Not just any refugee gets on television news. They must hold auditions. Kurds, for example, are obviously not photogenic enough. It's a shame, as they've worked so hard to get the part.
According to the Turkish parliament's own investigation, in 15 years 4,000 Kurdish villages have been destroyed by Turkish security forces, leaving 30,000 dead, and 3 million driven from their homes. But they don't even get a cameo. Still, that's showbiz.
It's difficult to intervene in every conflict, but there is something the West can do about other humanitarian disasters. In East Timor, where hundreds of thousands have been slaughtered by the Indonesian army, there is one military strategy which might just help. They could stop supplying the weapons.
Maybe the Foreign Office feels this would be extremely risky, in a mountainous area with an unpredictable climate, but surely it's worth a try. In Iraq, where 6,000 a month are dying as a result of sanctions, they could try lifting the sanctions. It may just work. If Blair and Clinton refuse to agree, they could phone each other up, both come on TV wringing their hands about a grave humanitarian disaster, and threaten to bomb themselves.
'If I refuse to listen to reason, we have a moral duty to compel me to back down with force,' they could say in their broadcast.
And with Turkey, they could stop being an economic and military ally. If only the Kurds had a better agent.
There are other clues as to whether the West has developed a conscience over Kosovo. As the Kosovars flee, New Labour are hammering through legislation to restrict refugees coming to Britain. Which could make for some peculiar government statements . 'As the appalling flood of tragic refugees hits our borders, we have to stiffen our resolve against Serb atrocities. Mind you, how do we know they're not making the whole thing up? Don't think you can ride in here on the back of a cart and get accommodation, mate.'
And what an unconvincing double act which takes place every day, to convince us the bombs have hit their targets. None of the ones they show us ever miss. Even George Robertson admitted that 60 per cent of smart bombs in Iraq missed their target, so surely they should occasionally say: 'Here's the weapons factory we were aiming for. And here goes our cruise missile - wallop, a direct hit of a furniture store on the other side of the road. Never mind.'
So it's a shame that so many liberals have proved that they're marvellous at opposing wars, as long as they ended at least 15 years ago. The first world war and the Falklands they berate as a waste of life, but this time it is a just war, they plead, just as their counterparts did in 1914 and 1982.
Their argument is that we have to do something, which is true. But cheering on a military machine designed for carving up the planet is a worse abdication than doing nothing. It's like arriving at a burning house with no water, and screaming: 'Well chuck petrol on it then, at least it's something.'The first week has not only failed to save anyone, but appears to have speeded up the Serb butchery. So now the allies sound like a parent who's been smacking a naughty child to no effect. 'Right,' they say, 'well if you still won't stop, we'll, well, we'll, I'm warning you, you're really for it.'
The most tragic aspect of the cruise missile liberals is that they assume every Serb is a supporter of the Milosevic atrocities. Yet only two years ago mass demonstrations in Belgrade came close to overthrowing him. Now the most courageous opponents of his tyranny are in air-raid shelters.
As a result, 'the air offensive has reinforced Milosevic tremendously', said a Serb dissident, quoted in this paper. 'I've been working for 10 years against Milosevic. Democracy and the opposition was growing very slowly. But after the Nato air strikes we were crushed,' said a peace campaigner. Every report tells the same story. Like any ruler, Milosevic takes the strength of opposition into account before acting. As that opposition has vanished, he's been able to be more brutal than ever. Similarly in the West, our rulers' ability to carve out their own murderous world order depends on the strength of opposition to their hypocrisy and wars.
So those who back the Nato action make it more likely that the screams of helpless refugees will go on, in Kurdistan and East Timor, while Tony Benn and those currently accused of not caring state their case. And the Kosovars will be dumped by the West as mercilessly as the Iraqi Kurds were after the Gulf War.
At which point a batch of liberals may well realise they've been duped again. 'How could we be so daft,' they'll say. 'But this time, against the Estonians, well we have to do something.