201. uzmakk - June 27, 1999 - 8:50 AM PT
Since the evil deed:-)of)-: Empire has been done, the conversation on this thread has become very interesting.
202. bottomfdr - June 27, 1999 - 11:39 AM PT
It looks like this thread has pretty well petered out. NATO accomplished what it started out to do and has obviated the argument on this thread. However, there is still a hot argument going on in the New York Time's Forum. The difference is that it's not nearly so exclusive as the Fray, not so clubby.
203. colossus - June 27, 1999 - 11:55 AM PT
Message #197 I don't disagree AU. If the US had not intervened, certainly France and Britain would not have been able to stop the Red Tide, though France and Britain and Germany might have (interesting what if?)
As a matter of Soviet policy, moreover, Stalin was committed to the spread of Revolution via war, via force of arms - that was a major objective of the Purges beginning in 1928. Stalin fancied himself a Russian Tsar.
My only point was this was never a primary objective of Soviet arms in WWII. First survival, then destruction of the German war machine, which, after Kursk in July '43 was, more or less a certainty.
As JR has pointed out, even with the help of D-Day, the Reds were a thoroughly exhausted force at the end of the war. Divisions were 1500 men! Further, without US intervention in the war, it could be argued that Germany might have prevailed because the Reds wouldn't have sufficient materiel and logistics to prevail as well as they did.
So the what if game is interesting but the Red Menace gloss, decidedly less so when you focus on what was really happening, not what Republican "commies at Yalta" morons would have you think the reality was. The reality, for Russians, was a) clear the Rodina - 1944 b) Kill Germans c) advance as far West as possible.
204. colossus - June 27, 1999 - 12:09 PM PT
AU:
"An unexpected benefit of Kosova:"
If you think that was unexpected, you do have very low
expectations indeed.
Not my expectation for as I stated on March 25, NATO power was the overriding objective for me.
Perhaps NATO leaders thought the same. I kinda doubt it though. Maybe.
"NATO's "power" is almost entirely unrealized and most of
it is thousands of miles away in the United States. The
effort to "take on" the Russians would be a thousand times
that of Serbia, require months to years of very public
preparation and act to unify the Russians like nothing else
could. No where in the west can the will be found to do
such a thing. Without will, there is no power."
Kosova was Nato's first actual op. I count 50 years of totally "unrealized" power. As for the Russians, when they can pacify Chechnya and afford to pay their troops, maybe we could worry for indeed as you say, the Russians have no will nor do they have any power.
Look, I am in the middle of Guderian's "Panzer Leader" and need no Neitzchean lectures on the will to power. But everything is relative.
No country in Europe has the stomach for serious blood letting. Thus, our performance in Kosova is as powerful as a Panzer Schwerpunkt, in fact its more powerful. For if no nation can muster the will to fight, how much more powerful is an alliance that can do so with minimal loss?
Saletan was right - even Hitler did not enjoy such power.
205. uzmakk - June 27, 1999 - 12:48 PM PT
Message #202 Btmfeeder:
A large tear formed in the left hand corner of my right hand eye.
206. pellenilsson - June 27, 1999 - 12:52 PM PT
Aunaturel
"Compared to the Eastern front, the western front was
almost unpopulated by German soldiers. In '43 Hitler had
at most a half million troops, mostly ill trained and aged
Volksgrenadiers, in the west."
But the offensive in the Ardennes?
207. AuNaturel - June 27, 1999 - 10:09 PM PT
"But the offensive in the Ardennes?"
Was a indeed big battle and a big mistake. Model and Jodl both pleaded with Hitler not to try it. They wanted to concentrate the troops in the east against Russia. (There were a lot of Germans who had desperately wanted to surrender to the US before the Soviets set foot on German soil.)
The Battle of the Bulge was far and away the largest battle on the Western front and lasted from December 16, 1944 to January 28, 1945. A total of 600,000 Germans participated, a mixture of Volksgrenadiers and elite Panzer units. Even had some SS participation. In the end they suffered 100,000 killed wounded and captured.
Contrast this with Stalingrad ('42-'43) where Germany lost a *million* men captured and 150,000 dead. (Of the captured men, only 5,000 were returned at war's end.) Stalingrad was one of several eastern front clashes that killed over 100,000 Germans outright.
Both battles were symptoms of Hitler's growing madness.
208. colossus - June 28, 1999 - 12:36 PM PT
To all, especially Rosetta Stone who is now in the Home Country assisting Slerb refugee relief, a HAPPY VIDOV DAN!!!!
Yes today is the Holiest of Holy Days for the Beasts of the Balkans. Vidov Dan, the 610th commemoration of the crushing victory of the Turks over the hapless and pig like Serb people at Kosova Polje.
Happy Vidov Dan, the holiday that reminds Slerbs every year of their inferiority; the fact that they are perpetual losers, and the fact that the entire world hates them.
Happy Day!!!!!
209. colossus - June 28, 1999 - 1:24 PM PT
"If America wasn't here, I'd be dead. The Serbs would have killed me."
Bosnian Muslim - MSNBC - 6/27/99
210. colossus - June 28, 1999 - 1:27 PM PT
Pelle -
To compare the Battle of the Bulge with any major offensive on the Eastern Front is to reveal that you are a Swede whose relatives were not members of SS Panzer Div Viking.
211. colossus - June 28, 1999 - 1:27 PM PT
Its Vidov Dan and I WANT ROSIE!!!!
212. colossus - June 29, 1999 - 5:56 PM PT
The Post reports a very gray Vidov Dan at Ole Kosova Polje. Some encouraging signs that some Serbs are not in denial:
"This [anniversary] differs from previous ones," Patriarch Pavle, head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, said in a statement today. "There will be no hypocrisy in it, [and] in its celebration the godless leaders of our people will take no part."
"Kosovo is almost lost," said Pavic Milorad, as he sat drinking beer at the 1389 Restaurant in the village of Gracanica -- a few miles from the battlefield in Kosovo Polje, where the Serbs were defeated by the Ottoman Turks 610 years ago. "Milosevic used us."
Milorad said he is awakening painfully to the price Kosovo Serbs have paid for Belgrade's policies. "I have regrets that I didn't speak against what was done," he said, adding that he feels trapped within the small Serbian enclave in Gracanica. "I want to stay -- if I can."
"Church leaders acknowledged that the Belgrade authorities had conducted a vicious campaign of forced deportation and murder of ethnic Albanians in the past three months. "The evil and suffering which the Albanian people endured in Kosovo was characterized as a product of the undemocratic regime of Slobodan Milosevic, and it is surely true," said Artemije, bishop of Raska and Prizren. "The Serbian Orthodox Church has officially demanded the resignation of Milosevic, not because he lost his war but because he made war."
213. ycmeehan - June 29, 1999 - 7:16 PM PT
Colossus,
The beginning of the end, you think?
214. RosettaStone - June 29, 1999 - 7:28 PM PT
Why ask Jexster? He's been wrong on almost every single aspect of this story.
215. EricCartman1 - June 29, 1999 - 9:09 PM PT
This heartwarming article from the AP wire tends to make one rethink our motives and objectives in Kosovo. What sort of people are we protecting and repatriating, that would rape & murder a mentally-ill woman, and steal wheelchairs from 90-year-old people so they can sleep in their own urine? They're not a damn bit better than the Serb paramilitary animals we just chased out for them. Fucking bastards.
Fuck 'em all. Maybe the Serbs and Albanians deserve each other.
216. ycmeehan - June 30, 1999 - 8:35 AM PT
Eric,
Where exactly is that article in the AP wire link?
I can't find. I want to read it.
217. EricCartman1 - June 30, 1999 - 6:43 PM PT
yc:
Didn't the link work? For some reason, links aren't working on my PC, so I can't test it. The AP site is www.ap.org, then click on "Wire". There's a section on Kosovo stories in there. The article was from 6/27 or 6/28, and it was by Ellen Knickmeyer. I can't recall the exact headline, but the article was about Albanians terrorizing Serbian women and elderly, in revenge.
