I wonder if someone can explain to me how Zisek can be for total occupation of Serbia and yet say he is adamantly against the bombing. One can't be for total occupation without being for full scale invasion; there is no other way to bring one about. And there is no possibility of an invasion without bombing. So the only way I can reconcile these two statements is that he is only against the bombing only because it is not coupled with an invasion. This the position of the most adamant advocates of humanitarian war. They agree that the bombing by itself is cowardly, futile and counterproductive. But they draw from this the conclusion that the true crime of NATO is not that they bombed, but they they didn't have an full scale invasion force prepared to march in after Day 1 of the Kosovan expulsion. This is be a logically consistent position, albeit one I disagree with. But if this is Zisek's position, then it is true but disingenous in the extreme for him to say he's against the bombing.
Perhaps I'm missing something? Does anyone know another way to parse his position so that it makes sense? Being against the IMF-regime's creation of monsters doesn't change anything. His fellow Yugoslav Bogdan Denitch has been making that argument in relation to Milosevich and Tudjman for years and it didn't stop him from supporting the bombing. One can argue that the IMF created a monster, and that it should change its policies so that it doesn't create them in the future -- and still think the monster at hand has to be destroyed by any means necessary.
In short, this doesn't seem at all beyond the double blackmail. This seems like just another variant of the New Crusade. But I'd be happy if someone would show me where I'm going wrong.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com