Starting a War for Peace

You know, sometimes I wonder about being an American.

I love this country. I think we managed to do a lot of things right, even if they were for the wrong reasons. I hardly expect perfection.

But when I listen to the Clinton administration rant about the monster that is Slobadan Milosivec, sounding more shrill with each passing day, I have to wonder if anyone ever notices what a load of crap they're shoveling.

Shortly after the Columbine High School Massacre, there was a sound byte of our Commander in cheese beseeching America to keep kids away from guns and shield them from images of violence. Immediately after this, without missing a beat or exhibiting any sense of irony at all, the announcer mentioned that the US Apache helicopters had arrived in Yugoslavia to assist in one of the greatest acts of hypocrisy to distract the hoi-polloi in recent memory.

Let's review, shall we?

We're bombing the Serbs to:

Prevent local de-stabilization through the exodus of large numbers of refugees.

Well, THAT certainly worked. NATO starts bombing, and THEN a huge flow of refugees comes across the borders.

Prevent ethnic cleansing.

Somewhere the wonks managed to make "ethnic cleansing" synonymous with "genocide", and mention the serbian president in the same breath as Hitler almost like a mantra.

On the 'Net, there used to be a text file describing the ten ways to know when an online debate had reached it's conclusion: Using the Nazi's as a form of comparison to ANYTHING was one of them. It's way to easy to tar someone by comparing them to Nazi germany...not that some things don't deserve to be. The point is that going straight to the Nazi's blast your enemies is like using an H bomb to deter the next door neighbor's dog from piddling on your lawn -- it's overkill, and people start to get annoyed with you.

Stop Serb Atrocities.

Something that NO ONE wants to bring up is the fact that the Kosovo Liberation Army is essentially the Yugoslavian equivalent to the Irish Republican Army, the Palestinians Liberation Army, and any other militant group determined to achieve their political ends by force. In short, they are a terrorist organization, doing very unpleasant things to people that may or may not support the yugoslavian president.

We've gotten ourselves involved on one side of what is the worst kind of conflict: The domestic squabble. There's a reason cops are more frightened of dealing with spouses having it out then with armed bandits -- at least with the bandits you have a clear idea of who's doing what to whom.

The Kosovars wanted to, essentially, secede from Yugoslavia. The serbs were upset by that. They were determined to keep it from happening. They did some things we would consider barbaric.

Question: How would you think the government in THIS country would react if, say, Nevada decided they didn't want to play anymore? Can you say army occupation and martial law, and probably trials for treason for any state official who went along for the ride?

So the Nevadans fight back, using the usual assortment of guerilla tactics. How do you think THEY would be treated? Brush up on your American Civil War history sometime to see just how nasty we can be to people with the brass balls to say they want to try something different.

It's way to easy to sit in judgement of the Serbs from the comfy confines of our declining empire. Making things worse is that the US seems to have very selective vision when it comes to righteous causes... especially after we "win" them. Ever wonder about Haiti? You know, we did some mopping up there once. I understand that things are even more gruesome there then ever -- yet you don't see the US charging back in to clean things up. How about China? I guess we only pick on countries that can't defend themselves.

Even as obnoxious as Hussein was, you gotta wonder why we were so hot to kick him out of kuwait, a small iron-clad muslim monarchy not exactly known for it's human rights record.

So, what's really at stake here, the real motivational force behind the NATO (read:US) bombings?

Congress just approved 13 billion dollars to support this little boondoggle. That's 13 billion from the surplus that would have gone to pay off the debt, or shore up entitlement programs doomed to fail sooner or later like the pyramid schemes they are. That's 13 billion distributed to arms suppliers who otherwise have no way of getting rid of their inventory.

Has anyone noticed that these little conflicts occur just often enough to line the last gasp defense industry pockets?

Update (or, Yo gets in the last word)

Well, the conflict in Kosovo did end...but not before we managed to piss off the Chinese anyway. Of course, some people might view this as a form of vindication, that we were really there to clean up a mess, because if we were trying to avoid conflict with the Chinese, we failed pretty miserably.

However, as I pander that tiny conspiracy theorist that lives in a dark corner of ALL of us, I note: What better way to sustain the defense economy but to bring the relationship with China to just below the boiling point? Let's see, we accuse them of spying (which of course EVERYONE does to everyone else, including our allies...fascist governments thrive on secrecy, after all), of beating up or suppressing their inhabitants (that satisfies that urge to be self-righteous), and have even beaten their Soccer team in the world cup. Blowing up their embassy by "accident" (yeah, right) just brings up the heat to just the right point.

The trouble is, the politicians are playing games that are lot easier to lose these days. People don't accept "documented evidence" as easily as they once did. Also, there's WAY too much money to be made in China: if we think that they couldn't live without anything the west has to offer, we haven't been paying attention the last few thousand years.

But I digress.

The war has ended, we wasted a lot of money blowing a country up, and now we're going to waste more putting it back together. But not serbia...we're going to punish the serbs because we don't like who they elected. In some circles I believe it's called "extortion", systematic and brutal. In our world, it's called "diplomacy". Doesn't it make you feel good?