Bloodshed in Kosovo
Pfaff, William
medical science, especially organ transplants and genetic manipulation, combined with notions of unfettered individual choice and self-determination, are eroding even those barriers. When...
...There is nonetheless some reason to think that Milosevic will back off...
...I do not say the innocent population, because the voters of Serbia unquestionably support repression of the movement for Albanian autonomy or independence in Kosovo...
...One giant leap...
...Lorenzoni wrote a piece about it in the Irish Religious Lift" Review, suggesting some of the messages being sent...
...information operation, U.S...
...The church determined which biblical books would be considered canonical largely in reaction to Marcion, who wanted to exclude all of the Old Testament and much of what we regard as the New Testament...
...It drew agreement from various Vatican eminences who saw it at the time...
...When Europe recognized those countries' independence, it turned Belgrade's action into international aggression--but did nothing to stop it...
...he can say: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for womankind...
...As previously noted in this magazine (December 16, 1994), Lorenzoni once had occasion to look up, in quick succession, the names of the superiors general of the Fathers of Mercy, an order with exactly seven members worldwide, and of the Salesian sisters, with nearly 18,000 members...
...were noted early on...
...The United States has threatened to act without renewed UN approval in Iraq...
...They are identifiable military targets and the actual instruments of Milosevic's power...
...A radical Commonweal 7 March 27, 1998...
...And in 1996 (again in 1997) women superiors general acquired names and recognition in the Annuario...
...Fast forward--with all deliberate speed--to today...
...There is exactly the same stalemate that prevented construct...
...This time he may have started something he cannot, or will not, stop, and which the international community is unwilling to stop...
...In Iraq, where an even more ruthless apparatus of political control exists, no outsider can know what the scale of opposition to Saddam Hussein really is...
...troops stationed in Macedonia, active diplomacy in Belgradehave been possible because practically no one in Washington noticed them...
...But it has become clear that at least in the case of some new infertility treatments, physicians are themselves incapable of controlling and restraining their own practices...
...The legal objection to interference in other countries' internal affairs has not inhibited the United States in the past, in Central America and Southeast Asia...
...The Serbian people had their chance last winter to depose Slobodan Milosevic...
...What can be done about people like Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein...
...C The similarities, and the differences, influenced the response to the Kosovo crisis of the so-called Contact Group in London in early March...
...He attacks what he portrays as destructive movements inside his country's borders...
...But the leaders of the democracy demonstrations, which then seemed so impressive, squandered that opportunity in sterile personal rivalries...
...Today, they support the Milosevic government against the Contact Group's demands...
...There's no point in publishing the names of women superiors because who needs to know them...
...He takes calculated risks, and the downside of what he has done this time is considerable...
...And if medicine can't restrain itself, the federal government or state legislatures should...
...And what could history have to do with the Song of Songs...
...There is an immense emotional charge behind their belief that Kosovo, because of Serbia's history, is an inalienable part of Serbia, whoever actually may live there...
...The episode in Daniel may or may not have had its roots in some royal wickedness, but it is so charged, as something to be recited, that you have to see that something more than history is involved here...
...D 9 1998, Los Angeles Times Syndicate n a good op-ed page piece in the New York Times (February 26), Joyce Carol | Oates makes a statement with which I have to disagree, at least in part: "The truth of one era becomes, as if by an artist's sleight of hand, the mythology of subsequent eras...
...Shi'ites in the southern half of the country, and the Kurds in the north, resist Baghdad's domination, but that predates the present regime...
...He seems to have mistakenly assumed that the United States, and therefore Europe, would ignore renewed repression in Kosovo...
...for example, "Women are of little consequence in the church...
...The very sensible American initiatives already in place to influence the sitnation in Kosovo--a big and visible U.S...
...In 1994 Archbishop Maurice Couture of Quebec pointed to the Annuario's odd custom as an instance of churchly discrimination against women...
...The compilers of the Hebrew Bible also had no problem with contradiction: the two creation accounts in Genesis differ, to take only one example...
...As a "lesson," bombing has always proven illuso~ policy...
...The male name was there...
...His power has from the start rested on the nihilistic exploitation of that nationalism...
...Europe and the United States contemplate an arms embargo, diplomatic isolation, etc., for Serbia, but Russia resists strong measures...
...In both cases, he relied on the Annuario Pontiffcio, the Vatican yearbook...
