Reply #5: ...what they "see as" repression and imperialism... [View All]

[eridani]

...actually IS repression and imperialism. Not meaning to get excessively nitpicky about a very fine essay (which IMO you should try to publish), just commenting on how easy it is for all of us citizens of an imperial power to fall into the "normal" language habits we've been surrounded with all our lives.

I disagree on Kosovo. The intent of the attack on Serbia was to force them into the corporate imperial economic system and to establish the permanent Camp Bondsteel (Isengard to the Mordor of the US embassy in Iraq). Milosevic was no worse than Tudjman or Itzbegovic, both of whom sided with the Nazis in their extermination of 500,000 Serbs in WW II. He was just way more stubborn about selling off national assets.

Yes, it did have humanitarian benefits for Kosovars, just as Russia's thumping of Georgia had similar benefits for South Ossetians. But that was just the luck of the draw. It served neoliberal imperial interests to designate Kosovars as wee innocent lambs in need of defense, just as it suited Russian regional imperialists to do the same for South Ossetia.

If US policymakers gave a flying fuck about genocide and ethnic cleansing, why did US mercenaries help Croatia to do to Serbs of the Krajina in actuality what Serbs wanted to do to Kosovo? The Serbian minority in Croatia somehow missed out on being designated as wee innocent lambs. (I say "wanted to" because most of the atrocities perpetrated by Serbs in Kosovo occured after the bombing and was a vengeful--and perfectly predicted by NATO--response to it.)

Why did the ultimatum to Serbia include a demand to sell off all its state or employee owned assets? What in bleeding hell did that have to do with ethnic cleansing? Why were 95% of the targets in Serbia non-military and directed at infrastructure and non-foreign-owned factories? Why were no foreign-owned factories bombed? If the MSM have been lying through their teeth about Iraq, why would they have told the truth about the Balkans?