noe fra Edward Said på
http://www.ahram.org.eg/weekly/1999/435/op1.htm
... noe for Dagbladet ("If ethnic cleansing is evil in Yugoslavia -- as it
is, of course -- it is also evil in Turkey, Palestine, Africa, and
elsewhere.") som nylig fant det for godt å skrive på lederplass (30. juni)
om Tyrkia:
>"... Europarådet og Den europeiske menneskerettighetsdomstolen har gang på
>gang kritisert landets bruk av tortur, forsvinninger, utenomrettslige
>henrettelser og ødeleggelse av eiendom for å knuse kurdisk opposisjon. I
>Kosovo medførte slikeovergrep en langvarig luftkrig. Tyrkias problem kan
>ikke løses med bomber ..."
Legg merke til den upersonlige språkbruken: "medførte .. en langvarig
luftkrig" som om det dreidde seg om et naturfenomen som ingen handlende
personer eller organisasjoner sto bak. Men motsatt Tyrkia kunne altså
Kosovos problem "løses med bomber" fra organisasjonen som endelig har vist
sin dypeste natur som et moralsk agens, en forsvarer av menneskeverd og
frihet og de svakes hjelper, med bifall fra nesten hele den norske
offentlighet, forført av de frie etterplaprende Nato-medier og et hopetall
av tause eller taleføre åndarbeidere langt inn på venstresiden. Har noen
hørt eller sett NRK eller Dagbladet fortelle om Rambouillet-avtalen (etter
at den ble kjent) eller resolusjonene i det serbiske parlamentet?
... og noe for f.eks. Janne Haaland Matlary som ikke forteller Clinton og
Blair osv at tiden nå er inne til at "vi" (som er standardbetegnelsen når
norske Nato-politikere uttaler seg i mediene i Nato-spørsmål) (Matlary og
Clinton så og si) må bombe Tyrkia, alle diplomatiske muligheter er utprøvd
forlengst, og vi i Nato kan ikke bare stå og se på at mennesker blir ofre
for etnisk rensing og brenning av landsbyer og fordrivelse? Hvorfor sier
ikke Bondevik, Vollebæk og Matlary "hopp" til Clinton og Blair? Hva kan det
komme av?
Heldigvis ble Nato reddet av "Strømmen av flyktninger ..." (Nils Morten
Udgaard i Aftenposten 10 juni). Glem aldri det.
http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentarer/d85339.htm)
Knut Rognes
****************'
The treason of the intellectuals
By Edward Said
No one at all can doubt that what has transpired in Kosovo as a result
both of Slobodan Milosevic's brutality and the NATO response has made
matters a good deal worse than they were before the bombing. The cost in
human suffering on all sides has been dreadful, and whether it is in the
tragedy of the refugees or the destruction of Yugoslavia, no simple
reckoning or remedy will be available for at least a generation, perhaps
longer. As any displaced and dispossessed person can testify, there is no
such thing as a genuine, uncomplicated return to one's home; nor is
restitution (other than simple, naked revenge, which sometimes gives an
illusory type of satisfaction) ever commensurate with the loss of one's
home, society, or environment. Through a combination whose exact
proportions we will never know, despite NATO as well as Serbian propaganda,
Kosovo has been purged forever of any hopes that coexistence between
different communities is soon going to be possible. A number of honest
reporters here and there have admitted that what exactly took place so far
as the ethnic cleansing of Albanians by Serbs was concerned is still mostly
unknown, since the NATO bombings of Kosovo, the actions of the Kosovo
Liberation Army, and the actual brutality of individual or collective Serb
actions took place all at once: trying to determine the blame and
responsibility in such a chaos, except to score self-justifying debating
points, is pretty difficult, if not impossible.
But that the illegal bombing increased and hastened the flight of people
out of Kosovo cannot be doubted. How the NATO high command, with Bill
Clinton and Tony Blair leading the pack, could ever have assumed that the
number of refugees would have decreased as a result of the bombing fairly
beggars the imagination. Neither leader, significantly, has ever
experienced the horrors of war; neither man fought, neither has any direct
knowledge of what it means to search desperately for survival, to protect
and feed one's family. For those reasons alone, both leaders deserve the
strongest moral condemnation and, given Clinton's appalling record in
Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq and the White House corridors, he should be
indicted as a war criminal as much as Milosevic. In any event, even
according to US law, Clinton violated the constitution by fighting a war
without congressional sanction. That he also violated the UN Charter simply
adds to the felony.
Morality teaches that, if one wants to intervene to alleviate suffering or
injustice (this is the famous idea of humanitarian intervention which so
many Western liberals have dragged out as an excuse for the bombing war),
then one must make sure first of all that by doing so the situation will
not be made worse. That lesson seems to have eluded the NATO leaders, who
plunged in ill-prepared, poorly informed and heedless, and therefore
cold-bloodedly sealed the fate of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars who,
whether they had to bear the brunt of Serbian vengeance on them, or because
the sheer volume and density of the bombing (despite ludicrous claims about
precision-guided ordinance) made it imperative for them to flee the
province, became victims twice over.
There is now the colossal job of trying to restore a million people to
their homes with no clear idea of what, once they return, is to be their
fate. Self-determination? Autonomy under Serbia? Military occupation under
NATO? Partition? Shared sovereignty? According to what sort of timetable?
