When feelings are rightly high, it does not help impatiently to dismiss others arguments as absurd.
The biggest reason why the imperialist powers are responsible for what is happening currently to the Albanians of Kosovo is that they appeased Serb nationalism earlier this decade in Bosnia. That was a dress rehearsal for this.
Doug and some others seem to have a blank about the risk of fascism in the interwar years and the appeasement of national socialism. Perhaps the history of appeasement of Hitler was something citizens of the US felt less involved with.
I sympathise with Doug's view that it would help if his own government were weaker on a world stage. Some of the points I have made support that. I would like to see a separation between the North American and the European wings of NATO.
But marxism and left politics cannot just be reduced to opposing your government. Or merely being cynical about it.
There appears to be an enormous gap about what we are all actually fighting for. I have given an answer in terms of the broadest possible united front. Have you got a better one?
> It neglects the role of
>imperialism in creating what you call "fascism" - the U.S., Germany, and
>the IMF have done everything they could to promote the breakup of
>Yugoslavia along ethnic lines, consciously and unconscioulsy.
I think the argument is repeating itself. A number of former socialist states broke up after the fall of the Berlin wall. I accept there were external factors but to put the prime explanation on external factors is not dialectical. It was the internal factors, economic and national, that were the prime cause of the break up of Yugoslavia.
I am not asking you to agree with me, but I see no reason why you should assume such views are ridiculous.
>And it begs
>the question of what fascism is. If it means armed racism, then the U.S.
>and UK are the world's leading fascist powers, and have been for centuries.
Of course it begs a question what fascism is, but it seems to me that the withdrawal of civil rights across much of the society and men going round in masks escorted by the army and shooting people dead or ordering them out of their houses and then burning the houses because of their nationality, is pretty unacceptable.
> you're under the
>delusion that Clinton & Blair are humanitarians.
The muslims are the new Jews.
To defend muslims from national oppression in central Europe is a just cause. Including by armed force if necessary.
WE DIFFER.
But for those who think the war of NATO should be opposed, n what reasonable basis can it now be opposed? Because I suggest the Serb-nationalist influenced left is in a big hole about how to work out a line that is credible enough to have any impact at present.
(and specially for Louis Proyect if this post gets copied back to his list like the previous one - I know some people regard it as irrelevant whether a line on war and peace can get anywhere!)
I hope some opponents of NATO will answer Hinrich's post about the political programme, and not just me.
Chris Burford