218. ycmeehan - July 1, 1999 - 7:03 AM PT
Eric,
Thank you
219. colossus - July 2, 1999 - 9:30 AM PT
Serbs in Denial (Again) - See Themselves As Victims (Again) [LaTime]
This is a paranoid, a psychotic, a bestial people. Have I said that before?
220. RosettaStone - July 2, 1999 - 9:39 AM PT
So many times, that no one ever reads this thread anymore.
Admit it, NAT-ZIO was wrong to get involved in the Balkan Civil War, and it will cost $40 billion U.S. tax dollars to raise the Russian flag over Pristina's airport.
221. Wombat - July 2, 1999 - 10:48 AM PT
Rosetta:
I wonder how you sleep at night, given the extent of Serbian atrocities that are coming to light in Kosovo.
222. colossus - July 2, 1999 - 12:53 PM PT
The pathetic dream of a Greater Serbia is dead. This nightmare resulted in 2 world and 5 regional wars in this century.
May the Dreams of This Pig People - Rest in Hell (NyTimes)
223. colossus - July 2, 1999 - 12:58 PM PT
Wombat,
I say "f*ck Rosetta Stone" and the Serb pig she rode in on.
224. JJBiener - July 2, 1999 - 1:13 PM PT
Wombat - You act as if the Serbians were the sole perpetrators of atrocities in Kosovo. Why do the ethnic Albanians get a pass for all of their misdeeds?
225. arkymalarky - July 2, 1999 - 1:38 PM PT
They pale in comparison to what the Serbs did, and the fact that that type of behavior on the part of any belligerent, including Americans, is abhorrent and inexcusable does not change what happened at the hands of the Serbs in Kosovo or the fact that under NATO and Russian supervision atrocities on both sides have been drastically minimized if not stopped altogether. NATO was right to intervene, as the results of their actions and the conditions they have found in Kosovo clearly show, and it's a terrible tragedy that they didn't prevail sooner and prevent more atrocities from occurring in Kosovo, just as it's a tragedy that we don't intervene where there is suffering due to internal conflict in other parts of the world less vital to NATO and the Western World's interests.
226. colossus - July 2, 1999 - 1:40 PM PT
Rose,
Glad you are back from your Vidov Dan "Holy" day!
Thanks to you, I have learned to destest Serbs!
"Throughout Kosovo, the Albanians' flag flutters on smashed factories and city halls, hoisted there by the young men of the K.L.A. From time to time, NATO patrols pass beneath the flags.
Such scenes could scarcely be more fantastically remote from the nationalist vision offered by Milosevic a decade ago when he came to Kosovo's Field of Blackbirds -- scene of a Serbian defeat by the Turks in 1389 -- to proclaim a glorious Serbian future, one in which the Serbs -- no longer "humiliated" -- would do battle for their "state, national and spiritual integrity."
May an Albanian *enjoy* YOUR children for a change!
227. Wombat - July 2, 1999 - 2:02 PM PT
JJ:
My feelings toward reports of Albanian atrocities are ambiguous (setting aside the fact that the Albanians have a long way to go before they come close to matching what the Serbs have done).
I feel about as sorry for the Serbs in Kosovo as I would for German and Japanese citizens who lost everything in WWII, or for those Hutus who fled Rwanda after their side lost.
I hope that NATO will work quickly to restore order in areas where Serbs and Albanians are in proximity. I suspect that at best there will be a de facto partition of Kosovo, and at worst no Serbs will remain. Ironic, when you consider that most Serbs wanted no Albanians to remain in Kosovo.
228. Trialshark - July 2, 1999 - 2:22 PM PT
jex --
Thanks for the link to the LA Times story. It seems as though the Serbs have a long way to go before they come to grips with the reality of their nation's guilt.
I wonder whether, had Germany been occupied and forced to stop killing Jews following Kristalnacht, the German people would have been equally defiant?
229. joezan - July 2, 1999 - 3:40 PM PT
221. Wombat - July 2, 1999 - 10:48 AM PT
Rosetta:
"I wonder how you sleep at night, given the extent of Serbian atrocities that are coming to light in Kosovo."
Wombat...have you not seen the news? Did you not see Nato and US reps back-tracking since early yesterday?
It seems there was some, ahem....over-estimation in the numbers.
>3-6,000 Kosovars killed. NOT "over 100,000", as the Prez is on record as claiming.
>About 7,000 of those who remained in Kosovo were displaced. NOT "possibly more than 1,000,000" as the Prez has also claimed.
>No "crippling", or even "significant degrading" of the Serb military, as has been reported by NATO and US commanders, as the hundreds of tanks, APC's, AAA, etc, seen retreating into Yugoland are testament to (not to mention all the decoy tanks and artillary that have been found - looks like Slobo pulled a Saddam).
So...how does this save NATO's credibility?
How many people in this country who supported this war to "stop the genocide", will now be willing to write this off as just some kind of mistake?
And how can the Clinton administration justify the apathy and outright negligence they've shown with regard to the Chinese stealing all of our military secrets - a REAL, immediate threat to our national security - in the face of what is proving to have been just another little ethnic squabble in the Balkans?
230. colossus - July 2, 1999 - 6:32 PM PT
TS - Excellent point in Message #228. The parallels between what happened during Kristalnacht and Kosova '99 are scary indeed. And the worst of it - the Serb national mentality - is eerily similar to the German pre-WWII.
Wouldn't you agree that this is an evil pig race Pelle, in the New Testament sense that Jesus cast out demons who went into pigs that is?
231. colossus - July 2, 1999 - 6:34 PM PT
O give me a home
Where no Slerb pigs do roam....
This just in!
"KOSOVO POLJE, Kosovo -- Hundreds of Serbs now huddle at the Patriarchate of Pec, the old Serbian church with frescoes that speak of the great flowering of medieval Serbian civilization.
[Laughter!]
Their cars are lined up, ready to leave for good if and when Italian NATO forces in Pec are ready to escort them out.
"We have been here for 700 years, and now NATO bombs and the Albanians have driven us out," said Dragutin Martinovic, the director of a factory. And what of the rampage against Albanians' homes? "All the homes were destroyed by NATO bombs," Martinovic said. "We did nothing."
[Stinking pig farming liar!]
There is a terrible sadness in the sight of all these Serbs slumped over old stones on the grounds of their church, their bundles beside them, awaiting some new migration in the long Serbian history of migrations.
More than 300 years ago, in 1689, Patriarch Arsenije led tens of thousands of Serbs north and west from Pec to escape the Turks in a flight that has become part of Serbian myth. "
BOO-HOO! Just don't "migrate" here. We have enough Serbians in this country.already.
Right Rose?
232. TrialShark - July 2, 1999 - 8:24 PM PT
joe --
So you're saying that the bombing campaign prevented the "humanitarian disaster" the Republicans have been prattling on about, *and* inflicted minimal Serbian casualties?
Seems like you're a bigger admirer of the Commander-in-Chief than I'd realized. [g]
233. TrialShark - July 2, 1999 - 8:26 PM PT
jex --
I don't know that the Serbs are inherently evil, any more than the Germans were. They've been doing evil things, though, I'll give them that.
234. joezan - July 2, 1999 - 8:46 PM PT
Shark:
The Republicans were suckers for the line they were being fed by the US and NATO commanders - and by the Clinton Admin.
Nothing to admire there.
235. TrialShark - July 2, 1999 - 9:11 PM PT
joe --
Darn those eeeevil NATO commanders. How dare they bamboozle those dewy-eyed innocent Republicans like that!
BTW, in keeping with the spirit of your posts: I hear that from 1933-1945, only five Jews died in all of Germany and the Axis-occupied countries. And they died in a car accident.
236. joezan - July 2, 1999 - 9:55 PM PT
Shark:
The spirit of my posts?
No - the figures I've quoted above are facts - reported by a contrite (but awfully defensive) DOD flunky.
Chew on that.
Listen. Clinton and NATO got themselves so far into this mess, that when it was too late to get out, they made up a genocide out of whole cloth - to "save NATO's credibility".
