[PEN-L:5482] Young Democratic Socialists position on Kosovo

[William S. Lear]

On Monday, April 19, 1999 at 10:35:17 (-0400) Nathan Newman writes:
>...
>The question we face as democrats and socialists is whether the abysmal
>record of our own military interventions elsewhere can justify non-
>intervention now.  We feel it can not.  We feel that the US and the rest
>of NATO have an obligation to intervene to stop Milosevic's brutal and
>racist campaign for power.  Having failed to intervene to prevent the war
>in Yugoslavia in the first place; having stood by while 10,000 Muslim
>soldiers were executed in Srebrenica; and then having failed to broker a
>tenable position for Kosovo within the new Yugoslavia at the Dayton
>accords, it is the responsibility of the US and its allies in NATO to
>intervene now in an effort to finally contain Milosevic's aggression in
>the region.

This is a load of idiotic garbage.  The US undermined the very
effective democratic opposition in Kosova, led by Ibrahim Rugova, by
refusing to allow them to participate at Dayton (the "failure" at
Dayton was deliberate), and then supported the KLA, which attacked
police stations and civilians.  The refugee crisis that the US
("NATO") created is an example of *its* aggression.  Who is to
"contain" that?

Would the US support European intervention if armed "resistance
fighters" in the state of Texas decided to secede, attacking police
stations and civilians?  Would the US simply incinerate such people,
as it did the followers of David Koresh (sp?) at Waco, and consider
any noises from Europe unwelcome?

The United States bears a huge responsibility for the mess it has
created.  Reliance on force to solve problems is the only thing the US
understands, and it has ugly and entirely predictable consequences.

Bill