From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sat Aug 19 2000 - 12:19:49 MDT
On Friday, August 18, 2000 10:04 PM Spike Jones spike66@ibm.net wrote:
> I am against all war, including the US involvement in the Kosovo War.
That
> one was kinda tricky because the notion was that by intervening, more
lives
> were saved than were lost. I sure hope that is true,
That is one of the points in dispute here. That so few died in Kosovo
before the bombing (a few dozen) and so many after (thousands), kind of
points to that justification for the war being wrong -- at least from its
aftermath, though a lot of this could have been predicted beforehand. Also,
the tactics used in diplomacy beforehand, make me think that the US
government wanted a war. Finally, the more evidence I look at during the
Balkan wars of the 1990s, the more I see Serbia being demonized while every
other nation of group is given a free pass on judgment. I've already
mentioned Croatia enough times here. No one has refuted my claims. The
same seems also true of Bosnia, where Bosnian Muslim forces used UN
protection to attack the Serbs.
That said, I don't want to whitewash any side in the conflict, but it's
strange that when all sides are commiting atrocities that only one side gets
singled out and takes all the blame. That only reinforces the notion that
if you have the better publicists (Serbia, notably, has failed to publicize
its case as the Bosnian Muslims and Kosovar Albanians have) and allies, you
can do what you want.
> however I would prefer
> to see peace achieved by having all countries owning outrageously advanced
> defense technologies, that make them too expensive to attack. In the long
> run machines are very cheap compared to war. I am interested in seeing
> the development of weapons that can *only* be used to defend, but are
> useless for attack. Such things exist.
It sounds like a nice science fiction story, but I don't think it will work.
A purely defensive weapon almost sounds impossible. For instance, heavy
machine guns (e.g., M-60) are better for defense than attack, but can be
used for both. Also, any defensive weaponry can be used to cover attacks --
as machine guns are used to defend positions from which other forces attack.
This is not to say defensive weaponry and strategies shouldn't be developed,
but rather that I don't think they are a cure all for war. They just make
it more costly, which is, in most cases, a good thing.
> Another reason that war was difficult was that it was an internal
conflict.
> Even libertarians have a hard time seeing what is the right thing to do
there.
> Im open to suggestion. spike
My view here is I don't have a solution, but it's easy to see what is not a
solution -- or what makes things worse. I think a lot of people start here
thinking they can solve these problems and that one of the various sides
(the KLA, the Bosnian Muslim government, the Croatians, etc.) want a just
solution and that none of the sides is able to manipulate the solver or
thwart the solution. This is exactly the sentiment of the people in the US
government, from President Bush on down, who wanted to get involved in
Somalia.
Also, among Americans, there is the romance of coercion. They tend, sadly,
on the whole to think force always works. (This is also a bad lesson to
teach the world: to use force in conflicts.)
Cheers!
Daniel Ust
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
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