Ken wrote: > In the same way, Paul first notes that before the bombing there was no >ethnic cleansing etc. The bombing provided the conditions for the cleansing >since it gave Milosevic the freedom to cleanse, and also to decimate the KLA at >the same time. The bombing was a sufficient condition or cause of ethnic >cleansing etc. This is not inconsistent with and does not deny that the Serbs are the >agents. Old Aristotle (a well-known dead white male, who apologized for slavery but still had a thing or two to say) distinguished between different kinds of causation: "efficient causes" are the triggers of an event. The "material cause" refers to the existence of raw material which allows the event to occur. The "formal cause" refers to the structure of the object being triggered which allows the event to occur. The "final cause" is the goal or driving force behind the process. The US/NATO (a) pulling-out of OSCE and other human-rights observers from Kosova/o combined with (b) the start of strategic bombing of Serbia, Kosovo/a, and Montenegro [!] were the efficient causes or triggers of the "ethnic cleansing." The material and formal causes of the cleansing -- the keg of dynamite -- were the rampant ethnic hostility in Serbia, involving not only Serbian violence against ethnic Albanian Kosovars but also the latter's violence against the ethnic Serbs (see various news stories posted to pen-l), i.e., involving both Serbian counterinsurgency and KLA insurgency. The final cause isn't exactly Aristotelian with a capital "A," since it's not like this mess can be explained teleologically, as happening because it serves some Greater Cause, or like the acorn being driven to become an oak. But there were conscious and to-be-held-responsible actors who, pursuing their goals, lit the fuse, triggering the keg of dynamite: Clinton, Albright, Blair, etc. thought they could attain their "reasons of state," asserting the US/NATO as the presumptive world state [*], imposing their standards of human rights [**] via strategic bombing. Milosevic and his colleagues aimed to maintain order, promote ethnic Serbian fortunes, promote their own political fortunes, etc. The KLA leadership hoped to benefit by hooking their sled to the US/NATO star. [*] Max Weber defined the "state" as an organization that successfully monopolizes the legal use of force in the given territory. This is what US/NATO is trying to become on a world scale, something the UN has never been (since the UN has no armed forces). (Weber's original definition has the word "legitimate" replacing "legal," but that has the potential of sneaking a value judgement that the monopolization is good into the definition.) [**] Note that the US/NATO standards of "human rights" ignore the right not to starve, the right to a job, etc., things that show up in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (cf. in English, http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/lang/eng.htm ). Under the latter (especially articles 23 and following), the US/NATO would be attacking countries that impose poverty and unemployment on their people as part of IMF/World Bank-type structural adjustment programs. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html Bombing DESTROYS human rights. US/NATO out of Serbia!
