Rebuttal to Nathan

[Seth Ackerman]

First of all, Nathan, it sounds silly to insist that NATO only lied about
100,000 murders, not 500,000. (Besides, I think the actual numbers went up
to 225,000.) 

But the point--which, incredibly, you still seem to be denying--is that NATO
tried to sell the war by filling the media with inflated stories of a huge
slaughter that never took place. There is an important difference between
the killing of 2,500 people and the killing of 100,000 in the space of ten
weeks. One is an atrocity and the other is genocide of epoch proportions.

Then, you dodge:

	And as I said then and say now, the speed and coordination with
which the
	ethnic expulsions were done shows that Milosevic had to have put in
place
	plans to do it, showing absolute lack of good faith in any
negotiations. 

My last post patiently explained that Milosevic *did* plan the mass
expulsion, but that most knowledgeable observers of the Balkans regard these
as contingency plans--held in reserve in case NATO attacked. I argued
further that NATO has similar contingency plans--for, say, invading
Serbia--but that Serbia could not legitimately launch a "pre-emptive strike"
against NATO on the basis of these plans.

Then you say:

	I don't buy that anyone goes from seriously negotiating autonomy for
a country
	to full-scale ethnic clensing.  Those are not the kind of modal
choices held
      in serious negotiations

This is moralistic nonsense. Madeleine Albright helped to supervise and
execute Operation Storm, the expulsion of 250,000 Serbs from Croatia in
1995. Yet you think Madeleine Albright negotiated in perfectly good faith at
Rambouilet. So which is it, Nathan?

You haven't followed Milosevic's career very closely either. Slobo is
notorious for oscillating from reasonable negotiator to insane butcher. He
alternated from a campaign for Greater Serbia to the "sell-out" (as they see
it) of the Bosnian Serb republic. In that respect he's much like Dr.
Albright herself.

As for the dreadful (but necessary) numbers game, I'll just say this. My
figure (2,500) comes from a forensic investigator for the International
Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Your figure (10,000) comes from nowhere,
except maybe a British foreign ministry official who just made it up. And
there's a big difference between 2,500 and 10,000.

A further point: I agree that Kosovo is like Israel/Palestine in some
respects. But why do you think that's a point in favor of bombing Serbia?
Are you in favor of bombing Tel Aviv too?