History As Melodrama -11
The media that recount Balkan ghost stories to the "children" back in
NATOland rarely go into detail about the peculiarities of these various customs and
situations. Popular culture has prepared audiences for a simpler version. The pattern is
the same as in disaster movies, outer space movies, etc: there is always the trio of
classic melodrama: wicked villain, helpless victim (maiden in distress) and heroic
rescuer. Same plot. Over and over. Only in the Abramowitz
humanitarian war plan, the trio is composed of ethnic entities or nationalities. There is the "good" ethnic group, all victims, like the Kosovar
Albanians. Then there is the "bad" ethnic group,
all racist hatred, ethnic cleansing and even "genocide". And finally, of course, there is Globocop to the rescue: NATO with its
stealth bombers, cruise missiles and cluster blade bombs, its depleted uranium and
graphite power-plan busters. A bit of fireworks, like the car chase at the end of
the movie.
The whole concept of ethnic war as pretext for U.S. military intervention implies
this division of humanity between "good" and "bad" nationalities,
between "oppressor" and "victim" peoples. Since this is rarely the
case, the story is told by analogy with the famous exceptional cases where the categories
fit: Hitler and the Jews being the obvious favourite. Every new
villain is a "Hitler", every new ethnic secessionist group to be used as pretext
for new NATO bases is the victim of a potential "Holocaust". At this rate, the
two terms will cease to be proper nouns and become general terms for the new global
Guignol.
Starting with the pretense of militant anti-racism,
"humanitarian intervention" finishes with a new racism.
To merit all those bombs, the "bad" people must be
tarnished with collective guilt.
At the G8 summit in Cologne in June, Tony Blair clearly adopted the doctrine of collective guilt when he declared that
there could be no humanitarian aid for the Serbs because of the dreadful way they had
treated the Kosovar Albanians.
With their incomparable self-righteousness, the
Anglo-American commanders are leading this new humanitarian crusade to extremes of
inhumanity.
