In response both to today's indictment and offlist requests, I shall briefly recount my debate with Paul Phillips on pen-l regarding Milosevic and the Kosovar Albanians (btw, I find the indictment to be horribly one-sided and counterproductive).
Basically I gave the kinds of arguments the Tribunal has made, saying that Milosevic gave the orders for mass expulsions and some related executions, etc.
The most serious responses seem to me not to be those like Louis Proyect's that demonize the Albanians as a whole because of the chauvinism and racism of some of their poliitical activists in the early 1980s, but that NATO did nothing to stop arms flowing across the border from Albania into Kosmet before last fall, to arm the UCK/KLA. Clearly this aggravated an already bad situation on the ground and justified to some degree some kind of defensive offensive against the UCK/KLA. That NATO in violation of international law has bombed Yugoslav civilians for this is appalling and without justification.
Another part of Paul P.'s argument was to suggest that the expulsions were justified as part of this offensive and as preparation to defend Yugoslavia against a possible ground assault, now looking more serious than ever. However I do not see that as a sufficient excuse, If the goal was not' to eradicate the Albanians but to protect them, then why not move them further in from the border to the north? I see no justification for the scale of the expulsions on such a basis.
BTW, another argument given by some simply lacks any serious credibility, namely that the refugees fled NATO bombing and UCK/KLA attacks. Undoubtedly some did, but not the vast majority.
For all of its evil, however, these expulsions and related executions do not constitute genocide, not even close. Barkley Rosser