Lets get some things out in the open for starters. I think the bombing is the right choice, for the moment. I just think it should have started before now. The people who say that this is not any of our concern (we being the U.S.) seem to have forgotten about the Gulf War. Strangely, I was against getting involved in that, at the beginning. But we had to "liberate" Kuwait from those bad Iraqis, so off we went. Those who say that Kosovo is just an internal Yugoslavia matter forget that Iraq claimed that Kuwait was part of their country, and that they were "re-claiming" what was already theirs. So, if we accept that line of thinking for a moment, what we are doing in Kosovo is along the same lines.
We seem to have forgotten that the United States has always stood for being on the side of people who want the right to determine how they want to live. Right or wrong, this has always been the way we have operated. Anyone who wants to deny the Kosovars that same opportunity should be ashamed of themselves. If we won't fight to allow others to have freedom, what are we going to fight for?
The Serbs seem to have a problem with where it is they live. What's so terrible about Serbia that they want all the other land around it? First it was Bosnia, now Kosovo. I understand about all the historical implications, but really, if what they have isn't enough, too bad. If a group of people don't want to live in a place where they are in the minority, they should move to where their own kind of people are. Why do they feel like they have to drive everyone else out so they can have it all to themselves? If that's where they want to live, then they are going to have to roll with the punches, and hope that someone will protect their interests as a minority.
The Balkans have always had these sorts of problems. No one has ever seemed to be able to coexist with one another for a very long period of time. The reasons why aren't important at this point, because there is nothing we can do to change it. Like a lot of other places around the world, they just don't understand the concept of democracy enough to be able live together. While we can't make them accept this, we can make them see that oppression is terrible, and not something that anyone should have to endure. If the Serbs start to understand this after all of the bombing, maybe we will have accomplished something. But I doubt it. They seem to thrive on being oppressed, and inflicting their pain on others as well.
If we end up with hundreds of thousands of people being forcibly moved from where they live, on a permanent basis, we will be worse off as a global society. Unless we can get these people to live next to each other, peacefully, we will have failed as a supposedly civilized species. Maybe we won't deserve to see the next milenium.
There are no simple answers to these problems. I certainly don't claim to have any. But we can't wait around and have thousands of people dead while we debate the right thing to do. Doing something is better than doing nothing at all. The faces of the people on TV milling around on mountainsides, no place to go, and nothing to do, should make us realize that we owe it to them and to ourselves to do what we can to help. Otherwise, there will be no one to wonder about how the old folks are at home, and there will be no home or old folks to wonder about either.
I could go on, but I only get more depressed about this with every word I write. Let's get these people to stop this foolishness.
Happy Easter