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Did Oprah Pick Another Fibber? Truth and Fiction in Elie Wiesel's Night In his special report Alexander Cockburn interviews former Wiesel colleague and Holocaust survivor Eli Pfefferkorn. What Raul Hilberg, the Holocaust's greatest historian, really thinks about Wiesel's "Night". Also in this special issue: Is Hugo Chavez Hitler or Father Christmas? Larry Lack tells the full story of Venezuela's hand-outs to Uncle Sam's Shivering Poor. Plus, Jeffrey St Clair profiles the Endangered Visigoth and traces the rise and possible fall of Rick Pombo, destroyer of nature. CounterPunch Online is read by millions of viewers each month! But remember, we are funded solely by the subscribers to the print edition of CounterPunch. Please support this website by buying a subscription to our newsletter, which contains fresh material you won't find anywhere else, or by making a donation for the online edition. Remember contributions are tax-deductible. Click here to make a donation. If you find our site useful please: Subscribe Now! |
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Today's Stories March 14, 2006 Earl
Ofari Hutchinson Dave
Lindorff Kevin
Zeese Todd
Chretien Jason
Kunin Thomas
Palley Cockburn
/ St. Clair Website
of the Day
March 13, 2006 Uri
Avnery Dave
Lindorff Mike
Whitney David
Green Jeremy
Scahill Mike
Ferner Corey
Harris Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Paul
Craig Roberts Ben
Tripp John
Strausbaugh Landau
/ Hassen Robert
Bryce Gary
Leupp Fred
Gardner Ron
Jacobs Jonathan
Scott Ramzy
Baroud Jordan
Flaherty John
Chuckman Joe
Allen Julia
Kendlbacher St.
Clair / Walker / Pollack / Vest Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
March 10, 2006 Ben
Rosenfeld Lila
Rajiva Saree
Makdisi Elena
Shore Joshua
Frank Dave
Zirin Aura
Bogado
March 9, 2006 John
Walsh Annie
Zirin Brian
McKenna Chris
Floyd Rachard
Itani Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Wylie
Harris Alexander
Cockburn Website
of the Day
March 8, 2006 Patrick
Bond Brian
Concannon, Jr. Pat
Williams Lance
Selfa Mokhiber
/ Weissman Walter
Brasch Vijay
Prashad Website
of the Day
March 7, 2006 Werther John
Blair Dave
Lindorff Mike
Whitney Warren
Guykema Sen.
Russell Feingold Robert
Jensen Norman
Solomon Bernie
Dwyer Website
of the Day
Ralph
Nader Dave
Zirin Vanessa
Redgrave Walter
A. Davis Joshua
Frank Nate
Mezmer Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
Alexander
Cockburn Jennifer
Van Bergen Steven
Higgs Winslow
T. Wheeler Ron
Jacobs Rev.
William E. Alberts Colin
Asher Fred
Gardner "Pariah" John
Scagliotti Seth
Sandronsky Joan
Roelofs Arjun
Makhijani Ardeshr
Ommani Diana
Barahona Ben
Tripp St.
Clair / Socialist Worker Staff Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend March 3, 2006 Laura
Carlsen John
V. Whitbeck Chris
Floyd Mohamed
Hakki Pratyush
Chandra John
Scagliotti Website
of the Day
March 2, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Dave
Lindorff Ramzy
Baroud Saul
Landau Joe
Allen Steve
Shore Denise
Boggs Norman
Finkelstein Website
of the Day
March 1, 2006 Mairead
Corrigan Maguire Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Faheem
Hussain Antony
Loewenstein Elizabeth
Schulte Mike
Whitney John
Ryan Michael
Donnelly Tom
Reeves Website
of the Day
February 28, 2006 Sen.
