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A little more than a month ago (February, 1999), not very many people thought that a war was about to push Monica Lewinsky off American television screens once and for all. But she's gone now. I'm sure the NATO bombing campaign has hurt her booksales, but no matter.
I'd almost think war was a good thing merely for the fact that the American media has discovered that news is more than sex and murder scandals. This hasn't happened since sometime in the mists of time before OJ. But to watch CNN, the commercial tv networks and PBS, or reading the mainstream press in the USA as they all march in step to the official line about what NATO is doing, is disheartening to say the least. Truth truly is the first casualty in war.
I do agree with the NATO bosses: Clinton, Tony Blair, Madeleine Albright, and the military brass, that the Serbs are doing very evil things to the Kosovar Albanians, a minority in Yugoslavia, but by far the majority inside Kosovo itself. The Serbian goal is to expel the entire population of Kosovar Albanians. Serbs have murdered or expelled hundreds of thousands in Bosnia and parts of Croatia in the last ten years, and they're doing it now inside their own borders.
The decision to bomb Yugoslavia ostensibly has been to stop the Serbs from ethnic cleansing and to allow the Kosovar Albanians to live autonomously within Yugoslavia, But just as important to the policy-makers has been the idea that it is necessary to demonstrate the credibility of NATO itself. Actually in the early days, this was the dominant explanation. Amazingly, the NATO policy-makers didn't seem to think that the Serbs would respond to bombs by intensifying their ethnic cleansing and creating an enormous refugee crisis. NATO and relief organizations have been embarrasingly unprepared.
The bombing campaign seems to have been a failure in convincing the Serbs to stop their rampage in Kosovo. The Serbs are a people possessed by extremist nationalist doctrines. Even those opposed to Milosevic are extreme chauvinists. Their goal is to create a greater Serbia by force so that anywhere a Serb lives is considered Serbian land (watch out Chicago...)
The Kosovar Albanians are hardly saintly heroes. Many of them are chauvinists themselves who are willing to shed blood to create an independent Kosovo with the goal of a Greater Albania. The KLA is a ruthless guerilla army, weaker than the Serbs, but just as willing to kill civilians.
The alternative would seem to be just as horrible as what NATO fitfully is planning: a full-scale ground war and imposing a solution on the Serbs. That alternative would be to try to take care of the refugees, stop the bombing, and allow the Serbs to ethnically cleanse Kosovo. In other words, to damage that precious credibility of NATO and allow genocide to occur.
What NATO is sliding toward is a real war with the potential for enormous casualties (and if the US has anything to say about it...and it does), that would mean mostly European casualties. The Serbs would fight back ferociously, and who can depend on a politically fragile Russia standing by and doing nothing?
Who knows how long such a war would go on? And what would be the outcome? Nobody knows. Probably some kind of protectorate for Kosovar Albanians surrounded by a Serb poplulation with a bigger grudge than ever.
In other words, a very unstable and unviable solution.
The only debate that the US media is discussing is how Clinton should back away from refusing to commit to the use of ground forces. It really seems to me that public opinion is being hoodwinked by policy-makers and the lapdog media. It's a carefully orchestrated attempt to manipulate people into believing that a full-scale war is the only solution.Unfortunately, a halt to the bombing and declining to send in troops is not considered an option.
Instead, the only option being offered is a scenario very similar to what happened in Vietnam. This time though, the US would have 18 other allies involved. But the outcome would probably be similar: a bloated and arrogant superpower would get bogged down in a war that would become increasingly unpopular when the coffins start coming home. The allies would bail out far before the US, which is so steeped in its machismo that it would find it as hard to stop fighting as an untreated alcoholic finds it to stop drinking.
We lost the Vietnam War,and we did not achieve our goals in defeating the North Koreans 45 years ago. Saddam Hussein is still in power. We ignored the genocide in Rwanda, Chechnya, East Timor, the Kurds in Turkey, and it could be said we performed ethnic cleansing ourselves all through the nineteenth century in the name of the chauvinistic policy of Manifest Destiny. In other words, the US has a terrible record of saving the world from itself, and a shameful domestic history it prefers not to discuss. The only war it has fought this century that was just was World War II.
I've heard Milosevic compared to Hitler, which is just ridiculous. The Serbs as a people have a lot to answer for, since they have willingly allowed themselves to embrace a hateful nationalism and a demogogue to lead them. But Serbian nationalism is not Nazism. It is the strong trampling the weak, and is the history of mankind from time immemorial.
Instead of bombs and war, NATO and its allies should have isolated Serbia politically and economically. Make them pariahs, ruin their economy, and encourage them to rid themselves of their rotten nationalism and dictators. That was more or less the policy applied to the Soviets (remember the Cold War?) What is so wrong with a peaceful confrontation of evil?
NATO's "credibility" will not be helped by the eventual outcome of a lost war. Unlikely as it is, stopping the bombs and admitting it was a mistake would be less damaging to NATO than the outcome where no one wins. Answering a wrong with a wrong response was not the only option, but it's the only one that we've been presented with.
The whole project was a miscalculation to begin with.To admit that is far more than Clinton and company could ever manage, it seems. Just look how hard it was for Clinton to admit he was cheating on his wife, and what that did to America for more than a year. And when have leaders, democratically elected or not, been eager to admit mistakes?
Instead, I think an enormous price will be paid. The question of the twentieth century truly seems to be: "Oh when will they ever learn?"
(May 10, 1999)
Addendum: Since this was written, an uneasy peace was established. The Serbs cried uncle, there was no ground war although NATO moved in, the refugees returned. It turns out although war crimes were committed by the Serbs, the number of people killed had been greatly inflated, but there's no defending the Serbs' brutality. Sadly, the Kosovar Albanians are seeking vengeance, and now the few remaining Serbs are being killed or intimidated into leaving. Nobody knows how long NATO troops will stay, whether Kosovo will become a UN Protectorate, whether any kind of civilized society can be created there or in Milosevic's Serbia. It seems doubtful the status quo will last forever. Meanwhile in Bosnia, things are still simmering, and the UN imposed arrangements seem to have only made the three sides dig in their heels deeper. The enormous price already paid as I mentioned above is getting higher, with no real solution apparent. Probably in the end, in bloody ways or through terror, "ethnic cleansing" will be the end result: Croats with Croats, Serbs with Serbs, Kosovars with Albania, a very, very small Muslim Bosnia. That's just the opposite of what the intentions of intervening were meant to do, but it seems to be the only real way for the peoples of this region to stop the madness of the last 10 years. (March 25, 2000)
Feedback is welcome. Please send e-mail to: alphistia@yahoo.com
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