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Agreed. But I'm not bemoaning the loss of the Balkans. What pisses me off is that the Balkan adventure reduced the Western Left to a trojan horse of that old dog NATO - not even of the Capital. While the Yugoslav excursion is a military and a political fiasco - shooting flies with cruise missiles and still missing them while standing waist deep in a quagmire for years to come - it was a death blow to any progressive pretences the assorted "left" parties - social democrats, socialists, greens and what not - could legitmately claim. They actually proved themselves worse - because more inept- than their conservative counterparts.
While the Left has been in a rather weak position lately, this was the final death blow to the idea that any of "left" political institutions - parties or governments - can have any influence other than being a window dressing for imperial realpolitik.
I predict a real backlash for this Balkan debacle not just against dummycrats in the us, but also against all those faux-gauche pseudo-labour swine in festung europa. that, in turn, will open the door for more neo-liberal 'reforms' (translation: dismantling of the public sphere) to the Capital's liking.
wojtek