SDF: First, the central issue:: : I'm not sure we can do anything about it either.
: We can support the current actions and attempt to boalster morale, it's maybe something you can take issue with your government about constitutionally but dont you care about the ethic cleansing of Kosovo?
SDF: Caring is fine. I care too. Does caring produce the results we want?
Now, the secondary issues:
: : SDF: I'm not sure that the current regime of bombs is going to stop the ethnic cleansing/ massacres in Kosovo. By the time they figure out that bombing doesn't make dictators "cry uncle" (i.e. by the time they review the numerous historical examples of where it hasn't done so), this dictator will be finished with his dirty work, and they all die unhappily ever after.
: This is true it is not the forces with the most high tech weaponary that triumph but those with the most resolve as Vietnam demonstrates but somethign must be done and this is going to wreck the serbian economy etc. and I think it's preferable to blitzing the population, although that'd be quicker in military terms.
SDF: Since this "something" that's being done is putting the Serbs on a timetable for ethnically-cleansing Kosovo, it's conceivable that the bombing is SETTING THE STAGE for Serb terror, much as Nixon's illegal bombing of Cambodia set the stage for the Khmer Rouge conquest of that same country and the slaughter of millions of its people. (I'm sure that Nixon "cared deeply" about the people of Cambodia and South Vietnam...)
I can conceivably understand how DOING NOTHING might be BETTER than the current military action, not that I'm interested at all in recommending the best of very bad alternatives... The Pentagon claims that the bombing has "slowed" the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. If there's any HARD EVIDENCE for this claim, I'm sure we'd all like to know what it is...
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: : If we had respected the Constitution, the current bombing-attack against Yugoslavia might be prefaced by a serious debate of the merits of bombing, diplomacy, UN intervention, NATO intervention, troop invasion, the debacle with Bosnia, the debacle with the ethnic cleansing of Serbs from Croatia, and the general application of the principle of nonviolence to the situation as a whole. Somehow I feel that this possibility, like the possibility of a peaceful solution, has been lost.
: Maybe but while your doing all this the serbs are raping, killing etc. immediate action was necessary, I'm just sorry that every possible means was not employed immediately before the damn stupid russians started their pan-slavic sabre rattling.
SDF: Lark, I'd like to contextualize once again what I said in the above quote. I said, "IF we had respected the Constitution"... the critical word in this being IF... the fact of the matter is that Congressional and US militarism has given Clinton carte blanche to kill anyone he wants dead, without any prior discussion. Who does Clinton want dead these days? Let's start asking THAT question, since we're not likely to postpone the days of death ourselves...
You should know well by now that the US government, especially the CIA, knows very well how to destabilize governments and get the ones they want practically anywhere. Why do you think Milosevic is in power today, despite having had a broad array of opponents and a solid grip on the allegiance of maybe 20% of the Serb population at the most? Don't you think the CIA would have any idea about destabilizing the Milosevic regime? Has it occurred to you that getting Milosevic out of power, stopping the atrocities etc. is not the real goal of the current bombing campaign, just as the bombardment of Iraq (given that it has solidified Saddam Hussein's hold on power) doesn't have the elimination of Saddam Hussein (or the prevention of death) as its goal. It's like Madeleine Albright said when she was appointed US Secretary of State: "We are not a charity... our goal is to defend US interests..."
: I think troops and every means, whatever it takes, should have been use on day one of this struggle and fuel bombs, the most powerful weapon after the atomic bomb or nuclear devices should have been dropped all over the serbian forces.
SDF: Sending troops presents significant logistical difficulties but at least it's more consistent with support for "humanitarian warfare" than support of the status quo.
: : "All post-Auschwitz culture, including its urgent critique, is garbage." -Theodor Adorno
: So?
SDF: So we have Clinton on TV hypocritically calling for an end to school violence while he sends planes to bomb Kosovo and Iraq and funds killers in Turkey, Colombia, etc., and we have critics of Clinton who don't appear to be arguing for anything REALISTICALLY better... look, I'm not saying this conflict could have a decent end, I'm just saying it's not likely given the current paths of action.
None.
