The Bosnian War
The Economist summarily dismissed Brendan Simms' book, Unfinest Hour, on the Bosnian War for having no more than "the force of an inkpot thrown from a schooldesk" and for its criticism of government ministers for their "flaws of logic failures of clairvoyance". Simms himself observed in response that The Economist's own attempts at clairvoyance had "backfired spectacularly". He pointed to the magazine's editorials through July 1991 and 1992, which predicted that European Community foreign policy would deal with the situation well and that there would not be all-out war in Bosnia.
Simms characterizes The Economist as being "a longstanding opponent of military intervention" in Bosnia, pointing to its editorials of July 1995, when the 1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina was underway, and to Bill Emmott's own letter to the publication, which rejected "intervention in this three-cornered civil war, a war which all along has risked escalation into a far wider conflict with even ghastlier consequences", as evidence of this.
Simms observed that the magazine's editorial stance changed at the end of September 1995, describing it as "finally conced what it had denied for so long".
Read more about this topic: The Economist Editorial Stance
Famous quotes containing the word war:
“The war is utter damn nonsense—a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking [sic] malignity on the part of those who don’t do the fighting.”
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