Exactly when and why did the KLA cease being a terrorist organization in the mind of the Department of State?
CHOICES
If you want to count bodies, the incontrovertible fact is that the US embargo policy towards Iraq has been infinitely more gratuitously deadly than any actions of the Serbian regime. Even in the Balkans, brutalities have been committed by a number of parties: Serbs, Croats, Albanians, and now the US and its NATO partners.
Refugees? According to the United Nations here are a just few totals of refugees that existed without benefit of coverage by CNN, Fox, or MSNBC prior to the start of the current conflict:
--In Yugoslavia: 223,000 refugees from Bosnia, 300,000 from Croatia, 55,000 from Kosovo. --In Bosnia & Herzegovina: 836,000 internally displaced refugees, 30,000 from Croatia. --In Europe: 128,000 from Bosnia and Croatia; 100,000 from Kosovo. --Croatia: 30,000 from Bosnia, 62,000 internally displaced.
These truths indemnify no one - certainly not the Serbs -- but they do remind us of the futility of trying to construct a moral hierarchy of slaughter and brutality. Further, to emulate the worst in others in the name of righteous punishment simply brings us ever closer to what we oppose. Each bomb narrows the gap between Milosevic and ourselves.