Noam Chomsky:

På adressen http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/chomreplieskos.htm

hittar vi uttalanden från Noam Chomsky om konflikten i Jugoslavien:

"Chomsky was asked first about support among progressives for the position that 'military intervention is needed to stop Milosevic from committing genocide, regardless of whether NATO's motivations are pure,' ..."

"... let's consider Milosovec's 'genocide' in the period preceding the NATO bombings. According to NATO, 2000 people had been killed, mostly by Serb military, which by summer 1998 began to react (with retaliation against civilians) to guerrilla (KLA) attacks on police stations and civilians, based from and funded from abroad. And several hundred thousands of refugees were generated. (We might ask, incidentally, how the US would respond to attacks on police stations and civilians in New York by armed guerrillas supported from and based in Libya).

That's a humanitarian crisis, but one of a scale that is matched or exceeded substantially all over the world right now, quite commonly with decisive support from Clinton. The numbers happen to be almost exactly what the State Department has just reported for Colombia in the same year, with roughly the same distribution of atrocities...

So if Milosovic is 'genocidal,' so are a lot of others -- pretty close to home. That doesn't say he's a nice guy: he's a monstrous thug. But the term 'genocidal' is being waved as a propaganda device to mobilize the public for Clinton's wars.

Second, the US ('NATO') intervention, as predicted, radically escalated the atrocities, maybe even approaching the level of Turkey, or of Palestine in 1948, to take another example."

Chomsky was also asked: 'To what extent could US resort to military force in the Balkans be related to Caspian Sea oil and concerns over declining reserves, uncertainty about Russia and its former empire, the threat to Western interests of increasing conflict in the Balkans, the desire to
increase the Pentagon budget, or maybe other factors, since the professed humanitarian concerns seem `dubious.'"

"On the last, 'dubious' is too kind. If a Mafia don who runs the local branch of Murder Inc. shows some kindness to children, the humanitarian concerns don't rise to the level of 'dubious"'-- and that's even more so if he shows his humanitarian concerns by kicking the kid in the face. We can put that aside, as sheer hypocrisy.

More plausible, in my view, is just what Clinton, Blair, etc., have been saying from the start. It's necessary to ensure the 'credibility of NATO.' But that phrase has to be translated from Newspeak."

"Here we can return to the Mafia don. If someone doesn't pay protection money, the don has to establish 'credibility,' to make sure others don't get funny ideas about disobeying orders. So what Clinton, et al., are saying is that it's necessary to ensure that everyone has proper fear of the global enforcer."

"...That makes sense for a rogue superpower, with a near monopoly on means of violence. The 'humanitarian cover' has been used by violent states throughout history: we'd probably find it was true of Genghis Khan, if we had records. It was surely true of the Crusaders who left a hideous trail of death and destruction."

"In the background is the dedicated US assault against any institution of international order: the UN, the World Court, even the WTO when it gets out of hand. That's been going on for almost 40 years, ...: they don't follow our orders, so they can get lost. That's why the US, in this case, compelled its more reluctant NATO allies to reject even 'authorization' from the UN.

A very important observation leaked through the NY Times on April 8, in one of the last paragraphs of a story on an inside page by Steven Erlanger, their Belgrade correspondent, who has a record of reliability. Possibly the most important bit of information about what has been happening. He writes that 'just before the bombing, when [the Serbian Parliament] rejected NATO troops in Kosovo, it also supported the idea of a United Nations force to
monitor a political settlement there.'

If Erlanger's report is true, then it provides very dramatic evidence of US intentions: like the bombing of Iraq in December, it is another brazen attack against the institutions of world order, since the Serbian Parliament would be right, and Washington wrong, on the alternatives of a UN vs. a NATO force. If the report is true, then the last shreds of legitimacy for the US/NATO operation disappear. I hadn't seen this reported before; maybe others have. It surely merited a front-page headline, the day before the bombings began, not a hidden phrase two weeks later -- though that's better than nothing."