On Mon, 29 Mar 1999, M G MCQUILLAN wrote:
> A substantial force on the
> ground would be the only way to rescue and shelter those most at
> risk, if they were serious about that task, and the possibility of
> Serbian civilian casualities of NATO weapons would be minimised.
- Robin, Paddy Ashdown and (reluctantly) me in more-or-less total
agreement: is this a first? What worries me though still is the rapidity
with which we all become fluent experts in international strategy on these
occasions: it leads to travesties such as this from Bart's Radio Tower:
"Free of emotion, there are two choices for Serbs who do not want to be
bombing victims, move out of Serbia, or stand up against the government"
Only the massive and self-evident ignorance which underpins such a
statement can save it from standing alongside the worst excesses of
military threatening of our time. Or the straightforward overhastiness:
"And Kosovo, as a piece of ground is not a day older than the USA.
Even it's government is a newcomer, the USA has existed as a state"
If we read Miroljub Todorovic's post with any degree of care, we'll see
that what he was saying was that *the problems* of the Balkans predate the
founding of the US - uncontroversial, no? If you're in any doubt, check in
a library. It's sad to reflect that the first most westerners know of any
of these places and cultures is the explosion, though the story's there,
for anyone with the curiosity and patience. But still, that's a level of
care in reading which Bart must deny to Serbs who won't fit into his
(long-distance) view.
Close reading - and close writing - are, of course, amongst the early
casualties in war, and ones which we lose at our peril: careless talk
costs lives. I'd suggest linguistic care must be of concern to members of
a list concerned with poetry: the opposite of close reading is the
slipshod oversimplification of complexity which is as wrong in a B52 as it
is in a troop of serbian soldiers: it leads finally to the travesty of
relative condemnology:
"I don't approve of the bombing [...] but I condemn even more the genocide
being conducted by SERBS!"
"condemn even more"? We're back in that school playground, with the
self-justificatory whining of kids found doing wrong. More troubling,
we're in a tabloid world of oversimplification, miles from any kind of
understanding of the problems involved.
RC
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