-Caveat Lector- Bombin' Bill going mano a mano against Sadistic Slobo: we like that By Barbara Ehrenreich Thursday April 8, 1999 A round of applause, please, for the Serbian people. No matter how often they're pounded with bombs and told their leader is 'Hitler' incarnate, none of them seems to be launching impeachment proceedings. Instead, they mock us on CNN by holding up placards saying: 'Sorry, we didn't know it [the downed US plane] was invisible.' Or they gather in Belgrade for patriotic rock concerts featuring some of the very same performers who, only three years ago, were busily rocking against Milosevic. In an instructive contrast to Nato, which fights only when the weather is agreeable and preferably after all anti-aircraft installations have been demolished - the Serb civilians even don bulls-eyes and form human chains over vulnerable bridges. Confronted with this extraordinary surge of Serbian solidarity, Nato spokesman Jamie Shea opined that they'll get over it soon enough. A follow-up question, if you don't mind, Mr Shea: if the Serbs are still smarting from their defeat at the battle of Kosovo more than 600 years ago, what makes you think they're going to forget the bombings of Belgrade, Novi Sad and Aleksinac in a couple of weeks? The historical analogies are far from encouraging. When the Luftwaffe bombed London, you may recall that the English failed to rise up against Winston Churchill. Similarly, the obsessive bombing of Iraq by the United States has yet to produce a mighty pro-democracy, anti-Saddam, movement on the ground. In fact, persecution - real or perceived - is the very seedbed of nationalist enthusiasm. Observe how the Australians still get misty-eyed over the battle of Gallipoli, at which they were soundly whipped. You don't have to read Serbo-Croatian to understand what the Serb rockers and demonstrators are trying to tell us: namely, that there's more than one person in Serbia. But the Nato assault has so far been conducted against a single individual, just as the US likes to imagine that Iraq contains only one occupant, Saddam Hussein. It's the one-man theory of the nation state, and its effect is to transform war into an S&M psychodrama: now that we've degraded 'his' infrastructure and knocked out 'his' supply lines, will he finally break? Will he cry uncle? No one in Nato seems to have realised that when Milosevic looks out of his window, he doesn't just see mangled bridges and smashed ministries, he sees the same militant crowds that we do. Imagine the warm feeling it must give him to know that this time the crowds aren't calling for him to be ousted, they're hailing him as the saviour of his country. The one-man theory of the nation state undoubtedly has its charms. For one thing, it eliminates the psychological imponderable that is nationalism, which can be ignored while we concentrate on the individual psychopathology of a Slobodan or a Saddam. It furthermore eases any guilt occasioned by civilian casualties, since those civilians never fully existed in the first place. Finally, it restores the lost glories of the days of individual combat, when brave men rode out on horseback to joust with the other side's warrior heroes, while the foot soldiers fell back in awe. Which would you rather watch on TV: Nato vs the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, or Bombin' Bill going mano a mano against the Sadistic Slobo? The alternative, multi-person, theory of the state is not only conceptually more challenging, it would require an entirely different approach to conflict. You'd start, not with bombs, but with an information blitz, aimed at an entire population. If, for example, the Serb people think the Kosovans are fleeing Nato bombs, not Serbian forces, why not deluge them with faxes and e-mails? Maybe an information war wouldn't work, but with a literate, PC-possessing population, there's no excuse for not giving it a try. Next, you'd bend over backwards not to injure a single Serbian civilian, even if this means passing on a tempting downtown target or two. If peace is the aim, then the peacekeeper's rule should be the same as the medical professional's: first, do no harm. If all this sounds disgustingly wimpy, bear in mind that the current Nato strategy seems designed to turn the children in Belgrade bomb shelters into tomorrow's international terrorist menace. In the end, of course, we bomb because bombing is what we know how to do. But here another historical analogy may apply: in the Hundred Years war, the French knights tried to battle English longbowmen by charging them, on horseback, in the usual knightly fashion. Again and again - at Crecy and through Agincourt - the French knights charged very nicely indeed, and were duly slaughtered by English arrows. So yes, Nato does a commendable job of bombing. Now let's see it try to accomplish something useful. • Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of Blood Rites: Origins And History Of The Passion Of War, published by Virgo DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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