Customer Reviews

To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia

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1 star:		(13)

 

 

Michael Parenti is one of my favorite authors, and he continues his trend of excellent and informative work in this book. The NATO "humanitarian" bombing was widely accepted at the time. There were few who challenged it. The Serbs were simply "the new Nazis" and thats all there was to it. That is why it is so refreshing to see someone make a challenge to those assertions. Whether you agree with it or not, this is an essential book to read if you are studying the NATO intervention and the conflict in general. Some other books and articles I reccomend on the topic are: NATO in the Balkans: Voices of Opposition (Available on Amazon), Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions by Diana Johnstone (also available here),Parenti's article "The Demonization of Slobodan Milosevic", but most importantlythe Republika Srpska Bureau for Cooperation with the ICTY's report on Srebanica, based on UN and Red Cross documents, which exposes the whole thing as a fraud, but not suprisingly was suppressed.

I found this book to be one of the most honest attempts to discern the dynamic forces acting upon and precipitating the spate of late 20th Cent Balkan Wars. This book is certainly written from a left wing perspective. If you think that the IMF and World Bank are great institutions, then you are going to disagree with Parenti. Parenti unearths many important details that alter some of the predjudices that the press constructs in an almost a priori way. The Serbs must always be bad. I visited Serbia in 2001; while they were bitter at America, most were very polite and accomodating. After all, how would you feel about Serbia if they bombed your city for 79 straight days.

Some of the details that Parenti shares:
1. Toward the end of the war, the Croats bombed, with German artillery, in the Krajinia/Knin fleeing Serbian civilians as they were ethnically cleansed. In 2001, while taking the bus through Knin, I sat near a cute Croat girl, maybe 25. "We got rid of the Serbs in this area" she stated with a grin. "They just ran away." Perspective?

2. The marketplace bombing that really brought the conflict to the nightly news, was a bit of a hoax. Forensic experts examined the corpses and found that they had died earlier than the date of the bombing. The press just does not follow up their claims when they are wrong.

3. The role of the IMF and World Bank were huge. The central federal bank in Belgrade was frozen after Milosevich refused to accomodate some of the SAP's that the IMF were insisting upon. Without the transfer of money to the provinces, the people grew angry.

There are many other points he makes, I found these interesting. I think an accurate analysis is needed to create foreign policy on, rather than preconceived notions.

Amidst all of the Kosovo War books that came out immediately following the war, this was notable since it doesn't take any standard line, starting with the title.

To Kill A Nation is a look at what many consider to be a big mistake--NATO's first war, fought against Yugoslavia in 1999. Parenti comes at every angle and rails against an unjust, trumped-up war that was dishonestly reported and then forgotten. It is nevertheless important as it set the stage for further international adventures out of the scope of international law, now a US policy staple.

Parenti is not denying that an ugly civil war was taking place. What he is disgusted with is the 'presentation' of this 'war' as a humanitarian effort, an unprecedented act of altruism by powerful states to save an opporessed people.

Parenti focuses on things like collateral damage, economics of Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe, the media and 'their atrocities', bumbling politicians, etc.

Not everything here is so convincing, but there is much merit in the argument against the war, a war now forgotten and brushed over as our committment to this troubled corner of Europe ends.

Recommended for a different take on the Kosovo War.

Parenti's book is not a historical account of Yugoslavia's conquest by the West. Few dates are mentioned and only a rough chronology is followed. Instead it's a valiant attempt to set the record straight following years of drumfire propaganda aimed at toppling the Yugoslav federation and its non-western economy. By no means, is Parenti attempting a whitewash of Milosevich, his regime, or real crimes against non-Serbs. He is combatting the vicious, one-sided campaign waged in Western media against all things Serb or Yugoslav. That NATO has finally succeeded is testament to an overwhelming military and political superiority, not to any inherent rightness in the cause, ( consider the spate of international law violated by NATO's attack). This is the burden of the book and the author handles it well, with documentation and sources outside the usual CNN-NATO axis.

Two key points are worth mention. The vaunted killing fields of Kosovo never materialized despite near hysterical reports all over Western networks. Turns out that many of these claims were based on rumor, exaggeration, or KLA mendacity. That these reports of Serb massacres were circulated as fact by an uncritical media testifies to a level of subservience to NATO war aims, which , not incidentally, work to strengthen European prospects of this same corporate media. Now that the conquest is complete, backtracking is quietly underway, but so what, the damage has been done, and more of the same cheerleading can be expected next time Western peace-keepers go after some rogue nation or crazed foreign devil.

A second point: Parenti documents terms of the Rambouillet conference, a NATO-Yugoslav diplomatic meeting that set the stage for the armed attack on Serbia. Seems this parley was sabotaged from the outset. To meet Western terms for peace, Serbia was required to permit NATO forces to occupy the country, renouncing in effect sovereignty over its own territory. In short, it was a demand Serbia could not afford not to refuse - just as NATO had calculated, and the air attack got underway against what was now portrayed as an unreasonable regime in Belgrade! (This is reminiscent of the diplomatic trickery surrounding talks between April Glaspie, US ambassador to Iraq, and Saddam Hussein, prior to the Gulf War, in which Hussein was told the US had no interest in the disposition of Kuwait or its royal family, thereby setting a trap that Hussein immediately fell into.)

What should be apparent to critical observers, is that truth, goodness, and fellow feeling mean nothing when power and wealth are at stake, regardless of the regime involved. Western transnationals see an opportunity to gobble up the world economy behind a facade of "free trade" and "democracy" and, by god, they're going to do it, whether people like it or not. That's their version of democratic thinking. If this seems an exaggeration, read the book. The truth is out there, but don't expect to hear it on the six o'clock news.

