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In a message dated 23/09/01 06:24:22 Eastern Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Or do you pick the grenade up, pull out the pin and toss it
> back [at the finally revealed sniper killing your familly]?...
Of course...but then again, I think in your analysis of the Balkans you're
making the gun seem like it controls the sniper and not vice versa....
You proclaim that:
> Kole, the Serbs - thanks to KFOR and the KLA - are still in
> a war...
> A dirty war. But not just a shooting war - a media war as
> well...
> where impressions, not bullets, count. If the opportunity
> arises
> to change those impressions to the disadvantage of their
> enemies,
> then Serbs should grasp it thankfully without hesitation.
> B/c all
> ethical concepts of even-handed fairness, all moral
> considerations,
> were tossed out the window long ago... by the enemies of the
> Serbs!
Right, in some Machiavelian way this is true. Let's then just throw ethics
out the window and concentrate on the pure power politics aspect of the whole
issue. You state the following:
> You see, I am implacably opposed to NATO - most particularly
> regarding what it has done to Yugoslavia and continues to do
> to the Serbs, non-Croats, non-Muslims and non-Albanians who
> used to compose that country. NATO and its allies are
> embarked
> on an undeclared war upon the Serbs. And therefore, so far
> as I'm
> concerned, the battle still rages and they are "the enemy."
> Fine
> points about observing ethics, even-handedness and
> scrupulous
> "fairness" - especially when locked in mortal combat with
> such
> cynically ruthless foes as the KLA, NATO's surrogate army,
> AND
> the Western media - are luxuries the embattled Serbs and
> their
> supporters simply cannot afford and would be stupid to
> entertain.
Hmmm...interesting proposal. You seem to think that by using the Western
media at a time that it is justifying an anti-Muslim crusade that will be
carried out by NATO, you/or the Serbs, should use this opportunity to jump on
the bandwagon and let the forces that provide the entire structure of
justification perpetuating Western occupation of the Balkans, i.e. NATO and
the Western media, do away with their "surrogate army" (in your own words).
Fine, but you have still preserved NATO and the Western media's domination of
the way Balkan political space is interpreted and ordered. Nothing has
fundamentally changed, you've only confirmed that NATO and its media are the
only institutions capable of solving Balkan injustices. From a pure power
politics perspective the KLA is a dependent army, it will disolve as soon as
the West leaves, it cannot maintain itself politically even among its own
people, who it has to kill to ensure compliance, it can certainly never
survive without its patron. So in this current moment, which is a huge
opportunity to illustrate to the entire Islamic world that 1) they've been
lied to about the Serbs, and 2) the real enemy is NATO which is now
threatening every Islamic country, you suggest that the Serbs simply jump on
the side of the very force that is represing them, thus doing nothing to
oppose its codification as an alliance for global aggression, and let the
winds of fortune whirl around them until the hated KLA disapear. How is this
going to change the fact of NATO domination? Wouldn't it simply increase?
But you see Jon, morality really does matter, if it didn't we wouldn't have
to sit through weeks of ritualization of the victimhood of the USA on our
television screens in order to establish the "justice" of Bush's war. If
morality doesn't matter the US could have continued to carpet bomb Vietnam
until every last Vietnamese was nothing but a heap of bones. Morality does
matter in politics, and especially in wars of public opinion. Morality is
the sine qua non of imperialism, it is the sole legitimizing force for the
domination of distant lands and peoples. Imperial domination depends on the
belief that our policy is always just and that those Others can not organize
their lives without appeal to our sense of justice. For colonized people to
simply "play dirty" and not even target these attacks at the colonial master
but at their fellow colonized (you can't tell me that the average Albanian
has benefited one iota from its elites marriage to fascists,
narco-traffickers, and imperialists!), only confirms the whole imperialist
moral geography that squarely locates such "dirty tricks" among the
colonized. Your idea to side with NATO, or use NATO's manipulation to
forward narrow goals is absurd, morally hollow, and more importantly for your
own Machieavelean purposes strategically idiotic. Not only does it then
further deepen the divisions in the Balkans that only really benefit NATO but
it also weekens the Serbs by helping increase NATO's global legitimacy
worldwide. They could say "See we bombed the Serbs with our humanitarian
bombs and look how happy they are now, they're even ready to join us in our
new civilizing missions abroad! You get bet they'll aplaud when we start
bombing China, India, and Russia in a few years after we mop up with the
Muslims and establish bases throughout Central Asia".
