Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions

by Diana Johnstone

Book Overview

Military interventions on supposedly humanitarian grounds have become an established feature of the post-Cold War global order. Since September 11, this form of militarism has taken on new and unpredictable proportions. Diana Johnstone's well-documented study demonstrates that a crucial moment in establishing in the public mindand above all, within the political context of liberalism and the leftthe legitimacy of such interventions was the "humanitarian"...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 158367084X
• ISBN13: 9781583670842
• Release Date: November 2002
• Publisher: Monthly Review Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

name withheld

As an intelligence officer from a NATO country who spent three long, and two short tours in Bosnia, I must say the information provided in this book is disturbingly accurate. While the first US and NATO troops on the ground (IFOR) at least made an attempt to present a neutral front, all semblance of neutrality went out the window with SFOR. SFOR was a blatant pro-Muslim, pro-Croatian force. Several observations for other readers who disagree--what would be the reaction in the world press if Germany re-adopted the Nazi flag? Yet the Ustasa Nazi Croation flag is completely accepted and Serbs who were living in Croatia certainly remembered that flag. How is it that the world bastion of democracy-the United States-can directly intervene in a free and open election in the Republika Serpska and remove an elected president, Dr. Poplassen, and forceably install a corrupt US puppet. (this was witnessed first hand.) Enough venting; for people interested in purchasing this book, be prepared. The story told is not what you will remember from the press and is not US State Department approved.

Based on evidence and reason, not propaganda!!

Diana Johnstone's text is extraordinary. One of the main difficulties when dealing with social reality is that no one is neutral. When a particular point of view regarding any issue is supported by those who have the power to influence the flow of information, then the general understanding of that particular issue is biased. This is true for the bombing of Yugoslavia in particular, and for the general understanding of the whole conflict. The reason is that those with power to influence the flow of information had a strong motivation to do it -- putting it into context, US-led NATO needed a justification for their intervention, which in reality had more to do with building oil-pipelines, installing US military bases in Kosovo and control-reconstruct the area, and NATO credibility, than with anything regarding the conflict in Yugoslavia (for anyone who knows anything about politics this should be no surprise, a state act solely out of concern for its national interest). However, the bombing was rather catastrophic for people in Yugoslavia, even for Kosovo Albanians. In any case, as Johnstone's book demonstrates with strong evidence and the use of reason (the hardest weapon against state propaganda), the US and NATO largely succeeded in their aims, demonizing Milosevic and the Serbs, and reducing the Yugoslav conflict to slogans -- such as the so-called "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanians in Kosovo, or the comparison of Serbs to Nazis and of Milosevic to Hitler. For anyone interested in understanding the conflict, those claims, although widely supported by the mass media in the West, are not only false but rather absurd, and its most immediate consequence is a generally biased understanding of the conflict. What Diana Johnstone does is to demonstrate this bias, widely supported by state propaganda and, surprinsingly, most of the mass media, and compare it with what, as far as evidence can take us, the reality of the Yugoslav conflict from as early as the XIVth century (in the case of Kosovo) through 2000. So, for anyome willing to reason about the conflict instead of following slogans, this is a great book to challenge mainstream accounts.

AN EYE OPENER ON WHY YUGOSLAVIA WAS DESTROYED

A thoroughly researched book on how Europe allowed itself to be dragged by a deceitful Clinton Administration with UK/Nato support into approving/participating in the destruction of Yugoslavia once a european socialist model of a peaceful and happy multicultural/multireligious society. The consequences of this aggressive and criminal war which devastated the civilian infrastructure of the country and caused the death of hundreds of thousands of people are ethnic tensions that hardly existed before and the continued dislocation and misery of millions of Serbs, Croats and Moslems who have lost their homes, their belongings and any hope for a better future.

Ver well researched work of excellence

It is not common to see 500 references in a book of 280 pages, and most of them are easy to check through major libraries or even the internet. Johnstone builds her case with undisputable documentation of the available evindence of massive propaganda that was much more successful than in the case of Iraq, since there was tacit approval among all Western countries and nobody was willing to rock the boat. Those who dispute her evidence should check the references, one by one. Perhaps they will learn something new.Nash, Canada

Collective guilt

Much has been said in times recent about the need for Serbs to come to terms with their collective guilt over the extreme violence surrounding the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. This book makes it abundantly clear that, as far as collective guilt is concerned, it's not the Serbs that should be in the dock.The litany of lies and misinformation that was used to convince the clueless masses of the righteousness of the case against 'the Serbs' is quite astounding. The big lie technique to justify war is well known, and has been documented extensively elsewhere. However, this wasn't the case with the Balkans, where instead many many small lies were used effectively to create a smoke screen around the reality of the situation. These lies were, and still are, constantly and persistently perpetuated by a subservient media and presscorp, hungry for the gratuities earned from deceptions as gratuitous as the carnage they portray. Reports every bit as bad as that last sentence.The small lie that convinced the world that the Serbs were the new Nazis, the so-called 'concentration camp' picture from Trnopolje.The small lie, the Srebrenica massacre, that diverted the worlds attention from a massive piece of cognitive dissonance, the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from the Croatian krajina. It's over 8 years now since the alleged genocide occured, and still the media persists in stating as fact, every time Srebrenica is mentioned, that 7000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered by Serbs, despite the evidence which is at best inconclusive, and at worst indicative of a grand deception. On the other hand, the media never seems to mention the krajina at all.The small lie about the Croatian and Bosnian leaderships. Would the anti-Serb rhetoric have been so easily swallowed if we had known the truth about Tudjman and Izetbegovic?All of these small lies worked so well because the vast majority of us corn sucking westerners have been so thoroughly depoliticized that we can only see conflicts in terms of human rights violations. Any political context goes straight out the window. This is a bizarre situation, because the first thing defenders of Empire say when confronted with western power atrocities is 'you've got to consider the political context.'And when you only see, and are only told about one sides human rights violations, what else are you going to think.Another irony to come from the Balkans conflicts is the ICTY, and it's relationship to the ICC. The US rejects the ICC because it believes that it will be used for political purposes. Well, duh! That's exactly the precedent set by the ICTY. The whole Milosevic situation, from indictment right through to the trial has been a string of political manipulations. My favourite one is the externally driven kidnapping of Milosevic, and extradition to the Hague, to undermine Kostunicas' credibility, and allow Djinjic (who never was concerned with credibility) to take the power.This book, as the author states,