-Caveat Lector-
can you please stop defining a political belief by it's poltician's? i
really hate it when people do this. because Clinton (who i have absolutely
no respect for, incidentally) calls himself a liberal does not necessarily
mean he is one, it is merely another lie. i would've thought you'd have
figured out that the idea of him being a libertarian was just another one
of his endless stream of lies.
btw, about the british labour party, i'd hardly call the leadership and all
the faithful little Blairites the 'leading lights', Tony Benn has come out
very strongly against the war.
When people condemn one pointless war, and encourage a different, even more
pointless war which has all the makings of a large regional conflict or
even a world war, this means that they are merely liars. liars should not
be defined as 'libertarian' or 'conservative' or 'socialist', they should
be defined as only one thing, 'liar'.
although the label of politician would do equally well
> Where have all the Western liberals gone? Nearly two weeks into
> NATO's war against Serbia, there is barely a whimper of protest in
> either Europe or North America. But then you can't expect Western
> peaceniks to protest against a war they themselves are waging.
>
> Nearly eight years ago, the U.S. Democrats came very close to
> denying the President, Mr. George Bush, the authority to wage a war
> against Iraq's Mr. Saddam Hussein. But now it is a Democrat in the
> White House who is pursuing an open-ended war in the Balkans. In
> Britain, many leading lights of the Labour Party and the Left had
> strongly protested against the Gulf War. Now a Labour Prime
> Minister, Mr. Tony Blair, is among the NATO hawks on Kosovo.
>
> The reversal of attitudes towards war and peace among liberals is
> most visible in Germany, where the ruling alliance of Social
> Democrats and pacifist Greens has ordered the German bombers into
> combat for the first time since the end of Second World War.
>
> Until recently, German public opinion refused to endorse the
> participation of German armed forces even in international peace-
> keeping missions, given the sensitivities arising from the Nazi
> past. But now there is strong support in Germany for the war
> against Serbia.
>
> In France, where the intelligentsia traditionally revelled in
> opposing American "Cowboy imperialism", is backing the war against
> Serbia. The French Government, which had been promoting the idea
> of a "multipolar world" is now firmly with the United States in the
> Balkan war.
>
> The conservative French President, Mr. Jacques Chirac, and
> Socialist Prime Minister, Mr. Lionel Jospin, have set aside
> political differences and the traditional suspicion of the NATO
> to line up behind the bombing of Belgrade.
>
> Although there is some unease in Europe -- particularly among the
> former Communists and in Greece -- at the unfolding war in the
> Balkans, the measure of political unity that has emerged in the
> Continent against Serbia is unprecedented. A war started by the
> Western liberals in the Balkans has now gained strong support from
> the conservatives -- of course, for entirely different reasons.
>
> The liberals have always recoiled at the idea of going to war in
> pursuit of such crass objectives as balance of power, geopolitics,
> or securing valuable natural resources such as oil. The European
> liberals were particularly irked by what they saw as attempts by
> the U.S. to drag their nations, through the NATO, into such wars.
>
> They see the war in the Balkans, however, as being driven not by
> narrow national interests but by the moral imperative of preventing
> "genocide", "ethnic cleansing" and the return of "barbarism" to
> Europe. Although many in the world may not share this view,
> there is no denying the strength of this belief in Europe, and
> the absence of any sympathy for the Serb point of view.
>
> When the Balkan crisis began to unfold at the turn of the 1990s,
> the then U.S. President, Mr. Bush, was extremely reluctant to get
> involved. Despite the fact that he had successfully waged the Gulf
> War in the name of a "New world Order", Mr. Bush was determined not
> to repeat the adventure in the Balkans.
>
> Mr. Bush and other American conservative internationalists seemed
> to say "we don't have dog in that fight". With no conceivable
> geopolitical interest in the Balkans, the Bush Administration was
> quite happy to leave it to the European powers to manage the
> crisis. It was the American liberals who challenged the Republican
> policy of benign neglect and kept up the demand for a U.S. military
> intervention.
>
> In his election campaign against Mr. Bush, Mr. Clinton attacked
> the American inaction in the Balkans. But when he took over as
> President, Mr. Clinton was equally wary of being drawn into the
> Balkan quagmire. But as the European efforts failed and the
> political pressure from the liberals mounted, Mr. Clinton got the
> U.S. inextricably entangled into the conflict by the mid- 1990s.
