Your overall frame is a perfect mirror image argument; everything is pro-Serb or anti-Serb. I’m not interested in that limited frame and have not written anything that fits it. My concern is with the veracity of the television reports from Trnopolje and Omarska in August 1992. Those reports don’t fit that frame either, as you would know if you had watched them.

I’m also not interested in your tendentious claims about what you think I think about the atrocities you mention. If you want to run the bombing of Indochina, East Timor and Iraq together as though they were the same formation of violence in the Nazi genocide, go ahead. I’m interested in understanding how things are specific to time, space and politics, something which does not in any way diminish the horror of those events or the culpability of major powers. I know none of that will give you pause for thought as you have your framework and certainties, so I think we’re done here.

Regarding Trnpolje, Chomsky said Knightley was “PROBABLY” right about the camp and that the major issue was a large corporation burying a tiny news agency. Edward Vulliamy wrote that “Trnopolje cannot be called a ‘concentration camp’ and is nowhere as sinister as Omarska: it is very grim, something between a civilian prison and transit camp.” Penny Marshall wrote that “British newspapers were calling for military intervention; within 20 minutes of the [ITN] report being re-broadcast on American television, George Bush promised to press for a United Nations resolution authorising use of force” and Time made a similar call for intervention, as quoted above.

It doesn’t matter that this didn’t lead to an immediate NATO intervention. The question is, why does the media publish this picture and not others? For example, why not publish a picture of a starving baby in Iraq, skin-and-bones, and call it “atrocity and outrage” over US-imposed sanctions on Iraq. Why not publish photos of human rights abuses from refugee camps in Krajina? If you want a fair comparison, it’s more the recent Time publication of an Afghan woman named Aisha, with a subtitle “What Happens if We Leave Iraq” is an apt comparison. This comes from a nation that supported the Taliban when they throwing acid in the faces of women two decades ago and is now sending $60bil to an Islamic fundamentalist oligarchy who won’t let women drive on their roads.

This is the point, and maybe you get it, maybe you don’t. There’s no humanitarian motivation. There is no “mirror image” to this and if you really cared about people in Serbia, you would pay attention to the way imperialism works, which is what denigrates Serbs and the world’s people, who are being starved to death as slaves by the world’s richest people.

- Mike

There is nothing hysterical about pointing out, in this case, the intellectual failings of a well-known commentator who continues to insist on something about the production of those images that cannot be supported. That is the primary focus of my concern, which I’m sure you appreciate if you have read the research articles that support this post. And, as I show in those articles, even the repeated use of Alic’s image by other media did not lead to the intervention that is so often claimed.

What is needed in reviewing this situation is an understanding of history and a commitment to evidence. Simplistic Hitler analogies with regard to the former Yugoslavia are as inappropriate as speaking of an “American Holocaust” with regard to US policy, even if the continued US support of authoritarian regimes must be opposed.

If you’re concerned about the well-being of Alic and people like him, it’s not that you shouldn’t tell his story. While you tell it (and correctly, as you have documented), you should recognize that the reason the West is telling his story is to demonize one side of the conflict.

The Time Magazine article that used this picture of Alic on August 17, 1992 clearly demonized the Serbs: “murdering babies,” “hatred…consuming Serbs,” “the world sitting by as Adolf Hitler marched into Austria.” The article then tempers the claims (both sides are probably guilty parties) but asserts the Serbs are the worst and suggests that the great humanitarian West intervene. As you probably know already, Croatians committed extensive war crimes and ethnic cleansing (e.g., Tudjman in Krajina). (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976238,00.html)

Where is the outrage and atrocity? As you are surely aware, Bush destroyed our ex-buddy Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, targeting civilian infrastructure. You are surely aware of the Turkish campaign the US funded against the Kurds and our support for Suharto and countless other dictators. Our participation in ethnic cleansing, indirectly via diplomatic and material support and directly at times throughout the Twentieth Century, is an American Holocaust itself, scattered across the world.

Perhaps you agree with this, perhaps you don’t. But you are indeed being hysterical about Chomsky’s comment. The point is unequivocally that the media used this picture to conjure up images to make the situation look worse than it is, alluding to Hitler and demonizing the Serbs in order to suggest intervention. And that’s the point Chomsky is concerned with.

If he does not want to be reminded of embarrassing interviews he gave in the past, then he should not give them in the first place. His professed concern about “free speech” is non-sensical. Why should people who deny horrendous crimes deserve our special consideration?

It’s the usual Chomsky. Just as he made the most naive and bizarre statements about Cambodia in 1977, he again makes strange comments on a time and place he has no knowledge about. And again, when confronted with in-depth research, he rambles on incoherently and cluelessly to defend a fundamentally indefensible position.

But it won’t matter to his community. His followers’ thinking is so streamlined that they swallow almost any level of irrationality as long as it is pronounced by their master.

thanks very much for this post. You have done a great service to the public through your research.

And, you are right, Chomsky’s position is indeed profoundly disturbing. He is making it still worse by sarcastically referring to Bosnia as a “holy issue” in Britain.