Of course it matters how many people were killed, and how many houses were destroyed, etc.
This doesn't in any way mitigate the responsibility of the Serbs for the crimes they committed - I agree that those responsible should be held accountable. But you can't understand what really happened without doing this kind of gruesome math. Without quantitative information it becomes much easier for individuals or organizations to distort the truth in order to suit their own, often ideological, purposes.
Secondly, even the raw numbers have political impact. If you hear about a government that killed 10 million of its citizens and another that killed only 100 (for argument's sake, say they were killed for political reasons and rounded up and summarily shot. Also assume the countries have roughly the same population), are they both equally bad? Do they deserve the same degree of condemnation?
All governments do some horrible things. This sort of accounting is done all the time, and is a useful way of making comparisons, especially in order to cut through ideological pap. Are the actions of the Serbs any different than the actions of, say, the Isreali military toward Lebanon? If the Serbs killed a million Kosovars, the answer is yes. If the number is more like 4,000, its not so clear cut.
Brett
>not either, but I will say that all the calculations show is that
>calculations are not the terrain on which a politics can be based. are we
>accountants? would an 'unbalanced ledger' suggest a direction for politics
>or analysis?
>
>indict all the bastards for war crimes. anything less would be a miserable
>position to be advancing.