Re: More on Violations of International Law (fwd)

"colin s. cavell" wrote:

>         Second, there was no genocide going on in Kosovo. Cries of Serbian
> agression and genocide within its own province were being made in the US
> Congress in April 1998 when only 80 people had died and less than 100,000
> internally displaced. At the time of the attack, 2,000 had died on all
> sides and 250,000 Albanians had been displaced.  It was the threat of NATO
> attack and the subsequent terror bombing that parallels the fire bombing of
> Tokyo and Yokohama during the Second World War that triggered the Serbian
> retaliation and humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo.

Colin, don't you think that there was enough evidence to suggest that
the Serbs were planning a campaign of taking the human and property
rights away from the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and, further, that it
was reasonable to predict that genocide might occur? If so, was it not
reasonable for NATO to ask Serbia to allow observers to witness the Serb
actions? And if such a request was reasonable and the Serbs declined,
was there not even more reason to expect that ethnic cleansing and
genocide would occur?

I find your claim in the last paragraph astounding. What kind of leader
"retaliates" against a foreign aggressor by unleashing his paramilitary
to murder, rape, extort, and bully an ethnic minority in his own country
and, further, in the face of potentially being held accountable for war
crimes. When people are known to be unreasonable, when there is reason
to believe that their actions will cause great damage to others, it is
not wrong to demand that they reveal their intentions and that they make
their activities transparent. Further, it is not unreasonable to
threaten punishment if they refuse. Finally, it is not unreasonable to
punish when they do not respond to threats.

Whether NATO can achieve its goals at a reasonable cost is another
matter. But its actions are surely defensible from a moral point of
view.

It is also irrelevant to cite cases where NATO, the U.S. or the U.K. did
not intervene. Just as two wrongs don't make a right (to borrow from
Gunder Frank in another context), failure to do the right thing in one
case does not justify failing to do it in another case.

-- 
Pat Gunning, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
Web pages on Subjectivism, Democracy, Taiwan, Ludwig von Mises,
Austrian Economics, and my University Classes
http://www2.cybercities.com/g/gunning/welcome.htm
http://www.fortunecity.com/meltingpot/barclay/212/welcome.htm