Date: Thu, 14 Oct 1999 06:13:33 +1000 From: Rob Schaap <rws at comserver.canberra.edu.au>
G'day Observers
Doug writes:
>Lots of stories of Serb atrocities were circulated to justify NATO's
>bombing, before, during, and after the fact. It turns out that lots
>of them just weren't true. Like I said in introducing the forward,
>I'm not denying that Serbs did many horrible things. But in that
>they're not alone. The plucky Kosovar Albanians have done horrible
>things too. Ditto our allies the Croats. There's a widespread
>impulse, from the Oval Office to the fringes of the political
>spectrum, to make the Balkan wars into an episode of good guys vs.
>bad guys. I'm saying it's a lot more complicated than that. I'm no
>fan of Saddam Hussein, but the incubator baby stories turned out to
>be pure invention too.
That good guys/bad guys thing works at two levels, too. Not only Serb (bad) versus Croat/Bosniak/Albanian Kosovar (good), but US (good) versus absolutely everybody in the Balkans (anachronistic / pre-modern tribal zealots who need to be pulled up by their bootstraps by us to be like 'us').
And I see Wall St is groaning nicely, albeit quietly yet. It sounds rather different when it does it in Octobers, doesn't it?
Cheers, Rob.