What we have here is a fundamental failure to get the "joke," which of course is Clinton's: its ludicrousness becomes slightly more obvious (one hopes) by displacement. Of course all analogies limp, but the point is to make the US' "real contemporary massacres" more visible, hardly to trivialize them, and to illustrate the arrogance and transparent lies of the defense Clinton offered for the current one.
(And BTW what the US is alleged to be doing in the Southwest and what recently constituted routine in Serbia may be more similar than you think: e.g., as to the "fiction about the INS executing people" -- are you aware of any of the recent cases against the Marines and the Border Patrol? Or of the effects of the Boder Patrol's Orwellingly-named "Operation Gatekeeper," "Operation Blockade," or "Operation Hold the Line" during this administration? A dozen years ago the American Friends' Service Committee began a monitoring program "based on the recognition of endemic abuse in the practice of immigration law enforcement at a time when the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 gave the U.S. Border Patrol more personnel and resources." Their records are instructive. The INS has more armed agents than the FBI, and there's little doubt about their brutality.)
--C. G. Estabrook
On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Max Sawicky wrote:
> This is cute but rests on a fundamental failure to distinguish between
> what the Serbs are alleged to be doing, and what constitutes routine in
> the Southwest. I appreciate a joke as much as anyone -- even bad ones,
> in fact -- but I'd also say the whimsy (e.g., the fiction about the INS
> executing people) trivializes real contemporary massacres, as well as
> genuine aspirations for national liberation (the burden I took from
> Burford's salient contribution).