...the chronologies of John and the synoptic Gospels differ, and these and other differences (how many angels were at the tomb after the Resurrection, and what did they say...
...I am not sure that this is true--or it is at least not nearly so simple...
...Father Larry Lorenzoni may now be entitled to paraphrase Armstrong's line...
...What was sacred becomes secular...
...Our modern idea of history is relatively recent, and limited: just the facts, please...
...Military intervention would find little popular support...
...The hysteria which often surrounds discussion of Saddam Hussein obscures the fact that because he has been an international aggressor he has been easier to deal with than Slobodan Milosevic...
...Hussein went to war with Iran in 1980, thinking to overthrow the revolutionary government there (and enjoyed tacit American sympathy in doing so, as well as subsequent intelligence and arms help...
...onsider Kosovo and Iraq...
...the female was not...
...all the superiors of all the men's orders were there, none of the women superiors...
...Our thinking about human procreation obviously has a profound impact on our attitudes toward children and how we understand what it means to be a human person...
...Milosevic could let Slovenia and Croatia go because his aim was a greater Serbia...
...It is time for the appropriate professional bodies to do it for them...
...But the Balkans are another place, and Kosovo's fate is widely, and not unreasonably, thought by Americans to be distant from any American national interest...
...Kosovo, in terms of international law, is a Serbian internal affair...
...On the other hand, violence can make a difference when it has a direct effect on what is happening...
...When his country was Yugoslavia, he tried to prevent secession by Slovenia and Croatia...
...And you can read Jonah as a wonderful (and funny) fable, and the account of the three young men in the fiery furnace, in Daniel, was plainly something to be recited aloud...
...WILLIAM PFAFF BLO@DSHED |M K@$0u What can be done...
...It proved unattainable, and he abandoned the Krajina Serb minority in Croatia, and the so-called Republika Srpska in Bosnia...
...By defying the United States last fall, and again last month, the Iraqi dictator has fired national pride and won an increase in permitted oil sales and humanitarian imports...
...NATO's experience in Bosnia demonstrated that force can change Milosevic's mind...
...When everything has a price, we are unable to determine the value of anything...
...However, this is not going to happen...
...Whatever the violence committed against its Albanian minority, international law and convention limit the intervention of foreign governments to persuasion, or to measures of sanction or boycott that in practice tend to punish the population...
...My problem is with the too simple distinction between "literal ~uth" and "metaphorical truth...
...Europe's reaction to the situation is depressingly familiar...
...The Review article appeared in 1985...
...However, his career has rested on provoking nationalism and creating wars...
...But when he invaded Kuwait, it was not difficult for the Bush administration to organize an international coaliCommonweal 6 March 27, 1998 tion to eject Hussein's army...
...Ladies Last Stepping to the surface of the moon on June 20,1969, Neil Armstrong radioed a prepared message back to Earth: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind...
...For exampie, when the church compiled the New Testament it knowingly included some contradictory accounts...
...If the Serbian authorities do not call off their campaign of militarized police repression in Kosovo, as demanded by the Contact Group, the argument can be made for attacking those forces...
...But he cannot now let Kosovo go because it is the focus of Serbian nationalism...
...ve and collective European action when the old Yugoslavia came apart...
...My problem is not with the idea that our ancestors may have had a different approach to these things than we do, nor do I deny that they may have thought Jonah was really swallowed by a huge fish...
...The genealogies of Christ offered by Matthew and Luke, for example, are different...
...Well, the College of Cardinals still has no co-eds...
...If Saddam Hussein keeps the promises made to Kofi Annan concerning arms inspections, he is within sight of an end to sanctions...
...Our impassioned ancestors must have intended books like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament to be historical documents, bearing the literal truth, not the metaphorical truth they embody today...
...Slobodan Milosevic is an internal aggressor...
...The father superior of ten men is more important than the mother superior of 10,000 women...
...Armed intervention is pointless when, as in Iraq in February, no coherent explanation can be supplied as to how bombing will make a difference to how the despot behaves...
...It wasn't an accident...
...For some time, deference to medical professionals and compassion for infertile couples has stayed the hand of regulatory bodies...
...Giving technology and commerce such a large role in babymaking will increasingly compel us, legally and in other ways, to think of new life as an object to be manipulated and sold like any other...
...No one dared talk about armed intervention, although the United States once warned of military // action should the Kosovo Albanians be attacked...
Vol. 125 • March 1998 • No. 6
