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 | | War of Words: Washington Tackles the Yugoslav Conflict by Danielle S. Sremac ISBN-10: 9780275966096 ISBN-10: 0-275-96609-7 ISBN-13: 9780275966096 ISBN-13: 978-0-275-96609-6 Hardcover 1999-10-30 Praeger Publishers Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description Sremac argues that there is a process and ideology that guides Washington in the post-Cold War era, and any special interest group that understands how Washington works can put forth a message that appeals to the media and the U.S. foreign policymaking establishment. The Yugoslav conflict was one of the first and most important examples of how certain foreign interest groups and their supporters in the United States, were able to tap into this system and play out a war of words in Washington that greatly influenced U.S. actions in the Balkan region. Sremac goes behind the rhetoric and propaganda to reveal how Yugoslavia's Bosnian Muslim, Croat, and Albanian ethnic factions sought to win the heart of Washington and draw U.S. military intervention to help them fight a war against their foe -- the Serbs. The U.S. media was more than willing to promote the cause of these warring parties and, as a result, had a profound influence on Washington's view of Yugoslav ethnic clashes. The author offers a penetrating look at how media-generated images of Yugoslav ethnic conflicts from 1991 to 1999 hindered Washington's ability to understand the region's complex problems and made U.S. foreign policy a reflection of sound bites rather than sound reasoning. A controversial look at Washington, the media, and the Balkans, this book will be of interest to all concerned individuals, scholars, and others who want to gain a behind-the-scenes understanding of what really happened in the Yugoslav conflict, and explore more alarming trends in Washington that continue to encourage U.S. interventionism in ethnic conflicts today. | ||
Reviews | ||
Coherent internaly and with other sources Sremac is perhaps biased by any residual Serb identity but that is irrelevant if the claims and sources used agree with those of authoritative writers on the subject. That appears to be the case in comparing her book with the NSA's expert during the war (John R. Schindler) and the US Army Intelligence's John E. Sray. Sadly, while the NSA was did not go public with its criticism of the standard interpretation, Sremac could have referenced Col. Andrei Demurenko's report on the Markale Markeplace bombings. David Binder had access to it but used a secondary source instead. In the broader perspective, the account is accurate in terms of events and motivations seem in line with what is described by other sources as well. The book is in conflict with the popular conception of the war in that it does not believe Serbs to be guilty of Genocide, commencing the war, and other atrocities. That does not mean that she believes they did not exist. War crimes and atrocities existed on all sides but she singles out the Bosnian government under Alia Izetbegovitch and the Croatian Ustashe government for particular cruelty and for using such as tools of war. Her case in that regard could be stronger but that is due to a perhaps excessive focus on the actual war instead of the propaganda war. She stops only to mention the occurrence without providing the amount of detail of the situation and the comparison with Western media beliefs. This is understandable in an effort to communicate without boring the audience (Westerners refuse to listen to detailed arguments) but as any lawyer knows, omission is is potential failure unless the weight brings the case down. A good book that perhaps deserves 4.5 but is given the benefit of the doubt for a still excellent understanding of events on the Washington side. | ||
Poorly written Nothing in this book references back to the historic facts about the Bosnian right to independence, freedom, and democracy. Book has failed on numerous accounts to provide the overview of true causes of war and agression on Bosnia. | ||
Sremac's Fantasy War of Words is an amazing piece of racist propaganda matched only by the fantasy-laden accounts of the wars in Yugoslavia which came from Belgrade's state-run media, or the version of the war in Iraq as told by the Iraqi information minister. Sremac is not only a representative of the Serbian government, hardly making her account unbaised, but fails to account for aspects of the Bosnian war (such as the starvation and murder of Muslim prisoners in detention camps) which were confirmed by witnesses from dozens of relief organizations and media groups, as well as thousands of tesitmonials at the UN warcrimes tribunals. Sremac further claims that Washington's motivation for supprting the Muslims was based on some crazy desire to intervene in countires after the cold war (laughable is you know anything about Clinton's record of intervention, or if you examine how long it took Washington to intervene in Bosnia and under what conditions). She relies on the accounts of the war from such indicted criminal murderers as Radovan Karadzic, and subscribes to common Serbian attempts to blame the victim of genocide for Serbia's vile crimes. If you want to know what it is like to read some nice racist fiction, or experience Balkan duplicity firsthand, pick this work up, glance it over, burn it, and then scold yourself for having put money in the pockets of somebody like Sremac. Further, the people on this site who wrote rave reviews of this book are probably either ultranationalist members of the Serbian parliament or themselves indicted war criminals hiding in Pale. | ||
Subjectivity vs. Objectivity Danielle Sremac was a registered agent lobbying on behalf of a foreign government, namely, the Yugoslav (Serbian and Montenegrin governments) during the wars of the 1990s. This can be looked up in public records, as proscribed by law. She is more than entitled to write a book about the wars, but one must exercise caution as to the content of her book. If this woman was lobbying on behalf of indicted and convicted war criminals, then much of her case would be higly suspect from the beginning. | ||
Serb Propaganda This is a great book if you prefer to hear the Serb version of the Bosnian War and the Kosovo conflict. Sremac does a great job of painting a picture of innocent Serbs and blood-thirsty Muslims and Croats. She condemns Western media for their "tendencies" to report from only one side(Muslims and Albanians), yet she nelects to find error with the reporting of the wars from the Serb propaganda machine in Belgrade. This book goes so far to claim that the death toll of Muslims and Croats was exaggerated and that the seige of Sarajevo was more detrimental to the innocent Serbs rather than the many citizens who lost their lives on Sniper Alley . The Serb mentality of Us Against the World is blatantly lined through all aspects of this book. | ||