US IN THE BALKANS 9…THE REAL ANSWER TO KAMM AND HOARE

by Felix Quigley

July 3 2008

When political sewer rats like Kamm and Hoare cite the Hague Kangaroo Court, set up and run by NAT, partisan enemy of Milosevic and the Serbs, then they should be given short shift. It is really not worth spending a great deal of time with Kamm and Hoare. They are basically full of racist hatred for Serbia and Serbs.

If one feels so inclined there are many references to guide these two particular sewer rats (among a veritable horde of same) towards, one may be the following:

[start quote here]

According to Michael Mandel, Professor of International law at York University in Toronto
the Tribunal’s claim genocide occurred at Srebrenica was not supported by the facts it found or by the law it cited. Even the trial chamber’s conclusion that ‘Bosnian Serb forces executed several thousand Bosnian Muslim men [with the] total number of victims … likely to be within the range of 7,000 to 8,000 was not supported by its specific findings.

[end quote here]

From

(British website Harry’s Place, Oliver Kamm & Marko Attila Hoare exposed as pro-NATO Imperialist liars & war criminals (by Neil Craig & Peter Robert North)

Tuesday, February 27, 2007
BOSNIA – THE HAGUE VERDICT
Today’s Scotsman

http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/2007/02/bosnia-hague-verdict.html)

Posted as a comment on this website by Mick Tanzer, July 1, 2008

https://4international.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/us-in-the-balkans-7alliance-with-tudjman-and-islam/#more-364

I personally have been reading over the past few days some of the material surrounding this issue of Srebrenica. I want now to urge socialist revolutionaries, that is Trotskyists, to have a major rethink in order to develop a proper perspective on the issue of what happened in Yugoslavia.

My starting point is that Imperialism (as the highest stage of capitalism) has entered its death agony. It is a corrupt rotting system which Trotsky referred to as being in its “death agony”. What happened in Yugoslavia is vital to understand in this context. Political low lifes like Kamm and Hoare do no more than represent this terminal diseased system of capitalism. The same goes for Gutman, O’Kane, Marshall, Vulliamy et al who ran to the assistance of Clinton and Blair in order to jointly destroy Yugoslavia. These essentially are diseased people, representing a diseased system. Such that in reading for example O’Kane one searches in vain for a verifiable source, there are the words of this Serb sitting in the back seat of a car spounting to her somewhere near Sarajevo(He could be anybody) or an unidentified Muslim Woman in another context claiming wholesale rape by Serbs.

These people that we meet in this story of vilification against the Serbs are the representatives of a system on its very last legs. A corrupt, decrepid, depraved but essentially a dying system!

It is necessary for the revolutionary socialist movement to answer this charge that the Serbs murdered 8000 in Srebrenica. But the first part of the answer is undoubtedly a bold assertion that the Serbs murdered nobody.

And this as a result of my reading I see a major break between us, the Trotskyists of today, and the people like Harman and Chomsky plus many others who appear to be on the side of the Serbs and against the liars like Hoare and Kamm.

Why can we be so clear and confident in making this claim? For the very good reason that these embittered enemies of the Serbs have been unable to bring forward a single scrap of evidence. Let them bring forward their evidence about Srebrenica then we shall consider this by now thoroughly discredited charge. But in the meantime it is much better to treat Kamm and his ilk for what he is, a pimp for US and British Imperialism.

And so, as was always the case, the issue of Srebrenica centres around the issue of revolutionary socialist leadershhip. Only by revolution, and by replacing this decrepid and dangerous system of capitalism by a socialist commonwealth can there be freedom from this kind of barbarity. This is where the real division lies on this issue of Srebrenica.

The most important thing about the Srebrenica Massacre myth story is its timing. It was announced by Albright one month after it happened and at the time of the very real massacre of the Krajina in which the US played the leading and central role using the Fascists of Tudjman as US proxies.

Repeat it a million times so people can learn, that is the real context for the lies of Kamm and Hoare about Srebrenica.

 

The second is the nature of the opposition to the myth. It is quite impossible to expose the truth of what happened without a struggle against the politics of Herman and Chomsky.  As the following passage makes clear Herman in fact without any evidence whatsoever asserts that the Serbs did massacre Muslims, only not so many as is alleged by the enemy Imperialists.

