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Posted June 18, 2001
Albanians in Macedonia
Shame on [Nebojsa Malic]! How can an educated man write this: "The 'ethnic' is crucial here, as simply calling them 'Albanians' would imply the politically incorrect (though accurate) notion that Albania is their mother country, where they have all the rights they could possibly want. Specifying that Macedonian Albanians are an immigrant minority with astronomical birthrates would make Western audiences draw parallels to immigrants in their own countries - which cannot, must not ever be allowed to happen…"
Wake up! The Albanians in Macedonia are not immigrants. They have lived in there for centuries. I advise you to "fine tune" your mind by reading Encyclopedia Britannica and apologize for your comments. Please don't spread lies and hatred. Can you once write the truth? I don't think you can. The hatred has blinded you and has "animalized" the humanity in you.
~ Bob Kelmendi
Nebojsa Malic replies:
I appreciate Mr. Kelmendi's effort to defend the honor of his people. He does not, though, offer any facts to dispute my claims. Albanians have always been a minority in the region - and now country - of Macedonia, and their population has risen exponentially only during Tito's communist regime. Even Tito did not recognize them as a constituent nation within Yugoslavia, but a national minority. So why all of a sudden, 50 years after Tito's Communist state was established, do they want nationhood? One should look across the border, into NATO-occupied and KLA-controlled Kosovo. The truth points to itself.
Power Vacuum
As a citizen of (allegedly) neutral Ireland, I tend to sympathise with US non-interventionists. Nevertheless, I would like to read (or be pointed to) a sensible non-interventionist reply to the following problem:
Wouldn't US non-interventionism create a dangerous power vacuum…leading to a worldwide replay of the civil wars…in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Yugoslavia, following the vacuum created by the withdrawal of Soviet power? After all, US non-interventionism in 1919-1941 gave a free hand to the likes of Hitler, Stalin, and Tojo to fill the power vacuum in Eastern Europe and China at the time, with World War II the result.
~ Frank Biggar Dublin, Ireland
The Backtalk editor replies:
Anti-interventionists tend to view imperialism/interventionism - rather than isolationism - as the cause of WWII. Certainly, the war would not have occurred if German and Japanese citizens had stopped their governments' aggression. Also, WWII can be viewed as a continuation of WWI. Niall Ferguson argues in The Pity of War that the second world war could have been avoided, had Britain not intervened against Germany in the first. As early as 1898, American Anti-Imperialist League vice-president and benefactor, Andrew Carnegie, warned that imperialism had made Europe into an "armed camp," preparing to fight for "distant possessions."
Roosevelt & Cockburn
…[Roosevelt's] hands were tied by a mentality in this country that was cowardly [and] self-centered - …dreaming of a bizarre and impossible utopia where all that mattered was our own little garden. History tells us…that the civilization that tends its gardens and ignores the rest of the world soon becomes a shell of itself, empty, [and] backwards… Once the US was in the war, the Germans and Japanese were finally facing an enemy that could inflict real damage from the West while the Soviets came at them from the East, and Hitler was stopped. And Japan was stopped. And Italy came to its senses. And some Jews survived the holocaust. And the war was over in a few years, after millions died.
If we want to be less than what we can be, if we want to blow the greatest opportunity to bring civilization forward, not backward, then we should follow Cockburn's advice and put the blinders up [and] ignore the evil out there as long as it doesn't touch our shores… That FDR knew of Pearl Harbor before it happened, even if he knew lives could be lost by intentional inaction, he also knew that it would change the debate in America and compel ordinary Americans to get their blood boiling and overwhelm the isolationist instinct. When there are dangerous people with huge resources and ambitious plans and evil deeds in their past, present, and future, it is dangerous to put the walls up higher as if that were the way to make it go away…
~ Carl Haber