articles/kosovo_east_timor_r2p_and_ian_williams

Quote :

"There is massive evidence about Kosovo in impeccable Western sources, never questioned. That includes two compilations of documents by the State Department, detailed reports of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe Kosovo Verification Mission monitors, a British parliamentary inquiry, reports of NATO, the UN, and more. As I wrote in the paper on R2P to which Williams refers [http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/22227], the results are unequivocal: The worst atrocities began as the bombing started (to be precise, there was a slight increase a few days earlier when the monitors were withdrawn, over Serbian objections, in preparation for the bombings). On March 27, NATO Commander General Wesley Clark informed the press that the vicious Serbian reaction was 'entirely predictable.' He added shortly after that the sharp escalation of atrocities had been 'fully anticipated' and was 'not in any way' a concern of the political leadership. Clark clarified the matter further in his memoirs. He reports that on March 6, 1999, he had informed Secretary of State Madeline Albright that if NATO proceeded to bomb Serbia, 'almost certainly [the Serbs] will attack the civilian population,' and NATO will be able to do nothing to prevent that reaction... Considerably more remarkable even than these apologetics for NATO is what Williams says about the crimes in East Timor at the same time. These crimes were far worse than anything reported in Kosovo prior to the NATO bombing, and had a background far more grotesque than anything claimed in the Balkans. He writes that 'Chomsky quite rightly raised the question of why there was no intervention in East Timor.' It would have been outlandish to raise that question, and I did not do so. Since Williams favors Holocaust analogies, it would be like raising the question of why Nazis didn't intervene to stop the slaughter of Jews by local forces in the regions they occupied. The question doesn't arise, and for a simple reason: The United States and United Kingdom had been intervening for decades, providing decisive support for atrocities, and continued to do so right through the escalation of crimes in 1999, even after the vast destruction in early September. There was no secret about the reasons. In my R2P paper I quoted National Security Council advisor Sandy Berger who, after the September atrocities, dismissed the matter by saying 'I don't think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said that we ought to intervene wherever there's a humanitarian problem' -- in this case, a 'problem' we are directly expediting. Britain and Australia reacted the same way. As discussed further in the same paper, there would have been no need for any form of intervention: it would have been enough for the United States, United Kingdom, and their allies to have withdrawn their decisive participation in Indonesia's crimes. That was demonstrated a few days after Berger's dismissal of the 'problem' when, under strong domestic and international pressure, Clinton finally informed the Indonesian generals that the game was over and they instantly withdrew, allowing a UN peacekeeping force to enter unopposed -- a step that could have been taken at any time during the 25-year horror story. It is understandable that Williams doesn't like to look at the blood on his hands, but it cannot be so simply washed or wished away."

“Response to Chomsky”
By Ian Williams
http://www.fpif.org/articles/response_to_chomsky

Quote :

"I am afraid that simply because Noam Chomsky makes an ex cathedra observation does not make it 'uncontroversial' -- not even when he hyperbolically accuses me of having 'blood on my hands.' He still defends his statement that 'NATO air raids on Serbia [beginning March 24, 1999] actually precipitated the worst atrocities in Kosovo,' and is surprised that I find this untrue -- let alone morally unpalatable. One hesitates to teach logic, let alone linguistics, to the distinguished professor, but his use of the world[sic] 'precipitate' shifts the blame for the massacres and mass deportations that he admits took place from the actual perpetrators to those who were trying to stop them... One can certainly accuse the West of neglecting the plight of the Kosovars, but it was Milosevic and his regime that deprived the Kosovars of their rights and then began to kill and deport them. It was that regime that had recently killed up to 8,000 Bosnians at Srebrenica, whose dismembered and reburied bodies are still being found. There was no NATO bombing to blame for that rather shameful inaction. In fact, faced with that cold-blooded massacre, NATO leaders had every reason to fear the worst in Kosovo... In finding the Serbian officials guilty, the tribunal noted 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 [italics mine].' The blame-shifting certainly seems to have worked with Chomsky, but the judges looked at the mass of evidence and decided to the contrary... We could deplore this intervention as much as we like, but I fail to see what was going to stop Indonesia's brutality otherwise. Indeed, Chomsky points out that it was Clinton's intervention that persuaded the Indonesian general's that the game was up in East Timor. Yes it was long overdue, but it was an American intervention, which deserves some grudging credit. Also, by delegating U.S. forces to the UN on the Macedonian border, the United States successfully prevented yet another former Yugoslav republic being sucked into Milosevic's bloodstained mire. There are hundreds of thousands of dead Rwandans who would have welcomed a U.S. intervention there. However, Chomsky takes an absolutist position on intervention in principle, which would have had him picketing the Normandy beaches to stop the war against German workers."

