>-So it would have been, had that actually been the prevalent line. It
>-wasn't, as the archives clearly show.
>
>They hardly show that. There was repeated statements that a "mere" 2000
>deaths in Kosovo made it all an internal issue that outside groups should
>keep their noses out of.
As was clear at the time, the 2000 number was a response to inflated Washington numbers, and the point was made that insurgencies produce lots of ghastly deaths as a matter of course. Anyone who knowingly helped kick it into life (and Milo ain't the only one in that particular dock) is culpable. There was (relative) restraint in the Kosovo insuregency that was absent in many other examples of the genre.
>Yet everyone calls for greater international
>pressure on Israel (correctly as I note). I made the comparison of the
>Palestinian and Kosovar numbers at the time and folks tied themselves in
>prezels, based on the illegitimacy of the Israelis as a people, to argue
>against the comparison.
No-one's asking for Tel Aviv and Haifa to be bombed from 20000 feet, Nathan. Not even for whipping what moderates are left in Palestine into a lather, representing Hezbollah or Hamas as their exclusive voice, or giving 'em tonnes of tactical weaponry.
>Who said Kosovo ever would be "independent" in some Platonic sense?
I wasn't talking about Plato. I was talking about it being anything other than a protecterate, a (not necessarily convenient, I'll admit) plaything of greater powers, economically and strategically nonviable, and a focus and source for ongoing conflict.
>No country is and no socialist supports pure nationalist states.
I've recently had my utopian say on the bloody state ... and I was alluding to the legitimation for what went on at the time.
>But the Kosovars do have far greater cultural autonomy, the right to speak
>>their language and most of the goals they wanted when all they wanted was
>autonomy, not secession.
Which Rugova and most Kosovars thought they might get in an infinitely preferable manner, had someone not fanned and financed the KLA in the years leading up to the bombing - leading to an all-or-nothing showdown.
>And any economic problems in Serbia are not due to the war but to the
>sanctions and other self-created problems of the state-kleptocracy that
>Milosevic had created.
No-one's letting Milo off either. But the claim that the bombing hasn't had a profound effect on the Yugoslav economy and Serbian social welfare and health, well, I can't begin to see how you'd defend that, Nathan.
>2) High-level bombing is always, and has always been, the mass murder of
>innocents.
>
>No, it's often the reduction of murder to far fewer civilian deaths than
>have happened in other wars.
Examples, please.
>The issue is not method of murder but goals. Kosovo (unlike Iraq, Panama,
>>Vietnam, or most other US interventions) was designed for minimal deaths
>with >maximum effect to end the war.
The bombing's role in ending the war is itself an argument. I reject that deaths were minimal (the commuter train, the bridge full of morning commuters, the secondary passes timed to get their rescuers, the broadcasting building, the Chinese embassy, the Kosovar refugee caravan - how much did those atrocities contribute to justice?). And ends may not as neatly be excised from means as your sentence implies. But I know you know that.
>Since anyone sympathetic to
>secession gets defined in such statistics as non-civilian, it's a pretty
>easy claim but not persuasive. Most Palestinians killed can probably be
>considered combatants given how mobilized they are for support of attacks on
>Israelis-- so does that justify Israeli murders of Palestinians.
Just making the point that this is what happens in military insurgencies. Do you deny that western agencies contributed to the fanning of the flames well before the bombing in Kosovo - in much the way it did in Afghanistan around 1980?
>One reason I am unimpressed by the fine distinctions between civilian and
>military deaths is precisely because such distinctions miss the social
>mobilization involved in civil war and broad-based resistance. Rather than
>concentrate on such distinctions, I prefer to look at the justice of the
>cause. Murders in the name of cultural repression and injustice are wrong
>whether done against civilians or military. Murders done to end such
>repression and decrease violence in the long run is far more justified,
>whether done against obstensibly civilian supporting that repression or
>direct military targets.
I repeat, *at the time*, the KLA had far less popular support than did the democratically elected Rugova - and those western readers who gave a toss were still reading what a dodgy bunch of ruffians the KLA were. If memory serves, the latter's image underwent a remarkably quick transformation in the year leading up to the bombing.
>Once this last
>decision is made, lefties like the WWP et al just pile on whatever numbers
>games needed to devalue their lives.
I'm certainly not having anything to do with defending WWP's Tianenman position. I think they insult the memory of the demonstrators, as I think western media disguised the aspirations of many of 'em. I distinctly remember footage of the demonstrators breaking into The Internationale, but I saw it once late at night on a British (I think) news programme. Read nothing about it and never saw that footage again.
Cheers, Rob.