Belgrade, March 31, 1999
The refugees' humanitarian catastrophe, which is pre-eminent
in the western view of the Kosovo situation, is recognized as being a major
issue also in Belgrade. Yugoslav television has shown crowds of refugees
leaving Kosovo for Macedonia, but the
emphasis here is on people leaving for Serbia and Montenegro. They are mostly
Serbs, Montenegrins, and Romany (Gypsies) but also include some Albanians.
There are maybe 100,000 Albanians living in Belgrade, and some Kosovo Albanians
find refuge in Belgrade with their relatives. Refugees arriving in Belgrade say
that they run from US bombing. On the basis of western reporting from Pristina
and of observation of bombing damage that we see on television, it seems
reasonable to accept that explanation. US bombing caused refugee humanitarian
catastrophes in Europe in WWII, in Korea, and in Vietnam. It is silly to claim
that our bombs are now nice and do not spread panic amongst the population any
more. Which of course does not exclude terror by gunmen or police.
The KLA guerrillas, since the beginning of their military confrontation with
the Yugoslav army have created fortified positions in their own villages. When
you choose such tactics you in effect ask for your house to be shelled. It is a
primitive defensive tactic, such that no successful guerrilla force has ever
employed. That explains some of the damage, but I do not doubt that there has
been some intentional torching of Albanian villages. During the Vietnam that
was called a "Zippo raid". Unfortunately, that's war. In the human
species we have an unfortunate tendency to set enemy houses on fire. We have
been doing it since the good old paleolithic times and we continue to do it in
wartime, unless our commanding officers be prepared to have us shot when we do
it without orders. Such instinct is so strong that Zippo tactics are practiced
even by the victors advancing into newly conquered territory. It was practiced
on a large scale by the Russians as they conquered Prussia in 1944--they
intended to keep Prussia for themselves, these in effect were their own new
houses, to conquer them they had shed much blood, yet they burned them. Zippo
tactics were very much in fashion during Operation Storm, the Croat conquest of
Serb Krajina in 1995. On that occasion, no squeals of indignation were heard
from NATO governments, let alone threats. It is heartening to see such moral
growth taking place in western capitals over the short span of four years.
To express shock that Serb thugs, whose families for more than 20 years were terrorized by Albanian thugs, may be settling accounts in the midst of a NATO intervention which many Albanians asked for, is disingenuous. Everyone expected a general settling of accounts, and all western reporters in Pristina knew it was coming. All important people in Washington, London, Paris, and Bonn, knew it was going to happen but accepted the "unavoidable risks": few western editors or politicians own property in Kosovo. It is unquestionable that the western media performed the function of creating the atmosphere that was necessary to start this little war.
Here is how this war was delivered. Film and pictures showing the ravages of war are shown. Pressure for some action, any action, is brought to bear. A fake massacre is set up in Racak, where during heavy fighting about 40 Kosovo Albanians lose their life. A few French journalists challenge the tale of murder, pointing out serious inconsistencies, while everyone else drinks it up. Orders, then threats are sent to Belgrade. When little Slobodan dares to shrug his shoulders at the nervous young schoolteacher, the media boys snicker audibly. Now it is a matter of face, the schoolteacher has to issue his final warning, and pulls out his ruler, terrified at the idea of losing control of the class. The only thing that could now save the teacher from doing something stupid would be the entry of an older teacher.
If this were a bar, Mr. Clinton would have to start swinging unless his buddies held him back. When in 1953 Mr. Dulles, who run US foreign policy, developed the brilliant scheme of dropping atomic weapons upon the Vietnamese guerrillas, who were fighting for independence from France, their colonial master, he was saved by the French refusal to cooperate. When Mr. Dulles resolved to step into France's colonial war in Indochina with conventional forces, it was Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden who saved him. Now, in 1999, at the Bar Balkan, the President's buddies are egging him on. The allies now are socialists and greenies who are so moral and sensitive that they fall for the old crying baby trick: set a cradle in a swamp, give a kick to the cradle, set the baby crying, and all the sensitive socialists and liberals will jump into the swamp and get stuck. In 1999 there was no Churchill, there was no realist ally to save the President.