Russ Feingold Ralph
Nader Joshua
Frank Aziz
Haniffa Benjamin Dangl Norman Solomon Mike
Ferner Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
February 27, 2006 Buncombe
/ Cockburn Paul
Craig Roberts Ingmar
Lee Ron
Jacobs Dave
Lindorff Pat
Wolff Lila
Rajiva Website
of the Day
February 25 / 26, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Lila
Rajiva Lee
Sustar Jennifer
Van Bergen / Madis Senner Justin
E.H. Smith Paul
Craig Roberts Jason
Leopold Gilad
Atzmon Zahid
Shariff Fred
Gardner Dick
J. Reavis David
Stocker John
Bomar Mike
Marqusee Pratyush
Chandra Ben
Tripp Dr.
Susan Block Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
February 24, 2006 Alan
Maass William
S. Lind Dave
Lindorff Pierre
Tristam Meg
Bannerji Robert
Jensen Mark
Engler Jennifer
Loewenstein Website
of the Day
February 23, 2006 Chet
Richards Jonathan
Feldman Joshua
Frank Ron
Jacobs Amira
Hass Samah
Sabawi Norman
Solomon Christopher
Reed Website
of the Day
February 22, 2006 Robert
Pollin Phil
Doe Pirouz
Azadi Saul
Landau Brian
McKinlay Sam
Smith Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Diane
Farsetta Website
of the Day
February 21, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Franklin
Spinney Dave
Lindorff Alevtina
Rea Bruce
K. Gagnon Dave
Zirin Bill
Quigley Website
of the Day
February 20, 2006 Jennifer
Van Bergen Rachard
Itani Gideon
Levy Joshua
Frank Newton
Garver Pratyush
Chandra Seth
Sandronsky Cockburn
/ St. Clair Website
of the Day
February 18 / 19, 2006 Werther Uzma
Aslam Khan Joe
DeRaymond Edward
F. Mooney Paul
Craig Roberts Elaine
Cassel P.
Sainath Thomas
P. Healy Brian
Concannon, Jr. Fred
Gardner Rep.
Cynthia McKinney Brian
Tokar Chan
Chee Khoon Andrew
Freedman St.
Clair / Walker Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
February 17, 2006 Floyd
Rudmin Gervasio
Rodríguez Gary
Leupp Ramzy
Baroud Amira
Hass Matthew
Koehler Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Debbie
Nathan Website
of the Day
Febrauary 16, 2006 Lila
Rajiva Norman
Solomon Ron
Jacobs Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
February 15, 2006 Brian
Conacnnon, Jr. Dave
Lindorff Saree
Makdisi Joshua
Frank Amira
Hass CounterPunch
Wire Robert
Bryce Website
of the Day February 14, 2006 John
Sugg Don
Santina William
A. Cook Ray
McGovern John
Ross Website
of the Day
Lila
Rajiva Christopher
Brauchli Dave
Lindorff Ron
Jacobs Mike
Whitney Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
February 11 / 12, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Pat Williams Fred Gardner Saul Landau John Chuckman Roger Burbach Seth Sandronsky Website of
the Weekend
February 10, 2006 Carl
G. Estabrook Sen.
Russell Feingold Roxanne
Dunbar----Ortiz Saree Makdisi Website of
the Day
February 9, 2006 Dave Lindorff Mike Marqusee Paul Craig Roberts Peter Phillips William S. Lind Christine Tomlinson Innocent Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's Eavesdropping Program Will Youmans Robert Robideau Richard Neville Peter Rost Website of the Day
February 8, 2006 Ron Jacobs Stan Cox Sen. Russ Feingold Robert Jensen Rep. Cynthia McKinney Niranjan Ramakrishnan Don Monkerud David Swanson C.L. Cook Christopher
Fons Jeffrey Ballinger Website of
the Day
February 7, 2006 Edward Lucie-Smith Robert Fisk Paul Craig Roberts Neve Gordon Joshua Frank Peter Montague Jackie Corr Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
February 6, 2006 Christopher
Brauchli Robert Fisk John Chuckman Jenna Orkin Paul Craig
Roberts
February 4 / 5, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Mike Ferner James Petras Alan Maass Fred Gardner Ralph Nader Bill Glahn Saul Landau Laura Carlsen James Brooks Mike Roselle John Holt Sarah Ferguson William S.
