>Before the NATO intervention, a lot of folks on this list noted that "only"
>2000 Kosovars had died in the year preceding the war, a minimal number not
>justifying international action against the Serbs.
People die in insurgencies, and an insurgency had been mounted, with foreign aid and encouragement, and against the stated wishes of the Kosovars' popular elected leader, Rugova. 'International action' here was all about stepping into a situation largely of international action's own making. 2000 deaths is tragedy beyond calculation, of course, but it's a number consistent with a counter-insurgency less intense and more disciplined than the American efforts in, say, Vietnam or the Philippines. It is on the small side of the sort of casualty figures one gets in such situations. It is not genocide.
>The deaths in Palestine have not reached that number yet this past year,
>in a >far larger population, but I would agree that international action
>is called >for against Israel.
Milosovic was a bastard and Sharon is a worse bastard. The former presided over the deaths of 2000 people over a year of insurgencies within his own borders. The latter, if memory serves, accounted for 2000 innocent people in a few hours (the Sabra and Chatila massacres of '82) and in someone else's country, too. I reckon, this latter is more comparable to the murder of those 2000 Yugoslav innocents by NATO pilots and their superiors. So, yeah, I'd like to see Milo in the dock, but not before the real professionals have their day - not before Sharon and NATO are rotting in gaol.
Anyway, 'International Action' helped make and sustain Milo and Sharon both, 'International Action' has turned out to be the pointless endless tragedy most here predicted in the Yugoslav instance, and 'International Action' has been one in the Middle East. What would you have 'International Action' do now?
>At the time, many leftists said that independence for Kosovo was an
>unwarranted solution after the war and that the fact that Serbs settled in
>the region felt the need to evacuate showed the injustice. Of course, any
>independence for Palestine will require a similar evacuation-- any other
>assumption is laughable.
>
>Any assertion that the Serbs had some greater historic "right" to Kosovo
>than the Jews do in Israel is also ridiculous given the millenium of
>invasions, population displacements, and mass murder that characterize the
>Balkans.
And absolutely everywhere else ...
Our arguments were, if I remember rightly, based on the west's contribution to the initial Yugoslav disaster, the disgusting and strategically pathetic murder done from on high - to no purpose that could hope to lay claim to whatever 'humanitarian' used to mean, and the (perfectly vindicated) suspicion that Kosovo could never be an independent country, that the KLA would not sweetly disband, and that they'd now conduct perpetual civil war throughout the region with German Marks, American weapons and not a few fascist leaders - another rod US foreign policy has made for its own back ...
3/3 I'd say.
That ancient-history-as-legitimation stuff is demagoguery, I reckon. Field of Blackbirds, my arse. No-one was basing any arguments on that, just allowing that it makes for powerful rhetoric.
Cheers, Rob.