[PEN-L:4587] Re: NATO Bombing

[Rob Schaap <rws@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

My heart (and much of what passes for my brain) is with Paul's take on
this, but Max always serves a necessary purpose for me on these lists, in
that he reminds me that even a fairly coherent set of default settings is
not the best apparatus with which to read my world.

When Paul assures Max he "was using history to show that Serbs have not had
a history of discrimination," might he not be making of 'Serb' a rather
ahistorical (never mind monolithic) notion?

I spent the first year or two of the obscenities in Bosnia grimly
determined to indulge my prejudices and blame anybody but the residual
champions of socialism in Central/Eastern Europe (these are the
rose-coloured glasses through which I saw the Yugoslav/Serbian - they
gradually merged into the same notion - forces at the time).

The time came when even I could not disregard the mounting evidence of (a)
the atrocities committed by some Serb Republican forces; (b) the purely
nationalistic rhetoric with which they justified their Srebrenicas; and (c)
the profound linkages between Milosovic's government and Karadzic's mob.

I think *Living Marxism*, now more modestly *LM*, proffered some evidence
that some of the concentration camp stories had holes in 'em, but nowhere
else could I find reason to fight off the horrible truth: that a couple of
years of economic suffering and the dramatic dissolution of old identities
is all it takes to turn our like into raving murderous nationalist thugs.
(And this is not just a concern for the humanist in me; it is an insight
that only the emotionally strong should take with them when they come to
analyse Russia's political culture du juour.)

This is not meant as evidence for the media reports we got out of Kosovo
leading up to the unilateral NATO strike, but it is cause for pause before
we throw our whole argument before the world.

Mebbe we should focus on the developments (so many of which were authored
beyond Yugoslavia's borders, as I mentioned yesterday) that got things to
the ghastliness of today a little more, and the particulars of Kosovo's
recent tumult a little less.  Or perhaps talk about the nail that's just
been driven into the UN-shaped coffin the US has been so patiently building
all these years.  Or perhaps just talk about incinerated Yugoslavian
civilians and conscripts in light of the Clinton rhetoric.  Or perhaps talk
about strategic reasons for which NATO might like to sweep Russia's
doorstep so violently.  Or perhaps just point to the manifold hypocricies
(and the Kurdish question is a real whopper).

Let's not overplay our hand and look like fools by the end of this terrible
adventure.  We lefties do this a lot.

I reckon NATO and its bullshitting apologists already stand condemned on a
decisive number of criteria.

Cheers,
Rob