Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: Americans are idiots
Author: Fredrik Lundh Posted: 5/5/1999; 4:26:19 AM Topic: scriptingNews outline for 5/4/99 Msg #: 5668 (In response to 5602) Prev/Next: 5667 / 5669
Is there support for the war in Sweden?both the government and the public opinion (who often tend to be out of sync these days) support the nato intervention. the official line is the same as the european union's: it's all milosevic's fault...
but on the national level, there's also some serious concern over the political consequences of this intervention. it will most likely change the future roles of both the united nations and the european union in some, yet to be seen, way. sweden is a strong supporter of the UN (which proved itself to be almost completely useless in this conflict), and a somewhat reluctant member of the EU. most swedes would probably prefer a stronger UN and a weaker EU, but this conflict may move things in the opposite direction.
re: resettlement -- this is probably one of the main reasons why europe is so united on this one; no european country is prepared to handle more than just a handful of kosovars, by various reasons (when UNHCR asked for help placing 100,000 refugees, finland offered to take fifty!).
so if milosevic is allowed to implement his plan to build a Greater All-Serbian Empire on top of a pile of rubble, we'll end up with millions of people living in refugee camps in the poorest corner of europe.
and that would be a Really Bad Thing, in many ways.
re: my earlier post -- I should perhaps mention that there have been attempts to "blame it all on the americans", but they seem to have fizzled out.
besides a heavily criticized appeal to stop the nato aggression, signed by some 150 mostly left-wing intellectuals, and a few rallies organized by exile serbs, there hasn't been much visible opposition.
partly because Godwin's Law works also outside the net: in late march, I walked around a corner in central Linköping and ran into in a small pro-milosevic rally, just when the speaker claimed that "clinton is MORE evil than hitler ever was, because at least the nazis had an ideology". bzzt. end of thread.
in addition, american officials are not very visible in this conflict. albright appears now and then, but the daily nato press conferences are manned by well-versed britons and spaniards, and we see lots of pictures of aircraft and soldiers from various european countries. it's not the usual footage of US representatives claiming that "our moral grounds are better than your moral grounds" ;-)
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