Medhat,1. The Montenegrins are at risk because the problem in Yugoslavia is not basically ethnic division but rather the collapse of an artificial, we would almost say experimental, state founded after WWI to neutralize the imperialist ambitions of the great powers, especially but not exclusively Italy, Russia, and Germany. Regrettably, Serb Nationalistic politicians, including but not only Milosevic, chose to reignite the archaic ethnic passion of ordinary Serbs, who also, regrettably because of the injustice of the WWI settlement that delivered over the other minorities into the hands of a Serb King and establishment, have been all too willing to be seduced by such Hitler-like racism. Yugoslavia was held together only by the fear of foreign invasion, even Croatians, for whom I have an emotional attachment, preferring the rule of fellow Slavs to Italian domination, especially because of the strong legal claims of the Italian Kingdom, as successor state to the nearly thousand year rule of the Venetian Republic over the Istrian Peninsula and the Dalmatian islands and coast. (Not only did the poet d'Annunzio seize Fiume in 1920, the weakness displayed by the Italian Parliament in returning the city being one of the causes for the rise of Mussolini, but at the first hint of dissension in Iugoslavia bastarda, the imperialist Mussolini's fleet would have been on the scene immediately. The Dopoguerra Italian Republic having renounced such Irridentismo, the glue that held Yugoslavia together then became the firm hand of Communist Tito against Communist Russian imperialism, which irony I always pointed out as one of the fatal flaws in Universal Marxist theory that rendered the USSR never any real threat to a powerful USA.
2. Historically, the idea of "going to war for humanitarian reasons" has origins far older than Clinton. The American Abolitionists are probably the first group who did so completely untainted by any interests of personal interest or state aggrandizement (indeed our Civil War came tragically close to destroying the North American Republic). The next such promulgation of that doctrine was by President Wilson, who cajoled heavily isolationist USA (your non-interventionist views are not novel) into the "War to End All Wars" to save "little Belgium from the Hun."
NATO is Europe, Yugoslavia is Europe, Europe is the democratic and cultural motherland of all Americans, NATO is the disguised forerunner (Nationalists and Isolationists everywhere!) of United Europe, which can and must police the fragile European baby-states in the Balkans to prevent their horrible cancer from spreading. Surely you cannot forget that the Serb assassination of an Austro-Hungranian (which act, "terrorist" crime or "nationalist" rebellion -- which do you prefer to label it? -- is actually celebrated by the Serbs who have made a memorial of the footsteps of the assassin). The danger to all of Europe presented by the Balkan's adolescent instability is no Ivory Tower theory but a terrible fact of recent history.
If you want to discuss the Tamil situation, that's another question. However, it has little to do with Europe and NATO cannot stretch its tenuous claims as an All-Europe government by expanding its arms to other regions, who, need I remind you as a pro-Arab, emotionally resent the old European Imperialism and the new American Hegemony.
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It is very pleasant for me to discuss these matters with you, even though we disagree on some issues. You know and understand a great deal, and one of the strengths of American democracy is our toleration, though often reluctant, of dissent. I beg you excuse me for just one little pro hominem argument by asking if you could safely express anti-government views in Syria or Lebanon or Iraq or Serbia?So continue to keep Clinton honest by questioning his every action but do be honest yourself and do not allow yourself to seem to be simply an knee-jerk anti-Clinton partisan Republican.
Steve
June 29, 1999