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noted that "we demonize Milosevic. ...they demonize President Clin–
ton." To prove that he was above such simplifications he took the hand
of Milosevic and invited him to join in a prayer circle.
Marjorie Cohn, an antiwar activist in
1969
and currently a law pro–
fessor at Stanford, "attacked the war...as another case of American
imperialism," according to the
New York Times,
"saying the United
States 'will protect its markets and international influence at the expense
of whatever small country happens to get in the way'...ending her
speech ...with 'Power to the People!'" James Rule, a sociologist writing
in
Dissent,
explained the intervention as reflecting "the need for a cred–
ible enemy" on the part of the American military and other elites. He
suggested that repression in Kosovo became unacceptable to U.S. poli–
cymakers only when it "threatened to roil relations among such crucial
U.S. allies as Greece and Macedonia."
For other critics of American involvement in Vietnam, the differences
between the two situations were apparent and significant: trying to pre–
vent the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo was a good cause; fighting the Viet–
cong was not. The bombing of Yugoslavia was justified by its objectives
even if civilians were sometimes hurt. As for not intervening elsewhere
and at other times, "past irresponsibility in the face of genocide... [is
not] a warrant and justification for repeating the mistake," Tony Judt
argued, as did Stanley Hoffman: "The fact that the U.S. and its allies
failed
to
respond to cases of genocide or ethnic cleansing all over the
world...is not a reason for passivity in Kosovo; it is a reason for
remorse."
Susan Sontag was willing to confront the charge that the NATO
intervention was "Eurocentric," and that higher value was placed on
the lives of Europeans than on those of Africans or Asians:
Yes, to care about the fate of the people in Kosovo is Eurocentric
and what is wrong with that? But is not the accusation of Euro–
centrism itself just one more vestige of European presumption...
of Europe's universalist mission: that every part of the globe has a
claim on Europe's attention?
If
several African states cared enough
about the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda ... to intervene militar–
ily, say, under the leadership of Nelson Mandela, would we have
criticized this initiative as being Afrocentric? Would we have asked
what right these states have
to
intervene in Rwanda when they
have done nothing on behalf of the Kurds and the Tibetans?
