genocide

[Max Sawicky]

> Look, the U.S. isn't slaughtering Indians wholesale as it did in the good
> old days. No one is claiming that. The point was originally raised in the
> context of the Yugo war - that if the U.S. was claiming the right to
> violate Yugoslavian sovereignty on the basis of genocide, the claim could
> be made with equal legal justification about the U.S. itself. U.S. policy
> towards Indians fits the legal definition of genocide. Maybe lots of
> Americans have a hard time believing that about their country, but it's
> true. No doubt Max Sawicky will have a mocking response to this too.

Wrong again, Dalai Henwood, prone to forgiveness of Serbian
anti-imperialists.  My mocking was not directed towards U.S. treatment of
Indians, which was as bad as you would care to characterize it, but to the
flagrant failure to exercise rational anti-imperialist faculties.  Present
treatment of Indians is "normal" in the sense used -- incorrectly, I would
say -- by Devine re: Serbian counter-insurgency.  In other words, while very
bad, it is not very different than U.S. treatment of inner city minorities,
Latinos in the Rio Grande valley, etc.  Now if Sweden were a nation of 300
million and the U.S. 40 million, it might be reasonable to talk about the
righteous Swedish social dems disciplining the U.S. into a more humane
policy, but that's not the world we live in.  So talking about somebody
bombing the U.S. is just silly.

I even allowed that Milo's policy is not genocide, if exceedingly brutal.
The proper focus -- self-determination for Kosova -- is what is key.  The
fellow who writes poems for the Nation used to have a funny bit about a
politician's slogan, "Never been indicted."  Sort of like that moralist
Louis P.'s rap, "Sendero Luminoso:  not as bad as you thought."  The
counter-part for apolgia for Serbian war crimes is "not really genocide."
Maybe not, but bad enough.

mbs

"There's a bomb in this laptop, baby."