This will be my only message on this or anything today as I must take off to give a lecture out of town.
1) Erstwhile "intelligent internationalist" Kissinger has now oined John McCain in calling for the introduction of ground troops into Kosovo. For those not in the US,McCain is a Republican senator from Arizona who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. His support of US diplomatic recognition of Vietnam provided political cover for Vietnam draft-dodging, pot smoking (but not inhaling), adulterous Bill Clinton's recognition.
2) Gen. Wesley Clark apparently also told Clinton and anybody who would listen that only ground troops could prevent the kind of disaster that is currently happening in Kosovo-Metohija (where is that Metohija?) if bombing were to happen. But it is clear that it would take a month to get a serious ground force in there. All involved should remember that this is the Yugoslav army, perhaps not what it was in the days of Tito, when it threw the Germans out in WW II and deterred Stalin from invading, but still a much more serious military machine than what the US has been used to dealing with in recent years.
3) Yoshie's repeated posting of old NY Times stories does remind us that there were serious problems in K-M before the autonomy revocation by Milo. That certainly did not come out of the blue. But there had been annoying separatist movements, several of them quite violent (especially among the Croats) throughout the history of Yugoslavia. Under Tito such movements were suppressed, but local autonomy was not removed. Milo had to go and whip up the ghost of Kosovo Polje. Sorry, this was utterly indefensible.
4) I'm sorry if Yoshie thinks everybody is picking on poor old Milo too much, even those of us opposed to the bombing and agreeing with her that the UCK/KLA is not worth supporting in the least. Well, much has been made of the 700,000 refugees that the neo-Ustashe thug, Tudjman, tossed out of the Krajina region of Croatia, an expulsion I have pointed out was not opposed by the West. However, no one has so far mentioned that this was preceded by Milosevic's gang invading the Vukovar region of Croatia, ethnically cleansing the city of Vukovar and surrounding areas. I had a friend in Vukovar who had to leave. Milo started that one, too, one reason why the Serbs of Krajina did not receive the sympathy they genuinely deserved.
5) Also, it may be that there were odd Merecedes-Benzes or other odd ducks crossing the borders at first. But anybody who now doubts the seriousness and scale of what is going on is only kidding themselves. That includes the innocent civilians in places in Novi Sad who would like to think the best of their own government and the worst of its enemies. No one on these lists should be buying any silly nonsense from either side.
6) It looks like partition is out. According to the maps in the Washington Post in the last two days, ethnic Albanians are being expelled from all the major cities in a wide ring and all the region in between. The only areas they are not (according to this possibly incorrect map) are rural pockets in the far north (mostly Serb-inhabited?), in the far east (who's there?) and a mountainous strip in the southwest along the Albanian border. I think Milo is going for the whole ball of wax, and nobody is going to be able to stop him.
7) The report I saw yesterday about Pristina was from guys with cell phones in basements claiming to be UCK/KLA. The WP said nothing about them today, although the refugees being moved out in box cars (is that one an imperialist lie, Yoshie?), report widespread gunfire in Pristina. I don't think whoever is fighting the Yugoslav army is going to last too long there.
8) What seems to be the most horrifying tale, although it may well be seriously misreported, is that supposedly the Yugoslav army is firing on 70,000 refugees southwest of Pristina. Probably there are UCK/KLA elements who have been firing back, but this one sounds like the potential for something worse than anything we have seen anywhere so far in any of these post-Yugoslav wars.
9) I support a) opening the US to refugees, b) aid on the ground to all refugees, including those in Serbia, and c) aid to the governments of Albania, the Yugoslav Republic of Montenegro, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for dealing with this new and accelerating refugee influx. Barkley Rosser