Last time:
Q: Who gets to decide what is a ‘Genocide’ or a ‘Crime Against Humanity,’ and what is merely a series of purportedly less serious war crimes or atrocities?
A: Whoever has the power to do so.
…
It’s as simple as that. No need to overthink it.
Yes: the official narrative on the very complex Balkans conflict is no more morally reputable than the ravings of David Irving who (as is well enough known) tried to challenge the well-established facts on the vile mass atrocities committed by the Nazis.
For, just like the latter comrade-in-sophistry of theirs, IntCom de-emphasizes and backgrounds and trivializes the crimes of non-Serbian factions, in order to buttress and legitimize the palpable myth they have concocted of benevolent and sincere ‘humanitarian intervention’ in the Balkans.
(Hey Bill, how’s all that ‘humanitarian embassy bombing’ going? And any chance of some more “voluntary humanitarian payments” (sic?) I hear a few folks could be doing with those right now. But hell, they could probably be doing with more than economic compensation. Maybe a slight drop in the number of drones swarming over their cities and villages could be a start).
Admittedly, I suspect the specious mythology constructed around the Balkans conflict may be something of a third rail.
For, anyone who utterly condemns out of hand (as I do) the disingenuous narratives concocted by the denialists of non-Serbian mass atrocities (I mean implicit denialism via the slick choice of specious terms outlined in part one of this op-ed, rather than explicit denialism)…
Well, such individuals would no doubt be accused in turn of committing precisely the vicious act I condemn: denialism.
In other words, to point out the crimes of others is to be taken as a form of implicit apologism for Serbian atrocities:
‘OTHER PEOPLE COMMITTED WAR CRIMES TOO? BUT WHO CARES? THAT’S IRRELEVANT, I MEAN, WHY DOES THAT MAKE SERBIAN CRIMES LESS BAD?!’
Of course, such deliberate, conscious, cynically opportunistic derailing is par for the course, and is fit only to be sneeringly dismissed with every whit of the derisive contempt that such sophistry (and such sophists) so very richly and thoroughly deserve.
Those who behave in such a manner are not interested in rational discussion, but in point-scoring.
They are taking rhetorical pot-shots over the bones of innocent people who have been massacred.
So, perhaps it would be a mistake to respond to such worthless derailing tactics in a similar manner as one would to the sincere and reasoned arguments of a non-POV pusher who was merely wrong…
At least a great deal of the time.
I should say that although such derailing gestures are deeply disingenuous and insincere in character, I would expect nothing less from the Partisans of the Universal Interest, and from the Universal League of Globally Just Vanillamongers.
For, as a man much greater than any of these unrepentant war apologists and shameless lackeys of the military industrial complex has said (slightly abridged here):
‘They are unanimous in their hate… and I welcome their hatred.’
***
He who controls the past controls the future.