Continued below.

1/5/2010 7:07:01 PM

“Response to Williams”
By Noam Chomsky
http://www.fpif.org/articles/response_to_williams

Quote :

"I quoted Clark's statement, made 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 political leadership'; and several weeks earlier to the White House, that if NATO attacked, 'almost certainly [Serbia] will attack the civilian population' and NATO will be able to do nothing about it. Thus Clark very explicitly predicted, and the White House recognized, that NATO bombing would precipitate Serbian atrocities -- exactly what happened, as the voluminous Western record demonstrates. In responding [August 21, 2009, above], Williams ignores all of this completely and instead haughtily affirms exactly what I wrote: that the Serbian crimes followed the bombing. Throughout, he pretends not to understand the difference between 'perpetrate' and 'precipitate' (my accurate paraphrase of Clark's warning). He writes that the bombing provided 'an opportunity' for which Milosevic had been waiting. Perhaps true, but if so that clearly reinforces the conclusion of General Clark and the White House that the NATO bombing would precipitate these crimes, as it did... He writes further that NATO 'had every reason to fear the worst in Kosovo,' because of what had happened in Bosnia. It is quite true that NATO had 'every reason to fear' the atrocities it regarded as an 'entirely predictable' consequence of its bombing -- a small fact that Williams omits. I can only interpret the bluster and evasions as his way of admitting that his charges are groundless, mere slander, and that he recognizes, at some level, his own complicity. Much more shocking are Williams' continued efforts to deny U.S.-UK crimes in East Timor. His reference to Bosnia as a justification for bombing Serbia illustrates again the depth of his commitment to denial of Western crimes. As I wrote, the crimes in East Timor -- carried out with decisive U.S.-UK support throughout -- were vastly greater than anything charged in Bosnia, coming as close to authentic genocide as anything in the modern period. If he means what he is saying, Williams should have been calling for the bombing of Jakarta, Washington, and London as the crimes in East Timor escalated again in 1999, to a level far beyond Kosovo before the NATO bombing, always with firm U.S.-UK support... Williams writes that the United States was 'certainly wrong' in failing to intervene to prevent the horrendous Indonesian crimes. That has been the standard line of apologists: We 'looked away' instead of intervening to stop the crimes. But as Williams and others who resort to this evasion know very well, the United States and United Kingdom most definitely did not fail to intervene during the quarter-century of Indonesian aggression and atrocities. Rather, they did intervene, and massively: By providing decisive support for these crimes, continuing to do so as the crimes accelerated again in 1999, even after the destruction of Dili in September, which elicited from Clinton's National Security Adviser Sandy Berger the statement that 'I don't think anybody ever articulated a doctrine which said that we ought to intervene wherever there's a humanitarian problem' -- so therefore the United States and United Kingdom continued their crucial participation. Even more remarkably, Williams writes that 'Chomsky points out that it was Clinton's intervention that persuaded the Indonesian generals that the game was up in East Timor. Yes it was long overdue, but it was an American intervention, which deserves some grudging credit.' The intervention Williams praises was Clinton's termination of U.S. participation in the aggression and atrocities. By Williams' logic, he should praise Russia for intervening in Afghanistan by withdrawing its troops in 1989. It would be instructive to see if even the most extreme Communist Party loyalist stooped to that."

