Apologies and Conflict, With Another Look at Bosnia

[LeoCasey@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 95-08-06 10:13:16 EDT, Chris Burford writes:

>Seriously though you do seem to get a bit masochistic in always
>expecting to get into a fight of a personal nature, instead of
>concentrating on building on agreement. I can also see Doug's
>point of view that in apologising you actually continued to
>imply that you thought you were provoked. It might have been
>better if you had addressed the issue of conflict more directly,
>after apologising for the personal anger.
>
>I think your heated exchanges did actually symbolize something
>very important, and enacted a tiny fragment of the violence
>of Yugoslavia. Yet if you are attacked, people are attacking something
>in their mind as they do not really know you. It does not have to
>be taken personally.

Chris --

Thank your for your comments. Let me address them in turn. (For those who
wish to skip the discussion of list dynamics and conflict, the issue of
Bosnia is at the end of posting.)

1. You are not completely off base in saying that I often expect to ne
presonally attacked, but the reality is a little bit more variegated than you
may have seen. The reason why I stay with this list is precisely because very
interesting and stimulating conversation is possible with a wide range of
folks, yourself included, and I have never felt personally attacked, much
less expected personal attacks, when involved in these conversations. At the
same time, there are other folks whose idea of vigorous debate is the
intellectual equivalent of the barroom brawl, with the notion that the
"victor" is whomever is left standing at the end after trading body blows in
the form of personal insult and imputation. From the very beginning of my
appearance on this list, they have made it clear in various ways that my
radical democratic politics are beyond the pale, and that the sooner I
disappeared the better. Believe me, if they were the only folks on this list,
I would have gladly obliged them a long ago. So if you perceive in me an
anticipation of such attacks from such quarters, you are correct.

2. My apology was entirely sincere. I inherited from my father a wicked Irish
working class temper, and I am not always successful in keeping it under
control. At a certain point in the "barroom" exchange, I just lost my cool,
and started trading insults just like brawlers trade body blows. (Its a
miracle that my key board survived.) But (1) it did not really deal with my
anger, nor make me feel any better; and (2) upon a little bit of reflection,
I felt like a bloody fool for having done it. What had begun as a debate on
Bosnia ended as a flame war, and I was throwing the gasoline on with everyone
else. Th e purpose of my apology was to say that I recognize that this is not
the type of behavior we should expect of each other, that I will do my best
to avoid it in the future and that I hope I wouldn't be judged too harshl for
this lapse. Yes, you are correct that I felt provoked, but I also do not feel
that provocation is a good excuse for inappropriate behavior on the part of
someone like myself, who has been around left political debates for 25 years
+. If I abhor that type of exchange, and see it as a hallmark of a sectarian
style of politics which I find profoundly destructive, then I sure as hell
shouldn't be doing it myself.

3. A word must be said, I think, on the source of my anger, in the (not
vain?) hope that it might clear the air. It is my perception that among
certain quarters it is de rigour to reply to ANY argument I make with every
type of imputation about my personal life and political commitment -- how I
lead a life of comfort, about my ivory tower existence, about my shallow
commitment to emancipatory politics, and on. Until now, I never responded to
these imputations because (1) it was absolutely clear that those who made
these charges did not know a damn thing about me, and that the charges were a
cover for the lack of a argument; and (2) such charges are completely
irrelevant to the quality of the argument I, or anybody else, makes. But it
is an incessant drumbeat, and I have become increasingly pissed off about it,
and that anger is now spilling out into our discussions. For the record, I
teach in an inner city high school in Crown Heights and I am active in the
New York City teachers union. I am as "well paid" as other inner city school
teachers. This job is a matter of choice and political commitment for me: I
have a Ph.D. in political theory from the University of Toronto, obtained
with scholarships from my father's union and immense student loans, and I
could easily find my way into a post-secondary setting if I wanted to do so.
Like other inner city school teachers, I deal on a daily basis with
incredible social decay and violence. To offer the most graphic illustration:
in the last year, there have been four drive by shootings outside of my
school, and a student shoot on school grounds. It is galling, to say the
least, to struggle through this daily life and do my best to bring a little
hope to a world of despair, and then come home to read postings from the most
elite of universities telling me how my politics are a function of my life of
privilege.

One posting from May still stands out in my memory: one of the things I love
about my teaching is the work I do with my 12th year students in an American
Government and Politics class. We enter a national, very rigorous debate
style competition on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and through the
dint of hard work and effort, have managed to consistently better schools
from the most priviliged sections of the city, state and nation. Preparations
are very intense, eating up weekends and holidays, and -- on top of my
regular teaching and union duties -- leave me little time for anything else.
This year, we won the New York City and New York State championships, and won
fourth place in the nation at a week long competition in Washington DC at the
end of May. I returned to New York bursting with pride about what my inner
city African-American and Latino students had accomplished to find in my
e-mail a posting on this list gleefully declaring that my lack of
intervention in the preceding weeks meant that I and my bankrupt radical
democratic politics were gone, and had moved to more privileged precincts.

I ain't no saint. I lead this type of life because it makes me fulfilled and
gives my life meaning. As much as I miss the time for intellectual reading
and writing, I wouldn't be half as happy toiling in an university library.
(Indeed, the reason why I have stuck with this list is that sometimes gives
me small tastes of the intellectual exchange it is hard to find elsewhere.) I
do not want any of my arguments accorded moral status because of my life
choices. What I would like, for once and for all, is that those arguments be
judged as arguments, and that those who disagree with my politics address the
substance of the issue, rather than imputing things to me personally. If the
only argument that can be made against a radical democratic politics is that
its advocates lead lives of privileges, then its time to close up shop.

