[109634] in Cypherpunks
Economic and cultural reasons for Kosovo
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Frederick Burroughs)
Wed Mar 31 09:21:06 1999
Date: Wed, 31 Mar 1999 08:58:10 -0500
From: Frederick Burroughs <riburr@shentel.net>
To: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@ns.minder.net>
Reply-To: Frederick Burroughs <riburr@shentel.net>
--------------E73A2DF1BE20283E4F30110A
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Washington Post article from March 31, 1999, suggests economic and
cultural reasons for Serbian action in Kosovo; power plants, mineral
reserves, religious sites, and rebel strongholds, the crux of the
biscuit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/31/015l-033199-idx.html
Here's my huff: NATO is playing stupid, publicly anyway, by downplaying
the obvious and traditional strategic objectives of the Serbian
campaign. In this context "ethnic cleansing" should be viewed not as an
objective, but as a diversion. NATO is guilty of exploiting ethnic
cleansing for it's own public approval ratings and as an excuse for
invasion, but is essentially ignoring it in it's military planning. The
Serbs are indeed herding thousands of refugees out of Kosovo as a
diversion. NATO is being militarily proper by ignoring it, only
expressing concern in press briefings. The plight of Albanian refugees
is secondary to NATO's primary objective at this time. The fight is
between NATO and Yugoslavia, refugees are collateral but expendable.
--------------E73A2DF1BE20283E4F30110A
Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
<html>
<body text="#000000" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" link="#0000EE" vlink="#551A8B" alink="#FF0000">
Washington Post article from March 31, 1999, suggests economic and cultural
reasons for Serbian action in Kosovo; power plants, mineral reserves, religious
sites, and rebel strongholds, the crux of the biscuit:
<br><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/31/015l-033199-idx.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/31/015l-033199-idx.html</a><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/31/015l-033199-idx.html"></a>
<p>Here's my huff: NATO is playing stupid, publicly anyway, by downplaying
the obvious and traditional strategic objectives of the Serbian campaign.
In this context "ethnic cleansing" should be viewed not as an objective,
but as a diversion. NATO is guilty of exploiting ethnic cleansing for it's
own public approval ratings and as an excuse for invasion, but is essentially
ignoring it in it's military planning. The Serbs are indeed herding thousands
of refugees out of Kosovo as a diversion. NATO is being militarily proper
by ignoring it, only expressing concern in press briefings. The plight
of Albanian refugees is secondary to NATO's primary objective at this time.
The fight is between NATO and Yugoslavia, refugees are collateral but expendable.
<br><a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/31/015l-033199-idx.html"></a>
<br>
</body>
</html>
--------------E73A2DF1BE20283E4F30110A--
