Michael Strutt wrote:

[really big snip]
>
>        I made the mistake of responding to you in the belief that you
>        were putting forward an opinion you honestly hold re the bombings.
>
>        However, from the evasive nature of your arguments I suspect I've
>        fallen for a troll.

Michael, it sounds like you're losing steam. Let Michael Albert from Z
Magazine take up the rest of your argument:


Tips On Talking with Advocates of the Bombing
By Michael Albert

(http://www.zmag.org/tips.htm)

People supporting bombing argue that it is better than nothing and is
somehow dealing with horrible ethnic crimes in the Balkans. They either
claim that that was the bombing's purpose and the purpose is being met -- or
they admit that the motive was something else but add that even so the
bombing is doing good as a by-product, so they are for it despite its bad
motives.

People holding these views often do so with a great tenacity. The evidence
and analysis offered on ZNet's Kosovo Pages is more than sufficient to
technically counter such views, and so I heartily recommend it to you and
won't repeat such content here, but to get this evidence heard by folks
sometimes one has to penetrate defenses by other means than just offering
the data and logic, and I suspect that how one does that is in large part
personal. Nonetheless, here I offer to whoever might be interested some of
the techniques I have seen meet with some success.

People say:

"After all, Milosevic is horrible and there was genocide going on and
someone had to do something and NATO did something, so that's good...right."

I reply by using the information available at the ZNet site to explain in
detail about the actual level of the crimes transpiring before the bombing,
and about the motives and results of the bombing. I emphasize how and why we
know that concern for humanitarian values isn't operative as a factor in
U.S. policy-making, and what the bombing's effects are, including, for
example:

- worsening the plight of the Kosovars
- strengthening Milosevic and wiping out the work of those valiantly
fighting him in the democratic opposition
- weakening the nonviolent voices of the Kosovars
- exacerbating ethnic hatreds even beyond their prior condition to perhaps
intractable levels
- directly killing and exiling more Kosovars and unleashing all restraints
on the Serbs doing likewise
- smashing Yugoslavia back decades and maybe a century in development with
who knows what long-term human costs and doing likewise specifically in
Kosovo and perhaps worse
- dramatically weakening the UN, tearing international law to shreds
- informing the world that yes, the U.S. is ready willing and able to bomb
anytime anywhere it suits us
- elevating NATO to a war machine, and providing rationales for further
defense spending, etc.

And I also note, not wanting my list to be only negative, that the only good
result that will come out of this situation is if well intentioned people
can bring about widespread resistance, consciousness raising, curbs on
future horrible undertakings, and maybe even movements that begin addressing
and getting at underlying causes.

This makes some headway for a bit...but then the bombing advocate most often
just slides back and says:

"But even if the U.S. has been bad and bad and bad through all these cases
that you offer (that is, the evidence offered about Vietnam, Nicaragua,
Grenada, Panama, Guatemala, Timor, Colombia, Turkey and whatever cases I
happen to mention), we should support and celebrate that at least this time
around the U.S. is doing good."

And I try to restrain the primal scream tunneling through my mind and answer
that, well, I would be the first to shout hooray and to celebrate if the
U.S. or NATO undertook to do good and seriously went about doing it
somewhere, sometime, but that is not occurring. Instead, from the options
(a) do nothing, (b) make things better from the point of view of life and
limb, and (c) make things worse from the point of view of life and limb, the
U.S. is actually doing the last, and doing it systematically and
aggressively. And then I use the data on the ZNet Kosovo pages to make the
point.

And the person may give a little ground for a minute and even let a ray of
possibility through and say:

"Well, okay, then why is the U.S. bombing if not to save the Kosovars?"

Here, if you will excuse a diversion from the main purpose of this little
essay, I think some leftists go off track. Leftists know into their toes
that U.S. foreign policy is imperial so they look at this case and they
start to see it in the most dramatic and familiar imperial terms at their
disposal. They begin talking about grand designs over Eastern Europe or
about oil pathways or even about Yugoslavia as some kind of obstacle to U.S.
agendas or maybe even as a good example trying to extricate itself from U.S.
hegemony which cannot be permitted to do so--and it seems to me that all of
this is shoehorning events into a framework rather than finding a framework
that explains events.

Anyhow, instead of those more explicit and straightforward (but, I believe,
inaccurate and non-applicable types of explanation) I reply that the
Serb/Kosovo conflict became a crisis for the U.S. and NATO not out of
concern for the Kosovars (or pursuit of resources or desire to punish a
rogue nation) but because there was a growing danger that the area's
conflict would spread and affect important relations and assets in
surrounding Europe and a growing sentiment that, well, what is the world's
cop going to do about this--it's legitimacy as enforcer becoming ever more
threatened as well. At that point, one can imagine the Security Council and
Clinton and what-all meeting and unanimously agreeing on the need to respond
both to contain the local conflict and to fulfill their role to police what
are for them untoward world events. So they chat it up and consider their
options, nary a voice raised mentioning human costs and suffering, and they
notice that the only tactic for interceding that they have which is
consonant with the U.S.'s broader aims and orientation is bombing. (And to
make this claim compelling, I then of course have to use the data on the web
pages to demonstrate that diplomacy, and UN involvement, and international
law, etc., are as much as possible rejected as means of intervention by the
U.S. because they are contrary to U.S. interests, while bombing is clutched
as a favored option to be employed, even wildly, because it advances U.S.
agendas.)

