Bring: Milosetic wins a unanimous note to continue as leader of the Serbian ruling party The New Military Humanism: Lessons From Kosovo, Noam Chomsky. Pluto Press. Reviewed by Geoff Ryan. FOR MUCH of this book Chomsky attempts to refute the claims of NATO leaders to have been acting on humanitarian impulses in Kosovo. He does so by accepting, at least for the strong reasons for using the lesser known Albanian spelling Kosova. This is in marked contrast to many critics of NATO's Balkan war who continue to deny that the Albanian population was in any way subject to repression. By recognising the brutal nature of Serbian domination Chomsky strengthens his cri. tique of NATO policy. He shows that western leaders were fully aware that by launching the bombing campaign Milosevic would step up the expulsion of Albanians. Yer they went ahead without making any provision for the vast numbers of refugees they knew the bombing campaign would cause. Subsequent attempts to deny this are simply lies.
Chomsky also takes apart the notion of 'the international community. The vast majority of the world is excluded from this 'international community. it is merely an attempt by the west to hide imperisist ambitions.
Moreover, as he demonstrates, the claims by this "international community to be acting to uphold international law and justice is fraud.
ulent. Only two countries in the world have rejected a World Court judgement: one is Iran, the other the United States.
Veto
Moreover the USA is the only state to have vetoed a UN Security Council motion calling on all states to international law. In fact the United States frequently refuses to sign international treaties that its government does not consider to be in the national interests of the USA "It wouldn't do to mention such matters, Chomsky remarks, quoting from the preface to George Orwell's Animal Form. In nis preface Orwell pointed our that in supposedly free societies Unpopular ideas can be silenced and inconvenient facts kept dark, without any need for any official ban". Censorship is largely voluntary, based on shared interests.
The reference to Orwell is highly ironic. As Chomsky points out, the preface to Animal Farm has been published in only one edition of the book. and then over 30 years after it was first written, only to be very quickly withdrawn.
Orwell would certainly be totally unsurprised by the ease with which the western media simply ignore such inconvenient facts as the appalling record of the United States in particular in supporting brutal oppression throughout the world - not just before the end of the Cold War but all through the last decade.