Existential Angst

So, what's an economy, anybody?
A system of exchange.
So one of the things that happens is exchange. What else happens, do we just exchange things? Where do things come from?
We produce things.
We produce things and we?
Produce, exchange, consume.
That's it, stop.
So one useful way to look at an economy is as those institutions that accomplish these three functions, producing stuff, consuming stuff, allocating stuff - a slightly different word for exchange -- where allocation is determining how much of this or that is going to be produced, where this or that is going to wind up, and who's going to be doing what in the process.
We're going to use that kind of approach to what an economy is, though slighting consumption a bit, due to time considerations. We'll start with production and proceed to allocation. First, we'll talk about production and production institutions: What they're made of and what it is about them that gives them their qualities and how they can help us understand the economy and its implications.
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One thing that is bothering me is that one very good progressive talk show host, Peter B. Collins, is biassed in his position on the situation in the former Yugoslavia. He believes the narrative that has been coming from the western media since the start of the conflicts. Serbians were committing genocide, or something close to it, while the rest of the world were standing by. So the US had to intervene. There is much more to the story. It was a civil war. Ethnic Serbians were getting slaughtered by paramilitary forces, too. But in this country, and probably western Europe, the Serbs were the bad guys. The information is there for someone as smart as Peter B.--and his research team--to find it. He claims to read CounterPunch, where there is plenty of balanced material is available. But no. He said on Thursday that while Serbians systematically slaughtered civilians, that he could find nothing of the sort from the Croation or Bosnian Muslim side. He also does not know the history of Kosovo.

February 18, 2008

Independence in the Brave New World Order

NATO's Kosovo Colony

By DIANA JOHNSTONE

Across this last weekend, the Western propaganda machine was working overtime, celebrating the latest NATO miracle: the transformation of Serbian Kosovo into Albanian Kosova. A shameless land grab by the United States, which used the Kosovo problem to install an enormous military base (Camp Bondsteel) on other people's strategically located land, is transformed by the power of the media into an edifying legend of "national liberation".

For the unhappy few who know the complicated truth about Kosovo, the words of Aldous Huxley seem most appropriate: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall drive you mad."

Concerning Kosovo, truth is like letters written in the sand as the tsunami of propaganda comes thundering in. The truth is available--for instance in George Szamuely's thoroughly informative piece last Friday here on CounterPunch. Fragments of the truth sometimes even show up in the mainstream media, mostly in letters from readers. But hopeless as it is to try to turn back the tide of officially endorsed legend, let me examine just one drop in this unstoppable sea of propaganda: a column by Roger Cohen entitled "Europe's new state", published in the Valentine's Day edition of the International Herald Tribune.

Cohen's op ed piece is fairly typical in the dismissive way it deals with Milosevic, Russia and the Serbs. Cohen writes: "Slobodan Milosevic, the late dictator, set Serbia's murderous nationalist tide in motion on April 24, 1987, when he went to Kosovo to declare that Serbian 'ancestors would be defiled' if ethnic Albanians had their way."

I don't know where Roger Cohen got that quotation, but it is not to be found in the speech Milosevic made that day in Kosovo. And certainly, Milosevic did not go to Kosovo to declare any such thing, but to consult with local Communist League officials in the town of Kosovo Polje about the province's serious economic and social problems. Aside from the province's chronic poverty, unemployment, and mismanagement of development funds contributed from the rest of Yugoslavia, the main social problem was the constant exodus of Serb and Montenegrin inhabitants under pressure from ethnic Albanians. At the time, this problem was reported in leading Western media.

For instance, as early as July 12, 1982, Marvine Howe reported to the New York Times that Serbs were leaving Kosovo by the tens of thousands because of discrimination and intimidation on the part of the ethnic Albanian majority:

"The [Albanian] nationalists have a two-point platform," according to Beci Hoti, an executive secretary of the Communist Party of Kosovo, "first to establish what they call an ethnically clean Albanian republic and then the merger with Albania to form a greater Albania.

Mr Hoti, an Albanian, expressed concern voer political pressures that were forcing Serbs to leave Kosovo. "What is important now," he said, "is to establish a climate of security and create confidence."

