Martin William Smith wrote:
>
> Sorry, that last paragraph should have been:
>
> Are the Serbs in the field actually being demons?  Or not?  I mean,
> NATO and the western media demonize them, and the Serb media portray
> them as victims of NATO bombing and the KLA, who want to invite the
> Albanians to come stay in the homes of Serb families.  Are they
> behaving as demons or not?

They are demons.  There are many Serbs, of course, who are undoubtedly
good people.  Probably the vast majority of them are good people.  But
the Serbian paramilitary forces operating under Milosevic are demons.
They murder, rape, and pillage.  What else do they have to do to be
characterized as demons?

It is reasonable to object to NATO actions because they are wreckless
and dangerous.  They may make the situation worse rather than better.
That is what seems to be happening now, but I hope things will take a
turn for the better.

Nevertheless, we cannot allow ourselves to condone or downplay the
horrendous actions of Serb military forces in the Balkans.  Disapproval
of the United States should not have to mean approval of the United
States's enemies.  Besides, the US befriends its enemies and attacks its
former friends so often that we could never keep up (e.g., Pol Pot,
Noriega, and Saddam Hussein).

The following is a post from David Graeber, an anarchist anthropologist
from Yale University.  He is responding to a post from another leftist,
who disputed Western demonization of Serb military actions. David seems
to know the issue really well, and gives a good description of what the
Serb paramilitary forces are really like:

  "Again, I'm not about to deny the complicity of foreigners
in the breakup of Yugoslavia, and if your point is that it
would have been better if it had never broken up at all,
I definitely agree. But your representation of
Milosevic's role here seems to be based on reading some kind
of weird propaganda source which does not correspond to
what actually happened. I think my information on this
is pretty good - not only do I have a number of friends who
are either Serbian by decent or actually from Belgrade (but
all devout anti-fascists) but I spent some time at Haverford
where there was a major foundation dedicated to documenting
what happened in Bosnia: between them and the UN tribunal
they have compiled literally tens of thousands of pages of
detailed eyewitness accounts with names and dates and been
systematically cross-checking them against each other, and
all other available sources. There is no doubt about the
broad outline of what happened.
   To represent Yugoslavia as simply "trying to stop the
insurgence", rather than attempting to create a "Greater
Serbia", which you characterize as "crap", implies that
Milosevic and the forces he supported were interested in
preserving a multi-ethnic state against ethnic separatists.
In fact, their behavior was precisely the opposite. The
obvious question: if they were just trying to reunite
Yugoslavia, and not creating 'Greater Serbia', why did they
began a systematic program of expelling all non-Serbs from
the areas they seized. In fact, Milosevic sent major units of
the Yugoslav army over to Karadzic's forces; most of the forces
that carried out the atrocities in Bosnia were actually on Yugoslav
army payrolls at the time. The normal procedure when they took
an area in Bosnia was to (a) execute all non-Serb intellectuals,
doctors, lawyers, anyone with even the potential to take part
in political activity, (b) execute (often after extended
torture) all or most of the adult males, (c) expel the remaining
women and children after stealing all their possessions. In
what way is this "trying to stop an insurgency"? This is
skating as close to genocide as one can go and still be able
to claim you're not actually exterminating the entire population.
All of this has been EXTENSIVELY documented, in great detail.
I need hardly go into the systematic use of rape as a weapon
of war. But it's useful to point out that the use of rape
was as much about its effects on the Serbian population as
on its victims: the problem was that people in most Bosnian
communities had such a long tradition of living with each
other, and their lives and histories were so intertwined,
that the separatist leaders were forced to go to extreme lengths
to ensure that people would never be able to live with each
other again. There are a number of well-documented cases,
for example, of Serb soldiers who were ordered by their
commanders to rape the (Muslim or Croat) neighbors' daughters;
and shot when they refused. Clearly the idea was to destroy
any possibility of people being able to recreate a common
life. They were intentionally trying to destroy any possibility
of rebuilding anything remotely resembling the old Yugoslavia,
just as the Bosnian government (for the most part) was doing
its best to try to maintain something of the old Yugoslav
multi-ethnic ideal. As people who went to Sarajevo during
the seige often remarked, it was only there one could still
see pictures of Tito and posters saying "we are all one people"
and the like; in Serbia they had long since taken all that
stuff down.
   Anyway, the desire to create a 'Greater Serbia' was openly
and explicitly stated by many participants: the Bosnian Serb
fascists declared from the start they desired to join Serbia,
just as the Bosnian Croat fascists wanted to join Croatia (and
the latter, who were quite as bad, have largely achieved
their aim, at least de facto)."

***

This was only an extract; the rest is online at
http://x7.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=465560613 and on the Usenet group
alt.society.anarchy.  I just posted what I thought was relevant.  I hope
it was informative.  It seems like too many leftists are starting to
think the Serbs are the good guys.  Serb civilians are good guys.
Albanian civilians are good guys.  Ordinary people are the good guys;
governments are the bad guys here (as usual).

  Matt