Whose Intransigence?

The Washington Post is usually somewhat tragicomic in its imperialist cheerleading and dripping Russophobia (which often turns into Serbophobia, as the WaPo sees Serbs as nothing more than surrogate Russians), but its Monday iditorial on "Serbia's intransigence" surely deserves the grand prize in the "Arrogance of Power" contest.

As they see it, a "firm Western consensus" is that Kosovo should become independent so that poor victimized Albanians would never again have to suffer from Serb oppression, while the Serbs would be reunited with their cultural heritage when both Kosovo and Serbia end up as provinces of the EU, along with the rest of the Balkans, in some indeterminate but hopefully soonish future. It's billed as a "forward-looking vision" that most people in the region - including Serbia, they claim - support. Alas, the "problem, as so often during the past 20 years, is Serbia's political leadership, which remains addicted to the poisonous nationalism that drove the country into a series of disastrous wars during the 1990s."

Why, Prime Minister Kostunica dared turn a deaf ear to Western threats and actually had the gall to declare "Kosovo is a part of Serbia," just like the evil Milosevic did in the 1980s! (But, wasn't it? Isn't it? Would saying "California is a part of America" be considered evil, or poisonous, or nationalist?) And even the poor Imperial busboy Boris Tadic is pilloried by the Posties, for "threatening" border changes across Europe, something only the vile Russians ever talk about. And so, sayeth the Post,

"All of this means that the West's attempt to resolve the legacy of the Balkan wars of the 1990s and position the region inside the liberal Europe of the 21st century is in jeopardy of being defeated by Serbia's 20th-century-style nationalism and Russia's 19th-century game of power politics."

Never you mind that the "West" engaged in unprovoked aggression; violated its own laws, treaties, charters and principles to carve up Yugoslavia illegally and illegitimately in the first place (all this talk about a "liberal Europe" is horse-droppings; why did they so wholeheartedly destroy Yugoslavia, if they disliked the notion of a dozen mini-states in its stead?); and that its "solution" is unadulterated thievery. No, it's clearly the evil Serbs and vile Russians who threaten peace in Europe.

The WaPo ends the iditorial on a hopeful note: "The country remains, at least, a democracy: There remains the hope that, if its leaders cannot adjust, its people will eventually choose better leaders."

"Adjusting" means "obeying the Empire," and "electing better leaders" means "electing better quislings." If Tadic, Draskovic and their ilk are not subservient enough for the Washington Post,
probably nothing short of a triumvirate dictatorship by Sonja Biserko, Natasa Kandic and Biljana Kovacevic-Vuco would do.

The Post represents Washington's "liberal-imperialist" establishment, which has been responsible for the U.S. Balkans policy over the past 20 years or so. Sunday's collection of vitriolic drivel encapsulates their view of the Serbs, one that no amount of sycophancy will change. Serbia's spineless leaders ought to show the uppity mandarins in Washington just how severe their intransigence can be. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

Hegemonic Maniacs

Sometimes the sheer absurdity of the world we live in, the wrongness of it, tends to overload my synapses and I just stop paying attention for a while. If I ever allow that condition to become permanent, I would of course become one of the docile drones the Empire counts on to support its continued existence.

Paul Craig Roberts keeps paying attention, though. Just the other day, he listened to two Imperial officials prattle about the need for hegemony on NPR (where else?). In discussing North Korea, Roberts says,

"Both Hill and Carter agreed that no country, with the exception of Israel, has a right to any interests of its own unless it is an interest that coincides with U.S. interests. No other interest is legitimate."

Roberts continues:

"Listening to the pair of hegemonic maniacs, I realized that the United States is the new Rome—there is no legitimate power but us. Any other power is a potential threat to our interests and must be eliminated before it gets any independent ideas."

Yet for all the Neocon prattle about the US being the sole superpower with the world at its mercy, there are billions of people who disagree - and many of them belligerently so. If the USA is the modern equivalent of the Roman Empire, this must be what the Empire looked like in its waning days, its power still considered supreme even as it was in practice nothing more than a cruel joke.