Protest against the Bombing

[J Cullen]

Barkley Rosser had a good backgrounder and I share a lot of the same sort
of ambivalence toward this bombing. Milosevic deserves the bombing, but
he's not the one who will get hit. The Kosovars deserve self-determination
in a peaceful homeland, but this course is not going to help them get it,
any more than our bombing of Iraq has helped to establish peace and
self-determination there or our help to the Afghani mujahideen helped
establish peace and self-determination in Afghanistan. But do we stand back
and watch the ethnic cleansing that plainly was going on in Kosovo, as we
did in Bosnia, when we left the situation to the Europeans?

We could let Serbia clear out Kosovo, and I doubt it would cause more than
a blip on the Dow Jones Average, so I'm not sure I buy the imperialism
angle. I suppose it let the Air Force roll out the B-2, but if anything
that showed how useless those $2 billion bombers are, that have to be flown
back to their base in the U.S. after every mission to make sure they don't
get rained on.

It's just not as easy a call as a lot of leftists would make it. I think
the bombing may be a mistake, especially if it takes on a life of its own,
as it has in Iraq. In the short term, it seems to have given Milosevic the
excuse he needed to establish martial law and accelerate the "cleansing" of
Kosovo. If the bombing somehow manages to slow the Serbian army and gives
the KLA a chance to fight back, perhaps it is defensible. But I wouldn't
hold out much hopes for the democratic instincts of the KLA, either.

-- Jim Cullen

Rosser wrote:
>     OK, sigh, I guess I'll get into this one, although
>I view it as pretty murky and not an easy call, although
>I think that ultimately this bombing is a mistake and
>could well lead to a really ugly mess.  I hope not. ...