-----Original Message----- From: jmage at panix.com <jmage at panix.com> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Chris, Nathan, in the bowels of Christ (and Rosa Luxemburg), consider that
>you might be mistaken...
I have always conceded that I might be mistaken, especially on the strategic gains from bombing versus negotiation. My argument has been empirical, that negotiation had yielded nothing other than continued mass murder and ethnic clensing.
The first phase of the bombing has obviously yielded the same, but this is one week of war; the question is after the Serbian military has been impaired, will it be possible to negotiate the return of refugees with NATO peacekeeping forces? For all the horror of the Serbian response to the bombings, the representatives of the Kosovans have publicly supported the intervention on their behalf, assumably because they were facing the choice of slow extermination with no hope of return, or quickly induced refugee status with the chance of return if Serbia is militarily defeated in Kosovo.
The latter will take ground troops, either voluntarily deployed as part of a negotiated settlement -- which was rejected before the bombing -- or as part of a deployment by NATO as part of the war.
Tom Lehman argued:
>Have the Yugo/Serbs been any worse to the
>Albaninans than the 19th century Americans were to the Mormons. Both
groups
>were white folks in much the same way as the Serbs and the Albanians. Don't
>forget the Mormons were not mainstream back then like they are today. Of
course
>the Mormons were not involved in banditry, smuggling, narcotics and
>international car theft rings the way the various Albanian sects have been
and
>are today. How tolerant can the Serbs be?
First and at heart, I really don't care what anybody did to anybody even a generation ago, much less a hundred years ago. Past brutality justifies neither present brutality, nor an excuse not to act.
But this wholesale libelling of the Kosovan Albanians makes me puke. It is morally repugnant to repeat Serb propaganda against a people having cultural genocide being committed against them.
Guess what? There were Jews who were cheap, cheated their customers and even some who smelled bad. Repeating that while justifying Kristallnacht (to avoid the Holocaust analogy) would be disgusting, as is your statement.
--Nathan Newman