<\/p>\n
The opinion column reproduced below from April 1999 goes a long way towards revealing the failings of the western media in its coverage if the Balkan conflicts. \u00a0More than a year after a Kosovo Liberation Army – trained and armed by the US, Germany, France and the UK – had crossed into Kosovo with the aim of seizing the whole of the Serbian province by force, the author seems entirely unaware that this had happened. \u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Nor does he appear the least grasp of the history of Kosovo, or the reasons why a Serbian majority at the beginning of the 20th century had become an Albanian majority over the course of the next 75 years.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n Mr Aaronovitch<\/span>\u00a0reaches all his conclusions on the basis of uncritical acceptance of the coverage in the western media. \u00a0It does not seem to have occurred to him that it was a bit odd that NATO, established as a Cold War defensive organisation and still officially operating as such under its Charter, should have commenced a massive bombing campaign against Serbia without even consulting the UN, let alone seeking its formal approval for this action.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n The barrage of uncorroborated anti-Serb propaganda seems also to have escaped his notice. \u00a0By this stage in the conflicts the power of this misinformation was no great secret.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Independent 6th April 1999<\/p>\n My country needs me – and the cause is worth fighting for<\/b><\/p>\n By David Aaronovitch<\/p>\n We pampered Westerners are all very martial as long\u00a0as we are only dropping ordnance from the sky.<\/p>\n The air is thick with the stink of attitudinising. Every\u00a0columnist, reporter, letter-writer, pub bore and backbencher knows what\u00a0should have been done, and what ought to be done now. You can sense the\u00a0determination to be on the right side of history when you hear them utter\u00a0sentence beginning with words like “it was quite obvious from the beginning\u00a0that.”<\/p>\n Yesterday morning, disgracefully, I went back over past pieces that I havewritten about Kosovo, hoping that they would show\u00a0what a prescient and clever fellow I am, and that they would defend me from\u00a0the various charges that those opposed to intervention now level at those\u00a0who support it.<\/p>\n Sometimes I disgust myself. What I believe about Kosovo – that we had little\u00a0alternative but to intervene, and that we should now begin to deploy an army charged\u00a0with winning it back for its dispossessed people – is not the consequence\u00a0of deep strategic and military insight. It is, rather, a product of conscience allied to a\u00a0deep worry about what would happen elsewhere were we to fail this test. People on\u00a0either side of this argument, who proclaim a clear and almost infallible\u00a0understanding of cause and effect in the Balkans, are seeking to mobilise\u00a0opinion rather than telling the truth.<\/p>\n The desire to be vindicated by events is particularly\u00a0strong in those currently in opposition in Britain and America. At the end of\u00a0last week, I heard an interview with the Tory Party chairman Michael Ancram\u00a0(William Hague has been practically invisible since the bombing began),\u00a0in which he more or less said that his support for Nato action was dependent\u00a0upon its eventual outcome. In the US, the Republican front-runner for\u00a0the 2000 presidential elections, George W Bush, answered the question about\u00a0action with one of his own. “My question is: is it good for America?”\u00a0said the man from Texas. “Right now, as governor, I’m going to figure out how\u00a0to get a tax-cut through.” So if it turns out to be a success, then\u00a0they are in favour of it. If it is a catastrophe, then the weedy, liberal focus-groupies\u00a0in power in Washington and London will face the justified wrath of the\u00a0people.<\/p>\n So far there has been surprisingly little wrath. In Germany, opinion pollsshow more than 60 per cent in favour of the air strikes, while in France, there\u00a0is 58 per cent support, including for the possible use of Nato ground troops.\u00a0Here there is a big majority in favour of bombing,\u00a0and a smaller one that agrees to the use of the army.\u00a0Slobodan Milosevic and his colleagues in Belgrade, however, may well believe\u00a0<\/span>that such support is soft. We pampered Westerners are all very martial\u00a0as long as we’re not taking any casualties and are dropping ordnance from the\u00a0sky (he may well tell his generals), but like Corporal\u00a0Jones’s fuzzy-wuzzies, we don’t like it up us, you know. And Slobodan\u00a0Milosevic has to look no further than the gung-ho Sun for some proof. Slapped\u00a0all over yesterday’s page one was the banner headline: “Don’t send our\u00a0troops off to die”.