East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait

Nathan Newman nathan.newman at yale.edu
Mon Sep 20 16:24:35 PDT 1999


Well, to return to our stock of historical metaphors, recent murders of slaves in the Southern United States were far less than the casualties involved in the Civil War. The point is that killing to stop repression is not the same as killing in the pursuit of that repression.

Of course, part of what is being debated is whether the Kosovars were being repressed, but to turn the question around, if you think NATO's raw body count is a sign of brutality, then you have to agree that the Serbs were involved in brutality and repression.

--Nathan Newman


> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Seth Ackerman
> Sent: Monday, September 20, 1999 5:17 PM
> To: 'lbo-talk at lists.panix.com'
> Subject: RE: East Timor, Kosovo, and Kuwait
>
>
> Please help me. I'm getting sucked backed in.
>
> Nathan, you haven't really met my point, which was that if Serb
> brutality was in the "Medium to High" range before the bombing, how would
> you rate NATO's brutality? Let me quote from today's Washington
> Post, which
> published part of the text of an internal NATO document from April
> concerning the planned bombing of the Socialist Party Headquarters in
> Belgrade:
>
> WP:
> Next to a photograph of the party headquarters, the document said:
> "Collateral damage: Tier 3 -- High. Casualty Estimate: 50-100
> Government/Party employees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250 -- Apts in
> expected blast radius." [end-quote]
>
> So NATO killed 2000 civilians. NATO's bombs certainly drove out
> thousands of Albanians, as Paul Watson of the LA Times and others
> reported.
> What distinguishes Serb brutality from NATO brutality?
>
> Seth
>
> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >
> > First, deaths are not the only measure of brutality, especially the
> > Balkans.
> > Deaths aimed at driving people completely out of the country as refugees
> > is
> > also a major form of military brutality. Along with the estimated 2000
> > killed, there are estimates of as many as 100,000 Kosovars leaving the
> > country in the years just before because of that brutality. And the
> > estimated tens of thousands of military brutality and militia
> murders that
> > followed NATO intervention are hard to measure as anything other than
> > "Medium to High."
> >
> > --Nathan Newman
> >
> >
> >
>



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