"Mr. President, you give us the picture, we will give you the war." I don't know if the publisher Hearst really said that to President McKinley in 1898, but it certainly perfectly describes the function which the western press played in the destruction of the Second Yugoslavia. From the rape camps story to the fake concentration camp of Trnopolje from the shelling of Sarajevo and Dubrovnik to the bread line and the marketplace self-bombings in Sarajevo there is a direct line, leading to the Drenica and the Racak fake massacres. I firmly believe that the Serbs, just like the Albanians, committed massacres and atrocities, but we ought to try to discover what drives the western media to report the grisly details of fake atrocities. Many in the media suffer from a perverse passion for unreality, like someone who can afford a plane ticket to Italy but chooses to go see Rome without perplexing, troublesome, non-English speaking Romans. All delivered in a nice, neat, comfortable, predictable package, in Las Vegas or in Disneyland. I am sure there are Serb Auschwitzes to be found, but the western media chooses to visit Disneyland Auschwitzes instead. On the other hand, the ethnic cleansing committed by Albanians against defenseless Serbs and Montenegrins since the 1970's is ignored. Not surprising, since no one would accuse TV news or newspaper editors of reading history books during their spare time. One thing I find surprising, however, is that the media choose to ignore great current stories like the crematorium for 22 disappeared Yugoslavs discovered in Klecka a few months ago. When I say Yugoslavs I mean Serbs, Montenegrins, Romany, and even Albanians who did not want to start a war and leave a state that had provided them with unprecedented cultural, religious, and political freedom and educational opportunities. I have no doubt that there has been mention of Klecka in the western press. The problem is the lack of repetition. What is repeated becomes history, what is mentioned once becomes a footnote. To all practical effects footnotes are not history. Footnotes are not part of the political discourse, they will never be discussed in a panel discussion on television. Footnotes go down Orwell's memory hole. They never happened. Klecka does not exist. Klecka never happened.
How can we explain such unfairness from the western media? Advertising. The Yugo vs. the BMW. Who would buy a Yugo when he is offered a free BMW? At the start of the break-up of the Second Yugoslavia, a perfectly tuned and well financed advertising campaign convinced western public opinion that the Serbs were primitive monsters. Everyone believed such demonization. I can personally report that I fell for it. The advertisements of the Yugoslavs were inept, stiff, and stilted. No one believed them, and after a while they came to be totally ignored. If you believe that an Edsel or a Yugo is a bad car, you will not buy it, not now, not next year, even if they have a new, improved, pretty good model. The western media decided that the Yugo was a bad car, period. Any urban legend about the Yugo was accepted. Any Serb fake massacre story sold. Western newsmen, publishers, and politicians believed them. If you challenged the stories you would be attacked as a supporter of genocide.
One of the best advertising success stories of the war revolves around the concentration camp of Trnopolje. The picture of a group of men behind barbed wire, one of them severely emaciated, in August 1992, shocked the world into realizing that genocide and death camps had come back to Europe and that something had to be done now to stop a new Hitler. The problem was that these men were not prisoners. They were refugees, but they were not behind barbed wire. The television crew had entered a barbed wire enclosure and from inside was shooting a group of men who were outside. This fake is still used, now in slow motion for added emotional impact, in television hate propaganda against Serbia and the President solemnly refers to it in his noble war speeches.
While I have a prejudice in trusting that the newsman on the spot, like the military man in the field, is trying to do the best job he can under the circumstances, I am a firm believer in the stupidity and deep ignorance of media editors and politicos. Should the reader prefer a more conspiratorial view of history, in which some "New Order" or "New (World) Order" pulls the strings that lead us into one military confrontation after another, for fun and profit, I will have to reserve judgement. But I will end this chat with an ancient quote by a dissident who eighty years ago was very pessimist about the motives of media and politicians in their world-wide search for enemies whom they create, strengthen, and finally demonize. Thus wrote H. L. Menckhen: "The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace in a continuous state of alarm (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing them with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."
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