Now, just think about this: What's going to happen the next time something pops off in some obscure little country? And what if next time there really is some serious shit going on? How much credibility do you think NATO and the US have brought to the bank with this little skirmish?
Mark my words. This is the beginning of the end of NATO.
They must be partying hard over at the U.N.
237. RosettaStone - July 4, 1999 - 7:34 AM PT
Are the chickens coming home to roost?
Let's be consistent, or, should we cluster bomb Israeli civilians and their hospitals if they don't return exiled Palestinians to their homeland, similar to the Albanians in Kosovo?
Israelis reacted with shock and alarm on Friday to comments by President Clinton in favor of Arab refugees having the right to return to home within Israel's borders.
Clinton, speaking in a joint press conference with Hosni Musbarak, told reporters on Thursday that he "would like it if the Palestinian people left free and were free to live wherever they like." Clinton also repeated his support for Palestinians having their own home but again refrained from calling for a Palestinian state.
"President Clinton's stance on the matter of the right of return, as it might be understood from his remarks yesterday in Washington is unacceptable," said a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ehud Barak.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and their descendants are in neighboring Arab countries--especially Jordan and Lebanon--after fleeing their homes in 1948 and in 1967.
Some elderly refugees still carry keys on their necks. Clinton's remark could boost their hopes of returning to their former homes and villages.
238. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:28 AM PT
The Serbian Orthodox Church: A Corrupt and Bestial Church for a Corrupt and Bestial People {NyT}
239. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:31 AM PT
OOOPS!
That link was to the article on the Corrupt and Cowardly Chicken George Bush and his defense of the Texas Coast during the Vietnam War.
Here's The Pig Church of the Pig People
240. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:36 AM PT
Message #237
Yes Rosie, let's be consistent. Let's kill all the Serbs we can and have done with those animals!
Trial,
No people is inherently evil, none is inherently good. They can be physically attractive (Germans) or incredibly ugly (Serbs) but that's something else.
Its clear to me, however, that the Serbs are infected, as a people and as a nation, with hatred, brutality and denial when it comes to their neighbors, especially Moslem ones.
The only way to stamp that out is to force Serbia to undergo a national character purge much like happened to the Germans and the Japanese.
241. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:40 AM PT
"
The Orthodox Church is both bound by
and responsible for the notion that
wherever Serbs live and bury their
dead should be part of Serbia."
Thus there is no such thing as a Serbian-American as if Rosetta Stone weren't proof enough!
242. Wombat - July 4, 1999 - 9:14 PM PT
Of course, Rosie: Let's just remember that is was not the Israelis who were threatening to drive the Palestinians "into the sea" in 1948 and 1967. You are obviously too stupid, or more interested in scoring inane points, to see the difference.
243. Wombat - July 4, 1999 - 9:15 PM PT
Of course, Rosie: Let's just remember that is was not the Israelis who were threatening to drive the Palestinians "into the sea" in 1948 and 1967. You are obviously too stupid, or more interested in scoring inane points, to see the difference.
244. Wombat - July 4, 1999 - 9:15 PM PT
Of course, Rosie: Let's just remember that is was not the Israelis who were threatening to drive the Palestinians "into the sea" in 1948 and 1967. You are obviously too stupid, or more interested in scoring inane points, to see the difference.
245. TrialShark - July 5, 1999 - 11:18 AM PT
Wombat --
Go easy on Rosie, okay? He's just pissed because his side lost the war.
246. colossus - July 5, 1999 - 1:05 PM PT
To: Pelle and others infected with Political Correctness
ABC News interviewed a hard-bitten forensic expert from Scotland Yard last night.
"I've seen a lot of stuff in my day but never anything like this. There's no other word for it - its pure evil."
Like I've said - the Serb nation is a nation of evil.
247. colossus - July 5, 1999 - 1:09 PM PT
Trial:
Wombat's been TOO easy on Rose.
RosettaStone is not simply a loser. She's a Serb and a traitor. She and her entire family should be deported.
248. RosettaStone - July 5, 1999 - 4:16 PM PT
Just saw video of Russian planes landing at their airport in Pristina. It reminds me of the 1948 Berlin airlift, in reverse.
Are the British still saying they don't need the airport and will build their own. LOL
Speaking of the limeys, they killed two Albanian troublemakers yesterday. I guess they learned something from their experience in Belfast shooting Irish civilians.
249. RosettaStone - July 6, 1999 - 4:18 AM PT
Here are some of the consequences of an immoral, dirty air war where civilians were the targets and the truth was cluster-bombed:
For the first time since Jimmy Carter was president, the U.S. Air Force can't find enough recruits to fill its enlisted ranks.
Rep. Solomon Ortiz (D-TX) says readiness could be jeopardized if the shortages aren't reversed and he suggested that Congress might have to start drafting people to go into the military.
"If this trend continues, we're going to very seriously look at the draft, at reviving the draft again," he said.
I hope that happens since a citizen army, not a mercenary one like we have now, will question operations like our illegal occupation of Kosovo in the Balkan Civil War.
250. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:04 AM PT
The Mayor of Novi Sad says the Slerbs will dump Slobo if
"The West Shows it Doesn't Hate Serbs"
Don't hold your breath Mister Mayor. The West DOES hate you.
251. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:05 AM PT
Message #249
Rosie are you high or just Serb?
252. Wombat - July 6, 1999 - 8:13 AM PT
Rosie:
And all of this happened as a result of the operations against Serbia, as opposed to being a continuing trend in the US armed forces. Idiot.
253. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:17 AM PT
Why the US fliers proudly bombed Serbia:
"Monday, Superintendent Bunn stood quietly to the rear of the ceremony with a few of his team members and summed up his findings briefly.
"There were 60 bodies, all shot," he said. "There were seven children under 12, including a 4-year-old. There were three women, one over 60. They were killed in individual little groups along the river. It was all quite deliberate."
254. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:18 AM PT
DEPORT ROSETTA STONE!
255. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:47 AM PT
Ognjen Pribicevic, a strategist with the opposition Serbian Renewal Movement, was more straightforward: "We can't rebuild the country with
shovels and slogans. We need foreign money and investment. Lots of it. The longer we remain in a cage, the worse for us."
Wild beasts belong in cages.
256. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 12:46 PM PT
IVAN GO HOME!
Russian General wished to meet with the KLA
Rahovec, July 6 (Kosovapress)
A Russian general, accompanied by high level officials sought to meet with the commander of the KLA's 124th Brigade located in Pashtriku. The Russians were ready to place a battalion in Rahovec and Prizren.
Ismet Tara, vice commander of the 124th Brigade, responded to the request by saying the people of the area do not accept the deployment of Russian troops in their country.
Local inhabitants have had recent run-ins with Russian troops, in particular in Rahovec, as they served as volunteers in the Serb offensive, killing alongside Serb soldiers, hundreds of locals. Tara informed the Russian delegation that the population will identify the Russian Battalion proposed to enter the region as the same as Serb soldiers and are therefore not welcome. Tara also said that without the presence of German authorities there will not be any official meeting between the KLA and the Russians.
During this meeting, it was suspected that one of the officers who accompanied the Russian General was actually a Serb officer.
257. EricCartman1 - July 6, 1999 - 6:55 PM PT
Stone:
The Air Force is experiencing a shortage of pilots because they've been jumping ship to commercial airlines, to make far more money. This has been going on for years. Don't be so obtuse.
Although I did like the crack about the Limeys using the Irish as target practice. As a fellow Irishman, I hear ya. To be fair, though, most reports indicate that the British, Americans, and Germans have been the most effective at preventing Albanian retribution on the few remaining Kosovar Serbs. Naturally, the French and Italians have mostly stood idly by, while yet more houses are burned down, more mentally ill women are raped and murdered, more crippled 90-year-olds are beaten and have their wheelchairs stolen. Yes, let's let the revenge killings continue for *another* 600 years.