 

This places Herman and Chomsky clearly within the enemy camp. From my reading the very same applies to Ms Diana Johnstone. And many others!

 

Only a fool would therefore believe that people like Herman do not uncover very useful facts and lead us into the truth about what happened in Yugoslavia. In fact some of his research is absolutely valuable and we on 4international will use it copiously. And we are also grateful, perhaps especially so in the case of Herman and Johnstone. But we also do so from a critical stand point. Herman has got certain positions towards Srebrenica that makes him actually closer to Kamm than to us as Trotskyists.

 

We on 4international do not accept the truth of any aspect of this so-called “massacre”. Neither the Media, neither Chomsky and Herman, not Kamm and Hoare, have ever produced one piece of proof that the Serbs murdered in cold blood a single Muslim in Srebrenica.

 

But our difference with Herman goes even further than on this issue. Herman says that there WAS a massacre. So does Chomsky. He thus offers to his opponent Kamm game set and match. Our position is one of total opposition to Imperialism. This whole Srebrenica fraud was at the centre of the strategy of Imperialism. Our position to the likes of Kamm is one of total and complete hostility. We say to Kamm, you say there is a massacre by the Serbs in that town, then you bloody well either produce your evidence or shut up. We will agitate in the mass movement without giving Kamm an inch. Kamm represents the sordid and crisis ridden imperialist system and as such the best way to treat Kamm is with total contempt. Our approach is very different to Herman, has been and always will be.

 

The most that Herman claims is that the Islamofascists in Srebrenica aided and abetted by the UN went out at night from their layers and ever a number of years murdered thousands of Serb peasants in their homesteads. That being proved, and it is very well proved even from the very mouth of the murdering Muslim Fascist Oric himself, Herman then goes on to extrapolate that the Serb army on retaking Srebrenica must be vengeful. And being vengeful they carried out “executions”.

 

He and Chomsky makes these allegations without the slightest bit of evidence. They have no evidence.

 

This is the methodology that has done so much damage. It is the methodology of Charles Enderlin in the El Durra France 2 case. It is even the method of O’Kane and was of Marshall and Vulliamy too! It is very wrong to make allegations without having proof. In the Madeleine McCann case the Portuguese proto fascist police force declared the parents of the little girl as “suspects” without the slightest morsel of evidence. This “method” is widespread.

 

The whole working class movement, the Serb movement and the Jewish movement must have nothing whatsoever to do with this method.

 

Kamm had great fun in arguing the case out with Herman and Chomsky. Kamm is a very devious character and he of course will pick somebody who is essentially on his (imperialist) side to argue with. Then he cannot really lose, can he!

 

[Start quote here]

 

The events in question took place in or near the Bosnian town of Srebrenica between July 10 and 19, 1995, as the Bosnian Serb army (BSA) occupied that town and  fought with and killed many Bosnian Muslims, unknown numbers dying in the fighting and by executions. There is no question but that there were executions,  and that many Bosnian Muslim men died during the evacuation of Srebrenica and its aftermath. But even though only rarely discussed there is a major issue of how many were executed, as numerous bodies found in local grave sites were victims of fighting, and many Bosnian Muslim men who fled Srebrenica reached Bosnian Muslim territory safely. Some bodies were also those of the many Serbs killed in the forays by the Bosnian Muslims out of  Srebrenica in the years before July 1995.

 

[end quote here]

 

Furthermore the writing of Herman is filled with this and a few paragraphs later there is this:

 

[begin quote here]

 

The abandonment of  Srebrenica by  a military force much larger than that of the attackers,  and a retreat that made that larger force vulnerable and caused it to suffer heavy casualties in fighting and vengeance executions, helped produce numbers that would meet the Clinton criterion, by hook or by crook. There is other evidence that the retreat from Srebrenica was not based on any military necessity but was strategic, with the personnel losses incurred considered a necessary sacrifice for a larger purpose. [5]

 

[end quote here]

 

The use of Herman of the damaging to the Serbs term “vengeance executions” places right into the hands of Serbophobes like Kamm.

 

It is not just that it is wrong tactically facing a ruthless enemy but it is presented by Herman without any evidence produced and almost slipped in under the cover of his other material.