And seven months after Milosevic's visit to Kosovo, David Binder reported in the New York Times (November 1, 1987):

Ethnic Albanians in the Government [of Kosovo] have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

The goal of the radical nationals among them, one said in an interview, is an "ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself."

As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981--an "ethnically pure" Albanian region

This was in fact the first instance of "ethnic cleansing" in post-World War II Yugoslavia, as reported in The New York Times and other Western media, and the victims were the Serbs. The cult of "memory" has become a contemporary religion, but some memories are more equal than others. In the 1990s, the New York Times evidently forgot completely what it had said about Kosovo in the 1980s. Why? Perhaps because meanwhile, the Soviet bloc had collapsed and the unity of independent, non-aligned Yugoslavia was no longer in the strategic interest of the United States.

Back to Milosevic in Kosovo Polje on April 24, 1987. An incident occurred when local police (under an Albanian-dominated Communist League government) attacked Serbs who had gathered to protest lack of legal protection. Milosevic famously told them, spontaneously: "No one should beat you any more!" If this is "extreme nationalism", perhaps there should be more of it.

But nowhere do I find a trace of the statement attributed to Milosevic by Cohen. In his speech to local party delegates that followed, which is on the public record, Milosevic referred to the "regrettable incident" and promised an investigation. He went on to stress that "we should not allow the misfortunes of people to be exploited by nationalists, whom every honest person must combat. We must not divide people between Serbs and Albanians, but rather we should separate, on the one hand, decent people who struggle for brotherhood, unity and ethnic equality, and, on the other hand, counter-revolutionaries and nationalists."

I turn again to Aldous Huxley for comfort: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

But Huxley also said: "Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations."
'''http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone02182008.html
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The Serial Lying Before and After Srebrenica

At each stage in the dismantlement of Yugoslavia, its ethnic cleansing, and before and during the NATO war over the Kosovo province of Serbia in 1999, propaganda lies played a very important role in forwarding conflict and anti-Serb actions. There were lies of omission and lies that directly conveyed false impressions and information. An important form of lie of omission was the regular presentation of Serb misbehavior as unique to the Serbs, not also characteristic of the behavior of the Muslims and Croatians or of the conflict overall. In case after case the media would report on Serb attacks and atrocities, having neglected to report the prior assaults on Serbs in those same towns and making the Serb behavior seem like unprovoked acts of aggression and barbarity.

This was evident from the very start of the serious fighting in 1991 in the republic of Croatia. In their treatment of the Eastern Croatian city of Vukovar, for example, the media (and ICTY) focused exclusively on the federal Yugoslav army’s capture of the town in the fall of 1991, completely ignoring the prior spring and summer’s slaughter by Croatian National Guard troops and paramilitaries of hundreds of ethnic Serbs who had lived in the Vukovar area. According to Raymond K. Kent, “a substantial Serb population in the major Slavonian city of Vukovar disappeared without having fled, leaving traces of torture in the old Austrian the spring catacombs under the city along with evidence of murder and rape. The Western media, whose demonization of the Serbs was well underway, chose to overlook these events…” [12] This selective and misleading focus was standard media and ICTY practice.

Lies of omission were also clear in the attention given Bosnian Serb prison camps like Omarska, which the media focused on intensively and with indignation, when in fact the Muslims and Croats had very similar prison camps—at Celebici, Tarcin, Livno, Bradina, Odzak, and in the Zetra camp in Sarajevo, among other sites—[13] with roughly comparable numbers, facilities, and certainly no worse treatment of prisoners; [14] but in contrast with the Serbs, the Muslims and Croats hired competent PR firms and refused permission to inspect their facilities—and the already well-developed structure of bias made the media little interested in any but Serb camps.

Wild allegations of Auschwitz-like conditions in Serb “concentration camps” were spread by “journalists of attachment” who lapped up propaganda handouts by Muslim and Croat officials and PR hirlings. Roy Gutman, who won a Pulitzer prize jointly with John Burns for Bosnia reporting in 1993, depended heavily on Croat and Muslim officials and witnesses with suspect credentials and implausible claims, and he was a major source of inflated, one-sided, and false “concentration camp” propaganda. [15] John Burns’ Pulitzer award was based on an extended interview with Boris Herak, a captured Bosnian Serb supplied to him and a Soros-funded film-maker by the Bosnian Muslims. Several years later Herak admitted that his extremely implausible confession had been coerced and that he had been forced to memorize many pages of lies. Two of his alleged victims also turned up alive in later years. In reporting on Herak, John Burns and the New York Times (and the Soros-funded film) suppressed the credibility-damaging fact that Herak had also accused former UNPROFOR commandant, Canadian General Lewis Mackenzie, of having raped young Muslim women at a Serb-run bordello. [16] These scandalous awards are symptomatic of the media bias that was already overwhelming in 1992 and 1993.
http://www.srebrenica-report.com/politics.htm

