Response to What does Anti-War mean?
Well, actually, if you look at WW2, you'll see that fascism was not what the UK and US governments were fighting; rather the expansion of German economic control and influence, which upset their trade with continental Europe. The 'fight against fascism' was of course used by them to encourage volunteers and keep up the morale of the soldiers who went out to fight their cause.
Among the UK ruling class, there had been much admiration for Hitler and his policies. It wasn't until considerable expansion had taken place that they finally got upset, since access to both markets and raw materials were undermined.
As for what they were doing to Jews, disabled, gypsies, homosexuals, communists, etc., while intelligence services may not have been aware of the full extent of the plans before entering the war, they certainly knew about the discrimination and herding people into concentration camps. And they weren't all that upset about it!
Serbia... NATO did not oust Milosevic; it was the ordinary people of Serbia who did this. And they probably would have done it even sooner only that NATO had been raining bombs down on them, destroying their homes, electricity and water supplies, road and rail networks, factories, etc. The mass demonstrations which had been taking place for many months before the bombings had to cease, since it was just too dangerous to go out in the evening. And Milosevic used the attacks to further whip up nationalistic emotions in order to rally people to him: he posed himself as the defender of the Serbian people against the imperialist might of US, UK and their allies.
It took some months to rebuild the mass demonstrations after the war, and it was the strength of this movement which led to his electoral defeat, and eventually deposed him when he refused to accept the election results.
Of course, the Kosovars are the real victims in all of this. The western powers do not want them to have their own independent state. Why? Because they have their own economic and political agenda, and (as is usually the case) this does not coincide with the wishes of the people whose lives and livelihoods are at stake.
Taking for granted the publicly expressed motives of the western governments in these situations of war or threats of war is even more dangerous than being neutral.
Created By: Ron Byrne