Atrocities Management
by
Edward S. Herman
It is extremely easy to demonize by atrocities management. I
became steeped in this subject during the Vietnam War era, and even
published a small volume in 1970 entitled Atrocities in Vietnam: Myths
and Realities. The
marvel of that era was how easily and effectively the U.S.
establishment
and media focused on the cruel acts and killings of the indigeous
National
Liberation Front (NLF, "Vietcong") and made them into sinister killers
("terrorists"), when in fact the terror of the U.S. and its local and
foreign proxies was worse by a very large factor. The violence of the
Diem government in the late 1950s was extremely brutal,
indiscriminate, and massive; and when the US entered the fray directly
in the 1960s a new level of (wholesale terror) was reached with
chemical warfare, napalm, fragmentation bombs, "free fire zones," and
high level B-52 bombing raids on "suspected Vietcong bases" (i.e.,
villages).
The NLF was always more selective in its killing, for strategic
and political reasons--it had a mass base in the countryside that it
did not want to harm or alienate. The Diem government, its successors,
and the US, were less discriminating for the same reason--they had
little or no peasant support, so that indiscriminate terror and mass
killing was the understandable strategy of
aggression.
But the U.S. media featured the relatively small and selective
terrorist
acts of the enemy, dramatized and personalized them with details, and
gave
correspondingly slight and more antiseptic attention to the horrendous
behavior of our clients and ourselves, also presented as defensive and
retaliatory. I recall being one-upped on a radio debate on the war
when my
opponent pulled out an article in Time magazine showing a picture of
two
Vietnamese, hands-tied, allegedly executed by the NLF. This may or may
not
have been an instance of NLF terror, but two things were clear: the
political selectivity of Time here and in general completely distorted
the overall truth regarding terror in Vietnam, and the selectivity and
dramatization made for very effective propaganda. While the U.S. was
destroying Vietnam in order to "save" it, the U.S. media found only
the Vietnamese enemy evil; the U.S. failed there, but with the noblest
intentions.
Another important result of the effective demonization of the NLF
as
terroristic was to paralyse many liberals and leftists, unwilling to
be tagged as not only unpatriotic but siding with terrorists. Many
lapsed into silence; others condemned both sides, calling weakly for
restraint and compromise; and only "extremists" were willing to call
the U.S. aggression and long struggle against Vietnamese
self-determination by its right name. This paralysis and
marginalization of a principled position weakened the oppositional
movement to the war.
The U.S. also destroyed Cambodia in a "sideshow" to the Vietnam
war
(1969-75), and following the devastating four year rule of the Khmer
Rouge,
the US supported the ousted Pol Pot forces as the "enemy of my enemy"
(Vietnam). The U.S. media focused intensively and indignantly on the
Khmer
Rouge genocide, but from 1969 to today have largely blacked out the
atrocities of the "sideshow" years, the misdeeds of the Khmer Rouge
during
the period of U.S. support, and the fact of that support.
Here again, the power of media propaganda has been such that
calling attention to the U.S. role as the first phase genocidists and
its badly compromised position as Pol Pot supporter after 1978 is
virtually unheard of, and departures from an exclusive focus on KR
crimes makes one an apologist for the KR. This process extends to the
"left," with repeated illustrations in the Progressive and In These
Times, and in an Institute for Policy Studies
(IPS)-Interhemispheric Resource Center publication, Foreign Policy in
Focus. In the latter case, a 1997 essay on Cambodia by Philip
Robertson focused entirely on KR crimes, portrayed the US as a neutral
party in that country and suitable adjudicator of policy, and supplied
a list of policy recommendations for it to implement there, including
U.S. support for war
crimes trials for KR leaders.
Another sideshow of the Vietnam war was the mass killings in
Indonesia in
1965-66, which destroyed the base of the Communist Party and brought
Indonesia into the U.S. sphere of influence. This sideshow was greeted
enthusiastically by the U.S. establishment. Given this approval, and
33
years of U.S. support for the Suharto dictatorship, atrocities
management
has required that the large-scale murders and rule by violence, and
the
mass killings in East Timor from 1975-1999, be kept under the rug. The
U.S.
media have done a great job here. There are no UN forensic groups over
there looking at bodies, and there are no demands for ending Suharto's
impunity.
Similarly, with the US "constructively engaged" with South Africa,
Israel,
and Turkey over the past several decades, the South African occupation
of
Namibia, assaults on the front line states, and support of Renamo and
Savimbi, Israel's invasions and "iron fist" attacks on Lebanon, and
Turkey's scorched earth policies and killings of Kurds, could proceed
for
many years killing hundreds of thousands unimpeded by any intense
focus on
atrocities or serious attention from the "international community."
Turkey
could even offer to lend armed support to the NATO effort in Kosovo,
presumably diverting troops from killing Kurds, without eliciting the
slightest sense of irony in the West.
Only when the Godfather needs atrocities--as with the NLF, PLO, or
Serbs--do atrocities come on line, with intense focus and
indignation. This
is done with such assurance and self-righteous virtue that liberals
and
leftists jump on the bandwagon and welcome the Godfather's gracious
willingness in this particular case to finally properly lead and bring
justice to the targeted villain and area. The willingness of leftists
to accept the U.S. (and NATO) as proper authorities to decide, judge
and drop bombs is nothing short of astonishing. Some of them might the
previous week have condemned the murderous U.S. sanctions that are
killing more Iraqi children each month than the aggregate casualties
in Kosovo, U.S. support of the Turkish war against the Kurds, the U.S.
bombing of the Sudan, etc., but still their political vision is so
limited, their response to atrocities so elemental, that they collapse
intellectually and morally. One leftist is reported to have said that
the Serbs are pulling people out of houses and killing them, implying
that this justified the NATO bombing of Serbia. On this kind of
reasoning, Israel would have been bombed after Sabra- Shatila and on
many other occasions; and of course the governments of El Salvador and
Guatemala would have been bombed incessantly in the1980s, instead of
being supplied and protected by the US.
With Milosevec and the Serbs effectively demonized, the left even
puts
forward spokespersons who openly favor the NATO bombing. Both IPS and
Mother Jones offer as an expert and spokesperson Albert Cevallos of
the
International Crisis Group, who urges "the need of bombing to bring
Serbia
back into the peace process," to be followed by an international
peacekeeping army in Kosovo. Mother Jones also provides Doug Hostetter
of
the Fellowship of Reconciliation, who proposes that as Milosevic is
carrying out "genocidal acts" the U.S. should seek to bring him before
the war crimes tribunal. Reminiscent of the Vietnam War paralysis, the
IPS and Mother Jones leftists oppose the bombing (Cevallos excepted)
mainly because it won't work in achieving purportedly humane goals,
whose substantive primacy is taken for granted. Not one of these
experts condemns the U.S. and NATO for tearing Yugoslavia apart, for
violating international law in the bombing, and for their political
selectivity and gross double standardin choice of innocents to be
protected from crimes against humanity.
Atrocities management works, but it also requires a complementary
gross
misunderstanding of the issues at stake and context of the actions
taken.
The Serbs have committed terrible acts in Kosovo and deserve
condemnation;
and international efforts to end that crisis are eminently desirable.
But
past NATO policies have contributed to the ongoing violence and are
part of
the problem--their bombing strategy is the culmination of policies
that
have exacerbated the crisis. The bombing is not merely immoral and
illegal,
it is part of an ugly and destructive policy sequence rooted in
self-serving geo-political strategies.
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