to America: Buyer Beware!
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/bosnia2.htm
Srebrenica revisited:
http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone10122005.html
The origins of the Guardian's attack on Chomsky:
http://www.counterpunch.org/johnstone11142005.html
The Guardian abuses quotes to smear Noam Chomsky:
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn11052005.html
Srebrenica and the politics or war crimes:
http://www.srebrenica-report.com/politics.htm
The arrest of Radovan Karadzic:
http://www.counterpunch.org/damato07252008.html
Serbian memories:
http://www.counterpunch.org/neumann.html

Lord David Owen's Balkan Odyssey:
http://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-personal-international-following-Yugoslavi...
Susan Woodward's Balkan Tragedy: http://books.google.com/books?id=G6PbWMzLCvYC&dq=%22Balkan+Tragedy%22&pg...

Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade: http://www.amazon.com/Fools-Crusade-Yugoslavia-Western-Delusions/dp/1583...
Review of Fools" Crusade:
http://musictravel.free.fr/political/political31.htm

If It's Thursday,
Let's Bomb Bulgaria!

By next week they'll be bombing Athens on the grounds that over 90 percent of the Greek people oppose the war. So then the Turks, fully enlisted in NATO's campaign, can get to bomb the Parthenon again, finishing the job they started in 1827.

By the middle of last week General Wesley Clark and his strategists had finally digested the contents of our predictions here a month earlier that the air war wouldn't work and would merely firm up Serbian eagerness to fight to the end. Next on the agenda comes the Pentagon's basic instinct when confronted with a defiant foe: carpet bombing by B-52s. Old fashioned 500-lbs. iron bombs are now descending from the heavens in prodigious numbers on Kosovo and Serbia. US Air Force General Richard Shelton is aping Curtis LeMay's old rules of engagement: "bomb 'em back to the stone age."

The war emptied Kosovo of most Albanians and failed to cow the Serbs. It is also beginning to have a seismic effect on the political landscape of Western Europe, where almost all the ruling war-mongering parties are social democrats. The Chinese have been bombed into being players. Even here its tremors can be felt, not just in Columbine High but also in Washington DC.

It seems quite likely that the Social Democrat-Green coalition governing Germany will fall apart, as the leaders of these parties are forced to react to fury at the war among many of their party members.

This is not to say that there aren't large numbers of German Social Democrats and Greens who don't heartily endorse this reprise of Hitler's invasion of Serbia, but particularly among the Greens there are also thousands of embittered people who do not find it easy to forget that their party is committed to peace, and who are not happy to see the Luftwaffe in action again.

Meanwhile, British interest in, and enthusiasm for, the war has been undercut by the murder on her own doorstep of Jill Dando, a popular broadcaster whose show about Britain's Most Wanted had a huge following. The upscale Guardian ran 3 full pages on the killing, and the more demotic Daily Mail no less than 8. The London Times evev ran a bizarre piece speculating that Dando may have been assassinated by a crazed Serb.

Here in the US we're having to redraw the political maps. Leftist opponents of the war, such as ourselves, now march shoulder to shoulder with Chuck Colson, Barry Farber, Don Feder, Bob Grant, Bob Novak, Arianna Huffington, A.M. Rosenthal, Charles Krauthammer, Edward Luttwak, Oliver North, Joe Sobran and the Pope. We never thought we'd ever be on the same side as Don Feder, a fierce right-winger who writes columns for the Boston Herald. We don't want to give the impression that the anti-war crowd is entirely composed of right-wingers. There are plenty of church folk on the anti-war side, not to mention Nat Hentoff, Lars Erik Nelson, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Camille Paglia and Gary Wills.

