THE NEW HUMANISM

THE NEW HUMANISM
by Edward Howard Griggs

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Scarcely had the dust settled on NATO's 1999 bombing of Serbia when prolific political commentator Noam Chomsky brought out The New Military Humanism, which raises incisive, unsettling questions about the motives of the United States and England--the two most vocal proponents of Operation Allied Forces--and the efficacy of their handiwork. Chomsky pulls together much damning evidence, including testimony from the military commander who led the attack, to demonstrate that the assault was not intended to bring an end to Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing" of the disputed territory in Kosovo; it seems very likely, in fact, that President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair knew full well that their actions would ultimately exacerbate the situation. Chomsky also points out that if the United States was genuinely concerned with ending the horrors of genocide, its continued financial and military support of repressive regimes in countries like Turkey and Indonesia is at the very least extremely puzzling. (The New Military Humanism was written and published before the international community decided in September 1999 to intervene in East Timor, which had been subject to Indonesian occupation for over 20 years.) Ultimately, Chomsky suggests, such contradictions exist because what the United States claims to be a "humanitarian" mission is--no matter how glowingly the mass media portrays it--nothing more than American muscle flexing. "The contempt of the world's leading power for the framework of world order," he concludes, "has become so extreme that there is little left to discuss." --Ron Hogan

From Library Journal
The essays in The Politics of Human Rights are reprinted from the third issue of the irregular serial Belgrade Circle Journal (ISSN 0354-635X). The Belgrade Circle is a nongovernmental organization founded in 1992 that, according to its web site, promotes "a free, open, pluralist, democratic, and rational civil society" and looks forward to a new Europe rather than back to old Serbia. A better title for the collection would have been "The Political Theory of Human Rights" as the contributors advocate a legal framework as the best protection for human rights, basing their arguments on the early Western European political philosophers of those rights. Three of the essays are analyses of human rights texts; only the last two, written by the volume editor, consider contemporary Yugoslavia. The publication of such essays in Belgrade may be a subversive activity, but they will hardly seem radical to American readers. Furthermore, the photo of Slobodan Milosevic on the cover misleads the reader to expect the contents to focus on Serbia, which is barely mentioned. Chomsky (MIT), a longtime critic of U.S. foreign policy, contributed one essay to the preceding book as well as writing his own book during the spring 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia. He compares the rhetoric of the U.S. government justifying this intervention to its rhetoric and actions in other parts of the world both recently (the Kurds) and in past decades (several incursions into Central America). In all cases, he depicts the United States as a rogue superpower intent on enforcing its wishes everywhere while flouting international legal conventions and undermining world order in the process. Intense anger and strong passion drip from every page, but the haste of composition has led to numerous nonsense statements, such as "If we had records, we might find that Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun professed humanitarian motives." His arguments would be better served by a thorough revision. Neither volume can be recommended.AMarcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

New Statesman, September 6, 1999; John Pilger
The notion of "humanitarian war" ought to be mocked by those paid to keep the record straight. But it remains a propaganda succes. Noam Chomsky, our greatest unraveller of accredited lies, addresses this in his powerful new book, "The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo." The Nato action, he writes, "has ...[opened] gates to a...new epoch of moral rectitude under the guiding hand of an 'idealistic New World bent on ending inhumanity'."...The new military humanism, like the Third Way, is a euphemism for the rehabilitation of an imperialism that dares not speak its name

The Nation, December 27, 1999; George Kenney
The spectacle of human beings acting out mindless violence through pack behavior instills more terror in the heart than perhaps any other event in the natural world... Life demands of us...a relentless struggle to explain these elemental experiences... "The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo" ably demonstrates how far we've come and, inadvertantly, suggests how far there is to go. Chomsky contends that almost everything you have read or heard or seen on television about Kosovo has been a partial truth or outright falsehood... On the one hand we have the established media, the respectable community of foreign affairs analysts, the government--and on the other, Noam Chomsky. Assuming he is right, a question begs to be asked: How is it possible for things to be so out of kilter?... What Chomsky has gotten ahold of, perhaps without realizing it, is the question of evil...

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