One reviewer has lambasted Parenti for portraying a "World Imperialist Conspiracy masterminded by the United States." Well, that's not quite true, but Parenti does interpret the attack on Yugoslavia as an expression of neo-colonialism. And for good reason. You just can't argue with the wheelbarrow-load of facts this book will dump on you. Of particular note were details of wholesale infrastructure bombing followed by multi-million-dollar reconstruction contracts for international (read: Western) corporations - a textbook example of corporate profiteering from US-lead bombing campaigns. But don't take my word for it. Read the book for yourself. It will blow your mind. Or better, visit Yugoslavia and SEE the aftermath of for youself.

j.w.k.

In the old Cold War era movie, "Red Dawn" about a Soviet/Chinese Communist invasion of the United States, the United States was systematically dismantled into several territories based on old regional and cultural divisions. For isntance, the southern states were split out based on the lines of the Old Confederacy. The Southwest consisting of California, Arizonia, New Mexico and Texas was returned to Mexico. New England states formed another unit. The Upper Midwest States from Minnesota to Michigan were returned to French Canada. And so on. Sound bizarre? Well that's what the United States did to Yugoslavia. This is a great book! After all the liberal media propaganda apologizing for the Clinton foreign policy, it's about time the real truth that the liberals and the Democrats protests about Bush's foreign policy are mere partisian political opportunism. Truth is Democrats like "Democrat" Wars, and oppose "Republican Wars". If I recall even peacenik Wellstone supported Clinton in this horrible mess.

I was a bit skeptical when I saw the book but after reviewing the reviews I bought it.
I guess I was trying to avoid the anger and pain that never went away since we have left our home in Bosnia, and ended up in the States. Well the book makes plenty of valid points. The US and the UN have created this distorted view of a nation that did not want to surrender, and even today, they are working hard to take away Serbian pride ,Kosovo, and give it away to a nation that does not have the right to own Serbian land. I will never understand how anyone can take a land where Serbian heroes have died and give it away.
Yes the book upset me but I already new most of those things, and I am glad that the truth is coming out and people start asking questions.
Even though we are all trying to move on we will never be able to forget.

To those readers whose total knowledge of the former Yugoslavia has amounted to steady and exclusive diet of CNN and the other standard news networks for the last ten years, "To Kill a Nation" offers some much-needed shock-therapy. However, as someone who has studied the history and culture of the peoples of the former Yugoslavia for the last 25 years, I can say that Michael Parenti presents a very logical and credible case of many of the motivating factors used in deliberately carving up Yugoslavia into "mini-statelets" --- that is "bite-size pieces" for larger economic organizations to more easily swallow for profit.

One does not need to share a Socialist viewpoint to appreciate the methodical trail of evidence leading to the involvement of the IMF, The Soros Foundation, Germany and other world financial institutions in the breakup of Yugoslavia presented by Parenti in "To Kill A Nation". Even those of us who believe in "capitalism with a conscience" would not support the mindset of "Social Darwinism", which appears to have been the thinking used by Western nations and individuals to justify their actions in seeking financial gain at the expense of millions of Yugoslav lives. And if it could happen to the peoples of Yugoslavia, what prevents it from happening to us?

Overall, I would recommend "To Kill a Nation" for it's thoughtful analysis of the economic factors and motivators which led to the horrifying and bloody destruction of the former Yugoslavia.

Michael Parenti's To Kill A Nation: The Attack On Yugoslavia exposes a decade of American and NATO disinformation campaigns with respect to Yugoslavia which peaked with 78 days of around-the-clock aerial bombardment of Yugoslavian cities and infrastructure that resulted in killing and maiming approximately six thousand citizens. Parenti draws from a wide range of published and unpublished material, as well as personal observations based on his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999. Highly recommended reading for students of international studies in general, and the Yugoslavian conflict in particular, To Kill A Nation is a valid, informative, iconoclastic challenge to the typical mainstream media presentations of Serbians respecting charges of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and political corruption that have been used to legitimize western policies resulting in the political instability, physical destruction, and economic destabilization of a once prosperous region.

This is a splendid book, it attracts attention on clear truths concealed deliberately by the western means and reports authentic crimes committed by NATO and USA. All those who know a civil war know that atrocities are committed on all the parts, do not exist good and clearly definite villains, since he claims the western press blaming to them the Serbian ones of everything.
If we observe with detail the history and the events observe that the Serbian ones are heroes and victims more than villains. And the Albanians emerge as the villains of the movie, which does not surprise us those that we know to the Muslims.
But unfortunately the public relations are more important that the true, as happens in every day life, and the Serbs did it very bad.
The guilt of Germany also is clear. What would happen if the state of New Mexico was declaring itself independent and Mexico was recognizing it as independent country? If the army of the United States was invading it to support the unit of the homeland, would it be an invasion of a country on other? This exactly is what happened with Eslovania and Yugoeslavia and Germany as accomplice of Slovenia.
Certainly there are some aspects that I do not share, for example the life in the communist Yugoeslavia previous to the war does not believe that it was so idyllic as mister Parenti says. The life in any communist country has never been enviable, can be more or less poor, but always poorly, but so many yugoeslavos would not emigrate abroad.
The hysteric rección of some readership demonstrates that mister Parenti is right. There is a phrase of Don Quijote who says " the dogs bark then we ride ".
I think that this book have to be completed with " Fool's crusade" that give a lot of more dates and confirm the principal lines of Mr Parenti, may be a few more boring to read but I think that " Fool's crusade" is a solid book.
After read both books my opinion about the politics and the performance of NATO and USA , is considerably worst that before and the serbs have all my simpathy in their suffering.
But the story isn't finished.