"Response to Chomsky II"
By Ian Williams
http://www.fpif.org/articles/response_to_chomsky_ii

Quote :

"I look hard but fail to see a moral or logical compass in Chomsky's fast and loose recital of dates and deaths. In the end, his argument reduces to two basic principles. If someone other than the United States commits mass murder they did so with American encouragement, and so the guilt is ultimately Washington's. Or they did it in response to American actions, which either exonerates them or in some way mitigates their crime. The second principle is that intervention to stop mass murder is wrong — particularly if the only powers with the economic and military strength for effective intervention, i.e. the 'imperialist' powers, are behind it... ...Chomsky is once again evading the issue. A linguist should know better. I can indeed tell the difference between perpetrating and precipitating. His use of 'precipitating' in this context is an outstanding example of the logical fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc: after this, so because of it. Hence, all the atrocities that followed the bombing are to be attributed to the bombing. Once again, he is faulty both in logic and in fact. And since Chomsky is so fond of the testimony of military men, perhaps he should refer to the testimony of General Naumann about the meeting he and Clark had with Milosevic when they were delivering the NATO ultimatum, and the latter looked forward to a 'final solution' for the Kosovars, invoking the 1946 Drenica massacres, where, he obliging explained, 'We got them all together and we shot them.' Equally unsustainably, and one might add, pointlessly, Chomsky avers that 'the crimes in East Timor — carried out with decisive U,S,-UK support throughout — were vastly greater than anything charged in Bosnia, coming as close to authentic genocide as anything in the modern period.' While the professor blithely elides time to shape his polemic, the estimate total number of deaths in East Timor resulting from actions of the Indonesian army and its militia proxies in 1999 was 1,400 — around one tenth of Milosevic's butcher's bill in Kosovo the same year... The numbers cannot meaningfully be called 'vastly' different, but 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. In Chomsky's ghoulish calculus, East Timor was worse than the Balkans, so failure to act and indeed even encouragement in the one precludes anyone acting to stop the other. This is a complete non sequitur... When I say that Clinton's role in East Timor deserves some 'some grudging credit,' Chomsky upgrades this measured assessment to unqualified 'praise' for Clinton's termination of U.S. participation in the aggression and atrocities. He continues, 'By Williams' logic, he should praise Russia for intervening in Afghanistan by withdrawing its troops in 1989.' Well, yes, one does 'praise' — or at least acknowledge something positive about — governments for doing the right thing eventually, even Clinton, whose reluctance to intervene in Rwanda and Bosnia caused untold suffering and whose public renunciation of ground force intervention in Kosovo at the beginning of the crisis did so much to hearten Milosevic. And yet Chomsky ignores my criticism of the bombing campaign as counterproductive, a function of Clinton's unwillingness to risk U.S. troops. In my original article, I gave Chomsky credit for admitting — as so many of his acolytes have refused to do — Milosevic's murderous nature. But he still has not suggested how Milosevic's crimes might have been stopped, or indeed whether they should have been. Perhaps Chomsky imagines that he can evade his own responsibility with such Pilatean hand-washing. But every time he refuses to answer the question, his hands would in Macbeth's words 'rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.' Such a burden of responsibility kept Macbeth awake at night. I hope that Chomsky loses some sleep over it occasionally."

I'm familiar with Chomsky's claims with regard to East Timor; however, I'm unfamiliar with his allegations regarding NATO's bombing of Kosovo. I know that Wesley Clark has a tendency to say too much at times, but I'm surprised to have not heard an argument similar to Chomsky's before. Anyone care to tackle this issue or add any input?

1/5/2010 7:07:34 PM

Chomsky hates western culture.

/thread

1/5/2010 7:17:34 PM

Did you see that movie Avatar?

1/6/2010 1:56:05 PM

^^
I thought that was one of Williams's weaker arguments. A better argument of his regarded the options available to Wesley Clark at the time. If he was aware that bombing would lead to mass ethnic cleansing, what were his other possible alternatives? It was known that ethnic cleansing had already occurred. Inaction may have led to terrible outcomes, as well.

^
Was that directed toward me, Solinari or no one in particular?

1/6/2010 11:30:01 PM