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
__________________________________________________________________________ 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" __________________________________________________________________________