As a committed supporter of fighting ethnic violence, why haven't you called for a ground war against the KLA? Why haven't your comrades? It would do a lot to dispel this misguided notion that there's bias against Serbs among the interventionists.
Then there's Chris Burford's suggestion that NATO "should have been aiding the KLA from the beginning in return for assurances that the KLA would avoid anti-democratic excesses. Only the KLA had the armed force on the ground among the Albanian population to have imposed effective state control over the Albanian population to stop these retaliatory murders."
Chris perhaps does not understand that the "retaliatory murders" are being committed by a segment of the "Albanian population" called the KLA.
And what's with "retaliatory murders"? Every murder in Kosovo has been a "retaliatory murder," according to the perpetrators.
Seth
> ----------
> From: LeoCasey at aol.com[SMTP:LeoCasey at aol.com]
> Reply To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Sent: Wednesday, January 24, 2001 5:59 PM
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: Kosova Redux
>
> I have no desire to be engaged in a "let's run around the same block for
> 100th time" debate about Kosova. My point was simply this: if the idea is
> that one should engage the strongest argument of the other side, as Seth
> suggested earlier with respect to the numerous rantings of Jared Israel
> and
> Louis Proyect, then it must go both ways.
>
> The strongest argument, made by the best proponents of intervention, took
> this form:
>
> 1. Military intervention in Kosova was required to stop what had become a
> practice of serial ethnic cleansing which had gone for years throughout
> Bosnia, with the killing, rape, torture and displacement of thousands upon
>
> thousands for no other reason than their ethnicity.
>
> 2. The proper form of intervention which would bring the ethnic cleansing
> in
> Kosova to an end as quickly as possible with the minimum of harm was a
> ground, military action.
>
> While the NATO bombing campaign did eventually bring an end to the ethnic
> cleansing, it did so at an unnecessarily high cost in terms of lives and
> property in Kosova. The choice to do an air campaign alone was made purely
> on
> the basis of political calculations in Washington, London, Bonn, Ottawa
> and
> elsewhere that their citizenry was not prepared to see the lives of their
> soldiers lost, regardless of the justice of the cause. After all, the
> victims
> of this ethnic cleansing were Moslems. It is quite logical that one could
> have opposed that choice, and still seen the absolute necessity for
> military
> intervention. Moreover, the use of depleted uranium bombs was entirely
> without justification, even within the terms of a purely air war campaign.
>
>
> Now I know that it is a lot easier to impute an entirely different set of
> arguments, one which portrays support for intervention not in terms of
> conceiving of it as an indispensable step to end ethnic cleansing in the
> former Yugoslavia, but as the embrace of imperialism, militarism and what
> have you. Like it or not, that is not the reasoning which was employed by
> serious folks. If you want left supporters of intervention to recognize
> that
> were opponents who did not deny the sordid record of ethnic cleansing on
> behalf of Milosevic and crew, then it is about time that you recognize
> that
> there were supporters of intervention who called from ground action, not
> an
> air war, and did not excuse, for a moment, the use of bombs with depleted
> uranium. You can't expect respect, if you are also not prepared to extend
> it.
>
> That is all that I have to say about the subject at this time. I simply
> find
> it inconceivable that I am about to convince anti-interventionists on this
>
> list that intervention was a necessary step to end ethnic cleansing, or
> that
> they are about to convince me that this was a crime of American
> imperialism.
>
> 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 --
>
>
>