-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.
So you seriously argue that if Israel reoccupied the West Bank and Gaza and the Arab League launched a war against Israel, including rocket attacks, everyone on this list would condemn such an outside "interference" as Arab aggression?
I don't think so. Most would support it or at least excuse it.
>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.
The whole point of the global justice movement is that most developing nations are already such protectorates, dictated to by the IMF and the World Bank. Kosovo is no more and no less viable than most postage stamp nations around the world, whatever the formal sovereignty arrangements.
>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.
Rugova supported the NATO intervention and many had given up on the nonviolence campaign precisely because Milosevic had been so unyielding despite years of resistance. It's fine to have an opinion, but don't put words in the Kosovars mouths that they do not endorse. That is the worst form of ideological gamesmanship possible.
>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.
It had its effects but the economy was already in the crapper by the time the war started. One of the reasons that Milosevic could not sustain the war and was driven from power was because discontent over the economy was already so extreme. It is a complete rewriting of history to attribute even a significant percentage of the economic problems of Serbia to the Kosovo war.
>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?
Absolutely deny it if that is your comparison. If nothing else, Afganistan was and remains to this day and incredibly multi-sided factional set of combantants and political players, unlike Kosovo where a relatively well defined oppressor group was kicking the shit out of an oppressed group (with the additional unfortunate additional of the perennial Romani who get the shit end of every conflict in the region). Kosovo needed no "fanning" - it had been at maximum mobilization and resistance for years, including periods where the US was deliberately ignoring Kosovar demands. The only thing that changed in 1999 was that US self-interest happened to coincide with the existing mobilization of the Kosovars-- but the first did not create the second, it just added additional support.
>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.
Yes, and the Rugova forces ended up winning the elections post-intervention. Whether the KLA had full support is no different from the support any military force might or might not have, but it is also fair to say that the Kosovars opposed the killings of KLA sympathizers, many if not most of them civilians by conventional definition, and the Rugova forces probably supported NATO intervention at least partly to make sure the KLA were not the only group with guns after they won independence. It was probably only the existence of external NATO troops that made sure that Rugova forces had a fair chance in the post-Milosevic era.
Frankly, the post-NATO intervention results were far better than I originally expected. NATO won the war with far fewer Serb fatalities than anyone thought possible, the Kosovars got a real degree of cultural autonomy, and Milosevic was driven from power. Macedonia has not become another domino of ethnic murder and seems to actually be stumbling towards a negotiated multi-ethnic settlement. The ethnic homogenization of Kosovo is hardly ideal, but the Serbs have a full nation to return to, so while unjust it is hardly the worst form on the global scale of such.
-- Nathan Newman