Lind Niranjan Ramakrishnan Seth Sandronsky Derrick O'Keefe Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Elisa Salasin St. Clair / Vest Stew Albert Poets' Basement Website of
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the Day
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Wheeler Stan Cox Rachard Itani Mike Whitney Amira Hass Norman Solomon Michael Simmons Christopher
Reed Website of the Day
February 1, 2006 Sharon Smith Jason Leopold Cindy Sheehan Joseph Grosso Earl Ofari Hutchinson Steven Higgs Robert Robideau R. Siddharth Jim Retherford Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
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March 14, 2006 Pages from the Liberals' WarDid Milosevic or His Accusers "Cheat Justice"? The Show Trial That Went WrongBy ALEXANDER COCKBURN "It's hard not to feel that by dying in his cell, Slobodan Milosevic finally succeeded in his determined effort to cheat justice." Thus the opening sentence of a New York Times editorial, Tuesday March 14. The editorial cited without comment Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunal, who told an Italian interviewer that "the death of Milosevic represents for me a total defeat." The editorial ended with words of praise for the high purpose of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established by the U.N. Security Council in 1994. In fact Milosevic's death in his cell from a heart attack spared Del Ponte and the Court (itself a drumhead tribunal set up by the United States with no proper foundation under international law or treaty) the ongoing embarrassment of a proceeding where Milosevic had made a very strong showing against the phalanx of prosecutors, hearsay witnesses and prejudiced judges marshaled against him. Until his death, "total defeat" had been the prospect facing Del Ponte, not Milosevic, though she presumably felt justifiably confident --based on their record of prejudiced rulings against Milosevic -- that the judges would never let her down. There are now charges and countercharges about poisons and self-medications. Milosevic's son says his father was murdered. The embarrassed Court claims Milosevic somehow did himself in by tampering with his medicines. But no one contests the fact that Milosevic asked for treatment in Moscow--the Russians promised to return him to the Hague-- and the Court refused permission. As the tag from the poet A.H.Clough goes, "Thou shalt not kill; but need'st not strive Officiously to keep alive". The trial had been going badly from the point of view of the prosecution (which included the judges) for most of its incredible duration. Here is what Neil Clark, a Balkans specialist, wrote in the Guardian newspaper of London, in 2003,
Coverage of the trial in the US was virtually non-existent, though there was a brief spotlight on what was actually going on when it was reported here that Wesley Clark's testimony in court was subject to US censorship. Writing in the British Spectator last November John Laughland painted a trenchant portrait of the kangaroo proceedings, then four years old:
Memory of NATO's onslaught on the former Yugoslavia has faded. But perhaps next weekend, when rallies across the world signal the third anniversary of the US onslaught on Iraq, some speakers will take the occasion of Milosevic's court-assisted demise to remind their audiences that the legal, military and journalistic banditry that have accompanied the Iraq enterprise from the start were all field-tested in the late 1990s in the Balkans, as weekly stories in CounterPunch laid out in detail. Later Jeffrey St Clair and I put together a chronicle of those stories. This week, as Milosevic and the onslaught on the former Yugoslavia return to the front pages among predictable obfuscation, we run some relevant extracts here from Imperial Crusades. These days we have the Neo-Cons' war. Back then we had the Liberals' War. There's continuity. The lying didn't start with Judy Miller nor the saber-rattling with Bill Kristol.
