Kosova Redux

[Gordon Fitch]

Chris Burford:
> I agree very much with the spirit of Leo's summary.
>
> ...
> Otherwise to those outside the Left the balance sheet in broad terms
> appears pretty clear: Messy business, and tragic that some deaths are going
> on but it is better that a million people were allowed to stay in their
> territory and have a chance to decide their educational system and laws.
> That is the broad picture that will appear. A one-sided leftist position
> harping on about the abuses (undoubted) of state power will not dent it.
> Most people, rightly, are not anarchists. They believe in the necessity of
> state power, and also want the world more orderly and safer. *That* is the
> basis on which we should attack global finance capitalism.

If you believe in the goodness of the State -- of imperialism,
institutional violence, inequality, and unfreedom, which are
intrinsic to the idea of the State -- why attack global finance
capitalism?  Within your preferred context, it's probably
doing a reasonably good job.  The business it's in, running
and exploiting the world on behalf of its rather peculiar
values, _is_ messy, after all.

I recall, a long time ago, Lyndon Johnson's remark that what
he was doing in Vietnam wasn't any different from what he was
trying to do at home with the Great Society.  It was one of
his more cogent and penetrating observations.  Or as Chairman
Mao said, "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."