To Kill A Nation (The Attack On Yugoslavia)
by Michael Parenti
London: Verso, 2000
Review by Richard Hugus
The United States has committed an enormity against the people of Yugoslavia - a crime which many have been unable to recognize because of its very size and audacity. We seem to have reached a stage in the "information age" when a completely factitious war is now possible - that is, a war based entirely on false information. The war against Yugoslavia didn't come about because of a crudely staged incident or provocation, like wars of old. It came about by virtue of a state-corporate media working in unison to create an entire world in which falsehood and lies were passed off as facts, and such facts, once established, became the building blocks for even greater fabrications. Propaganda which set the stage for the attack on Yugoslavia by the US and its NATO minions is not a recent phenomenon. The groundwork for it was laid years ago. It was carefully and logically planned. Such incidents as were staged, like the "Racak massacre", were only small pieces of a much larger production.
The intent of the US, simply put, has been to dismember and consume this once-prosperous Socialist federation. It has attempted to do so by, among other things, implementing long-term economic sanctions; fomenting civil war; passing off impossible ultimatums as diplomacy; engaging in a 78 day bombardment and massacre based on the outrageous pretext of such bombing being "humanitarian"; organizing a proxy army and calling it a "liberation" movement; using "peacekeeping" as the excuse for direct military occupation and the setting up of major bases; manipulating national elections through massive fraud; carrying out a political takeover by US-backed puppets; and continuing economic warfare through IMF and World Bank "structural adjustment programs. "
In To Kill a Nation, Michael Parenti has detailed these and other facts about the war against Yugoslavia, and, in doing so, has helped set the world right side up again. Because of his previous scholarship on the ways in which history is written to serve the needs of the powerful (see his last book, History As Mystery) Parenti is well suited to examine the "history" of the Balkans which is being made each day through reports in the mainstream press.
Take this typical example - a single sentence, provided as stock background -- from a recent article in the Boston Globe about new conflicts taking place in Bosnia ("Balkan Policy Has New Challenges", March 8, 2001):
"Serb paramilitaries, with Belgrade's support, waged a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing there [in Bosnia] as Yugoslavia's former president, Slobodan Milosevic, attempted to carve a 'Greater Serbia.'"
Parenti discusses the way in which such statements, though never established as true, became "true" by virtue of being repeated over and over again in a wide variety of supposedly independent news sources. Today, to most readers of the mainstream press, the idea that Serbs were not guilty of "ethnic cleansing" would simply be unbelievable. The fact that reported mass graves of ethnic Albanians were never found in Kosovo, or that the Serbs were themselves the victims of ethnic cleansing in 1995 in Croatia, and in 1999 in Kosovo, is either not presented or is overwhelmed by the sheer weight and number of assertions of Serb guilt.
These facts are documented by Parenti, who goes on to describe even more insidious feats of propaganda - hiding the deeds of the criminals by shifting them onto the shoulders of their victims. For example, in the excerpt above, it isn't the fascist KLA who have been trying to create a "Greater Albania"; it was Milosevic who "attempted to carve a 'Greater Serbia.'" This is complete nonsense.
What of the crimes of people who were not involved in civil war, of those who waged war from the outside of what was, afterall, a sovereign nation which had attacked no one? In a chapter entitled "NATO's War Crimes", Parenti describes the real atrocities which the fabricated atrocities were supposed to divert us from. (Again, the deeds of the criminal have been imputed to the victim.) These atrocities include the US/NATO's "bombing fifteen cities in round-the-clock air raids for over two months, spewing hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic and carcinogenic chemicals into the water, air, and soil, poisoning agricultural fields and rivers, maiming and killing thousands, exposing millions to depleted uranium, and obliterating the productive capital of an entire nation."
In the popular press, "Serbs" can barely be mentioned without being connected to the terms "ethnic cleansing" or "atrocities", and "Milosevic", of course, cannot be mentioned without the word "brutal" lurking somewhere nearby -- usually "brutal dictator." Parenti is probably the most notable left intellectual in America to have the courage to defend Milosevic and the Serbs against the exaggerations that have been laid upon them. He does this with an excellent account of the multiculturalism which prospered in Yugoslavia while Milosevic was in office, and by bringing levelness and common sense to the question of what a national leader and a people really are.
"To reject the demonized image of Milosevic and of the Serbian people," he says, "is not to idealize either nor to claim that Yugoslav forces have not committed crimes. It is merely to challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for the imperialist dismemberment of Yugoslavia and NATO's far greater criminal onslaught."
Why does this take courage? Because of the bullying of the press and notable opinion-makers. Because of the pressure to conform to accepted and seemingly universal opinion. Because the charges against the Serbs and Milosevic are so monumental that would-be defenders are themselves incriminated. And because, amazingly, almost no other well-known left intellectual has actually taken these steps.
The overt phase of the ongoing war against Yugoslavia represented by the March to June 1999 bombing was a crisis which discombobulated the antiwar Left. Some notables sold out completely, supporting the bombing. Others suffered different degrees of co-optation. Noam Chomsky, for example, who regularly uses the word "brutal" to describe Milosevic, opposed the US/NATO war while at the same time supporting some of the tenets of propaganda that made it possible. On this subject, Parenti writes:
"In the face of such a relentless propaganda campaign against Milosevic and the Serbs, even prominent personages on the Left - who oppose NATO's policy against Yugoslavia - have felt compelled to genuflect before this orthodoxy. While establishment liberals said, 'The Serbs are brutal and monstrous. Let's attack them,' some progressives argued 'The Serbs are brutal and monstrous. But let's not attack them, for that would be even worse.' Thus did they reveal themselves as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they criticized on so many other issues."
While it is admirable and correct of Parenti to point this out, Parenti himself, unfortunately, makes generalizations derived from this orthodoxy. When he says, for instance, that "no doubt atrocities were committed on all sides, including the Serbs" and that "Serbian paramilitary killings in Kosovo (many of which occurred after the aerial war began) are no justification for bombing fifteen cities . . . " he is in fact bowing to that monolith of unproved accusations which he elsewhere criticizes. What atrocities did the Serbs actually commit? Where is the proof that Serbian paramilitary killings occurred after the aerial war began? We know that the Serbs were accused of many things which they didn't do. So far, no one has documented the things the Serbs did do. So why say anything? This is something Jared Israel, editor of "The Emperor's New Clothes" web site, describes as "the obligatory bash."
It turns out to be very difficult to speak up against what everyone says must be true. It is difficult for all of us. But there is no reason to concede any part of a lie.
In addition to his own analysis, Michael Parenti discusses in this book the insights of a number of other writers who discerned and foretold a pattern of US aggression in the Balkans going as far back as the 1980's. With this pattern coming into horrifying focus today -- Serbia encircled, the US-supported DOS in power, the US-backed KLA lined up like wolves on Serbia's border -- now is not the time to turn our backs on the people of Yugoslavia. To Kill A Nation is a book which shows one way we can lend support. This was a war based on lies. The first step toward justice is to understand these lies. And then begin the work of setting them straight.