By Alexander Cockburn Strange are the ways of men! It feels like only yesterday that the New York Times was denouncing President Bill as a moral midget, deserving of the harshest reprobation for fondling Monica Lewinsky's breasts. And today here's the New York Times doling out measured praise to the same president for blowing little children in pieces. The Times last Thursday had pictures of those dead refugees on its cover, bombed by one of NATO's aviators. Editorial page editor Howell Raines staked out the Times official view that "For now, NATO must sustain and intensify the bombing." What a weird guy Raines must be. Kiss Monica's tits and he goes crazy. Bomb peasants and he shouts for more. Maybe some corner of Clinton's brain reckons that bombs on Serbia will extinguish Monica Lewinsky from popular memory. But what man of mature judgement and compassion would not prefer to be remembered by the Starr report than by bomb craters and dead bodies? Many people thought Clinton would be the first president who would somehow prefer Starr's volume as his epitaph, however embarrassing. But no. Like all the others he wants craters and corpses as his requiem. Being a peacenik is definitely passe'. Liberals are learning once again--did they ever truly forget--that it's fun to be a warmonger and cheer the high explosive as it falls. After suffering indigestion towards the end of the Vietnam affair, they got the taste for war again in the mid-1990s, with Bosnia. They became the "laptop bombardiers," an apt phrase coined by Simon Jenkins in The Spectator in 1995. Back then, there wasn't a week, for months on end, that Anthony Lewis didn't call for the bombardment of Serbia. Last week I ran across an interesting piece by an Indian, Lt General Satish Nambiar who had been First Force Commissioner and Head of Mission of the United Nations force deployed in the former Yugoslavia from March 1992 to March 1993. He was writing in an Indian journal. "Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only counterproductive but dishonest," the general writes. "According to my experience all sides were guilty but only the Serbs would admit that they were no angels while the others would insist that they were." Nambiar says accurately that there were plenty of chances of agreement on a Bosnian settlement in the mid-1990s but the Americans always nixed them. There was the Lisbon plan and then the Vance-Owen plan, both not so different from the final Dayton plan. But the trouble was that the US, amid the furious screams of the liberals, refused to admit the Serbs had legitimate grievances and rights. In Britain there was a coalition running from Margaret Thatcher to the Laborite New Statesman in favor of bombing the Serbs. Ken Livingston, the pinko firebrand of London, bellowed for bombs. So did the Thinking Woman's Crumpet (my sister-in-law's wry description of him), Michael Ignatieff. In this country the laptop bombardiers crossed from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which likes to bomb anythingto William Safire, to Anthony Lewis, to the Democratic Socialists of America. The worst offender was the press, which carefully ignored detailed accounts of how the Bosnian Muslims were manipulating western opinion most notoriously by almost certainly lobbing a missile in to a marketplace filled with their own people. When the Croats ethnically cleansed the Krajina of hundreds of thousands of Serbs--the biggest such cleansing in the Balkans since World War II--with direction from US military and CIA officer, reporters and commentators mostly looked the other way or actually cheered. "The Serbs Asked For It," exulted the headline on a piece in the Los Angeles Times by pundit William Pfaff. Monitors for the European Union prepared a report on the Croat atrocities, and though it was confidential, Robert Fisk of the London Independent was able to get a copy. "Evidence of atrocities; an average of six corpses a day, continue to emerge...the corpses--some fresh, some decomposed--are mainly of old men. Many have been shot in the back of the head or had throats slit, others have been mutilated...Serbian homes and lands continue to be looted. The crimes have been perpetrated by the HV (Croatian Army) the CR (Croatian Police) and CR civilians. There have been no observed attempts to stop it and the indications