Okay, after all this, with much evidence amassed in considerable quantities,
some people do waver and even change their views. But, frustrating as it may
be, many other bombing advocates just revert to:

"Well, I don't know, I hate war, yes, but surely bombing is better than
doing nothing."

And if I don't lose all communicative self-control at this point, as you may
find yourself doing as well, I reply (knowing I already have on the table
all required data about U.S. policy generally, about the bombing and
circumstances in this instance, etc.)...Suppose that you see someone step
out of a shoe store and look across the street fifty yards down to see a big
guy mugging someone smaller. There are people around the mugging, too, but
they have no means to deal with it. And, watching, you notice that this
fellow exiting the shoe store wants to intercede, and you see him pause a
second and realize that he can't get there in time. He needs to act from a
distance and quickly. He looks in his duffle bag and you can see that he
finds only one thing he is willing to use, a wide angle shotgun. Aha, he can
do SOMETHING. So he picks up the shotgun, aims, and fires, killing the
mugger, maiming the muggee, and crippling some bystanders as well.

Do you then defend what you have seen saying, "surely it was better to act
than to do nothing"?

I pause a beat, and then relentlessly--sometimes likely too relentlessly for
effective communication -- I point out that this isn't yet a good analogy
because in fact the U.S. didn't have only the shotgun in its duffle bag, but
also had diplomatic and other interventionary options that could have been
pursued (such as a UN peacekeeping force), but ruled those out as contrary
to its geopolitical interests despite their potential to end the violence
without violent means. And more, having rejected other options the U.S.
didn't pick up and shoot the shotgun out of concern for the mugee (who it
hit along with the mugger and bystanders and which would have been bad
enough), but because a block down from the mugging the guy with the gun--or
the U.S., by analogy--owns a store with a big picture window, and he was
worried that the mugger/muggee battle was going to move down that block and
break that window -- so he deduced that to prevent THAT he must intervene
and keep the conflict contained, and he knows that he doesn't want to use
anything but his gun, and so, even at the expense of hitting everyone in the
vicinity, involved or not, he fires.

That's a closer analogy, nauseating as it may be--though to make it more
real, I add, we would have to also notice that the reason the guy only wants
to use his gun and not other means of containing the conflict is because any
other course of action (using international law, the UN, or diplomacy) would
undermine his role as enforcer of the rules of the neighborhood, while using
the gun preserves that role and protects his window simultaneously.

And, if that doesn't jog anything, I say okay, then think about this:
imagine watching the Mafia intercede to correct serious race tensions in a
high school because some of the participants are dealers so the Mafia fears
that the racial conflict might spill over to disrupt their business as usual
in the neighborhood, And so the mafia intervenes and puts a lid on the
racial fighting, but of course it does this by treating the kids in the
school as potential addicts, dealers, or targets, and by violently pacifying
or employing them. Do you look at this and defend the mafia saying, well,
yes, but even if the mafia is generally not out for the well being of our
kids maybe in this case it was, or maybe in this case even though motivated
by its own crass criminal interests it is having a positive effect as an
accidental by-product? And meanwhile anyone with open eyes realizes that the
kids are being enlisted to deal, are being strung out, or are being shot.
And when challenged by a person seeing that, do you say "but the racial
situation is horrible and we have to SOMETHING, don't we?"

Finally, I just want to add for those who may get frustrated in scenarios
like the above, that we all have to realize that when we start trying to
change minds it doesn't always happen. And so with all the above and
everything else you add, sometimes the person just stands pat. And the
really intractable ones might even say, after all of it, still again:

"But for whatever reason, it may do good, and the achievement will be the
measurable success of the operation."

Yes, I might reply, a moonscaped terrain, a devastated UN, a ravaged
international law system, vastly more graves, lasting production of more
corpses due to the devastation of Yugoslavia and Kosovo by air, the
annihilation of the anti-Milosevic movements in Yugoslavia, the enhancing of
the U.S. military threat worldwide... all of which are fine from elite
perspectives since the only drawback for them comes if (a) the conflict
grows without limit to affect serious assets and (b) resistance and
dissidence causes a rise in consciousness that actually curtails the bombing
and undermines U.S. global agendas or perhaps even those at home--which
achievement is largely up to people like us.