Fools' Crusade
Fools' Crusade is a book written by Diana Johnstone. This is what Edward S. Herman has to say about it:
- Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions is essential reading for anybody who wants to understand the causes, effects, and rights and wrongs of the Balkan wars of the past dozen years. The book should be priority reading for leftists, many of whom have been carried along by a NATO-power party line and propaganda barrage, believing that this was one case where Western intervention was well-intentioned and had beneficial results. An inference from this misconception, by "cruise missile leftists" and others, is that imperialism can be constructive and its power projections must be evaluated on their merits, case by case.
It is a pleasure to watch Johnstone dismantle the claims and expose the methods of David Rieff, a literary and media favoriate, as well as Roy Gutman, John Burns, and David Rohde, three reporters whose close adherence to the party line in Bosnia was rewarded with the Pulitzer prize – all fueling the "humanitarian bombing" bandwagon. While critics of the party line risk being dismissed as apologists for the Serbs, even the most fervent partisan of an idealized "Bosnia" and campaigner for NATO military intervention, like Rieff, or the novice journalist Rohde, who wrote on Srebrenica in a semi-fictional mode, with U.S. intelligence guidance, have never had to fear being criticized as apologists for the Muslims or NATO.[1]