Who is going to pay? These are only some of the questions that remain
unanswered, if the agreement brokered by Russia actually works and goes
through. What does it mean that (according to the agreement) some Serb
police or military personnel will be allowed back in? Who will protect them
against Albanian violence, and who will regulate their actions? Who will
protect the Serbian Kosovars? Add to that the exorbitant cost of
re-building Kosovo and Serbia, and you have a web of problems that simply
defies the limited powers of understanding and political sophistication
possessed by any or all of the present NATO leaders.
What concerns me most, though, as an American and a citizen, is what the
Kosovo crisis portends for the future of the world order. "Safe" or "clean"
wars, in which American military personnel and their equipment are almost
totally invulnerable to enemy retaliation or attack, are profoundly
troubling things to think about. In effect, as the distinguished
international jurist Richard Falk has argued, such wars share the same
structure as torture, with the investigator-torturer having all the power
to choose and then employ whatever method he wishes; the victim, who has
none, consequently is left to the whim of his persecutor. America's status
in the world today is at its lowest, that of a stupid bully capable of
inflicting much more damage than any power in history.
The US military budget is 30 per cent higher than that of the total budget
spent by all the other NATO countries combined. Over half the countries of
the world today have felt either the threat or the actuality of US economic
or trade sanctions. Pariah states like Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and
Libya (pariahs because the US has labelled them so) bear the brunt of US
unilateral anger; one of them, Iraq, is in the process of genocidal
dissolution, thanks to US sanctions which go on well past any sensible
purpose other than to satisfy the US's feelings of righteous anger. What is
all this supposed to accomplish, and what does it say to the world about US
power? This is a frightening message bearing no relationship to security,
national interest, or well-defined strategic aims. It is all about power
for its own sake. And when Clinton takes to the airwaves to inform Serbs or
Iraqis that they will get no help from the country that destroyed theirs
unless they change their leaders, arrogance simply knows no bounds. The
International Tribunal that has branded Milosevic a war criminal cannot in
the present circumstances have either viability or credibility unless the
same criteria are applied to Clinton, Blair, Albright, Sandy Berger,
General Clark and all the others whose murderous purpose completely
overrode any notion of decency and the laws of war. In comparison with what
Clinton has done to Iraq alone, Milosevic, for all his brutality, is a rank
amateur in viciousness. What makes Clinton's crimes worse is the sanctimony
and fraudulent concern in which he cloaks himself and, worse, which seem to
fool the neo-liberals who now run the Natopolitan world. Better an honest
conservative than a deceptive liberal.
Adding to this unhealthy situation, making it worse in fact, is the media,
which has played the role not of impartial reporter but of partisan and
partial witness to the folly and cruelty of the war. During the 79 days of
bombing I must have watched at least 30 days of NATO briefings, and I
cannot recall more than five or six reporters' questions that even remotely
challenged the bilge put out by Jamie Shea, George Robertson and, worst of
all, Javier Solano, the NATO honcho who has simply sold his "socialist"
soul to US global hegemony. There was no scepticism in evidence at all from
the media, no attempt to do anything more than "clarify" NATO positions,
using retired military men (never women) to explicate the niceties of the
terror bombing. Similarly liberal columnists and intellectuals, whose war
in a sense this was, simply looked away from the destruction of Serbia's
infrastructure (estimated at $136 billion) in their enthusiasm for the idea
that "we" were doing something to stop ethnic cleansing. Worst of all, the
media only half-heartedly (if at all) reported on the war's unpopularity in
the US, Italy, Greece, and Germany. No memory of what happened in Rwanda
four years ago, or in Bosnia, or the displacement of 350,000 Serbs at the
hands of Tudjman, or the continuing Turkish atrocities against the Kurds,
the killing of over 560,000 Iraqi civilians, or -- to bring it back to
where it all started -- Israel's ethnic cleansing of Palestine in l948,
which continues, with liberal support, until today. In what essential ways
are Barak, Sharon, Netanyahu and Eitan different in their views and
practices toward different and "inferior" races from Milosevic and Tudjman?
In the post-Cold War era, the question remains: is the US and its sordid
military-economic policy, which knows only profit and opportunism, to rule
the world, or can there develop a sufficiently powerful intellectual and
moral resistance to its policies? For those of us who live in its sphere or
are its citizens, the first duty is to demystify the debased language and
images used to justify American practices and hypocrisy, to connect US
policies in places like Burma, Indonesia, Iran and Israel with what it is
now doing in Europe -- making it safe for US investments and business --
and to show that the policies are basically the same, though they are made
to seem different. There can be no resistance without memory and
universalism. If ethnic cleansing is evil in Yugoslavia -- as it is, of
course -- it is also evil in Turkey, Palestine, Africa, and elsewhere.
Crises are not over once CNN stops covering them. There can be no double
standards. If war is cruel and deeply wasteful, then it is cruel whether or
not American pilots bomb from 30,000 feet and remain unscathed. And if
diplomacy is always to be preferred over military means, then diplomacy
must be used at all costs.
Finally, if innocent human life is sacred, then it must not cynically be
sacrificed if the victims happen not to be white and European. One must
always begin one's resistance at home, against power that as a citizen one
can influence; but alas, a fluent nationalism masking itself as patriotism
and moral concern has taken over the critical consciousness, which then
puts loyalty to one's "nation" before everything. At that point there is
only the treason of the intellectuals, and complete moral bankruptcy.
***************************