“A massacre in one place was a fight against terrorists in another, and what was unavoidable collateral damage from one perspective was a war crime from a different angle” (Bahador 2007, p.18)
On March 24th 1999, NATO forces launched an aerial bombing campaign on multiple targets inside the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The campaign lasted until June 11th 1999, when an agreement was reached to allow a peacekeeping mission to enter Kosovo. NATO’s official justification for the intervention was ‘humanitarian’. It suggested Slobodan Milosevic’s troops were committing crimes against humanity by massacring ethnic Albanians in its Kosovo province. The war against Milosevic was illegal under international law, having not received a sanction for the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Because of this, NATO fought a media war in conjunction with its aerial bombardment. NATO’s justifications for the intervention have been widely disputed, with academics such as Chomsky suggesting that the media was used as a tool to help justify what he calls ‘humanitarian imperialism’ (Chomsky 2008).