We'll say this for right-wing columnists like Novak or Feder: when they turn against a war, they do it right. Try this from Feder:

"It's argued that now that we're in the conflict, America must win it to remain credible. By 1973, we had lost 55,000 Americans in Vietnam, which gave us far more of a stake there than we have in Kosovo.

"If we'd applied this do-or-die logic to the war in Southeast Asia, we would still be slugging it out in the rice paddles and the Vietnam memorial would be a far more imposing structure.

"I know, I know, if we don't take Belgrade and display Milosevic naked in a cage, malefactors and evildoers from Baghdad to Pyongyang will view us as a paper tiger.

"But if I were Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong II or the Chinese politburo, I'd like nothing better than to see America wasting its limited military resources (very limited, thank to our anti-defense commander in chief) in the Balkans.

"Think of how thrilled Hitler would have been if, in the spring of 1939, England had decided to begin bombing Liechtenstein.

"NATO cannot survive if it now abandons the campaign without achieving its objective, insists Henry Kissinger.

"Who says NATO has to survive?

"Half of a century after NATO's birth, the Iron Curtain is a rust heap. Eastern Europe and the Baltic states are free. So, why NATO?

"Presumably, if NATO loses credibility, it will limit the alliance's ability to pull us into future abysses. Wouldn't that be a pity?...

"The armed forces of the United States aren't the legions of the Roman Empire. The soldiers of a republic shouldn't be walking endless foreign battlements in a deranged and futile attempt to enforce a pax Americana."

It takes a robust Republican to throw NATO into the trashcan. Liberals never talk like that. For them, talking dirty about NATO is like attending a baptism and spitting in the font.

The most useful parable about progressives is that offered by Bernard Sanders, self-styled "socialist progressive independent" rep from Vermont. Sanders owes his political career to rage against the Vietnam war among radicals, many of whom moved into the state in the early 1970s. They forthwith planned a long-term, carefully organized, assault on the Vermont's two-party structure. Sanders linked his political ambitions to this effort to organize a third force, the Progressive Alliance. He became mayor of Burlington and, later , congressman. At a rapid clip the emphasis moved from party-building to Sanders-building. At least five years ago it was apparent that the only movement B. Sanders was interested in was that of liberal money into his political campaign trough. One disgusting political piece of opportunism followed another, always forgiven by Vermont progressives who are frightened of Sanders and fear to speak out against the loud-mouth fraud, even though, last year, Sanders spoke vehemently in Congress in favor of sending his state's nuclear waste into a poor, largely Hispanic, township in Texas called Sierra Blanca. He supported sanctions against Iraq which have killed over a million Iraqis, many of them children.

Then he voted in favor of this war. He did it once, he did it twice and on April 28, he did it again. This was the astounding 213-213 tie vote, which meant that the House of Representatives repudiated the war on Serbia launched by Clinton in violation of Article One of the US Constitution which reserves war-making powers to Congress. So if the "socialist-progressive"Sanders, who owes his entire career to antiwar sentiment, had not voted for the NATO bombers, the result would have been even more dramatic, a straight majority for the coalition of Republicans and radical Democrats such as Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee, Pete Stark and a handful of others.

On April 26, even before his most recent vote of shame, Sanders' office was occupied by 25 radical Vermonters sickened by his crap. The last time any political rep from Vermont had an office occupied was when a group later known as the Winooski 44 sat in (Republican) Senator Robert Staffords' office in 1984, protesting Reagan's War in Central America. Stafford waited three days before asking the police to remove the protester. The cops arrested 15. Sanders waited only four hours. On Monday May 3, he held a town meeting in Montpelier attended by the 15 protesters, wearing chains. The man in Sanders' Burlington office who told the protesters Sanders wouldn't speak to them was Philip Fiermonte, ironically one of the Winooski 44.