If the Serbs want to be emancipated they need to confront NATO and the
misdeeds of NATO country's in every corner of the earth, its not an easy
struggle, its not a happy struggle, yes sometimes evasion is better than
confrontation, sometimes lying low to regroup is also important, sometimes
playing dirty is necessary but ultimately fighting with your enemy -
especially at a time that they are aspiring to complete and untramelled
global domination - instead of against him can only hurt you. It is to the
lasting credit of the Serbs that they have been hard headed when faced with
the Hamidian massacres, Austro-Hungarian machinations, German militarism,
Nazi expansionism, Stalinist autocracy and neoliberal hegemony. To end this
tradition now would simply be spitting on the graves of the TENS OF MILLIONS
of Serbs and other Balkan and Slavic peoples who have died in the last 100
years for their freedom from foreign occupation.
Just think about your scenario man. Okay, so the Serbs start blaming the
Albanians by targeting them as "Muslims" (as if belonging to a particular
religion is some kind of indictment of an individual --- hmmmm...wonder were
such an idea was previously practiced?). Now assuming that the anti-Slavic
media in the West accepts this, although it's more likely than not that like
Darko pointed out they will try to show that the Albanians aren't Muslim
fanatics, which they aren't, but actually beholden to an Albanian national
ideal, and assuming that the West begins baying for the dismantling of the
KLA in southern Serbia, Kosovo province, and Macedonia, what then? Well
let's just say NATO then decides let's end the KLA. Will they end it by
withrawing their troops and say "Man were we ever wrong about the Balkans, we
failed to help our Christian brothers in their crusade against the Infidel",
or even "Man we're imperialist pigs, let's just drop our weapons, hand them
over to the JA, enlist in the Yugoslav army, pull back our puppet regimes and
help in the restoration of a strongly anti-imperialistic Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia united in a broader confederation of all Balkans
peoples singing hapilly together and whose songs will make us abandon all our
far flung overseas posessions b/c they touch our hearts so deeply" - or will
they simply end up saying (and here of course, in this whole discussion,
we're all making the eroneous assumption that media coverage determines US
foreign policy and not vice versa) "Man, it seems like the Serbs are our
'friends' now, and that the Albanians aren't really Western but are, you
know, one of them's dangerous Muslimists and A-rabs. Let's just arm and
train Djindjic's police force and let them do the brutal policing job they
were doing in the rest of Serbia after the October coup now in Kosovo as
well. And if the Albanians start complaining again, or the Serbs start
getting all cocky and upitty we'll just switch sides and play the weaker side
off against the stronger side one more time. Who cares whose small elite -
that is anyway beholden to us and 'our way of life' - be it Serb, Croat,
Muslim Slav, or Albanian dominates the region? Everyone knows who the real
master is and that's all that counts. Pax Americana was always built on the
Roman maxim of divide et impera, thank god these silly natives hate each
other so much, it always makes our strategy so much easier in preventing the
emergence of a regional power in any part of the world that is important to
us and that could challenge our interests"
> We're in a war. The enemy means business. That "business" is
> the
> business of the Devil - nothing less than the relentless
> subjugation,
> demonization and final humiliating defeat of the Serbian
> people.
> Serbs must really fight back.
>
And all you're proposing is that they fight back at a shadow while bolstering
the global position of NATO!!!!!!!!
Not a very good strategy my friend....
cheers!
Kole
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