At 03:51 AM 10/5/2000, William Meecham wrote:
>This is faintly reminiscent of the cold war liberalism.  The people
>of Yugo. naturally know that the US is threatening more slaughter.
>Nicuaragua comes to mind.  The US slaughter puts other accusations to shame.

William,

It's fairly bloody obvious that the people of Yugoslavia *want* an
alternative.  They've had about enough of Milosevic and it's at the point
where they feel a new President will be a qualitative step forward
irrespective of who that new President might be.  He runs a corrupt and
despotic regime which does not (or did not) allow for dissidents.  Perhaps
now we'll see a slightly less corrupt regime that does allow for dissidents
- surely a step in the right direction.  Instead, according to you the
Yugoslavian people should be supporting their own personal cold-war
dinosaur merely because the alternative - while allowing them a better life
- has NATO support (we think).

This is typical of middle-class Americans trying to tell the world what's
best for them.  They know what they'd prefer, and as they've only been
given two choices, they're settling for the lesser of the two evils.

I especially like the way you manage to accuse everyone who disagrees with
you of either not being a person or being complicit in everything from
Vietnam to NATO bombing of Belgrade and everything in between.  A more
observant person might remember the anti-Milosevic demonstrations long
before NATO went near Yugoslavia, or might also remember that the attacks
on Yugoslavia improved Milosevic's support and made it easier for him to
crush his opposition.

Alister



--

"Let us not fool ourselves, half a century after the adoption
of this Declaration (of Human Rights) and supposedly under its
protection, millions of people have died in the world without
reaching the age of 50 and without even knowing that there was
a universal document that should have protected them."
          Roberto Robaina, Cuba's Foreign Minister