Your position is as open to charges of manichean posturing as is Mark Jones' (racist) nonsense. The bombing has dealt the Albanian Kosovars an historic defeat, it kills innocents by the truck-load, is destroying an environment for years to come, is destroying the infrastructure the survivors need if they're to survive the winter, and has advanced the doomsday clock by some minutes. Which one of those claims is either wrong or unimportant?
Enforcing external control over a national economy and armed occupation of that nation at the point of a gun is wrong. Gotta problem with that?
See, I reckon all of the above is true and important.
Now, that NATO seems suddenly to realise it's all but beatified Milo Lazar The Bloody is a big problem. But it's a problem of *their* making. Continuing the bombing won't fix that problem any more than stopping it will.
And why charge the bastard (I better make that *fucking bastard*, just so Minister Richard Alston's sheet-sniffers don't miss the offensive obscenity with which I recklessly tear at the very fabric of Australian society) with war crimes now? Not over Vukovar, mind. Certainly not the single greatest slaughter of individuals enacted throughout the Bosnian War, at Srebrenica. And not at any stage during 98-99 (the pretext for this murderous arrogance, after all). But *now*. When just possibly the murder from the air might have been stopped, and some part of Kosovo might have been returned to its Albanian contingent before a nascent winter makes that impossible.
Beginning the bombing campaign just might have been manslaughter (the nature of the act not being apparent to naive minds), but continuing it now, atop all the evidence of civilian suffering, exacerbation of that which they purported to stop, and concomitant rising of Milo's stocks, well, that's gotta be *murder*, doesn't it?
It's the *opposite* of manicheanism to oppose both bombing and ethnic cleansing (I still reckon it ain't 'genocide'). Before the bombing we had just one of these two problems - and a Milo not nearly as entrenched as he is now. With the bombing came the other problem - one which also happened (predictably) to exacerbate the first.
If it wasn't murder, it would just have been incredibly hilariously stupid. And now we ensure its continuation and contemplate a war on the ground that will kill thousands and put the whole helplessly bemused bloody species at risk.
Fuck NATO, Max. And (with apologies to this university and its ISP) fuck the outrageously stupid and tyrannical Internet Bill - keep an eye out, comrades, you'll be next.
Rob.
>Speaking for myself, I ignore it because I've seen it on both
>lists before, I've responded in the past, and I don't have
>anything much new to say. Our pro-Serb extremists have a
>manichean East/West, socialist/capitalist frame in their heads
>which they use for everything and glorify by the name "political
>economy." Once the white hats and black hats are identified, no
>act by the good guys is too horrible and no act by the bad guys
>is above contempt. Moral concerns are held to be intrinsically
>illegitimate; "idealism." Then there are the neo-pacifists, with
>an unrelenting focus on violence perpetrated by US Imperialism,
>who disclaim any affinity with Milosevic, notwithstanding the
>practical import of their "no bombing/no genocide" posture.
>There doesn't seem much more to talk about.
>
>>
>> And, given mark jones' comments such as "Today the Yugoslav
>army seems to be clearing the decks by expelling the last Kosovan
>Albanians (good riddance to bad rubbish in my opinion).", it
>would seem that some challenge is required. >
>
>This isn't new coming from Mark either. I recall approving
>comments from him on this list a while back on internecine
>assassinations within the left in one of the South American
>countries. Forget which one.
>
>> I guess I'm also asking whether or not i should regard the
>silence and the
>silencing as consent. >
>
>Not at all. Like a certain other dude's ruminations on ethnicity
>and religion, one gets jaded by this stuff and comes to ignore
>it.
>
>cheers,
>
>mbs