Contrary to Colossus' pronouncements, it seems we have merely saved one group of "wild beasts" from another. To make matters even less moral, some of the NATO peacekeepers are Turkish. Nice to see our good customers, the Turks, can spare a few boys from THEIR OWN ethnic cleansing. Latest Kurdish casualty count over the last 11 years: 37,000 dead (mostly Kurdish), 3500 villages shelled and/or razed, 2-3 million refugees (more than double even the most outlandish NATO exaggerations). Several dozen Turkish reporters who have had the utter nerve to chronicle these atrocities are rotting away in the proverbial Turkish prison even as we speak. It's systematic, it's purposeful, it involves repressing the media, and it's fucking immoral. Same as Slobo, except these guys are OUR FRIENDS! Slobo's biggest mistake, I wager, was not buying American.
Pure evil, folks. And we Amurkins have a moral imperative to put a stop to it. Colossus sez so.
258. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 7:26 PM PT
"Yes, let's let the revenge killings
continue for *another* 600 years."
The idiot doesn't know what he is talking about - again. The myth of the 600 year war is just that. The scattered killings by Albanians are obviously understandable and for the most part, under control.
As for the Kurds....
let the idiot Cartman write his chico congressthing.
259. bottomfdr - July 6, 1999 - 7:27 PM PT
Cartman: It's pure evil, but from what I've read recently, the majority of Kurds living in Turkery do so in peace and are well integrated into Turkish society. So how bad is it really? It certainly doesn't seem to be anything like what happened in Yugoslavia.
260. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 7:37 PM PT
bttm:
Cartman is pure ignorance, about as boring as a Velveeta on White from Chez Chico. You must realize that
a) she doesn't know a damn thing about the Balkans, the Kurds, the Rwandans, the Sudanese
b) she doesn't give a damn about them either
She hates Bill Clinton and loves Noam Chomsky.
Cartman did too much acid as a little girl.
261. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 7:40 PM PT
Anti Slobby Dan Riots Spread
262. EricCartman1 - July 6, 1999 - 7:40 PM PT
Colossus:
So these people *haven't* been at each others' throats for centuries?
The media misinforming the proletariat. Imagine that!
"As for the Kurds....
let the idiot Cartman write his chico congressthing."
No, I'm writing *you*, fool. You want to be moral? You want to get rid of "wild beasts"? You want to rant about the ethnic injustices of the world? Fine, here's your chance. Turkey is MUCH more of an egregious example of EVERYTHING Milosevic has done -- massacres, shelling civilians, massive amounts of refugees, violent crackdowns on media attempting to bring this shit to light. With armaments purchased from the Good Old Moral US of A. The Turks are as bad, if not worse, than the Serbs. They have the dubious privilege of committing TWO ethnic cleansings this century (the first, of course, being the Armenians at the beginning of this century, which they deny to this very day).
And they're involved in PEACEKEEPING? Is your moral barometer so far off that you can't see the utter hypocrisy of that?
You are just as much of a partisan wacko as Stone. You don't *really* care about human life, you've picked your horse to back and that's that. You're willing to overlook any Albanian atrocity as "payback", even though many Serb atrocities were *also* payback. Besides, anyone with a lick of common sense (which certainly excludes you) realizes that any Serb civilians involved in the most recent atrocities have already gotten the fuck out of Dodge. So it's most likely that the returning Albanians are merely enacting their revenge on innocent civilians. Turnabout may be fair play, but do we want this to be over with, or not?
The fact that you are such a nut about the Wehrmacht merely underscores everything.
263. EricCartman1 - July 6, 1999 - 7:49 PM PT
Bottomfdr:
Some Kurds have been forcibly integrated into Turkish society. After all, when their villages were destroyed, they had to move somewhere, and many went to Istanbul or Ankara.
Again, though, the body count is higher than Kosovo, as is the refugee count. Turkey is still imprisoning journalists who dare write anything critical of Turkish policy wrt Kurds. All the elements of oppression that Milosevic perpetrated upon Kosovars have also been perpetrated on Kurds by the Turkish government. It's official policy, it's systematic, and it's been done largely with weapons they bought from us. And it'll probably resume if the Turks end up executing Ocalan. So it's a mistake to believe that the Kurdish situation is "over". It ain't over. You're just not seeing it on the front page (or barely *any* page).
So I ask you, if we're really so fucking horrified by a goverment violently oppressing its own people, why do we do or say *absolutely nothing* about Turkey. I'm not proposing that we go to war with them, mind you, but a truly *moral* government would do *something*, no?
Guess not. Too much money to be made selling them artillery.
264. EricCartman1 - July 6, 1999 - 7:53 PM PT
Aunt Bea Message #260:
Somehow I had a feeling you'd return to your true frothy form eventually. Like a drunken Liza Minelli, you never fail to disappoint; you can always be counted on to be a fuck-up.
"[Cartman] hates Bill Clinton and loves Noam Chomsky."
And you hate common sense and love Adolf Hitler. Sieg heil, mein grosse Scheisskopf!
265. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 7:59 PM PT
Message #262
As I said - cartman is an idiot.
266. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:01 PM PT
Poor Slobby Dan!
{Daily Telegraph}PRESIDENT CLINTON has ordered American government computer hackers to break into Slobodan Milosevic's foreign bank accounts and drain his hidden fortune as part of a clandestine CIA plan to overthrow the Yugoslav president, The Telegraph has learned.
267. colossus - July 6, 1999 - 8:13 PM PT
Yo Chico Chimp:
Why don't you go back to your Miss Fray Contest. The mentally challenged really should not mess with matters of substance.
268. EricCartman1 - July 6, 1999 - 8:32 PM PT
Aunt Bea:
"The mentally challenged really should not mess with matters of substance."
And yet you persist in cluttering up this thread with your inchoate rants and foamy rhetoric.
Can you be at least *marginally* specific in what you find disagreeable about my Message #262? After all, I really care what a mouth-breather like yourself thinks.
Maybe your feeble brain's just worn out from thinking up pick-up lines to try out on the "aggressive in-line skating" boys at the X Games this past weekend. No? Was it the "street luge" boys then?
Mach schnell, mein grosse Kartoffeln!
"Why don't you go back to your Miss Fray Contest?"
Because it's neck-deep in wonk shit right now, that's why. I'd rather hang out here, and see if I can push your buttons. Maybe you'll break down and explain why you're so morally inconsistent, and ideologically empty.
I doubt it, but anything's possible. The existence of J. Danforth Quayle, Secret Chimp, is proof of that.
269. AzureNW - July 6, 1999 - 8:46 PM PT
colossus, what the hell is your problem with femininity? If you never want to make love to a woman, you are certainly on the right tack.
270. AzureNW - July 6, 1999 - 8:48 PM PT
Just FYI and IMHO and so on.
Jeez. Are you clueless or gay?
271. EricCartman1 - July 6, 1999 - 8:55 PM PT
Azure:
I'm pretty certain that he's both.
272. AzureNW - July 6, 1999 - 8:59 PM PT
All of you guys should take a look at the way you use femininity as a universal insult. Half the population doesn't think it's funny, even if we smile indulgently when you do it. What the fuck do you mean by using my gender as
an insult? What is that?
273. AzureNW - July 6, 1999 - 9:00 PM PT
I've heard men say this shit in front of their
own daughters!
274. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 12:01 PM PT
:"What the fuck do you mean by using my gender as
an insult? What is that?"
It means that Cartman has an overabundance of female hormones. Makes her tend to hysteria.
275. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 12:05 PM PT
Slobo Under Seige {NyT}
276. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 12:32 PM PT
Rose 'n Cart, oft-slighted, most benighted, will cackle endlessly and hysterically about Kurds, Tibetans, Turks, Croats, Sudanese, Rwandans, Armenians, Palestinians, American Indians - in short anything but the topic at hand.
And so it is quite refreshing to read that the thousands have taken to the streets of the MotherLand in daily, illegal demonstrations seem to know what the hell is going on:
"They bombed us because our wrong politics are not in accord with the rest of the world," said Ljubise Maksimovic, 46, a railroad foreman."
277. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 12:56 PM PT
Oh Dear, Oh Rats, Oh Eric - 2,000,000 Dead in Sudan!
278. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 1:22 PM PT
Colossus:
Jesus H. Christ, after all this time, I would think that even you would understand what I'm getting at. Forget that you're so all-fired proud and secure in our absolute moral greatness, that we deigned to actually confront ONE of the TEN situations you mentioned (9 that you mentioned + the 1 at hand). No, let's set that aside for one brief moment.
My main point in relentlessly bringing up other current situations of governments violently and systematically oppressing ethnic minorities is not that we should go to war with Turkey over the Kurds, or nuke China over Tibet. It's that we actually ENABLE AND ENCOURAGE the monstrosities they have committed, and continue to commit.
Either we are a nation that is respectful of moral laws, and of the sanctity of all human life, or we are only when it is financially convenient.
If the proposition is "a", that we are respectful, then we do not sell weapons to Turkey, we do not politely act like they are doing no wrong, and we may even make their continued NATO membership contingent on reforming their policy, and acting like a civilized nation. But they buy a lot of weapons from us, and we want that big-ass pipeline to get our piece of Azeri oil, so we don't say a fucking word.
279. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 1:23 PM PT
(cont. to Colossus)
Same with China, which has pursued a violent and aggressive policy of ethnic cleansing for DECADES in Tibet. We "engage" them. We coddle them. Every year, we pretend to wring our moral hands over whether to continue MFN status or not, when it's a foregone conclusion. They take everything we give them, and continue to be the most anti-democratic and oppressive government on the face of the Earth. They're not going to fucking change, 'cause they don't really need to. And we don't really care, 'cause God forbid we should alienate the largest market in the world. That's a lot of fucking customers over there; no need to raise a fuss over a bunch of Tibetans who don't want to buy our shit anyway, right?
So you tell me, Jethro, who's morally equivocating here? It sure as hell isn't me.
280. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 1:24 PM PT
Finland Leads Massive EU Balkans' Stability Effort
281. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 1:31 PM PT
Cart:
What I find "disagreeable" about your Message #262 is that its argument is so freakin facile.
You've ranted about Sudan. You've ranted about Central America. You've ranted endlessly about the Kurds.
The facts wrt the violence are radically different. The threats to the peace are radically different. The military and geo-political situations are radically different. The domestic political situations are radicaly different. The practical ability of the US and Europe to affect the outcome are radically different.
The only point of comparison is killing and if that's to be the criteria God help us.
Europe and NATO are poised to integrate the Balkans into a European security arrangement in an area where Russia, a centuries old expanisionist power has sought political influence. (Dardanelles ring a bell?).
I can understand full well why you want to talk about everything BUT the Balkans.
282. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 1:40 PM PT
SUDAN -> "Is the conference ready to accept this report?" he asked, in a voice like an altar call. Amid the swell of answering applause, a Dinka woman stood and began to sing, her voice bell-clear. The back row picked up the chorus, and by the time the Nuer replied in song, the room was lit not only with slanting afternoon sunlight but with the glow of a unity that rose in the chest like hope.
"This," said the preacher who rose to close the session, "is the peace we have been calling for these many years."
Such was the arc of the covenant. The Wunlit Dinka-Nuer Covenant, signed the following afternoon, March 7, not only named the terms of the cease-fire, but called for its expansion to all of Sudan's aching south.
"The political movements that are fighting to liberate the Sudan, they didn't come from the blue," a conference organizer named John Luk reminded the delegates. "They didn't come from nowhere. They came from the people. I can't imagine anybody in the south, in any political grouping, that can afford to go against the wishes of our people if they are united."
]
A day later, another bull was tethered outside. Every one of the men circling it with spears had put his thumb print on the covenant. The words they kept repeating -- between dramatic, joyous leaps high in the air -- was a message for the animal to carry into the next world: Whoever breaks this peace they said, will be cursed."
EC,
Compare this peace process with that described in my link to the EU article in the Post and a related article on NATO's plans to integrate Bulgaria and Rumania.
If you STILL see a parallel between the Balkans and Sudan or the Balkans and Tibet or the Balkans and Kurdestan, I can't help you.
283. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 1:42 PM PT
Apologies for the ultra cheap shots (the cheap ones stand though:)
284. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 1:58 PM PT
"The facts wrt the violence are radically different."
Sure, one gov't (Serbia) kills largely in short-range combat, the other (Turkey) uses artillery and helicopters. China has used many of the "Serbian methods" in its terrorism in Tibet, incidentally. All are killing civilians, systematically and under gov't auspices. Dead is dead. What's your point?
"The threats to the peace are radically different."
Oh please. I fail to see how Serbia terrorizing its own province is a "threat to *the peace*". I assume that means that *the peace* in Europe is the only one that counts. By your logic, Tibet should be a real problem also, as China's hijinks there must threaten *the peace* between China and India. Is Serbia barbaric in its atrocities? Absolutely. Is Serbia an expansionist power? Extremely unlikely. So far, they haven't even been able to hold on to what was Yugoslavian territory just 10 years ago.
"The military and geo-political situations are radically different."
Yes. So what? Neither Serbia nor Turkey is something we can't handle.
"The domestic political situations are radically different."
To the extent that Kurds have been allowed (basically given no choice) to integrate into mainstream Turkish society, yes. But again, this has come at a large cost for them, at the hands of their own gov't. In fact, I wager even Iraq has had trouble keeping up with Turkey, wrt mistreatment of their respective Kurdish populations.
285. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 2:00 PM PT
(cont.)
"The practical ability of the US and Europe to affect the outcome are radically different."
Correct. It would have been INFINITELY EASIER for the US to halt Turkish repression. All we would have had to do was not sell them weapons, and exert diplomatic pressure. Made their continued NATO membership contingent upon them behaving. Much easier than the $50 billion boondoggle in the Balkans. No contest there.
"Europe and NATO are poised to integrate the Balkans into a European security arrangement in an area where Russia, a centuries old expanisionist power has sought political influence."
Sure, if the specific countries in question can pony up the $$$ to upgrade their individual forces to NATO standards (by buying equipment from us, of course). Have you been reading "Red Storm Rising" or something?
At any rate, Russia hasn't the money to be expansionist, and won't for at least a couple generations. They're flat fucking broke; they're not expanding anywhere.
"I can understand full well why you want to talk about everything BUT the Balkans."
I have, and will continue, to talk about the Balkans. I am merely interjecting relevant information to counteract your incessant back-slapping and noxious racism. You seem convinced that we do everything out of some sense of moral duty. I am pointing out that this is rarely, if ever, the case. Say we did it for money. Say we did it to expand NATO (ah, the "expansionist" argument again). Say we did it to get better proximity to protect our Azeri oil interests, should the need ever arise.
But don't say we did it 'cause we care. That's an industrial-strength load of horse shit, and we all know it.
286. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 2:24 PM PT
Zoran Djindjic, Serbian Democratic Party:
"In the last 10 years, four times Milosevic has sent the Serbian army into war with the tanks. And four times, Serbian refugees have come out in columns of tractors,"
287. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 2:30 PM PT
Message #284
As I said, you wish to talk about anything BUT the Balkans. Turkey's a member of NATO for a reason and that reason has to do with Russia. It has to do with Incirlik and Iraq. The US and NATO have not disregarded the Kurdish situation as you so facilely assume. Nor is the situation wrt Turkey and the Kurds as clear as you posit or the solution as easy. The Northern No-Fly zone which protects the Kurds from Iraqi gas is patrolled from Incirlik AFB Turkey.
You don't know what you are talking about but here we talk about the Balkans. Whether you think its a good idea to bomb Ankara or cut the Turks out of Nato is of little consequence to me because I don't think you have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.
If you wish to speak about Turkey, then ask Irv for a thread or do so on the International Thread.
288. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 2:42 PM PT
Now let's talk about the Balkans. We'll soon see why you do so little of it:
"I fail to see how Serbia terrorizing its own province is a "threat to *the peace*"."