point to a scorched earth policy." If American journalists had bothered to report this, then perhaps public opinion would have been prepared for the notion that there are no innocent political players in the Balkans. The better informed the people are the harder it is to demagogue them with the idea that the best way forward now is--to get back to Howell Raines and that New York Times editorial to "sustain and intensify the bombing." But Bosnia, back in the middle 1990s, rode on a hysteria that was never properly confronted and now the price is being paid, with contemptible opportunists like Senator John McCain shouting for "lights out in Belgrade" (why doesn't McCain have the guts to emulate John Glen, get assigned to a bombing crew and go strafe refugees in Kosovo.) But McCain is more than matched by Democrats like Senator Carl Levin, or by that brass-lunged fraud from Vermont, Bernard Sanders, "socialist progressive," who has endorsed Clinton's bombs. Well over two-thirds of the Democrats in the House are cheering the bombs, and senatorial liberals like Barbara Boxer are discovering the joys of war. "I never believed I'd go back and vote on air strikes." she marveled in an article in the Boston Globe for March 31. These days, to get a dose of common sense, you have to go over the Republican side of the aisle and listen to people like Rep Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania who made a terrific speech in Congress on April 12, reporting on his contacts with members of the Russian Duma (where Weldon has many friends), endorsing their idea that Russia should pledge that Milosevic will abide by the Rambouillet accords on condition that an international peace-keeping force moves into Kosovo, devoid of any personnel from nations now bombing Serbia. Follow this carefully, because the exact nature of such a force is what's causing bombs to fall on civilians in Belgrade and Kosovo. Remember that Milosevic agreed to virtually everything on the table at the Rambouilett meeting, with two exceptions. For him the status of Kosovo as part of Serbia was non-negotiable, and he wouldn't agree to the stationing of NATO forces on Yugoslav soil, which does after all include Kosovo. But it's clear enough that a solution could have been found. As Stephen Erlanger reported in the New York Times on April 8, the Serbian Parliament, before the bombing started, accepted the idea of a UN force to monitor a political settlement there. And it's clear that the notion of an Albanian autonomous region withing Serbian Kosovo was negotiable. After all, Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece--to name only three--and also the US have pronounced themselves opposed to the idea of a greater Albania, which is what an independent Kosovo would presage. It's plain enough that the US and its NATO subordinates wanted a confrontation and ultimately forced it. It's also clear that increasingly vocal and explicit charges by the Russians that the KLA was supplied by the Germans and the CIA have merit. The KLA itself was roundly denounced--before the bombings--in the London Times, as a Maoist gang fueled by heroin trafficking. (This is standard operating procedure for a CIA operation, as any scrutiny of recent histories of Afghanistan, or south-east Asia will attest.) So the NATO bombs began to fall and, exactly as could have been predicted, the Serbian brutalities in Kosovo escalated and the tidal wave of refugees began. Everything has gone according the script. NATO bombs destroying Serbian civilian infrastructure: power plants, sewage treatment, electricity and gas and oil supplies. Everything that's hit is hastily described by NATO spokesmen as "dual purpose," (i.e., possibly also for Serb military use) unless it's obvious to all that only peasants, with no conceivable "dual purposes" have been blasted to bits. Wednesday last saw the mad NATO supreme commander, Wesley Clark, utter his most deliberate and obvious lie to date, when he said that "There was a military convoy and a refugee convoy. We struck the Serb convoy and we have very strong evidence that the Serbs then retaliated by attacking the column of refugees." By the next day it became clear that there was no "Serb convoy," no "very strong evidence" and that an Albanian column of refugees on tractors had been killed by NATO bombers.
