I would agree that Jared Israel is not a "reasonable" representative of those who opposed NATO intervention in Kosova. In Michael's defense, however, the said Mr. Israel has made it his business to be omnipresent in cyberspace, as a veritable spam machine, and in whatever dark recesses he manages to miss, he has the ubiquitous Mr. Proyect to sing his praises. While one might be tempted to simply ignore them, this always run the risk that the uninformed might find no response to their "arguments."
It also seems that you do a little of what you are blaming Michael for. For example, the most serious of those who supported NATO intervention on the left took a position in favor of a military invasion, and are hardly uncritical of the use of the air war option, much less of the use of bombs with depleted uranium. If you don't want to argue against a straw man, you need to address that position.
Finally, certainly one of the most articulate proponents of intervention in Kosova was Ian Williams, and Michael posted her what I found a pretty definitive refutation of the argument with regard to Racak. But nowhere did I see his points addressed.
<< You'll notice that further up in my post I wrote: There were several high-profile massacres in Kosovo, most of them aren't questioned by reasonable people.
I don't see what Jared Israel has to do with the above statement.
If I wanted to, I could waste a lot of bandwidth on this list debating, in absentia, the outer fringes of pro-NATO sentiment -- I could set up a Jeanne Kirkpatrick strawman or a Robert Bartley paper tiger and knock them down just as easily.
But that's too easy because there are a lot smarter people to argue with on that side of the fence. So I don't. But apparently the bomb-Serbia claque finds it too tiring to engage serious arguments on the other side; much more pleasing to dig up the rantings of the most insane pro-Milosevic specimens on the Internet and then congratulate themselves for detecting the flaws in their arguments.
This isn't very impressive. >>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass --
-------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20010124/57356d3c/attachment.htm>