Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, August 15, 2000 5:59 AM Michael S. Lorrey retroman@turbont.net
> wrote:
> >
> > The thing is is that the conditions set forth in Appendix B are not very
> > different from the agreements that all NATO member nations have to sign
> > to host NATO troops.
>
> FRY/Serbia is not a NATO member. NATO is a defensive alliance. Originally,
> it was only intended to last about a decade, and then was mainly as a
> counter to potential Soviet invasion of Western Europe. Yugoslavia was
> never a member of this alliance.
Yet it is surrounded by NATO members, who have wound up paying the cost
of the refugee problem created by Serbia's racist policies. Because of
this unconsented imposition of externalities, Serbia brought NATO on
itself.
>
> > The differences being there specifically because
> > Serbia was, in fact, an agressor nation in opposition to NATO.
>
> An aggressor nation is generally defined as one that attacks other nations.
> Since Kosovo was (and de jure still is) part of FRY, this claim falls flat.
> Also, before the war began, it's still arguable whether the aggression was
> more than counter-terrorist operations. (Arguable, though not certain.)
Serbia had, at that point, established a consistent record of backing,
supporting, and committing genocide, ethnic cleansing, and all around
general anti-democratic gestapo tactics in violation even of its own
laws. While it is arguable that the KLA received backing from underworld
figures in Albania, that is really irrelevant. The ethnic Albanians
raised and living in Kosovo had been under an organized campaign of
prejudice, segregation, oppression and persecution ever since Milosevic
took power in the 80's and made his famous speech in Kosovo that he
would take back Kosovo for the Serbians. Given such a high level of
approval for anti-albanian activities by serbs in kosovo, it is only
natural that albanians would turn to their countrymen for support
against such persecution. Terrorists are only terrorists to those who
wish to wipe them out and those who buy into the propaganda of the
opressors. As has been learned in Ireland, Isreal, and elsewhere, the
easiest and least bloody way to deal with terrorists is to try to remove
the reasons why terrorists engender support. Now, terrorists are called
terrorist because they attack and engeder fear in a civilian population.
The KLA never attacked civilians prior to the NATO action, they focused
only on government police, soldiers, and politicians. These are not acts
of terrorists, but of guerrillas fighting an insurgency war. The only
people who committed terrorist acts against civilians in Kosovo were the
Serbs.
>
> The same applies to Kosovar Albanians, the KLA, and even Albania.
>
> > Being
> > given the opportunity to cooperate prior to the bombing
>
> The cooperation was limited to accepting the agreement or being bombed.
> That's not much more than pure coercion. Notably, neither the Kosovar
> Albanians nor the FRY had input into the drafting of the agreement. This
> was "take it or leave it" diplomacy. (You might argue that the Serbian
> government deserves no better, but the cost of such a stance is not only the
> effort spent bombing, but also innocents being killed, both Serbian and
> Albanian, etc. Also, one might ask, did American negotiators really want an
> agreement all sides could agree to that would protect Kosovar Albanians AND
> address Serbian concerns about the KLA or was the goal to push Serbia into a
> corner then bomb?)
This is a good question to ask, especially its being so concurrent with
the scandals that Clinton was going through at the time. However, it is
my opinion that while Clinton definitely had an interest in deflecting
attention away from himself, there was a just and real reason to go into
Kosovo. If I were a NATO peacekeeper, I can tell you I would not go in
unless I had AT LEAST the sort of conditions set forth in the
Ramboulliet agreement.
>
> > is markedly
> > different from the options Serbia gave the other republics when they
> > declared indiependence. Serbia just started bombing and shooting
> > non-serbians by the thousands.
>
> Also, some of this is expected behavior. Secessions on the whole are not
> tolerated by whatever they are seceding from. Note the cases of the
> American Colonies seceding from Great Britain, the CSA seceding from the
> USA, East Timor seceding from Indonesia, Chechnya seceding from Russia, and
> the Kurds attempting to seceded from Turkey, Iraq, and Iran. In all of
> these cases, violent methods were used to suppress the rebellions.
>
> This does not make such suppression good or right, but it's considered
> natural behavior for nation states. Ones that can't or won't do that,
> generally, do not continue to exist for long.
This is clearely unsupportable in the current day, given the excellent
example of Czhechoslovakia breaking up quite peacefully into Slovakia
and the Czhech Republic. The Soviet Union also broke up rather
peacefully, surprise surprise. I personally expected that to be a
bloodbath. Then you've also got Canada going through the process of
breaking off Nunavut at the present moment, with scarcely a ripple that
you have not heard anything about it in the news in months, and most of
the rest of english speaking Canada secretly wishes that Quebec would go
ahead and secede, just so they can get that damn welfare case off their
backs. You've also got Britain slowly going through the motions of
breaking up so peacefully and politely hardly anyone has a bad thing to
say about it. The Scots and Welsh are so damn happy to have their own
parliaments now they sure as hell can't say anything bad about London.
Hell, the Scots got their stone back too.
>
> > You really don't have much to stand on
> > here trying to make Milosevic look like the victim.
>
> I'm not trying to make Milosevic or the Serb government look like victims
> here. My goal is merely to give more evidence in this discussion. I'm not
> pro-Serb or pro-Milosevic. At the same time, I do think the US and NATO got
> involved in a basically counterproductive war where many innocents suffered.
> Many more Albanians and Serbians died during the war.
I don't think you can make any sort of representations over how many
died versus how many WOULD HAVE DIED if Milosevic and his Tigers had
been allowed a free reign to commit widespread genocide across Kosovo. I
personally think that despite the number who died, more would have died
if we had not gone in, and those that woud have died would have all been
Albanians, while at least this way the Serbian civilians that have
approved all this bullshit have finally had to pay some price for their
bigotry.
>
> I think NATO member populations were propagandized into accepting the war.
> Surely, Milosevic and the Serbian government are not nice, good, just, etc.
> But, at the same time, there are much worse problems in the world (Turkish
> treatment of Kurds being perhaps the most glaring one, since Turkey is a
> NATO member and a US client state) and I feel this was more Monica's War
> than anything else.
Turkish repression of Kurds is likely to remain on the back burner until
the problems of Isreal/Palestine and Iraq are resolved. The Turkish
people are getting more and more fundamentalist, and it may become more
of a problem in the next several years, however I am hoping that the
continuing moderation of Iran will decrease the support for
fundamentalist groups around the arab world.
>
> But to be more constructive here: how would Extropians in general deal with
> such problems? One would hope our bright technological future would make
> ethnic rivalries less a problem, yet the 1990s seemed like a time when both
> technology progressed and ethnic rivalries and even wars increased.
Governments and multinational corps have used advancing technologies to
try to make the world a smaller place. They need to realize that people
suffer from the same psychological pressures you see in the rat
experiment, and when there is the perception that people are closer
together and there is pressure for conformity, there will be increased
pressure by individuals to push people farther apart and be unique. We
all have to have our own space, our comfort zone. We are not domestic
animals.
-- TANSTAAFLMike Lorrey
"In the end more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free." --- Edward Gibbon (1737-1794)
"A person who wants a society that is both safe and free, wants what never has been, and what never will be." --- Thomas Jefferson
"It's a Republic, if you can keep it..." --- Benjamin Franklin
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