> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Seth Ackerman
>
> 1.) "Both sides" were not "hyping" atrocities. It was NATO and its
> supporters who were crowing about genocide. Opponents -- like Noam Chomsky
> in Nathan's quote from anti-war.com -- pointed out that the bombing only
> escalated the atrocities. That remains undoubtedly true.
(cut)
>
> The slinking evasions by the cruise-missile liberals are starting
> to get on my nerves.
> Seth
Instead of talking about generalities, let me say that I, myself, justified intervention before any reports of mass killings occurred. I based my support on the already existing cultural repression, the escalating military violence against Kosovars and the beginnings of the refugee crisis. Like everyone, I expressed worry about possible mass murder of Kosovars but specifically responded to the argument made by opponents that deaths were going to increase:
"I am quite open to the arguments that bombing cannot be successful in helping the Kosovans. That pragmatic argument that bombing merely strengthens the Serbian leadership and intensifies repression may be valid."
Inanother post on 3-28, I wrote:
"I will honestly say that it is not clear that we can prevent the slaughter in Kosovo without ground troops, but it is clear that stopping the bombing will guarantee that the slaughter will continue. So given a guarantee of continued repression and ethnic clensing -- and we have a track record of years by Milosevic to support that prediction -- the chance of stopping that slaughter is one we should take."
My express support for the war was that intervention would prevent further mass murder. So if apparently the Kosovar deaths were not as bad as feared and the Kosovars gained the autonomy that was the goal of intervention, why is this position a "slinking evasion."
There were critics of the war who argued that the bombing would itself lead to genocide and therefore supporting intervention was counterproductive. I hoped those opponents of the war were wrong and am glad they were wrong. The deaths involved are bad enough, but the Kosovars are no longer refugees and they now have some degree of autonomy in their home.
You can (and no doubt will) argue that the same result could have been gained by negotiation; I don't buy the evidence presented for that point. Or you can argue that Serbia deserved under international law to continue its dictatorial control over Kosovo. I disagree with that politically. Or you can just argue (as you did) that empirically, there would have been fewer Kosovar deaths without intervention. That's an unproveable point one way or the other.
But what you can't argue is that low death rates among Kosovars undermines the argument originally made for intervention. Since the goal was to prevent the deaths of Kosovars, the absence of genocide does not undermine claims for the success of a policy whose goal was (at least partially) to prevent genocide.
-- Nathan
Now, based on that starting position, it seems like a good thing that the Kosovars were able to gain some cultural autonomy and end the Serbian repression