NATO is invading a European country without a declaration of war. Milosevic
is right to characterize the ultimatum presented by the hypocritical
cannibals of imperialism as a choice between ground troops or bombing. NATO
has no right to force its regime of imperialist exploitation and enslaved
misery on any country.
It is obvious that the last thing to interest the imperialists is the
welfare of the people living in any part of the former Yugoslavia -- they
used the UN to starve the Bosnians and prevent them from arming and
defending themselves, and they are trying the same tricks in Kosovo. In
Bosnia they were in cahoots with the JNA (Yugoslav army), this time it's
the enemy. This time they are up against much sterner military opposition.
This is clear from the extraordinary acting effort by Clinton to prepare
domestic American opinion for a long, hard war with a lot of casualties.
Just as revolutionaries should defend Iraq against imperialist aggression,
they should stand up for the Serbian nation's right to defend itself
against US warmongering. The Yugoslav revolution with Tito as its spokesman
refused to let the British imperialists get a toe-hold in the Adriatic at
the end of the second world war. The national interests of the Balkans are
just as little served by imperialist invasion today.
It is equally obvious however that the national interests of the Balkan
peoples aren't served by the Great-Serbian chauvinism of the Milosevic
regime, which pits one people against another in ex-Yugoslavia and spits on
the interests of the working-class and working peasants. These policies are
the direct opposite of the drive to ethnic unity and socialist rule before
and during the second world war that fused the peoples of Yugoslavia into a
force capable of defeating Nazi-Germany, domestic fascists both Croatian
and Serbian AND Western imperialism (mainly represented by the British) --
not to mention the counter-revolutionary pressure exerted by the Stalinist
Soviet Union.
What is needed is an internationalist working-class response to galvanize
the exploited workers of every nation of ex-Yugoslavia into common action
against the imperialist cause of their current misery and the local
nationalist tyrants who are at once the symptom, the transmission belt and
the administrators of this misery.
History has no way back to the bureaucratic solutions of half-hearted
Titoist compromise -- the unity won in battle soon wore thin as the peace
was lost. Only a new and vigorous organization of working people for an
international solution to international problems will pull the rug from
under the feet of the Milosevics and Tudjmans and offer real resistance to
alien oppression. Until we get a consciously organized force that
recognizes that their fight is our fight, and our fight is theirs, we won't
see any end to the carnage that has been churned up in such places as
Chechnya and the Balkans, or the grotesque destruction of living conditions
that is going on all around us in the imperialist heartlands.
NO TO NATO! VICTORY TO SERBIA IN ITS DEFENCE AGAINST THE IMPERIALIST
INVASION BY THE US AND THE EU!
NO TO GREAT-SERB CHAUVINISM! INDEPENDENCE FOR KOSOVA!
NO RESTRICTIONS ON REFUGEES FROM THE FIGHTING! FREE ASYLUM!
FOR AN INTERNATIONALIST WORKING-CLASS SOLUTION TO THE PROBLEMS OF NATIONAL
RIGHTS AND LIVING CONDITIONS IN THE BALKANS!
FOR A REVOLUTIONARY FEDERATION OF FREE SOCIALIST BALKAN REPUBLICS!
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