>
> The Balkans have became the new testing ground for the convictions
> of postmodern liberal internationalism in the West. Since the end
> of the Cold War, liberal internationalists have been the strongest
> champions of Western intervention in the internal affairs of other
> nations in pursuit of universal values.
>
> Discarding the earlier distrust of interventionary policies,
> induced by the Vietnam war, the liberals now sought to mobilise
> Western state power to set right every wrong in the world -- from
> human rights to environmental standards and from religious freedom
> to sexual orientation.
>
> Whether it was to save failing States in Somalia or Haiti, or the
> promotion of democracy in China and Myanmar, the liberals called
> for greater American activism through use of either military force
> or punitive economic sanctions against any State seen as deviating
> from the prescribed norms.
>
> Although the U.S. and Western focus on these issues has remained
> inconsistent and episodic, the conflict in Kosovo may now have
> lured the Western liberals into pushing their internationalist
> fancies to their logical conclusion. Having failed to compel
> Mr. Slobodan Milosevic into accepting their demands on Kosovo,
> the NATO is now drifting into a total war against Serbia.
>
> While the American conservatives have been deeply troubled by the
> internationalist project of the liberals and are strongly critical
> of Mr. Clinton's incremental expansion of the military involvement
> in the Balkans, they now have no choice but to back the escalation
> of the conflict.
>
> For the American right, the question is no longer how the U.S. has
> got into the conflict, but how to get out with a clear victory.
> It is one of demonstrating the "credibility" of the world's most
> powerful military alliance. The political defiance of a small
> nation against the collective Western alliance cannot be tolerated.
> It must be stamped out at all costs.
>
> Those who believe the battle for Kosovo is just another absent-
> minded American intervention that would be withdrawn at the first
> signs of trouble may be misjudging the mood in the West. It is
> more likely to be a fight to the finish.
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> How the World sees us is often not how we see ourselves.....
> Some see us, especially the Liberals, as bullies.... imposing their
> will and ways on others........ as this article from New Delhi,
> aptly points out.........
>
> "Whether it was to save failing States in Somalia or Haiti,
> or the promotion of democracy in China and Myanmar, the
> liberals called for greater American activism through use of
> either military force or punitive economic sanctions against
> any State seen as deviating from the prescribed norms."
>
> Now the question is if we are willing to accept responsibility for
> being the World Police force....... a Pax Americana...... are we
> also willing to start World War 3 in the pursuit of Liberal
> interventionism... or to save the Prestige of NATO, now so openly
> exposed as corrupt....?
>
> Can we handle the truth?
>
> Posted by: prometheus () *
> 04/06/99 02:30:19 PDT
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To: prometheus
>
> "It is more likely to be a fight to the finish."
>
> Can we handle the truth?
>
> This is what Carleton Coon has to say in The Races of Europe (1939):
>
> In studying the racial history of the Balkans, it must be borne in
> mind that here more than elsewhere in Europe, linguistic and ethnic
> boundaries are constantly changing; there have been many wholesale
> emigrations and immigrations; whole countrysides have changed
> not only masters, but also peasantry, in mass evictions and mass
> colonizations. The Balkan peoples change their languages and
> ethnic identities with difficulty and only after bitter oppression;
> it is easier to transplant than to alter them; once converted,
> however, they become as ardent partisans of the new allegiance as
> of the old. The Serbs have been subjected to these disturbances as
> much as have the others. Their position as the dominant people of
> Yugoslavia has only been won through centuries of retrenchment and
> struggle; their present effort to Slavicize by force the minorities
> within their boundaries is a commonplace of Balkan history.
>
> From: Pig's Eye (emailname) *
> 04/06/99 02:41:38 PDT
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To: Pig's Eye
>
> And How many know the bloody history of the Balkans.... or that
> Yugoslavia was not even a country until the end of WW 1... or that
> it wasn't even called Yugoslavia at first but until King Alexander
> came to power in the 1930's.......?
>
> Or how many know that this is where the first World War started?
>
> From: prometheus () *
> 04/06/99 02:49:57 PDT
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> To: prometheus
>
> Where are the Hapsburgs when you need them?
>
> From: Pig's Eye (emailname) *
> 04/06/99 02:51:58 PDT
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
> [www.FreeRepublic.com]
>
>
>
>
>.
>
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DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
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