4. Finally, on the Bosnia issue. Meaningful conversation and dialogue
requires a certain set of shared premises and values. For example, it makes
little sense, I believe, to attempt to engage in a purposeful conversation
with a Holocaust revisionist, because there is a fundamental and unbridgable
divide on matters of basic beliefs. It is my view that there is a moral
threshhold for meaningful conversation on the Bosnia issue. You (Chris B.)
and I may disagree, for example, on whether or not military intervention from
outside is the only viable solution for an end to the carnage, but because we
share a common set of values that aggression, mass rape and genocidal ethnic
cleansing are moral evils which must be opposed, we can have a meaningful and
intelligent conversation, in which we both will learn something, on the
issue. However, there is a position which has appeared on the "left" which
treats those phenomena as creations of the capitalist and imperialist media,
in effect denying their existence. In my view, this denial is morally
bankrupt, and creates such an unbridgable moral gap. Thus, my point has never
been that intervention is the only moral response to the Bosnian situation:
the attempts by pacifists to place themsleves physically between the warring
force was a remarkably moral and self-sacrificial, but clearly unsuccessful,
response. Rather, my position is that intervention seems to me the only
viable means for ending the carnage.

I think the use of language is particularly revealing here, and it is a
worthwile exercise to "deconstruct" (if you can excuse the use of the term)
the moral posture assumed by some of the critics of intervention. The terms
'aggression,'  'mass rape' and 'ethnic cleansing' are altogether absent from
this position, and are replaced with the term 'civil war'. The first set of
terms carry clear moral connotations, while the second is a potentially
morally neutral term, and facilitates the establishment of 'moral
equivalences' between the different parties to the Bosnian conflict. The next
step is to discuss the different parties in terms of the Serbs and Croatians
to the exclusion of the Bosnians, for this makes it possible to set up a
'civil war' between two equally unpalatable forces in moral terms, both of
which have engaged in ethnic cleansing at every opportunity -- the Serbs,
having carried the day at the start of this round, have simply had many more
opportunities. (Indeed, given the history of Croatian Ustashe fascism, the
Serbs seemed intent on playing 'catch up' ball to descend to the same moral
plane.) Note also how this formula equates the acts of governments with the
people who are often vicitms of those actions.

Now, the moment one looks at the particulars of civil wars, moral
equivalences begin to break down. Was what took place in Rwanda a civil war
with a nasty ethnic dimension? Without a doubt. And it was also a
premeditated, organized attempt at genocide. What was do despicable about the
French intervention was the attempt to rescue the Hutu government which had
initiated the genocide, and in so doing, treating the situation as a civil
war of moral equivalences. Were the situations in Mozambique and Angola civil
wars? Again, without a doubt. Does that make Renamo the moral equivalent of
Frelimo, or Unita the moral equivalent of the MPLA? In the eyes of the U.S.
State Department, yes; but I would certainly dissent from that view. Thank
god the Hutus weren't led by a former Communist Party in league with Russia,
or we might now be discussing the moral equivalences of Hutus and Tsutsis.
Thank god the Maoists have passed into the dustbin of history, or we might be
discussing the moral equivalences of Unita (Remember Jonas Savimbi's Maoist
phase?) and MPLA.

The moral crux of this issue lies with Bosnia, and that is why its reality
and situation disappears in all of this language about a "civil war" in the
"former Yugoslavia." No sign that among the nations that emerged from the
former Yugoslavia,  Bosnia alone was a multi-ethnic nation which recognized
the rights of national minorities and included all ethnic groups in its
government. No word that Bosnia pleaded with the Germans and the Europeans
not to recognize the independence of Slovenia and Crotia in forms which
denied the rights of national minorities, a decision which sent the whole
region careening into this bloody carnage. No concession that Serbia and
Crotia have indicated their willingness to carve up  Bosnia at a moment's
notice when they thought it was possible, and in the interest of each to do
so. (And for those who maintain their allegiance to the Serbian Socialist
Party, no recognition of the fact that the precipitating event in all of this
was Milosevic's mobilization of rabid Serbian nationalism to maintain
political power in the face of the end of the communist regime.) So, the
clear victim of overt aggression, the nation that has suffered the most --
the worst ethnic cleansing, the greatest mass rape and the most overwhelming
loss of life -- is too inconvenient for the moral equivalences, and is elided
in discussions of Serbian-Croatian contention.

Now, conversation based on the denial of what has happened to the Bosnians
is, for me, morally indefensible. That such a position has appeared on the
"left" indicated a moral bankruptcy in those quarters. (The origins of that
bankrputcy in the CPUSAs, the Cockburns, et. al.  is another matter for
discussion.) But for me, the recognition of the nature of the crimes carried
out against the Bosnians is the sine qua non of any meaningful discussion of
what needs to be done in the region, and thus, of what those of the left need
to do.

I have come to the conclusion that for all of the downsides of foreign
military intervention, it is, at this point,  the only means for a solution
that will address the situation of the Bosnians. (That is why I do not share
the view, being proferred by the Clinton administration, that Croatian
successes in regaining its national territories will bring about a viable
solution.) I do not believe that the such intervention should be carried out
by the United States. Just as it was an American responsibility to undo the
results of our imperial policy in Haiti, and remove the fascist generals and
restore democratic government, it is the responsibility to the Europeans to
deal with a situation in their part of the world which is, in no small part,
the result of their meddling. I am far from convinced that the European
governments have the moral will to do so. The result of such an intervention
will be no more paradise than Haiti is today, but it will be -- as Haiti is
today -- an entirely different, and altogether better situation.



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