<\/p>\n Let us forget all this nonsense about how The Sun rules the world. Its threat\u00a0to Tony Blair to withdraw its support from the war effort\u00a0if ground troops were to be deployed should be treated with total\u00a0contempt. Last week, at the Press Gazette awards, the editor of The Sun got so\u00a0pissed that he sat for quite some time on the floor, unaware that he had fallen off\u00a0his chair. Beaverbrook he ain’t.<\/p>\n But that doesn’t mean that the argument should not be\u00a0taken seriously. Many soldiers’ families read The Sun, I imagine. And common\u00a0sense suggests that, should we lose dozens of casualties in a Balkans war,\u00a0then that bit of opinion in Britain that hasn’t cared much either way so far\u00a0may decide that this was never our fight anyway. All of a sudden, Mr Ancram\u00a0might discover a strong opinion on Kosovo and Mr Hague might reappear from\u00a0exile.<\/p>\n Central to The Sun’s objection to the risking of British lives in Kosovo is its\u00a0perception of those who are not quite so squeamish. “Too\u00a0many armchair generals and media commentators are calling for force\u00a0on the ground,” it said, suggesting, somewhat surreally: “Maybe they should go\u00a0and see the movie Saving Private Ryan to see what a ground war is\u00a0like.” Or El Cid, perhaps?<\/p>\n This reproof to the supporters of action is now one that is almost universally\u00a0used. To the ever-madder John Pilger, people like me are “junior Lord Haw\u00a0Haws” (this invocation of a Fascist traitor and collaborator with the Nazis is\u00a0explained by Pilger’s eccentric view that Nato is always the enemy), who\u00a0prescribe force “having never seen a shot fired”. In its editorial, the New Statesman states: “Whether those who advocate a ground offensive have relatives in the services – or whether they would countenance the conscription that might be required to sustain a long conflict – is unknown. But the world has never been short of those willing to send other people’s sons to war.”<\/p>\n And Alan Watkins in our Sunday sister paper observes: “Those with some\u00a0knowledge of warfare are members of the Peace Party, whereas the War Party\u00a0is composed largely of those who have not even heard a popgun fired in\u00a0anger.”<\/p>\n Now, I don’t find it necessary to slap my weapon on the\u00a0table and compare it for size with that of Alan Watkins, John Pilger, the\u00a0editors of the New Statesman and The Sun, or anyone else for that matter.\u00a0Their jibes are cheap and obvious. There has been no glorification of war\u00a0amongst those who have called for action – quite the opposite. Those in\u00a0power in the US, Britain, Germany, France and Italy are not demagogues or\u00a0right-wing populists, but people who grew up opposing the war in Vietnam and\u00a0distrusting talk of “collateral damage”.<\/p>\n But there is one point that the antis make that must be addressed.\u00a0Is this cause, the cause of the Kosovar Albanians, a\u00a0cause that is worth suffering for? What would I myself be prepared to\u00a0sacrifice in order to stop the massacres and to strike an immense blow against\u00a0the politics of racial and ethnic nationalism? Would I fight, or (more\u00a0realistically) would I countenance the possibility that members of my family might die?\u00a0Would I be prepared to explain to the mother of a dead soldier why her son\u00a0had been killed? Would I accept my children’s education being disrupted, my\u00a0comfortable lifestyle being altered?<\/p>\n I think so. There are, indeed, some unlikely warmongers around at the\u00a0 <\/span>moment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Joschka Fischer, a Green member of the Germangovernment, spoke for a generation of political activists this week. “When you are confronted by genocide and mass human suffering,” he said, “you cannot sit with your hands folded and ignore the killing of\u00a0innocent civilians. There are certain human values more important than pacifism.”<\/p>\n So yes, for this cause, if the government asked me to, I’d do what was necessary without complaining a lot. I can’t live with too much self-disgust.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The opinion column reproduced below from April 1999 goes a long way towards revealing the failings of the western media in its coverage if the Balkan conflicts. \u00a0More than a year after a Kosovo Liberation Army – trained and armed by the US, Germany, France and the UK – had crossed into Kosovo with … <\/p>\n