Kosovo and Somalia

[Michael Pollak]

Many parallels have been drawn between Kosovo and various imperial
adventures that pretended to be humanitarian ventures, implying that this
one too will someday be unveiled as having an explicable and brutal
purpose.  But I suspect the proper parallel is Somalia, which looks, even
after the passage of time, to have been a humanitarian venture -- and one
that failed pretty decisively through arrogance, ignorance and
half-assedness, i.e, the unwillingness to die even in tiny numbers for
such a disinterested cause.  I have a feeling the invasion in Kosovo grows
out of the same mixture of idealism and arrogance, and will come to the
same end.  And it will likely do for humanitarian bombing what Somalia did
for humanitarian invasion, i.e., remove if from future consideration as an
option.

Michael

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Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com

			Clear, unscaleable, ahead
			Rise the Mountains of Instead,
			From whose cold cascading streams
			None may drink except in dreams.

				Auden, "Autumn Song"
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