800,000 Albanian refugees in Macedonia spreads violence and exacerbates relations between Greece and Turkey. The Serbs have started 4 wars in 10 years in a highly unstable area of Europe. Europe is committing 2.2 billion for police forces in the area to deal with problems caused by Serb expansionism. Europe thinks this is a real threat to the peace and a real humanitarian problem even if you do not.
These 4 wars are in essence the Third Balkan War in the last 100 or so years - all Serb caused.
Now you can prattle about boondoggles all you want. Bulgaria, Rumania, Hungary, Macedonia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia and in fact all Europe thinks the Serbs are a menace whether you do or not is quite beside the point.
289. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 2:53 PM PT
"I will continue to talk about the Balkans."
No you don't! I wish you'd start!
You NEVER talk about the Balkans without whining about some other god foresaken place in the same message.
You talk about Armenia. You talk about Tibet. You tried to talk about Rwanda but stopped that holy horseshit when someone pointed out what Rwanda was really all about and the fact that the US has taken the lead in peace there. You used to talk about Sudan.
The sad part is that when you engage in these other wild-ass digressions you are scamming us. You don't know what you are talking about wrt Sudan, Kurdestan, turkey, Iraq, Sudan or Tibet but because no one wishes to digress into irrelevancies with you, your tripe goes unchallenged.
That is why I suggest that you really don't want to talk about these other places. You never do so on the International Thread, only here. I don't think you care about any of them. All you want to do is change the subject and in so doing mask your ignorance of many subjects.
290. HardyHarHar - July 7, 1999 - 3:00 PM PT
Kosovo: After the Bombing
What happens next? Will the NATO peacekeeping be a success? What about the Russians?
Messages 239 - 248 out of 289
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
239. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:31 AM PT
OOOPS!
That link was to the article on the Corrupt and Cowardly Chicken George Bush and his defense of the Texas Coast during the Vietnam War.
Here's The Pig Church of the Pig People
240. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:36 AM PT
Message #237
Yes Rosie, let's be consistent. Let's kill all the Serbs we can and have done with those animals!
Trial,
No people is inherently evil, none is inherently good. They can be physically attractive (Germans) or incredibly ugly (Serbs) but that's something else.
Its clear to me, however, that the Serbs are infected, as a people and as a nation, with hatred, brutality and denial when it comes to their neighbors, especially Moslem ones.
The only way to stamp that out is to force Serbia to undergo a national character purge much like happened to the Germans and the Japanese.
241. colossus - July 4, 1999 - 9:40 AM PT
"
The Orthodox Church is both bound by
and responsible for the notion that
wherever Serbs live and bury their
dead should be part of Serbia."
Thus there is no such thing as a Serbian-American as if Rosetta Stone weren't proof enough!
242. Wombat - July 4, 1999 - 9:14 PM PT
Of course, Rosie: Let's just remember that is was not the Israelis who were threatening to drive the Palestinians "into the sea" in 1948 and 1967. You are obviously too stupid, or more interested in scoring inane points, to see the difference.
243. Wombat - July 4, 1999 - 9:15 PM PT
Of course, Rosie: Let's just remember that is was not the Israelis who were threatening to drive the Palestinians "into the sea" in 1948 and 1967. You
291. colossus - July 7, 1999 - 3:30 PM PT
KRALJEVO, Yugoslavia (AP) - Stranded far from their homeland in Serbia's back country, Kosovo Serbs who once were Slobodan Milosevic's biggest allies have turned angrily against their former patron.
Bitter and despairing, they blame the Yugoslav president for their panicky flight from home.
``If I could, I'd skin Milosevic alive, slowly,'' says Zivko Lalic, a refugee from the Kosovo village of Stupelj. ``He doesn't deserve a quick death. He sold us out - everything that happened is his fault.''
Kosovo Serbs were Milosevic's biggest supporters when he rose to power in 1987, using the plight of minority Serbs in the province for his nationalist drive which later triggered the breakup of Yugoslavia -
the worst carnage in Europe since World War II.
Tens of thousands of Kosovo Serbs have fled the province since NATO began deploying in June 12.
``Milosevic would gladly deport them all back to Kosovo'' and let them be NATO's headache, opposition Serb leader Zoran Zivkovic says. ``No state media ever showed the sad pictures of what
happened to these people.''
Serb authorities have rejected media requests to visit Kosovo Serb refugee centers and frequently turn back camera crews trying to film them.
But the 268 Kosovo Serbs living in a shabby school-turned-refugee center just outside Kraljevo, 110 miles south of Belgrade, were eager to talk to the journalists who reached them.
The western Kosovo towns the refugees left behind - Pec, Decani, Klina, Istok, Prizren - all come alive in their tales of flight to escape the revenge of returning ethnic Albanians. They distrust NATO troops, which first bombed them and then failed to protect them. And they despair over what the future holds.
"I am never going back to Kosovo - it's Albanian now,'' says Zvonko Stosic, a former Serb policeman who fled his native village of Belo Polje with his wife and three children minutes ahead of the arrival of
ethnic Albania
292. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 11:00 PM PT
Colossus Message #287, et al:
While it may be easier for you to dismiss me as not knowing what I'm talking about, you're mistaken. I'm well aware of Incirlik, and where and why it's important. I'm also well aware of Turkey's geopolitical importance, and it's usefulness to our interests. I don't dispute those interests, nor do I advocate starting a war with Turkey over their ongoing abuse of the Kurds, and of journalists who report on the atrocities.
By the way, your notion that we are very worried about the Iraqis gassing their Kurds, but not the Turks shelling *their* Kurds, is touching, and probably correct. Realpolitik tends to make countries schizophrenic; supposed "principles" end up manifesting themselves as slogans which have inverse applications to differing states.
However, the US and NATO do indeed look the other way from Turkey's atrocities, and I think you overstate the threat of Russia and Iraq.
What I'm talking about is a fair and even application of human rights policies, and a universal respect of *all* international laws at *all* times. International law is there to protect Kosovar Albanians from Serb military; it's also there to protect *Serb* civilians from *NATO* cluster bombs. It's also there to protect Sudan from American cruise missiles. Supposedly.
293. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 11:01 PM PT
(cont.)
You have based much of your arguments on humanitarianism, and the supposedly Hitlerian agenda of Milosevic. While I agree that Milosevic, Mladic, Karadzic, and their ilk are indeed criminals, I submit that the most recent spate of Balkan wars have been in a futile attempt to prevent secession of the Yugoslav republics, and that it's very likely that *anyone* in Milosevic's position may have resorted to extreme measures to preserve the integrity of Yugoslav territory. Doesn't make it right, by any means, but it makes it more understandable, certainly more logical than your ceaseless ranting that the Serbs are basically psychopathic pig farmers with a terminal bloodlust. Certainly they have been atrocious in their attempts to reclaim seceded territory, but there seems to be no truly expansionist tendencies at this point.
Which is why I have trotted out other atrocities worldwide, which have claimed more lives, and been going on longer. Because they point to such extremely selective applications of the much-bandied term "human rights", one would at least find it to be strong circumstantial evidence that "human rights" has scarcely been a real concern of the US gov't!
Look, ultimately, I think protecting and returning the Kosovar Albanians is the right thing to do. But I find it to be a very selective application of what is supposedly a cornerstone of our philosophy as a nation. I don't want us to start wars with other countries over this, but I find it disgraceful that we look the other way while our "friends" do just what the Serbs were doing. The least we can do, if we're serious about being moral, is pressure our "friends" into treating their ethnic minorities in a civilized manner.
294. EricCartman1 - July 7, 1999 - 11:06 PM PT
(cont.)
That should have been obvious to you, except for your military fetishism. Your Tom Clancy-esque fascination with the techno-toys and gadgets of war, and your Clausewitzian preoccupation with institutionalized methods and strategies of killing, seem to blind you to the glaring inconsistencies in the execution of US foreign policy.
You don't find Turkey or Tibet to be valid analogies in demonstrating US hypocrisy to state-sponsored terrorism of ethnic minorities? Fine. Have it your way, Chief. I'll drop it. I may post in on strictly Balkan topics, but I'll leave the other stuff out. I can see I've wasted enough of my time on it.
