Hyperbole, no?
Ted
Just two writers, I'm familiar with that have a firm grasp on Serbian and Kosovar relations, especially on the period after Belgrade rescinded brutally the defacto autonomy of the late 80's are Tim Judah, "Kosovo: War and Revenge, " (have not read his earlier work, "The Serbs, " also from Yale Univ. Press) and Robert Thomas, "The Politics of Serbia in the 90's, " from Columbia Univ. Press. Both prove with copious detail, the almost universal ethnicized hatred from all sectors of Serbian political opinion, not just the Serbian Socialist Party and the Yugoslav United Left, and the neo-fascists of Seselj's Radical Party, (Seselj is still a Deputy Prime Minister. Ask Jared Isreal of www.tenc.com
why, he will say fascists are more controllable inside the tent!) but also, the "pro-Western democratic opposition" of Draskovic, Djindic and OTPOR. They all made their delusional pact with nationalist mythology and racist demogogy, when Yugoslavia disintegrated. Read the famous memorandum of Dobrica Cosic in 1987, for an example, pgs. 48-50, Judah, for the supporting legitimation of Serb racism.
No one that I know, that reluctantly "supported" the NATO bombings, really disputes the consequences that flowed from a bad choice dictated by years of inaction, and hypocrisy in Western capitols. After the thousands killed in the Bosnian conflict, and the deal at Dayton in 1995, made possible with the acquiescence of Milosevic after some limited NATO bombings, the situation in Kosovo was allowed to fester until, late 1998 when the political forces that become the KLA pushed the envelope and killed some Serbian policemen. (Betcha they knew something about how the NLF in South Vietnam killed thousands of village officials in the 60's. The KLA, in the begining still had a veneer of Enver Hoxhaite, neo-Maoist ideology.) Once the Racek massacre was publicized, pressure began to build for a response. Anyway, don't intend here to recap the whole damn war but, given the choices, in the real world 1) allowing the regime to continue ethnic cleansing 2) bombing the fuckers from the air, with little risk to NATO fighter pilots, and so far up, that the overwhelming number of casualties, as in all wars these days, were civilians and phony card board cut-outs of tanks 3) ground invasion, as Commander Christopher Hitchens of the ex-Trotskyist Social Imperialist Brigade joined by son of Susan Sontag, David Rieff, advocated, the least bad alternative was the last. Politically, it was impossible, neither the American public or the policy makers, want to pay the cost in body bags, which would have been substantial.
When it came down to the operative possibilities, on the ground, given how the region had imploded over the 90's, I do think that this neo-colonial protectorate of the NGO's, the UN and NATO is less bad than what the regime in Belgrade had in store. Not supporting Rugova in the 90's, who had built up a functioning parellel govt, and the tacit support of Milosevic after Dayton, eventuated in the "choices" that had to be confronted later. And I'm tired of the Spart like simplicities that reduce a complicated terrain to a Manichean battle of Malevolent Imperialists vs. "Anti-Imperialists" that consider racists and fascists, acceptable allies. To paraphrase, Ferenc Feher and Agnes Heller, two Hungarian exiles that studied under Lukacs, between Leninist and other varieties of authoritarianism, and bourgeois democratic regimes, that can be steadily social democratized at a glacial pace, the sectors of the left that have chosen the former have proven themselves to be politically bankrupt and morally compromised. And directing ones entire polemical fire on the UN and NATO interventions (btw, the empirical facts, mostly support the case that the bombings and their aftereffects are just as bad as people like Dace make out. Call my position, social imperialist if you like, I have no stake in denying the truths that people on the other side of this debate make. It is their alignments I question, with any and all putatively, anti-New World Order force. For example, a few weeks ago Belgrade made a commercial agreement with the military thugs in Mynmar(sic.)/Burma. Tanjug, the Belgrade Press agency made no attempt to hide this in the daily press summary. Are these really progressive forces? Or, retrograde regimes, run by bureaucratic-military castes, that operate on repression and corruption?
For a corollary, I'm sure the East Timorese would agree, too. It was Western arms to Jakarta after 1975 that fueled the repression, once the referendum was called, and the results were not respected by the anti-independence paras, the Big Powers had a responsibility to prevent further bloodshed. Abstractions, divorced from the concrete realities, seem like attempts to shore up leftist cred.
Anyway, I've gone on much too long...
Michael Pugliese