>Put me down for the reluctant support for the bombing camp. The expressed
>moral position that the US government is by definition more immoral than
any
>other opponent, and thus can never be the justified party in a military
>conflict feels like a reductionist political position that assists
knee-jerk
>political posturing while undermining critical analysis of choices in
>specific situations.
"Feels like"? Well, I've been follwing the thread very closely, and everyone who is against the bombing has given a number of well-thought out reasons, grounded in historical analysis of both the Yugo situation in particular and of imperialism in general. If this "feels like" something else, I'd suggest that it is your own perceptions at fault, not the actual utterances of the antis.
I'd also like to note that none of the anti-s tsk tsked the pros as "milquetoast liberals who objectively bloc with US imperialism and the slaughter in the Balkans" so why the pro group continues in this sort of smear of the antis as uncritical knee-jerkers is beyond me.
>Hegemony is not a matter of pure repression; even military hegemony is
>extracted through suppression of barbarism that many who oppose the hegemon
>find an even worse alternative. One can argue that the US as the hegemon
>may even play a role in feeding the very barbarism that in turn justifies
>its military actions. That is reasonable and I agree with that.
May? It is already occuring and has been occuring for most of the decade in the Balkans. Additionally, the US is not a hegemon and I think this is what the pro camp is missing. There are other forces on the ground, the choice is not between US bombing and Milosevic killing with ground troops. The choice is between the people in the Balkans being fed up with war and doing something about it (as the peace movement in the Balkans, the strikes, the high rates of desertion all show) and the US using Kosovo as a pretense to cement power and actually, to perpetuate the rule of Milosevic, who is not being targetted and will never be targetted.
>So what? We should protest those actions that feed that barbarism- the
>poverty, the intolerance, the political self-dealing among elites, and so
>on. Unfortunately, the protests during that phase of the cycle are never
>that large.
Imperialism does feed the barbarism. And when war hits, this shows the barbarism in sharp relief, which is why the demos get bigger. That is precisely when we can argue about the connections between war and poverty and intolerance etc., because it shows the limits of peace under imperialism. As people are interested in looking at the problems that feed the barbarism, you move yourself to the pro-barbarism camp, hanky in hand to dab at your eyes, and mutter how it is the only choice.
>But when that barbarism has taken off and transformed itself into the
>slaughter and repression we have seen documented in Kosovo, protesting the
>military actions of the hegemon to stop that slaughter leaves the victims
of
>that barbarism to die and suffer.
The US is not a hegemon and being anti-US does not mean we are pro-Serb. There is certainly no reason to believe that there are no other forces, including the Serbians who are against the war and have been working to stop it, that can save the people in Kosovo and there is no reasons to suspect that the US bombing will save even one person in Kosovo.
In fact, we have seen already that the barbarism as you call it, has increased since the bombing began and the peace movement is evaporated under the pressure cooker of the bombs.
> So we end up doing little to short-circuit
>the hegemon's role in feeding the barbarism, while curtailing the hegemon's
>corresponding role in stopping the barbarism - a rather unbalanced role for
>the Left to play in this cycle.
Why do you think the US is a hegemon? Why are all the actors in your little drama nation-states?
>Yes, we should vigorously condemn the arms trade the US participates in
that
>feeds local conflicts; we should condemn the ways US protection of Turkish
>and Israeli repression of their minority populations creates a climate that
>can justify dictatorial slaughter of Kosovans in the name of "national
>security"; we should do the historical analysis of how the assaults on
>Yugoslavian pluralistic sovereignty, dating from the preemptive recognition
>of Slovenia, started the chain of nationalist posturing that led to the
>present ethnic clensing.
>But to allow Kosovans to die because you can't stomach the fact that the
>potential savior of their cause is also partly the cause of their distress,
>well that's frankly an immaturity in the face of the hypocrisy and
nastiness
>of the moral compromises that we face in our global system.
Oh yes, that must be it. Nobody who disagrees can have actual points. It is just an immature tantrum, a reflex created by not liking the US in other cases. How silly of me to think I was actually making some points, now I realize I was drooling like a Pavlovian dog.
>I respect the pure pacifist position that argues that a pure ideal of
non-violence in all
>conflicts can feed an ethnic of "study war no more." But almost no one on
>this list at least is promoting that view, but merely the view that war by
>the US specifically cannot be justified. And it is that position that
seems
>untenable in this case.
Not that you give any reason for it to be untenable. You just announce that US intervention will work to save the Kosovars, in spite of the documented evidence that it has actually served to increase the slaughter, and you pooh-pooh, rather than argue all of the points the anti-camp has had to make.
Let me know when you need another hanky, it is going to be a looooong night.
>I am quite open to the arguments that bombing cannot be successful in
>helping the Kosovans. That pragmatic argument that bombing merely
>strengthens the Serbian leadership and intensifies repression may be valid.
May be? Turn on the news. Read a book.
>But there are two responses- one is to call for a pull-out; the other is to
>discuss the moral imperative of the war and whether a deployment of troops
>in Kosovo to prevent ethnic slaughter may be needed. That would be a
>serious escalation of the conflict, but that is a response to the pragmatic
>arguments about the limits of bombing Yugoslavia into submission.
Because of course, every Serb is a wild eyes freak ready to kill every single non-Serb in the Balkans. Nope, there is nobody there to support, no peace movement, nothing like that. And those crazy, swarthy bastards must die. Oh yes.
>
>This was back in 1990, note, when there was no large Kosovan mobilization.
>It is the reports of slaughter in Kosovo combined with the news blackout
>imposed by the government that makes the whole situation chilling. We know
>enough about the slaughter in Kosovo that to find out later that wholsesale
>genocide is happening would morally stain today's protests to their roots.
Wholesale genocide? Please. Btw, is there any particular reason why you think the US bombing would stop this wholesale genocide? Or that a US success in this realm would somehow lead to a net worldwide reduction in political deaths? Every pro-bomber I have seen has ignored the reality of imperialism to shriek about morality. Ah yes, the morality of indiscriminate bombing. The morality of another long-term troop embrakment. The morality of making sure the Milosevic remains a leader (and he will, if the US is there and the anti-M movement becomes an anti-West movement), and of course, the morality of the US actually becoming a hegemon, because leftist opponents at home are too busy blowing into their hankies to stop and think.