Reply #: genocide

[imenja]

Is your point that military intervention or war is never justified? If we had intervened in Rwanda, civilians would undoubtedly have been killed. As it stood, millions died. We were wrong to ignore the problem. Bill Clinton considers it his greatest failure as president, and I certainly agree. There the problem was inaction, not military intervention.

How many people should Milosovich have killed? Did he have the right to murder thousands, even millions if he had continued unfettered, because he claimed political jurisdiction over the territory? Do you actually believe he should not have been stopped?

Civilian deaths are always tragic, but they are sometimes the consequence of necessary military action. You probably have a better sense of how many German and Austrian civilians were killed by allied forces in World War II. I'm quite certain the numbers were far higher than in the Balkans. Yet they paled in comparison to the lives that would have been lost if Hitler had continued his imperial conquest and unfettered genocide. Or the lives the Third Reich
took before their empire was militarily defeated. War is sometimes necessary. I am most certainly not hypocritical to oppose the war in Iraq. Your full-scale opposition to all military intervention is troubling. Inaction is some circumstances can lead to millions of deaths. We found that out in World War II.

All wars are not the same. Yugoslavia and Iraq are not comparable. NATO participated in the Balkan intervention. No international organizations have authorized military actions against Iraq. Apparently I need to remind you that Austria is also a member of NATO. So if you are so quick to blame my government, you need to consider your own country's role in that military campaign. I cannot speak to the tactics of the Belgrade bombing. You may be quite right that it was not necessary. But to argue that the wars in the former Yugoslovia and Iraq are equally unjust is not defensible.

I'm not sure what kinds of murder you object to. Is it only action by the US government? Is mass murder acceptable as long as it not an American doing the killing? I suggest you examine your own hypocrisy.

This all began as a conversion in which Dirk claimed he had no responsibility for the policies described in the article linked because he doesn't vote. I pointed out that not voting is allying oneself with the dominant power structure, because those who preside over the state are the ones who benefit from political apathy and
inaction. If you oppose a war (whether Iraq, Yugoslavia, or World War II), you need to take action to oppose it. To fail to do so only allows the existing policies to continue.

By the way, it was another poster to mentioned Sean Hannity, not I. It took me some time to figure out why you even mentioned him. But go ahead and support him. Since you seem to consider genocide acceptable, he's a good role model for you. He's an apologist for Abu Ghraib, torture in Gitmo, and every other hideous thing this administration does.