Readers of the Washington Post first edition can be forgiven if they missed the historic House vote refusing to approve the bombings. At first the Post reported the vote coyly on page A27. In the late edition the Post still played down the vote. The New York Times had a better sense of news and history and put the vote on its front-page, above the fold: "Deadlocked House Denies Support for Air Campaign". The Washington Times did better too, with a front-page banner headline, "House Refuses to Back Air War on Serbs: Separate Vote Denies Funds for Deploying Ground Forces." In the Vietnam era it took years for resistance in the House even to approach that level.
CP

In the 106th Congress, Congressman Kucinich was one of the leading Democrats in opposition to the Balkan war and to NATO's bombing strategy. On April 28, 1999, Congress voted overwhelmingly against declaring war on Yugoslavia (H.J. Res. 44). Congressman Kucinich was also instrumental in the defeat of a bill (S.Con.Res. 21) that would have legally sanctioned the Administration to wage a larger war. The resolution was defeated in a 213-213 tie vote. As a result, the War Powers Resolution's restriction on the length of an unauthorized military campaign remained in place, and was one factor leading to the war’s quick end.

On April 30, 1999, a bipartisan coalition of Members of Congress, including Congressman Kucinich, filed a lawsuit to compel the President to follow the Constitution and halt U.S. armed forces from engaging in military action in Yugoslavia unless Congress declared war or granted the President specific statutory authority.

Congressman Kucinich played an active leadership role in Congress in seeking a peaceful resolution to the Balkan crisis in 1999. In an effort to encourage peace and negotiations in the Balkans, in April 1999, Congressman Kucinich joined an 11-member congressional delegation to Vienna, Austria chaired by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA). There, the representatives met with leaders of the Russian Duma. The two delegations issued a joint report that included recommendations for resolving the crisis and a framework for a peace accord. A congressional resolution based on the Congress-Duma peace framework, H. Con. Res. 99, came out of these consultations.

In Cleveland, Congressman Kucinich co-chaired and attended a candlelight "Procession for Peace" on Sunday, May 23, 1999. Under a driving rain, more than 400 marchers walked 1.2 miles across one of Cleveland's largest bridges in support of peace. The peace march was organized by Cleveland religious leaders, community groups, and labor organizations to push for an end to NATO's bombing of Serbia, an end to ethnic cleansing, and for peaceful negotiations to end the two-month war.

The Congressman also held a weekly series of "Teach-Ins" on Capitol Hill discussing the consequences of and alternatives to the NATO bombing campaign. He wrote to the Administration on many occasions regarding the targeting of civilian sites and infrastructure, and delivered several speeches on the House floor questioning the NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia.
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May 4, 1999

Congressman Bernie Sanders
2202 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC, 20515

Dear Bernie,

This letter explains the matters of conscience that have led me to resign from your staff.

I believe that every individual must have some limit to what acts of military violence they are willing to participate in or support, regardless of either personal welfare or claims that it will lead to a greater good. Any individual who does not possess such a limit is vulnerable to committing or condoning abhorrent acts without even stopping to think about it.

Those who accept the necessity for such a limit do not necessarily agree regarding where it should be drawn. For absolute pacifists, war can never be justified. But even for non-pacifists, the criteria for supporting the use of military violence must be extremely stringent because the consequences are so great. Common sense dictates at least the following as minimal criteria:

The evil to be remedied must be serious.

The genuine purpose of the action must be to avert the evil, not to achieve some other purpose for which the evil serves as a pretext.

Less violent alternatives must be unavailable.

The violence used must have a high probability of in fact halting the evil.

The violence used must be minimized.

Let us evaluate current U.S. military action in Yugoslavia against each of these tests. Evil to be remedied:

We can agree that the evil to be remedied in this case -- specifically, the uprooting and massacre of the Kosovo Albanians -- is serious enough to justify military violence if such violence can ever be justified. However, the U.S. air war against Yugoslavia fails an ethical test on each of the other four criteria.

Purpose vs. pretext: The facts are incompatible with the hypothesis that U.S. policy is motivated by humanitarian concern for the people of Kosovo:

In the Dayton agreement, the U.S. gave Milosevic a free hand in Kosovo in exchange for a settlement in Bosnia.

The U.S. has consistently opposed sending ground forces into Kosovo, even as the destruction of the Kosovar people escalated. (While I do not personally support such an action, it would, in sharp contrast to current U.S. policy, provide at least some likelihood of halting the attacks on the Kosovo Albanians.)

