Three points about David Wood's response, exposing three problem argumnents:
1. MORAL EQUIVALENCING.
> Arguing about who has killed more people is a bit silly really. Both sides
> have killed large numbers of people without concern for the long term or
> wider consequences. We don't know how many - you can't really trust either
> side (or their media) on this or any other aspect of the crisis.
>
Serb fascists = KLA fascists. CNN = Serb Media. "They're all the same." This
is a refusal to engage the particularity of the conflict, to analyze and
empirically determine who is repressing whom.
> 2. DON'T INTERVENE IF "PEACE" CANNOT BE ESTABLISHED: i.e. DO NOTHING (WHILE
> GENOCIDE UNFOLDS).
> Does Neil really believe that NATO's intervention will bring peace to this
> region? Did he believe that the Dayton Accord would?
"This region" = The Balkans = the non-West. Implicitly this echoes the common
conception of that the Balkans has been a violent quagmire for centuries that
is perpetually unstable. Peace is impossible in the region. "History"
overwhelms everything. Again, there is are refusal to engage the specifics of
the region's history, to see the region in non-ethnocentric terms, and to
distinguish between the negative peace of Milosevic's police state (where
peace is a consequence of repression) from the possibility of an alternative
positive peace (admittedly difficult given the brutalizing Kosovars have and
are suffering from the Serbian state).
> 3. IMPERIALISM, THE PHANTOM MENACE!
> Milosevic could have been stopped earlier by negotiation - has Neil read
> the joke of an agreement (Rambouillet) that was the basis of previous
> negotiations?
This is an assertion not a fact. Rambouillet was tough on the Serbs but
considering the blatant violation of the Holbrooke negotiated accord in 1998
and the Serbian state's record of violating ceasefires and the Dayton Accords
in Bosnia, this toughness was justified. Also, Rambouillet was unfair to the
Kosovars, denying them their overwhelming aspiration to escape Serb
sovereignty.
> If not, I suggest he does; he might realise then that
> Milosevic probably felt he had very few options (this does not however
> excuse Serbian atrocities...)
>
> Opposing this war is not about supporting Milosevic, it is about opposing
> the worldwide imposition of unnaccountable military and economic power on
> other parts of the world by the USA and its 'allies'.
Refusing the binary offered by war is an important political position.
However, we are inevitable forced to choose also. Your choice is, I would
argue, based on an obsolete and abstracted notion (in this case) of
imperialism as a phantom menace. The "unaccountable" notion is unsustainable,
given the fact that we have a media exposing NATO's 'mistakes,' governments in
NATO very concerned about maintaining their coalitions, and a US
administration long driven by public opinion polls.
> The arms manufacturers, car-makers and chemical industries in the west are
> rubbing their hands at the prospect of rebuilding (ie: taking over) the
> Yugoslav economy after the war is over.
"A ha, a war by Detroit's barons to crush the threat from the Yugo! Now it
makes sense... :) "This conflict, of course, has a political economy but
political economy is not DRIVING this conflict.
> This action by NATO will not bring lasting peace, has hastened and
> intensified Serbian repression both in Kosov@ and inside Serbia, and it has
> no democratic or legal basis. Period.
The anti-NATO stop-the-bombing position, in this case, is based on three
refusals: to distinguish morally between the sides, to overcome common myths
about the region, and to get beyond crude rhetoric about imperialism.
Gerard Toal (Gearoid O Tuathail),
Department of Geography, Virginia Tech.
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