But it'll be interesting to see what's said (or not said) if Turkey has internal troubles after executing Abdullah Ocalan (or even just locking him up and throwing away the key), and how they decide to handle those troubles.
295. Wombat - July 8, 1999 - 7:30 AM PT
What a pleasure to see an intelligent exchange between Cartman and Colossus. Keep it up!
Cartman underestimates the ad hoc-ery of US foreign policy in dealing with crises. Ad hoc responses lead to ad hoc justifications.
Cartman also needs to do more reading around the Turkish-Kurdish issue. A number of people have suggested that the situation is more complex than he posits, particularly when compared to Kosovo.
296. colossus - July 8, 1999 - 7:50 PM PT
Cart,
In Vietnam, the US forces emptied and burned entire villages and bombed a backward people who'd been fighting for 30 years to smithereens. All the while, our government pursued a war it knew couldn't be won (at least after '68). That is immoral.
I don't think that your Tibetan or your Kurdish examples are remotely comparable in terms of moral exigencies. Even if they were, though, our failure to purse a more aggressive policy there does not make our actions in the Balkans less moral, less upright.
In addition there are practical, geo-political considerations that are wholly absent from your analysis.
- Can we affect change?
- At what cost?
- What are the threats to the peace of the regions involved?
- What alliances are we able to empower to deal with these problems?
- What are the effects on US regional policies as a whole likely to be?
A host of considerations that militate for or against different policy choices in different regions.
My point is this - the Balkan intervention is the first action by a great power on primarily humanitarian grounds (although I have often argued that the intervention can be justified on real politik grounds alone, that does not detract from the obvious - the main motive of our Balkan intervention is humanitarian, to prevent killing and usher an era of multi-ethnic peace to a long troubled region.
Moreover, unlike Vietnam, the balance of the argument at this point reveals that our effort is meeting with success.
297. colossus - July 8, 1999 - 7:52 PM PT
"In 10 years, all we have is war,"
said Pasan Cosic, 55, who was slightly drunk and very bitter in the town square tonight.
Milosevic has started and lost wars in the former Yugoslav republics of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia, as well as in Kosovo, a province in southern Serbia.
Cosic said he had been drafted by the Milosevic Government to fight in Croatia, where he lost a son and was wounded in the knee. Equipped with a plastic knee, he said he was later drafted to fight in Bosnia and then in Kosovo.
"We just have war, and I am getting poorer," repeated Cosic, a taxi driver who spoke to the crowd tonight from an open microphone that was made available to anybody who had a complaint against the Government.
298. colossus - July 8, 1999 - 8:39 PM PT
"At this point, what I care about is finding out who died from Leskovac," Djordjevic said. "I don't give a damn about Kosovo."
299. colossus - July 8, 1999 - 9:21 PM PT
An evolving theory of war:
Iraq and Serbia: Models of 21st c. Siege
My take on LAT article. China could do the same to Taiwan with a credible nuke threat, a Navy and a few smart weapons.
300. EricCartman1 - July 8, 1999 - 9:24 PM PT
Wombat Message #295:
"What a pleasure to see an intelligent exchange between Cartman and Colossus."
Yes, while I am certainly not above the pro-wrestling-style debate tactics that Colossus & I engage in from time to time (there's a reason I take my handle from a dyspeptic cartoon character), I agree that it's preferable that we hash out our differences intelligently and lucidly. There's only so many ways you can tell someone to piss up a rope, and it's got to get old for everyone else out there to read that sort of thing. Rule of thumb: I generally respond in kind; I rarely start flame wars.
"Cartman underestimates the ad hoc-ery of US foreign policy in dealing with crises."
In certain instances (such as Kosovo itself), that's true. Given the immense cost, in money and human lives, I do tend to expect near-perfection when it comes to policymaking. That may be unrealistic, but there you have it.
However, in some of the other examples I have rehashed in comparison to Kosovo, the problem doesn't seem to be ad hoc-ery so much as outright disregard and hypocrisy. Whether that's 100% true or not, the fact remains, little or no effort is expended to either repair that appearance, or the right the wrongs committed. This is true from the animals we bankrolled in Central America to the gerontocratic thugs we engage in Beijing. There is much hand-wringing, true, but little in the way of true change gets done generally. I wish it appeared otherwise, sadly, it does not. And to me, that past history flies in the face of any purported humanitarianism we may currently seem to aspire to.
301. EricCartman1 - July 8, 1999 - 9:32 PM PT
(cont. to Wombat)
"Cartman also needs to do more reading around the Turkish-Kurdish issue. A number of people have suggested that the situation is more complex than he posits, particularly when compared to Kosovo."
There doesn't seem to be a whole lot of reading available on the Kurdish situation lately, but I have attended to such articles and essays as they have appeared. I realize that the Kurdish problem is not wholly comparable to Kosovo. But I am something of a moral reductionist; I believe that if you talk the talk, you'd best walk the walk, so I'm looking at the bottom lines -- body counts, our respective policies vis-à-vis Turkey and Serbia, and our respective attempts to counter ethnic terrorism in both regions (among others).
While I understand Turkey's geopolitical importance, I don't believe we need to sell out our principles to keep the Turks on our side. I think we can (and should) at least attempt to be fair but firm with them, and I feel that selling them weapons flies in the face of any humanitarian principles. Looking the other way (as in Rwanda) is one thing, selling them weapons is quite another.
Now, I am well aware that this is not considered a "realistic" view of the world, or of foreign politics. None other than Pseudo has decided that I am a "naive cynic". Maybe he's right. My position is, I know how the world works, and I know what's going on. I just refuse to accept the notion that things MUST happen the way they do. We don't NEED to support the Roberto D'Aubuissons of the world. We do it because they are useful, because they serve our ends.
My position is that the ends do not always justify the means, especially when we don't really have to resort to such means. There has to be a truly humanitarian way, if the will is really there.
302. EricCartman1 - July 8, 1999 - 10:04 PM PT
Colossus Message #296:
No, I wouldn't equate the immorality of our Vietnam policy with the immorality of our policies toward Turkey and China. Personally, I think that what fueled our Vietnam policy was identical to what informed our Central American policy -- virulent anti-Communism, so virulent that it thwarted a reasoned response.
Don't get me wrong, I have always found Communism to be basically a bankrupt philosophy; it's essentially the slow kids in class making everyone else sit there until they figure out how to read "See Dick run". But some cultures may actually be more inclined to benefit from it, and I think that in our paranoia we ignored that possibility in Vietnam and Central America.
But I digress.
All of the practical geopolitical questions you pose are quite relevant, but I still think that the Kurdish & Tibetan situations pass those guidelines.
"...the Balkan intervention is the first action by a great power on primarily humanitarian grounds (although I have often argued that the intervention can be justified on real politik grounds alone, that does not detract from the obvious - the main motive of our Balkan intervention is humanitarian, to prevent killing and usher an era of multi-ethnic peace to a long troubled region."
I think that humanitarian considerations were secondary, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I think the real proof of the mission is yet to come; how peacekeeping is handled, and what the current partitioning evolves into. I remain optimistic, but I have no faith in Clinton's will to see anything through, and who knows what his successor will do?
303. EricCartman1 - July 8, 1999 - 10:05 PM PT
(cont. to Colossus)
"Moreover, unlike Vietnam, the balance of the argument at this point reveals that our effort is meeting with success."
Yes, so far, so good, but it came at a tremendous price for Serbian civilians, and the entire infrastructure of their country. It would be nice if Milosevic is deposed, and a decent person takes his place, and we make good on our hints to rebuild, but again, I remain the doubting Thomas. There are simply too many factors which remain out of our control.
304. colossus - July 9, 1999 - 12:40 PM PT
Eric,
My point was that you can make out of any number of US interventions in this century (you like the Vietnam analogy or no don't matter) a double standard.
I will concede without further debate that until Kosova, all the grand statements about "humanity" (including but not limited to WWII) are so much hogwash.
