Saturday, June 12, 2004

The Bush-Kerry Conundrum: Our Only Choice is the War Party

By Kurt Nimmo

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Posted 06/12 | Add a Comment

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  1. This piece does a good job of highlighting the need to move beyond politics based on the Democrats vs. the Republicans model.

    I can’t decide if I am more amused or frustrated by how criticisms of Team Bush are regularly interpreted to mean that I support Kerry even though I’ve said nothing about Kerry. (I have no problem criticizing Kerry, and I have done so, FWIW.)

    Sometimes I suspect that my problem is that at one time I really did believe what my social studies teachers said.

    Posted by micah holmquist from  on  06/14  at  05:09 PM

  2. What does FWIW mean?

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  06/15  at  08:35 PM

  3. ‘for what it’s worth’ I think

    Posted by RzG from  on  06/15  at  09:04 PM

  4. Yep.

    Posted by micah holmquist from  on  06/15  at  09:46 PM

  5. You say the Serbs posed “no threat to the United States or anybody else.” What about the 10,000+ Kosovar Albanians killed by the Serbs?  What of the mass graves?  The people loaded into boxcars who were never seen again?  What of the 700,000 refugees?  Don’t those count?

    You also say we feel free to bomb anyone who stands in the way of us obtaining oil, minerals, rain forests full of lumber, etc.  While I think this is an exaggeration, what did we get out of Serbia?  Goats?  Yugos?  What was in it for us?

    Where’s the proof we intentionally bombed monastaries or hospitals?  Name one.  Cite some evidence, maybe.  I’m willing to be convinced.

    The statistics I’ve seen indicate roughly 600 dead Serb civilians, not the thousands you describe.  There’s a lot of exaggeration here.

    Intervening in Yugoslavia was the right thing to do.  I don’t see why those who supported action in Yugoslavia can’t criticize action in Iraq.  It doesn’t follow.

    Posted by Andrew from  on  06/16  at  06:17 PM

  6. Andrew,

    I urge you to read pp. 38-40 in my new book, “The Seven Deadly Spins.”

    MZ

    Posted by Mickey Z. from  on  06/16  at  08:06 PM

  7. I think that Yugoslavia is replete with contradictions, and I neither buy the approach of the liberal bombers or Ed Herman/Michael Parenti (whom I otherwise respect a great deal) that claim innocence on the part of Milosevic.  Zizek called this approach “double blackmail.” This is not to say at all that Wesley Clark and Mad Albright’s war on Serbia was justified - it was a war crime.  Yet what Serbia was doing - like Croatia with permission, and Kosovo as we speak - is exactly what Sharon is doing.  No wonder Sharon armed Milosevic.

    Posted by Jordy Cummings from  on  06/17  at  11:28 AM

  8. It was Barak, sorry - but Israel did arm Serbia, and Hezbollah fought alongside the States.  Contradictions abound.

    Posted by J cummings from  on  06/17  at  11:29 AM

  9. According to Parenti’s excellent book, I think the title was “To Kill a Nation” the primary reason NATO attacked Serbia was to impose the neoliberal economic model on that region, rich in resources, which it was resisting.

    I don’t remember him at all saying - although he may have - Milosevic was innocent.  He precisely said what Jordy is saying - contradictions abounded.  And he pointed out there were atrocities committed on both, on all sides, and there wasn’t any one innocent party nor any one guilty.

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  06/17  at  08:26 PM

  10. Tracy,
    Is that really believable?  We and the Europeans didn’t care about the massacres or the flood of refugees.  We didn’t care that Macedonia was falling apart and near civil war.  We just wanted to impose a neoliberal economic model on the region?  If you compare the cost of military operations and peace keeping in dollars and lives vs. any alleged benefit from this “neoliberal economic model,” does it really make sense?

    Why can’t you believe we wanted to stop people from getting slaughtered?  If you insist on being cynical, you can say we didn’t want to pay for a million refugees in Europe.  But the neoliberal economic system idea just doesn’t make sense.

    Israel, by the way, provided financial and material aid for the refugees and sent a large mobile hospital and 80 staff workers to Macedonia.  Netanyahu was Prime Minister.  Sharon was foreign minister.

    Interestingly, Sharon was opposed to NATO intervention.  He said it would violate international law and set a bad precedent.  He was shouted down by Barak and Netanyahu. 

    So Israel’s main involvement was to help sick people.  Two links on Israeli involvement:

    http://www.conservativenews.net/InDepth/archive/199904/IND19990409d.html

    http://slate.msn.com/id/25826/

    Posted by Andrew from  on  06/18  at  10:23 AM

  11. Just like the United States was interested in saving lives when it murdered 4 million Indochinese in the Vietnam War.  Or 200,000 Iraqis in the first Gulf War.  Or the tens of thousands in this one. 

    Chomsky said in The New Military Humanism that Kosovo/Siberia wasn’t all that rich in any significant strategic resouces, but that it was rich in cheap labor, and it was resisting neoliberalism.  He said the US led NATO in Kosovo was like the mafia Don who extorts protection money from grocery store owners.  Even though he doesn’t really need it from the mom and pop convenience store, at the same time he can’t let it serve as a bad example, so he breaks their knees also.

    The West, the US, and humanitarianism whispered in the same breath.  Don’t make me laugh. 

    I’m in possession even now of a back issue of the International Socialist Review - I went to their (soon to be “our”?) conference this weekend and hope to report on it soon - which has a picture of a Belgian master standing smart beside two of the most miserable shackled slaves in King Leopold’s Congo, one of whom is holding the severed hand of another slave.  The looks on their faces, not to speak of the hand, are instructive.  The slaves are seething with repressed resentment, and the master with vacuous surety.  That in a nutshell is the whole and continuing history of the imperial colonial “West.”

    Posted by Tracy McLellan from  on  06/21  at  12:05 AM

  12. Tracy,
    OK, at this point you’ve gone beyond where I’m even willing to discuss.  If that’s what you ACTUALLY BELIEVE, then there’s no point in continuing. 

    This looked like an interesting web page when I discovered it about a month ago, but I think I’ll leave you folks out here on the radical fringe and I’ll go my merry way. 

    Have a nice life.

    Posted by Andrew from  on  06/23  at  05:16 PM

  13. I did not mean to imply that Parenti (unlike Diane Johnstone) implies innocence on the part of Milosevic.  But Diane Johnstone - today at Counterpunch - and in her book, goes far beyond Parenti, and seems to be a PR agent for Milosevic, an authoritarian chieftain.  She (and Parenti) sugget that the US encouraged Yugoslavia to secede, when Milosevic’s chauvinist policies predated Germany’s pushing Croatia to secede, all the while encouraging (James Baker included) Slovenes to remain a part of Yugoslavia.

    The problem with Johnstone’s approach, and to a lesser extent Herman’s and Parenti’s is that it endorses a “double blackmail” concept that rears its head once in a while on the left - either you support Wesley Clark or Milosevic, in the eyes of either Johnstone or say, David Rieff.

    The problem is that they have their history wrong.  Many Yugoslavs/Serbs/Slovene writers who I have a great deal of respect for have a more complex version of events - specifically one that does not deny what was done to Bosnian Muslims.  I reccomend - even at the New Left Review website - perusing articles on the conflict from the early 90s.  I also reccomend “The Ticklish Subject” by Slavoj Zizek.

    Posted by Jordy Cummings from  on  06/24  at  05:27 PM

  14. Some said - you linked Johnstone’s piece - yes I did.  I think her research on the 99 war is fantastic but she misses the boat on Bosnia.

    Posted by Jordy C from  on  06/24  at  05:31 PM
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