[PEN-L:4553] Re: RE: Protest against the Bombing

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

Max, for someone who normally has a great deal of acuity about 
the BS that is peddled by the US administration in support of 
domestic economic policies, I wonder why you accept so 
uncritically such crap when it applies in another part of the world 
where you have no direct knowledge.

From:                   [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Max Sawicky)
To:                     "Pen-L" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:                [PEN-L:4549] RE: Protest against the Bombing
Date sent:              Thu, 25 Mar 1999 22:18:49 -0800
Send reply to:          [EMAIL PROTECTED]


> What seems very possible, at minimum, is that the Serbs have committed
> atrocities against unarmed civilians, and will commit more if given the
> chance.  Does anybody doubt this? 

Damn rights I doubt this -- as does most of the reputable press in 
Europe.

 More generally, from time to time very
> bad guys are going to gain power in assorted parts of the world and use it
> to horrific effect.  No power on earth can prevent this altogether, but some
> of it can in principle be dealt with.

Yea, the Serbs were the ones that protected the Jews during the 
Second World War against the Germans, Croatians and Moslems.  
Now who were the bad guys?
> 
> The criticism that bombing "won't work" is clearly unsatisfactory and
> disingenuous, since it implies that bombing is not a sufficient military
> response.  If military action against military targets is justifiable,
> bombing them is too.
> 
Except, as in Iraq, the major people who are being killed are 
civilians or whose electricity, water, food supplies are being cut off 
causing death and impoverishment to the women and children who 
were never in danger before.

> We are used to seeing these conflicts in terms of class strugle, in a
> bipolar international context, if you'll pardon the foreign relations-speak.
> But today the U.S. is a lone hegemon.  It doesn't need to conquer
> Yugoslavia.  Often these situations are more complicated than class
> relations would imply.  Sometimes the explanation for an intervention could
> be so trivial as to defy the gravity of the act; Grenada comes to mind.
 
Then pray tell why US is bombing Yugoslavia?

> 
> Contorted efforts to explain interventions in terms of some base economic
> motive can draw us further from the basic moral truth of a situation:  who
> is mostly right, and who mostly wrong?  Over the past few days I've heard
> raised "military keynesianism," testing military hardware, control of
> pipeline routes, the need to destroy capital in order keep the economic
> system humming, and other foolishness.  Typically in situations like these
> there can be many reasons for intervention, some crack-brained,

(on this I can definitely agree)

 others not,
> as well as purely political, domestic circumstances utterly without economic
> connotations.  But in any case, the existence of bad reasons for an
> intervention does not preclude the possibility of good ones.
> 

Name One?

> The fundamental question is whether the lives of many innocent people are
> under immediate, deadly threat at the hands of the Serbs.

What evidence do you have that one "innocent" (as opposed to 
KLA terrorist soldier's) live is under "immediate, dealdly threat"?

  The uselessness
> of much of the argument I've seen lies in its neglect of this issue, or even
> a forthright rejection of it out of wayward principle.  In so doing, the
> moral high ground is conceded to the Administration and left consigns itself
> to the political wilderness of the Ethically Confused.  

Are you talking about yourself?

We are thrown back
> on a more-or-less dishonest argument about effectiveness, or even
> neo-Kissingerian arguments about staying out of sovereign states' internal
> affairs.  Of course, we should understand why the GOP is soft on
> intervention; they are the party that officially doesn't give a shit.
> 
> Here's a thought experiment.  Imagine a debate on whether the left should
> support the response of a U.S., bursting with imperial ambition, to
> Krystalnacht or to the Japanese militarists' rape of Nanking.  Think of all
> the bad reasons why FDR would be interested in such a response, but consider
> also the

" real facts"

What real facts?  All you have got is propaganda from the US 
military and state department, the same that brought you 
Nicaragua, Panama, Chile, Columbia and all those other attempts 
to justify genocide.

 of the situations, the consequences of the U.S.
> abstaining, and the consequences of the U.S. intervening.
> 
> If you think history would have turned out better in the absence of U.S.
> intervention, you would be consistent in automatically condemning U.S.
> intervention in Haiti, Somalia, Kuwait, 

Yea, exactly.  If the US hadn't 'intervened' in Bosnia there wouldn't 
have been a war, and the country would still be together as a 
Swiss-type canton federation.  IT WAS THE US THAT NIXED A 
PEACEFUL SOLUTION OF THE BOSNIAN CRISIS JUST AS IT IS 
ATTEMPTING TO NIX A PEACEFUL SOLUTION TO THE SERBIA 
CRISIS.

Bosnia, and now Kosovo.  In other
> words, you would be a Trot or a pacifist.  Fine.  Some of my best friends,
> etc. etc.  But if such an implication makes you uncomfortable, then you
> ought to be uneasy about uncritical support for a politics that abandons the
> Muslims in Kosovo to the Serbs.
> 
> "Stop the bombing" is pretty uncritical.  It serves Slobodan Whatzis-name,

his name is Milosevic and, in Serbian politics, is a relative 
moderate -- in America his equivilent would be Bill Clinton which, I 
must admit is hardly anything to recomment him.  On the other 
hand, the US seems to prefer those Serbian politicians who are 
equivalent to Buchanan, the Newt, and others to the right -- 
particularly those who are racist.


> pure and simple.  Interventionist situations are diverse, I would suggest,
> not all one thing.  They deserve to be sorted out.  We ought to be
> uncomfortable with uncritical support for either side, since both are
> suspect in their own ways.  But one mark in favor of Blair and Clinton is
> that there is little reason to suspect a desire on their part to go into the
> Balkans and arbitrarily try to massacre any particular local population.

Then why are they doing it?

> They pursue economic subjugation, but we can confidently predict that
> outcome no matter who wins this struggle.
> 
> No revolutionary vision is sufficiently compelling to justify abandoning a
> people to genocide. 

But unfortunately, you are.  If the KLA win with US support in 
Kosovo, you will see the genocide of Serbs in Kosovo and, I would 
be willing to bet, in the not too distant future in at least parts of  
Macedonia.  If their are any Jews left in these areas, they will also 
be past history.

 If you don't think that is at issue, that's an argument
> but I haven't heard anyone make it yet.  Otherwise, I'd say the revolution
> can wait.  It's likely to in any event.
> 
> mbs
> 
I am reminded in this debate about the collapse of the left in the 
first world war.  Nationalisms overcame any belief in the 
commonweal of the working class -- so working class fought 
working class to the benefit of the arms makers and capital.  And 
here we have it again.  The US working class screaming for the 
blood of the Serbs, for the benefit of capital.  What a sad sight!