According to The New York Times (4/18/99), the U.S. began bombing Yugoslavia with no consideration for the possible impact on the Albanian people of Kosovo. This was not for want of warning. On March 5, 1999, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema met with President Clinton in the Oval Office and warned him that an air attack which failed to subdue Milosevic would result in 300,000 to 400,000 refugees passing into Albania and then to Italy. Nonetheless, "No one planned for the tactic of population expulsion that has been the currency of Balkan wars for more than a century." (The New York Times, 4/18/99). If the goal of U.S. policy was humanitarian, surely planning for the welfare of these refugees would have been at least a modest concern.

Even now the attention paid to humanitarian aid to the Kosovo refugees is totally inadequate, and is trivial compared to the billions being spent to bomb Yugoslavia. According to the Washington Post (4/30/99), the spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency in Macedonia says, "We are on the brink of catastrophe." Surely a genuine humanitarian concern for the Kosovars would be evidenced in massive emergency airlifts and a few billion dollars right now devoted to aiding the refugees.

While it has refused to send ground forces into Kosovo, the U.S. has also opposed and continues to oppose all alternatives that would provide immediate protection for the people of Kosovo by putting non- or partially-NATO forces into Kosovo. Such proposals have been made by Russia, by Milosevic himself, and by the delegations of the U.S. Congress and the Russian Duma who met recently with yourself as a participant. The refusal of the U.S. to endorse such proposals strongly supports the hypothesis that the goal of U.S. policy is not to save the Kosovars from ongoing destruction.

Less violent alternatives: On 4/27/99 I presented you with a memo laying out an alternative approach to current Administration policy. It stated, "The overriding objective of U.S. policy in Kosovo -- and of people of good will -- must be to halt the destruction of the Albanian people of Kosovo. . . The immediate goal of U.S. policy should be a ceasefire which halts Serb attacks on Kosovo Albanians in exchange for a halt in NATO bombing." It stated that to achieve this objective, the United States should "propose an immediate ceasefire, to continue as long as Serb attacks on Kosovo Albanians cease. . . Initiate an immediate bombing pause. . . Convene the U.N. Security Council to propose action under U.N. auspices to extend and maintain the ceasefire. . . Assemble a peacekeeping force under U.N. authority to protect safe havens for those threatened with ethnic cleansing." On 5/3/99 you endorsed a very similar peace plan proposed by delegations from the US Congress and the Russian Duma. You stated that "The goal now is to move as quickly as possible toward a ceasefire and toward negotiations." In short, there is a less violent alternative to the present U.S. air war against Yugoslavia.

High probability of halting the evil: Current U.S. policy has virtually no probability of halting the displacement and killing of the Kosovo Albanians. As William Safire put it, "The war to make Kosovo safe for Kosovars is a war without an entrance strategy. By its unwillingness to enter Serbian territory to stop the killing at the start, NATO conceded defeat. The bombing is simply intended to coerce the Serbian leader to give up at the negotiating table all he has won on the killing field. He won't." (The New York Times, 5/3/99) The massive bombing of Yugoslavia is not a means of protecting the Kosovars but an alternative to doing so.

Minimizing the consequences of violence. "Collateral damage" is inevitable in bombing attacks on military targets. It must be weighed in any moral evaluation of bombing. But in this case we are seeing not just collateral damage but the deliberate selection of civilian targets, including residential neighborhoods, auto factories, broadcasting stations, and hydro-electric power plants. The New York Times characterized the latter as "The attack on what clearly appeared to be a civilian target." (5/3/99) If these are acceptable targets, are there any targets that are unacceptable?

The House Resolution (S Con Res 21) of 4/29/99 which "authorizes the president of the United States to conduct military air operations and missile strikes in cooperation with the United States' NATO allies against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" supports not only the current air war but also its unlimited escalation. It thereby authorizes the commission of war crimes, even of genocide. Indeed, the very day after that vote, the Pentagon announced that it would begin "area bombing," which the Washington Post (4/30/99) characterized as "dropping unguided weapons from B-52 bombers in an imprecise technique that resulted in large-scale civilian casualties in World War II and the Vietnam War."

It was your vote in support of this resolution that precipitated my decision that my conscience required me to resign from your staff. I have tried to ask myself questions that I believe each of us must ask ourselves:

Is there a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in or support? Where does that limit lie? And when that limit has been reached, what action will you take?

My answers led to my resignation.

Sincerely yours,

Jeremy Brecher

http://www.serbianna.com/features/krajina/