-----Original Message----- From: Jim heartfield <jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>I think somebody mentioned the legality or otherwise of cluster bombs.
>Milan Martic, leader of the Krajina Serbs was indicted for war
>crimes by the UN Tribunal for using cluster bombs against Zagreb
>in response to Croatian Operation Lightening in May 1995, while
>NATO may use cluster bombs against the Serbs with impunity and
>its actions characterised as upholding humanitarian law.
If NATO is using cluster bombs on civilian targets, then this argument might have a point.
If the Serbs used cluster bombs on civilians as part of ethnic clensing, while NATO is using them on military units (arguably to prevent the same), then the analogy is merely more apologia for Serb atrocities.
The parallels we see here to that of conservatives who downplay the Nazi Holocaust by comparing it to Soviet and even US actions in World War II can get striking in this whole debate.
So far, every set of Serbian civilian deaths has been top news (here and in Serbia), which indicates so far how limited the civilian casualties are do to NATO. That may change, but to compare it to the DELIBERATE mass murder of CIVILIANS in Kosovo by Serbian troops is to ignore basic canons of what a war atrocity means.
What the US bombs did to Basra in the Gulf War would count as such an atrocity, but the need for moral apologia on behalf of the Serbs seems to strong to reach for that comparison.
--Nathan Newman