>Now all those countries have elected social-democratic or Labor governments,
>and the world is finally taking steps to stop Milosevic. If not for the
>leftward move in Europe, Madeleine Albright would stamp her feet, the U.S.
>would act scary, the Serbs would act scared, the Kosovars would be sold down
>the river and Clinton would declare diplomatic victory.
So now NATO bombs, the Serb government isn't the slightest scared, the Kosovars are sold down the river (along with everyone else in Yugoslavia), and Clinton merely promises us a victory (the way economic rationalists frame their promises: 'more of what hasn't worked so far, and has never once worked in history, will surely work'). Much better, eh?
>While a small minority of reflexively anti-American European liberals and
>leftists still see the New World Order looming in the dust of the NATO
>bombing, others see that Clinton has been dragged into this by allies who
>actually meant it when they said that the Serbs had gone too far this time.
No, he went too far at Srebrenica, just after the west went too far in announcing Bosnia's 'independence' without lifting a finger to make a formal recognition at all materially viable (but then, that's liberalism all over ain't it?), which was just after they presided over the dismemberment of a country along borders never designed to delineate sovereign nation states.
NATO has just wiped out Korica in Kosovo - at least 60 Albanian Kosovars have been humanely dismembered by caring cluster bombs. Switch on CNN and enjoy!
>Since NATO runs on consensus, the new European leftist governments were
>instrumental in dragging stragglers toward a military response once
>diplomacy failed. Their socialism ...
... their WHAT?
>may be attenuated in this era of global
>capital, but they have enough of an ideological core left to do the right
>thing, without waiting for focus groups to digest the latest CNN clips of
>refugees. And they have made it clear that their idea of doing the right
>thing means getting Milosevic out of Kosovo, if not out of office.
But instead they got the Kosovars out and went on to bomb the ones who didn't get out in time. They pulled a passionately anti-Milosovich constituency behind Milosovich. And they've killed thousands who had nothing to do with anything. That's what they did.
>It does help that European leaders generally have more popular support for
>military action than their American counterpart. That includes a greater
>acceptance that military involvement may lead to casualties. Europeans did
>not have to wait for "Saving Private Ryan" to restore a collective memory of
>World War II.
At the expense of a memory of World War One, it seems. And the WW2 comparison wants more substantiation than it gets here. It wants more than is empirically available actually.
>Many of them remember that pandering to bloodthirsty dictators
>only postpones and prolongs the time of reckoning. Blair evoked those
>memories last week when he said that the Kosovar Albanians "are the victims
>of the most appalling acts of barbarism and cruelty Europe has seen since
>World War II. We teach our children never to forget what happened in that
>war. We must not allow ourselves to become desensitized to accept what is
>happening in Kosovo today."
Korica is happening in Kosovo today. Maybe a Krajina is happening in Kosovo today (albeit without smug western approval and support). I mean, just what is this pillock trying to get at here? And why limit it to Europe? Throw Vietnam in and you get a more accurate picture of what obscenities inevitably come out of counter-insurgency strategies - then you can compare what we did in someone else's country to what Milosovich has done in his own. Sure, we're comparing turds - but which turd is the bigger and the more evil-smelling? 'Our' side was ruled by SocDems then, too.
>In that vein, many Europeans calculate how much blood would have been saved
>if NATO had acted resolutely against Milosevic when the genocide against the
>Bosnians began in the early 1990s. And despite the best efforts of British
>conservatives, it is difficult to be isolationist in Europe. Britain and
>France declared war in 1939 on behalf of Poland, and most British and French
>still remember with some gratitude the belated arrival of American forces
>after 1941.
'On behalf of Poland' is highly questionable (go ask an old Pole). And the only true comparison here is that between Bomber Harris's 'strategic' bombing campaign and the one we're engaged in today. Fucking mass murder then - and fucking mass murder now (go ask an old German - or a young Yugoslav).
>The Rambouillet talks, people forget, were about Milosevic's cynical breach
>of the pledges he had made last October, which were the result of
>negotiations, of course, and which had been enshrined in a binding Security
>Council resolution -- the latest of more than 50 against him. After
>promising to move troops out, he moved in some 20,000 more and killed more
>than 2,000 people, making hundreds of thousands of others homeless, and
>incidentally, chased unarmed Organization for Security and Cooperation in
>Europe monitors away when they tried to investigate the massacres. Only
>after its bluff was called did NATO take action. If NATO had been serious
>about its threats, ground forces would already have been introduced.
So you're agreeing they're not serious then? Mebbe even admitting that the KLA of March 1999 did not represent Albanian Kosovars at all. Mebbe even going so far as to admit that if the most powerful military force in the world today had really wanted to look after those Kosovars who were in jeopardy, they might actually have taken steps slightly commensurate with that aspiration?
Or not?
Cheers, Rob.