As noted by Ronald W. Cox, editor of “Class, Race, and Corporate Power,” the journal where this article by University of Arizona history Professor David Gibbs was published, “[i]t should be recalled that last year, the regime of Bashir Assad was widely believed to be committing genocide in Syria, and in 2011, Muammar Gaddafi was at least planning a genocide in Libya. And in all of these cases, the claims of genocide were widely accompanied by calls for US and NATO intervention, as a solution. While readers will rightly deplore the atrocities that attended these events, the word ‘genocide’ is being used with notable regularity, in a way that already has and will continue to erode the meaning of this very important concept, through overuse.” That is indeed a sensible caveat which exposes the absurdity of the new, propagandized, meaning that has been superimposed upon the legal concept of “genocide.” Had Assad and Gaddafi achieved success in perpetrating genocide against their nations, would there be anyone left for them to rule? Equally absurd is the misapplication of that legal concept to what occurred in Srebrenica in July 1995, even if the number of alleged victims were correct, because the Convention defines genocide with remarkable clarity. But the fundamental issue that Prof. Gibbs focuses on here is summarized in the question famously raised by Diana Johnstone about “the uses of Srebrenica.” Gibbs’ publicly expressed skepticism about some of the allegations made in the conventional Srebrenica narrative earned him unrelenting attacks by the Srebrenica lobby even before the publication of this article (see here, here and here). Prof. Gibbs’ dismal experience in the Srebrenica polemical arena demonstrates that in Srebrenica lobby’s intellectual arsenal intimidation has primacy over facts and arguments and that even respected academics are not exempt from their vindictive fury.
Note about the author:
David N. Gibbs is Professor of History at the University of Arizona and his most recent book is First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia. Vanderbilt University Press, 2009. His articles have appeared in the London Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Tikkun, and Le Monde Diplomatique, as well as many academic publications. He is currently writing a history of American right-wing politics during the 1970s. An earlier (shorter) version of this article previously appeared in Jacobin.
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How the Srebrenica Massacre Redefined US Foreign Policy