My only point is that the Bosnian intervention is primarily a humanitarian venture (even if in my personal schemata it is of secondary import) and that this is historically significant.
I am of the RealPolitiK, Fascist Imperialist School. Thus I rejoice in the demise of the dichotomy between "humanitarian" and "world domination" objectives.
305. colossus - July 9, 1999 - 12:43 PM PT
Message #295
Duke of Wellington - eat me!
The simple story of "Greater" Serbia (what a pathetic joke, eh?):
Slobo a Commie aparatchtik needed a cause in 1989....SO - 4 wars in 10 years; brutality beyond belief; Slobo's tanks rolled in and Slerbian refugees on tractors rolled out....
Because the World thought for 8 years that Serbia was the *sshole of Europe no one paid any attention....
Until NOW!
306. EricCartman1 - July 9, 1999 - 9:29 PM PT
Lewis Dolinsky writes a very excellent foreign-affairs column called "Notes From Here & There". It appears every Wednesday & Friday in the SF Chronicle, and in it, Dolinsky pithily assesses stories from around the world, both large-scale and small. He is generally non-partisan, a sensible centrist; occasionally, some of the things PE, Irv, or Wombat write remind me of Dolinsky's stuff.
This was the first article in Dolinsky's column in today's Chronicle. It's very reminiscent of some of the things I've been pointing out; he says it much better, though. That's why he gets the big bucks.
HITLER HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT
Adolf Hitler is a handy reference when bad things are done, but Lyndon Johnson was not Hitler when our planes napalmed Vietnam, nor was Richard Nixon when he ordered the Christmas Day bombing of Hanoi. Yasser Arafat had to stop equating Zionism with Nazism if he wanted to be considered a statesman. The Serbs said NATO forces were like Nazis (both bombed Belgrade), and President Clinton said Slobodan Milosevic was another Adolf because the Serbs packed Albanians into trains and killed out of ethnic hatred. But they did not kill millions.
The analogy breaks down. Gypsies are being killed now by Albanians, not by Serbs. An American reporter was in a village where ethnic Albanians welcomed German troops as a second coming; some Kosovars were old enough to remember Nazi soldiers who had treated them well and hanged Serbs.
307. EricCartman1 - July 9, 1999 - 9:31 PM PT
(Dolinsky article cont.)
Distinctions are more than mere pedantry, as Siegfried Mortkowitz makes clear in a commentary for the weekly Prague Post. "Any time history is exploited and subverted to support a crusade," he writes, "it probably means that crusade's motives are suspect. The facile use of Hitler for a metaphor also trivializes his crimes by reducing him to a common tin-pot thug on the order of Milosevic, a venal, profoundly cynical little man with no vision beyond the accumulation of power and wealth."
One need not admire Milosevic to dispute that he is another Hitler. Serbian atrocities in Kosovo "need no embellishment."(Hyperbole can be counterproductive, especially if it sounds like propaganda.)
Mortkowitz asks why NATO did not conjure up Hitler during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia between 1991 and 1995, when murder, looting and "ethnic cleansing" took place on a grander scale than in Kosovo. He says, "One of the objectives of the Hitler metaphor, and of NATO's Kosovo intervention, was to make us forget all about the abject failure of the West in that earlier conflict by portraying what occurred in Kosovo as the greater evil, the true test of moral backbone."
As Mortkowitz says, the Hitler analogy is a blunt instrument that ends all arguments. It subverts the past and leaves the present unexamined. It eases the way for a policy based on image, not reality. And it means that if mistakes were made on this round, we can be sure they will be made on the next.
Besides, if Milosevic is really Hitler, why was he left standing while bombs fell on hapless civilians? Why was he OK even last year when he could still be useful? The Milosevics, Saddam Husseins and Noriegas are all people we do business with (realpolitik, don't you know) until we cannot do business with them. Only when they become our enemy do they become the devil.
308. ACEofSPADES - July 9, 1999 - 9:31 PM PT
waaah! My name is Eric Cartman and I'm a frigging pussy!! I'll only tawk about Kosowo and I won't support my party!! Waaaah!
309. EricCartman1 - July 9, 1999 - 9:41 PM PT
Hey, I'm getting over there, Chief. I got a lot of fuckin' back posts to catch up on. Don't get your panties in a bunch.
Don't make me kick your ass, Beavis. Excuse me, *President* Beavis. Uh, huh-huh-huh huh-huh.
310. ACEofSPADES - July 9, 1999 - 9:43 PM PT
Eh, go stick it in your Compleat Elves' Handbook, dorkwad.
311. EricCartman1 - July 9, 1999 - 10:22 PM PT
Is that any way to talk to your new Secretary of State?
312. colossus - July 10, 1999 - 7:32 PM PT
Eric,
Speaking of hypocrites.
I would think that instead of whining about "greater" attrocities that remain "unaddressed" and parading your ignorance of them, you, as a genuinely committed humanitarian would be rejoicing over the one we stopped.
You might praise the work of the FBI HRT and forensic experts who are documenting crimes against humanity in Kosova. Heroes of Horror: Forensic Teams on the Ground in Kosova (Salon)
Unless of course, you yourself are a hypocritical gas bag.
313. colossus - July 10, 1999 - 7:34 PM PT
You have based much of your arguments on humanitarianism, and the supposedly Hitlerian agenda of Milosevic"
I have NEVER said Slobo was in the same class as Hitler. Not once. In fact, I have argued the opposite, in detail.
Glad to hear you think he's a criminal though.
314. EricCartman1 - July 10, 1999 - 7:57 PM PT
Colossus:
I disagree with the methods employed, but, yes, I'm glad we did something to alleviate a humanitarian catastrophe. What you refuse to acknowledge is that the more serious ones I've mentioned could be stopped, or at least slowed, with significantly less effort, money, and ball-busting of our allies (let's face it, not all of NATO was as gung-ho as we were).
If this indeed ushers in a new era of humanitarian intervention, great. I hope so. Our selective track record in such matters indicates otherwise, so I shall resist hopping on the bandwagon just yet. Also, let's face it -- winning the war was the easy part. Nineteen of the most industrialized nations on the face of the earth, pummeling Serbia? Piece of cake.
Winning the peace will be infinitely more difficult, as will determining the ultimate disposition of Kosovo. I don't think an independent Kosovo is a good thing for the stability of the region, but that is probably what will eventually happen.
Good for the forensic teams documenting atrocities. Hopefully all the criminals are brought to justice. Crimes on all sides need to be addressed though; returning Albanians raping and murdering Serbs is every bit as criminal as the Serbs' massacres of Albanians.
And while you may not have specifically said "Slobo is Hitler", you have made plenty of allusions to that notion, and you've certainly linked and endorsed articles and op-ed pieces which basically equate one with the other.
"Glad to hear you think [Milosevic is] a criminal though."
I've said it many times already; I said it in the old thread plenty of times. There was never any doubt about what sort of person Slobodan Milosevic is. So what? We do business with creatures of his ilk every damned day. He's a son-of-a-bitch, he's just not OUR son-of-a-bitch.
315. colossus - July 11, 1999 - 3:00 PM PT
"We're involved in peace enforcement," said Brig. Gen. John Craddock, commander of the 7,000-member U.S. peacekeeping force here in eastern Kosovo. "If you look where we're engaged around the world, that's what we're doing."
"Maybe," he added, "if you do this right, you shape the future to avoid the big war."
Eric Cartman: "Why didn't you free Tibet and the Dali Lama. Liar."
316. colossus - July 11, 1999 - 3:06 PM PT
"There was never any doubt about what sort of person Slobodan Milosevic is. So what? We do business with creatures of his ilk every damned day. He's a son-of-a-bitch, he's just not OUR son-of-a-bitch."
And we gave billions to Stalin and fought Hitler.
"So what?"
317. EricCartman1 - July 11, 1999 - 4:52 PM PT
Colossus Message #315:
That you encapsulate what I said about our China policy wrt Tibet into a misleading "quote", then falsely attribute it as my actual idea is telling of either your lack of comprehensive ability or your propensity to propagandize everything.
Or both.