Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 10:45:45 -0500 (EST)
From: danceswithcarp <dcombs-AT-bloomington.in.us>
Subject: Re: roger doesn't want diplomacy




On Wed, 14 Apr 1999, mokey wrote:

> it's time that
> you, along with NATO, Clinton, Blair and the rest of the wishy-washy
> liberals realised that military intervention like this doesn't work.  

Sure it does.  The Vietnamese intervention in Kampuchea wirked remarkably
well. This one we have now might not wirk (WIRK?) but for you to say
military interventions never wirk is totally worng.


> and
> attempts to paint this as a good-against-evil fight don't work either.

I don't think roger or anyone has put this in a "good vs. evil" context.
At best it is poeple choosing "the lesser of two evils."  In an ideal
wirld, of course, any evil is an equal evil.  But this isn't an ideal
wirld so a lot of us can detect +degrees+ of evil.

> what we need is peace - now, and for the future. 

Yes, and I need a fortune to pay off my bills, but it ain't likely to
happen. Neither is "peace in our time."  Didn't Your Neville once say
that "peace in our time" was the reality?

>  killing more people (be
> they serbian troops, train passengers, or Kosovars) is not going to make
> things better.  

Sure it will.  Kill enough serbian militia troops and cleansing squads and
a lot of things will get better, especially for the victims they haven't
gotten to yet.  The train?  Yeah, that's too bad:  We're up to 750,000
refugees who are fleeing SERBS and you cry because NATO made a mistake
that resulted in twenty-odd causalties?  I have a feeling that were you an
albanian fleeing on foot in those mountains you wouldn't feel so badly.

No one on this list likes NATO.  That's a given.  Allegedly no one likes
ethnic cleansing either.  But this list is full of apologistas who somehow
equate a half-assed effort to stop a horror with the horror itself.  You
all need to explain that.  The line of reasoning that if a state does it
then it is automatically bad is malarkey.  Sometimes the state ends up on
the side of good for the worng reasons.  This situation does not make the
state "good," only the action of the state is "good."  

We've had discussions here before about the rightness of state welfare or
dole programs for the masses of poor.  Except for Scott Spaketh (I think
it was him) no one has ever argued that people should not avail themselves
of the dole to help support themselves in an uncaring wirld.  even if the
releif money was coerced out of someone else's pocket?

Sooooooooo, should people who want to live where they live not be able to
utilize the dole or relief that is offered them?   

Funny these standards we live by, huh?

> and neither will blowing things up.

Tell that to the cambodians who are alive today because vietnam decided to
start "blowing things up."

I really do have a porblem with this attitude that if just NATO would stop
doing things, then somehow The Slobbo would become a nice guy.  So someone
tell me how this will all wash out if NATO just stops the war.  What?  
The Kosovars just have to wait on, what was it nico said?  Um.  Oh, yeah,
"the evoluttion" of anarchy.

Okay. So how many generations of those who can't go home will we
accept while we're waiting?



carp