more and more on Kosovo

J. Barkley Rosser, Jr. rosserjb at jmu.edu
Thu Apr 1 13:08:15 PST 1999


Responses to three other posters today:

1) Louis's account of the apparent collapse of the UCK/KLA is significant. The more horrifying aspect of this that he did not mention is what may be about to happen in Pristina itself, the capital and largest city of Kosovo. It had been immune to the earlier struggles, with most of that in rural areas. But apparently the UCK/KLA is holding out in basements in Pristina and the Yugoslav military is preparing for a house-to-house assault, being prepared by a cleansing of the suburbs where snipers might have used tall buildings, much as with the siege of Sarajevo. This could be the endgame and could be a really nasty business.

2) With respect to Michael Pollak's comments on Israel I would only add that it is a bit more complicated leading to what is probably a restrained favoritism towards the Serbs rather than a jumping-up-and-down enthusiasm. Certainly historical alliance with the Serbs against the Germans, opposition to Islamic fundamentalists (although as noted the UCK/KLA has not so far been officially fundamentalist, despite some aid from such), and vague sympathy over Pec being the Serbs' "Jerusalem" all weigh in sympathy. Cutting the other way are two factors, the less significant is the role of most Serbian Jews as opponents of Milosevic, and the more important second is the current de facto alliance between Israel and Turkey, who is very strongly anti-Serb and eagerly participating in the bombing big time. This would fit in with the "moderate Islamic belt" theory that Louis P. promulgated recently, that may have more going for it than some of the other "materialist" theories that have been proposed on these lists.

3) In response to Jim Devine's comment about Henry Kissinger, I must grant that case and accept that there might be some "intelligent interationalists," if we can call them that, among the 38 Republican US senators who voted no on the bombing. An example might be Kay Bailey Hutchinson of Texas. I don't think that on the Democrat side Fritz Hollings of South Carolina fits in there, given his long history of racist remarks, although Bingaman of New Mexico might, along with Wisconsin's Russ Feingold (Russ for president!!!) Barkley Rosser



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