[PEN-L:3715] Re: Re: Serbia

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

First let me say I have some sympathy with John's position on 
Serbia/Kosovo.  I can not say the same about Joseph's who 
appears to be totally ignorant of what has been going on in the area 
and what are the global involvements.  He appears to be parrotting 
Ms. Albright and the Pentagon to an amazing degree.  Has he ever 
been to Kosovo?  Has he ever walked the streets and the back 
lanes of Pristina?  Has he ever talked with the economic planners 
and academics of Kosovo (Kosovars, not Serbs)?  Has he ever 
been hugged and honoured by working kosovars (restaurant 
workers)?  Well, I have, and what he says is nonsense and a 
betrayal of the working class, the kind of 'impossibilist' rhetoric that 
has held back the left in America for generations.

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba





>       I don't have much time, but I should clarify a few things. 
> 
>       First off, I am not hewing to the trot line of "military but not
> political support," or some such thing.  You're right that I should
> clarify this, because there IS a great deal of slander directed against
> the Kosovars on the far left these days.  (By the same token, there is a
> lot of nonsense on the liberal left, which several years ago was holding
> up the government of the Islamic fundamentalist, Alija Izetbegovic, as
> some kind of last holdout of multicultural democracy and pluralistic
> tolerance.)  I was involved in an exchange on the Marxism List some months
> ago in which I criticized Diana Johnstone's CAQ piece as soft on Serbian
> chauvinism.  This is a problem on the radical left, and my hunch is that
> you place special emphasis on things like Kosovo because you are trying to
> go after some of the prejudices of the left when it comes to regimes like
> this.  Both you and your comrade Ben Seattle have produced some
> interesting stuff in this vein. 
> 
>       All of this said, I must insist that my comparison of Kosovo with
> "plucky little Belgium" does not constitute "slander."  To say that the
> Kosovar struggle is being manipulated by the Western powers for propaganda
> purposes does not constitute a denial of the oppression that the Kosovars
> are experiencing.  However, it does question the usefulness of stridently
> calling for "self-determination for Kosovo!" at a time when the Big Powers
> are preparing for war against Serbia. 
> 
>       You say that my strategy means abandoning Albanian villages to
> destruction.  I have to admit the grim reality that it does, just as
> opposing Allied intervention in World War I would have meant abandoning
> Serbia and Belgium to the tender mercies of the Central Powers.  It's
> cruel, but it involves a calculation that a full-scale war would be even
> worse. 
> 
>       Of course I am in favor of working-class unity and the
> encouragement of proletarian trends in the former Yugoslavia.  It's just
> that you haven't answered my question as to what exactly this would entail
> for leftists living in the United States.  Forgive any possible melodrama
> on my part, but what is to be done?
> 
>       Comradely, 
> 
>       John Lacny
>