We are dealing here with a whole layer who are basically opposed to the traditions of revolutionary socialism. Chomsky stands at the centre of this. We as Trotskyists seek at every point to demarcate ourselves from this layer. This is the centre of all knowledge on this isue today. It is not in the slightest accidental that the Hermans and Chomskys of this world stand in total conflict with us on the issue of Israel, and also with Trotsky on the issue of the Jewish state in the 1930s.

Basically: 1. there was a war 2. the Serbs took this Srebrenica Muslim post 3. There were previously much horror and assassinations here by Oric and he even boasted of his murdering spree 4. there was a retreat by the Muslim army as they made their escape to Muslim territory 5. there was no surrender and 6 the Serbs were militarily totally justified and correct in attacking the fleeing Islamofascists.

 

Into this scenario Herman introduces the concept of executions and vengeance by the Serbs. So how does Herman know? He has got no evidence and produces no evidence. Is Herman God able to be everywhere even in the heads of the disciplined Serb army.

 

In my opinion there has been already acres written to prove that there was no massacre by the Serbs in Srebrenica. There is no doubt at all that the Serbs took Srebrenica, took prisoners, attacked a fleeing army of Fascists who were making for a return to the attack as soon as possible, the Serbs therefore in everything being totally justified.

 

We have to investigate certain aspects such as how Imperialism and Fascism actually set the scene for the massacre charge, just as we examine Qana or the El Durra affair. We do this not so much to answer the massacre charge, because there is really no charge to answer, but to prepare the advanced workers and national movements for such attacks in the future and also to understand more deeply the crisis in the capitalist system, and the immorality of this system in crisis. That is all.

 

Those who lay the charge that the Serbs created a massacre let them as we said above lay the charge with proof. This they have not done because they do not have the evidence.

 

Kamm as the leader of these rats who lay this spurious charge… It is a definite fact that if the evidence was there Kamm would have regurgitated this evidence without stop. But that has not happened.

 

The proof of Kamm is in two parts. The first is that the Serb leaders in Bosnia themselves admitted to the massacre. Problem is that they did so under extreme pressure. I believe they were weaklings and cowards and that is all. That has to be shown clearly.

 

The second “proof” of Kamm is that The Hague Court said it. Oh Yeah!

 

The answer to this is that The Hague Court is a political court and not a judicial body. It was set up by the enemy of the Serbs, to destroy the Serbs, by NATO of course.

 

So not a great deal to say on that either.

 

Let the Kammite apologists for Imperialism come forward with the evidence. Until they do relax a little on the issue!

 

In fact, people on the Serb side, which is undoubtedly the side of truth and progress, can argue this for years and will be no further forward.

 

The issue is not, and never has been, about words or the Media. The Media we have seen in the case of Operation Storm is totally on the side of Imperialism. It is an Imperialist Media, an arm of the Imperialist system and component capitalist states.

 

So now there is urgent need for a new tack on the whole affair. To gain inspiration for the alternative and the way forward it may be useful to go back to the political position of the greatest socialist revolution that humanity has seen on the plight of the Jews in the late 1930s.  The essence, as opposed to mechanical applications, was in the way that Trotsky addressed the plight of the Jews. Serbs can learn enormously from this.

Trotsky’s prediction re Holocaust of the Jews

 

In a letter to American friends Trotsky was forced to make the boldest of predictions which were unique. In opposition to the Imperialist Sultan Knish I insist that it was unique because the Jewish patriot Jabotinsky while he took a similar position towards the danger from the Nazis had none of the understanding which Trotsky had about Fascism.

The prediction of Trotsky was based on his understanding of Fascism as emerging out of a world capitalist system in mortal decay, what Trotsky was to refer to as the “death agony” of capitalism.

 

I noted in the last article that indeed Milosevic who was an intelligent man had quickly understood something of this. The simple tragedy is that for historical reasons there was no Trotskyist party in existence. But that was never really the fault of Trotsky. Rather it was the fault of the Stalinist thug Mercader who took the life of the great revolutionary.

 

The time has come to break from the Popular Frontism of Chomsky and Herman and learning the most essential lesson of the destruction of Yugoslavia by Imperialism create the Trotskyist revolutionary leadership.

 

In the meantime let Kamm and Hoare prove first their slanders against the Serb people. If they continue to make these charges without any evidence then they will be labelled simply as “racists”. The truth is never all that difficult to access.