-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Spoken like an accountant. Appealing to the spirit of accountancy, rather
>than a critique of imperialism, a couple of points: the 2000 dead in Kosovo
>includes lots of KLA combantants, while the 220 count is purely civilian;
>we're talking 40 days vs. a full year; and we're not counting invisible and
>future casualties from pollution, uranium, etc.
How about the tens of thousands that died in Bosnia during the time NATO failed to intervene earlier? I wasn't the one posting one-sided numbers of civilian deaths from NATO without reference to the Serbian murders in Kosova last year and during the last 40 days.
The above post is pure apologia for Milosevic, essentially downplaying the murder by emphasizing KLA combatants and ignoring murders and ethnic clensing that has occurred. So much for condemning both the bombing and condemning Milosevic.
As to future casualties, the likely future casualties from turning 1 million Kosovars into refugees is much higher, yet that does not get counted at all by those dismissing such ethnic clensing as not really constituting the same thing as mass murder.
Yes, 220 civilians in Serbia have been killed apparently, which is a tragedy. I've agreed that targetting civilian targets is the wrong approach, but if the choice is killing 220 civilians to return 1 million refugees to their homes, then I'll relunctantly accept that choice compared to doing nothing. We'll see if the Chinese embassy bombing screws the deal, but against my best bet, the bombing actually seems to have brought Russia into agreement for some kind of armed force in the region (with the assumption that Serbia was moving in that direction).
--Nathan Newman