By Alexander Cockburn Liberals and social democrats who came of age politically amid protest against the war in Vietnam now talk in exactly the same phrases as did those Kennedy liberals back in the 1960s about the crusade that required planes, helicopters, Special Forces, troops, B-52 raids, the Phoenix program, My Lai and ultimately two million dead people. Listen to The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, the maddest dog in the war chorus: "Only when [the Serbs] conclude that their nationalist fantasies have brought them to a very dark and lonely corner will they change. The Balkans don't need a new Serbian leader, they need a new Serbian ethic that understands how to live in 21st century Europe. NATO can't produce that transformation. But by intensifying the bombing and intensifying the diplomacy, it can create the conditions in which that transformation might begin. Stay the course." Here in the US we're having to redraw the political maps. Leftist opponents of the war, such as ourselves now march shoulder to shoulder with Chuck Colson, Barry Farber, Don Feder, Bob Grant, Bob Novak, Arriana Huffington, A.M. Rosenthal, Charles Krauthammer, Edward Luttwak, Oliver North, Joe Sobran and the Pope. We never thought we'd ever be on the same side as Don Feder, a fierce right-winger who writes columns for the Boston Herald. We'll say this for right-wing columnists like Novak or Feder: when they turn against a war, they do it right. In one column Bob Novak lashed out at NATO, excoriating liberal warmongers and reaching back in literary history to the social democrat H.G. Welles' Shape of Things to Come, where Britain is liberated from enemy occupation by an international armada. Novak also evoked Sumner Welles, FDR's Secretary of State, who thought bombers should be the weapon of an an international police force. The most useful parable about progressives is that offered by Bernard Sanders, self-styled "socialist progressive independent" Rep from Vermont. Sanders owes his political career to rage against the Vietnam war among radicals, many of whom moved into the state in the early 1970s. The years rolled by. He grew older. He supported sanctions against Iraq which killed over a million Iraqis, many of them children. Then he voted in favor of this war. He did it once, he did it twice and on April 28, he did it again. This was the astounding 213-213 tie vote, which meant that the House of Representatives repudiated the war on Serbia launched by Clinton in violation of Article One of the US Constitution which reserves war-making powers to Congress. So if the "socialist-progressive"Sanders, who owes his entire career to antiwar sentiment, had not voted for the NATO bombers, the result would have been even more dramatic, a straight majority for the coalition of Republicans and radical Democrats such as Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark and a handful of others. June 3, 1999 By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair The deal brokered by NATO's errand boy Chernomyrdin on June 2 was virtually identical to that offered by Milosevic to NATO--before the bombing started. The sole purpose of the bombing was to demonstrate to Serbia and to the world NATO's capacity to bomb, thus killing nearly 2,000 civilians, destroying much of Serbia's infrastructure, prompting the forced expulsion and flight of around a million Kosovars. Wars have been triggered by the frailest of excuses and prolonged on the slightest of rationales, but the Cowards' War, as Nicholas von Hoffman aptly christened it, is hard to beat for the effrontery of its supposed rationales. The Rambouillet negotiations lasted from February 6 to February 23. The so-called "contact group" of NATO powers--US, Germany, France, Italy and UK--pushed for Kosovar autonomy, guaranteed by the presence of NATO troops. Kept unrevealed at the time was a secret Appendix B to the deal presented to NATO on the final day. Not only were NATO troops to occupy Kosovo, but NATO troops were to have the right to "free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia)....This shall include, but not be limited to, the right of bivouac, maneuver, billet and utilization of any areas or facilities as required for support, training, and operations." This language comes in Article 8 of NATO's secret demand in Appendix B. Article 10 allowed NATO cost-free use of all Yugoslav streets, airports and ports. In other words NATO was insisting that Yugoslavia --i.e. Serbia--surrender sovereignty. In other words NATO was setting impossible conditions, certain that Milosevic and indeed every Serb would find them impossible to accept. It seems a senior State Department official boasted of this at the time in deep back briefings of US reporters, saying that the US "had deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept" and that "they need some bombing and that's what they're going to get." The final offer of the Serbs was for Kosovar autonomy, to be guaranteed by a UN force with a Russian component. A NATO presence in Serbia was unacceptable. The NATO powers rejected this. Serbia refused to sign the Rambouillet agreement and so did the Kosovars, until forced to by NATO powers on March 18. On March 24 the bombing began. On June 2 the deal agreed to by Milosevic and the Serb parliament was for a UN force with a Russian component, plus a NATO force, plus Kosovar autonomy within the Yugoslav federation. The unstated agenda seems to be the partitioning of Kosovo. The KLA will be "demilitarized" and Yugoslav troops allowed at some point to return in limited numbers to Kosovo. No international force either under UN or NATO auspices will enter Serbia. The Kosovar refugees will be able to return, but that was never a sticking point so far as Milosevic was concerned. NATO forced a war and ended up with essentially the deal that could have been signed in late February. There will be some NATO helmets alongside the UN blue helmets in Kosovo, but only after a Cowards War would this be called victory.
