My nerves are on edge.
>>
You excised my qualifying language around those words, leading to the impression of more pontification than was in fact the case, but I'll assume that was inadvertent. As for your rant, there are enough anti-NATO diehards calling this a surrender to suggest some caution to leaven your assertiveness.
You make a big deal of the lack of any apparent agreement for NATO to occupy Serbia, as per some language in the Ram. agreement, but it was other people who made a big deal out of this. I said at the time it didn't signify anything, because there was and is no important reason for NATO to occupy Serbia proper.
That a different diplomatic stage prior to the bombing might have done the Kosovans better is not something I would dispute, but is not germane to whether Milo has made any concessions.
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. . . It's obvious, Max, that you are utterly unsympathetic toward any young man unlucky enough to be born a Serb: >>
Only those serving in the military, in Kosovo. I was always against the civilian bombing, and belatedly, against the whole enterprise.
> ...I can't say this fate wasn't richly deserved...
Maybe you never had a draft number for the Vietnam "this is not a war" like I did.
>>
Matter of fact I had a number, I was drafted, and I reported for induction. What happened next . . . you'll have to wait for the movie.
<< So I won't ask you to find it at all regrettable that several thousand Serbian draftees have lately been butchered by NATO bombs. Other readers, however, might note that even if the high government officials of Yugoslavia "richly deserved" to be blown up, it wasn't them who got to be the "sitting ducks for US air power," but draftees who had, in their truncated lives, as little control over the decisions of the Belgrade government as I do over those lunatics in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon.
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I have to say the denouement is welcome to me, its numerous shortcomings notwithstanding. On the one hand, you (unlike some of your co-thinkers) acknowledge Serb massacres in Kosova, and on the other you are shook up about a week's worth of military fatalities suffered by the aggressor. I can't say it wouldn't be nice if nobody killed anybody, but I think you are a little at sixes and sevens on this.
<<
NATO slaughtered not just uniformed soldiers en masse, but also Albanian Kosovo refugees on tractor-drawn carts, old people in hospital beds, civilians riding in buses and railroad trains, children in apartment buildings and so on; innocent victims by the hundreds. And the civilian deaths have only just begun; NATO has systematically destroyed the infrastructure of Serbia, by anti-civilian tactics such as blowing up electric, water and sewer plants, so now we can expect child mortality rates to soar soon just as they have in Iraq. This is called "sending a message," this message: if little 18-month-old Andrej or Ilsa doesn't get off the stick, toddle or crawl to Belgrade, and overthrow Milosevic pretty damn soon, then they and only they can be responsible for the "consequences" (sadistic parents love the word "consequences" as a euphemism for "punishment" as it disclaims the punishers's responsibility) and in their case, the "consequence" is death by typhus or dysentery.
>>
You're not arguing against me here.
<< Domestically, we have thrown away of blown up billions of dollars worth of military hardware to acheive what we could have done with a twitch of a diplomat's pen in March. This is great news if you own a lot of shares of Raytheon, which I don't. The cost of replacing all that Tom Clancy-fetish junk comes out of the Social Security trust fund. They've mulcted me since I was fifteen years old, and now the chances are even less than before that I'll ever get one red cent back, but at least Madeleine'll get a whole bunch of fresh new cruise missiles and cluster bombs to play with, yay!
>>
The connection of this war to the Social Security Fund or to your benefits could not be more imaginary.
<< Speaking of cluster bombs, wanna guess how many of the U.S. troops assigned to this peacekeeping force are going to get de-limbed by all those bomblets lying in the high grass? Man, no shit, it's no fucking good to step on a bomb. My next-door neighbor did that in VN way back in 1970, and he's been on his back in bed, paralyzed, ever since. Yeah, true, he had been drafted into the very same Army which perpetrated My Lai, strategic hamlets and Operation Ranchhand, but despite that connection you still can't convince me his personal fate was "richly deserved."
>>
This has nothing to do with my post or me. Nor does your next graph. You seem to be confusing me with Sandy Berger or somesuch.
<< In world politics, we have reignited the Cold War. Great news! - I really missed the Cold War, it was lots of fun. Russia is test-firing a new model ICBM, the Ukraine intends to re-arm itself with atomic weapons, we've unraveled twenty-five years of progress in U.S.-Chinese relations by deliberately bombing their Embassy (don't tell me it was any kind of an accident, I am a surveyor and I know better), and every country in the third world is staring aghast with fear and horror at NATO's bully tactics and is planning on building a nuclear or CBW arsenal of its own as soon as possible to keep it from happening to them next.
Finally, you say:
> All this supports the premise that projections of the conflict
> as a plan for Nato dominion over Serbia in the interests of some
> plan of greater conquest-cum-economic absorption were Marxoid
> hogwash...
"God" only knows what Albright & Co.'s motivations were in March. But you can't be unaware that the West intends, sooner or later, to lend Serbia the money at interest in order to rebuild the stuff the West's bombers destroyed. Be glad Detroit doesn't adopt this tactic, and send Apache gunships to blast your already-paid-for car right off of your driveway in order to get you back into the showroom.
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So you think the U.S. blows up countries in order to lend them money to rebuild? It's a theory, I guess. Hope you didn't find that in Wall Street. I'm still planning to read it.
mbs