Date: Tue, 1 Aug 1995 19:03:37 -0400
From: LeoCasey-AT-aol.com
Subject: Re: Yugoslavia -Reply


In replies to my comments concerning the genocidal situation in Bosnia, Louis
Proyect and Jeff Booth write:

Proyect:
Genocide means extermination and unfortutely this term is being bandied about
today with no regard for history. If the choice is not between "genocide" and
imperial intervention, but rather one between a brutal civil war and imperial
intervention, then some of us might be persuaded to stop doing cheap
imitations of Anthony Lewis.

Booth:
Imperialist powers create the conditions for and perpetuate genocide.
 (Including Yugoslavia).  Your "choice" is no real choice at all. 

And I say:
This is an inane debate which reminds me of the recently discussed orthodox
Trotskyist position on World War II, where "participation" in a mass
revolutionary upsurge which existed only in the imagination of the
Trotskyists is offered as a real, practical alternative to support for the
anti-fascist front. It reminds one of why Lenin called this type of
ultra-leftism an "infantile disorder."

The day when there was an alternative other than outside military
intervention which would stop the carnage in Bosnia has passed. The Germans
saw to that, and the rest of the West sat by while they did it. Although I am
far from confident that such intervention will take place, and that genocidal
'ethnic cleansing' will be stopped, it is bizarrely delusional  to think that
there is some internal revolutionary process in the former Yugoslavia which
would being this extermination to an end. This type of political purity is
bought at the price of real human lives.



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