By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair This was the Cowards' War, bombing a country for two and a half months from 30,000 feet. It was the Liberals' War waged by social democracy's best and brightest, intent on proving once again that wars can be fought with the best and most virtuous of intentions: the companion volume to Hillary Clinton's "It Takes a Village" turns out to be "It Takes An Air Force," though Bill will no doubt claim one day it wasn't his idea and he only partly went along with Sandy Berger, Strobe Talbott and Madeleine Albright because he wanted to "preserve my political viability", the words he used in his famous draft-dodging shuffle in the Vietnam era. Just as Social Democratic parties across Europe voted for war in 1914, so did they again in 1999. In Britain social democrats rallied to the pipsqueak bombardier, Tony Blair. There were honorable exceptions: Tony Benn and Yorkshire Labor Member of Parliament Alice Mahon who went to Belgrade and to Novi Sad and stood on the bridge with--as she later described--twelve nationalities including Albanians, defying NATO's bombers. Another fine Labor MP, Tam Dyell, was a spirited opponent. So was Harold Pinter, whose fine denunciation we excerpted in a recent CounterPunch. So was our friend Tariq Ali, a veteran of the Sixties' anti-Vietnam War campaigns. The two leading liberal papers, The Observer and The Guardian, both favored the war. In France most intellectuals fell into line behind NATO, though once again there were exceptions, notably Regis Debray, who went to Belgrade and Kosovo and wrote a fine denunciation which Le Monde put on its front page. Debray was then savaged by France's liberal intellectuals, including a vitriolic assault in Liberation. In Germany there was increasing
division, even in the Social Democratic Party. After Economics
Minister Oskar Lafontaine resigned rather than support the war,
he also quit as leader of the Party. Though chancellor Schroeder
ran for this position unopposed, fully 30 percent of the delegates
at a special Social Democratic Party convention voted against
him. There was also great dissension among the Greens against
the conduct of foreign Minister Joscha Fischer. In Italy the
resistance was strongest. There was a demonstration of 130,000
in Rome in late May, with the red banners of the Rifundazione
Party of leftists paired bravely with the white banners of the
Catholic boy scouts. The famous leftist Rosanna Rosanda appealed
publicly in Il Manifesto for Italian soldiers to desert, if required
to fight in Yugoslavia. She received much public support. The
pope flayed the war in his Easter Greeting, which was dropped
from Britain's broadcasts. The pope described NATO's bombing
as an "act of diabolical retribution". From a Pope
what stronger words could come? Here in the US the war found
almost all Democrats in Congress marshaled for war. The exceptions
were 26 Democrats in the House, led by Dennis Kucinich of Ohio--himself
of Irish-Croat ancestry--who leagued with a majority of House
Republics twice to deny Clinton legitimation for his war. Most
liberals favored the bombing. A particularly vulgar spectacle
was of Christopher Hitchens seemingly loth directly to endorse
war waged by the man he has been denouncing as incapable of any
decent or legitimate act, but taking the more devious expedient
of attacking opponents of the war such as Tom Hayden, without
putting any opinion of his own directly on the line. Even more
vulgar was the spectacle of Susan Sontag brigading herself with
Zbigniew Brzezinski and Madeleine Albright, in terming this bombing
campaign "a just war". Truly, a benchmark in the trahison
des clercs. Among those opposing the war was a man who has written
finely about this same trahison, Edward Said. Noam Chomsky, as
always, set NATO's claims to humanitarian motive in clarifying
context. Peace groups rallied and by late May there was evidence
of intense organizing across the country. Here at CounterPunch
we found, as we so often do, heartening evidence of interesting
coalitions. Many people visiting our website and subsequently
calling us up are not from traditional left constituencies, but
were delighted by our commentaries and have declared their admiration
and pleasure at our stance.
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from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |