MASSACRE IN MEJA : murder by Serbs in Kosovo

[Brad De Long]

>Brad De Long wrote:
>
>>Ah! Now I understand! Weapons should be used only in self-defense... unless
>>you think is right to use them to change people's minds...
>
>Brad, Germany was an expansionist imperial power that had invaded,
>occupied, and/or bombed many other European countries. And its ally, Japan,
>bombed the U.S. after having invaded several of its Asian neighbors. Both
>were major industrial powers too. I don't see any relevance of WW II
>parallels to the present situation, which even warriors acknowledge is
>illegal under present international law, and which involves an industrial
>midget that has been severely weakened by years of sanctions.
>
>Doug

You miss the point.

*Of course* Germany was an expansionist, imperial power. *Of course* it was
a public service to the world to stop it.

My point was Brett Knowlton was wrong when he said that weapons are there
to be used in self-defense: that there are times when it is
appropriate--moral even--to use weapons not in self-defense, but to make
one's adversary change one's mind.

And since his most recent posts acknowledge this, I am somewhat satisfied.

I am not completely satisfied because his claim that "...I support
intervention in cases where genocide is taking place..." seems to me
overbroad: such a doctrine would have committed the U.S. to intervene (i)
in the Ukraine in the mid-1930s, (ii) in China in the late 1950s, (iii) to
have assisted the Vietnamese in their intervention in Cambodia in the late
1970s, and to intervene now (iv) in North Korea. Of these, I think that
only (iii) would have been worth doing: in spite of ongoing genocide, I
think intervening in the other situations would have been likely to do more
harm than good.

And in case you have forgotten, I am *opposed* to NATO's course of action
in the Balkans today...

Brad DeLong