(I started writing this, but there was SOOOOOO much to say, so MANY reasons I hate the Kosovo war and the results, that I gave up and just did a list of many of the other people who didn't like it.)
We forced the war, started bombing with no idea where to go from there, didn't bomb seriously till after 2 months had passed, let the Kosovars fight on the ground for us, sped up the ethnic cleansing, killed as many Serb civilians as they had killed Albanians before we started, and didn't have any plan for the refugees. Now that we've "won", we have to rebuild what we destroyed, the Albanians are riding roughshod over the Serbs, the Russians are rattling sabers, the Chinese are furious, and the Serbs still have lots of weapons and army left.
But it did distract attention from China spying for a little while.
At Rambouillet, Milosevic rejected any autonomy vote for the Kosovars. He suggested that the UN patrol the province, and that the KLA be disarmed. Clinton rejected this out of hand, and said that it was "non-negotiable", and the bombs fell. At which point the Serbs really started their terror.
Bill Bradley is a columnist (not the Presidential candidate, I don't think) who writes for our alternative News and Review, which is so liberal it makes the Bee look like the New Republic. He wrote a recent column on the so-called "victory." He points out that the Rambouillet pact would have had NATO troops able to go anywhere in Yugoslavia and operate like the conquering army. He suspects that it was a plot, knowing that Milosevic would have to say no to such a condition, to force the war, to distract people from Clinton's other problems.
If I wanted to start a war with Milosevic -- a fast, easy, demonstration project kind of technowar that would send a cinematic message of humanitarian-tinged resolve around the world -- that's just the kind of demand I would make.
The cynical bombing without, God forbid, endangering a single American life, was totally immoral. If we were so concerned with humanitarian concerns, would we not have actually tried to WIN, and to do so before the Kosovars were massacred and evacuated?
Not that as many were massacred as NATO claimed.
Just remember, there actually WERE ground forces. Just not American ground forces, but imaginary blips-on-the-screen KLA ones, so they don't really count.
Worst of the Clinton war
Your June 13 editorial speaks of an American malady called
clintonphobia whereby some people so dislike Bill Clinton that they also hate
everything he does and wish him ill in all endeavors, his war against the
Serbs notably.
Unequivocally, I despise the ground he walks on and hope he falls flat on
his face with every step he takes. But my utter contempt doesn't blind me to
right and wrong; if it did, I'd have no right to express my opinion on this
matter.
Clinton's war was wrong on its own deficiency, not because of what he is,
or even because of his phony motives. There was absolutely nothing in the
Kosovo involvement that was in America's interests, unless you buy into
Clinton's naive global democracy pipe dream.
The humanitarian, ergo emotional, issue was lesser in scale and horror
than those Clinton studiously ignored in Africa. His fanatical demonization of
Slobodan Milosevic, the orchestration of his war criminal status, the
demands for total capitulation and now the ultimatum that the Serb leader
must go before Clinton will rebuild what he has destroyed--none of that fits
in with the president's policy of relative tolerance toward Saddam Hussein.
But the worst of Clinton's war was the tremendous destruction of
infrastructure, killing of civilians and displacement of people--in essence,
whatever it took to accomplish "victory."
What price victory, and what was accomplished? This little exercise in
futility has only intensified age-old hatreds and engendered yet another ethnic
rearrangement of the Balkans.
So yes, I begrudge Clinton this triumph as I have others equally
dishonorable. They always come at someone else's expense.
QUINCY R. JACKSON
Rogers
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 6/20)
U.S. a terrorist country
As an infantry combat veteran of World War II and Korea, I am appalled
at the hypocrisy and contempt shown to the American people by our
commander-in-chief, Bill Clinton, and even more appalled at the so-called
Christian people who support him no matter what he does to bring shame to
this country. I shudder every time he comes on TV.
He speaks about humane concerns while being guilty of unleashing tanks,
fire and bullets against peaceful church members in Waco, Texas, that killed
over 80 men, women and children without a twinge of regret, sorrow or
conscience.
Now this baby-killing, church-burning, draft-dodging, perjuring, lying
adulterer who calls himself the president of the United States has been killing
Europeans in the name of the American people.
Under Clinton, the U.S. has become a terrorist country. We have allowed
this sorry excuse for a president to unleash cruise missiles, bombs, fire and
death on the heads of innocent people from one side of the world to the
other. Our once proud flag has been sullied and disgraced by his murderous
acts.
America has become a symbol of the world bully who is subservient to
the desires of those who would bring us under one-world domination.
Today, in Serbia, we have been engaged in naked aggression against a
foreign state, the same sort of aggression that started World War II.
That this country has sunk so low that we would allow a pervert like
Clinton to lead us is a historical sign that we are nearing the end of our
greatness. When will those of you who call yourselves Christians have the
guts to say, "Enough"?
JACK MOHR
Little Rock
(Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 6/22)
Not really NATO victory
Once again Gene Lyons is using the old "I told you so" comeback on one
of his favorite wiping boys, George Will (Voices, June 9).
It seems that George has irked Gene by predicting that the bombing
campaign in Kosovo would not work. Gene is now, based on his vast
military knowledge, claiming a NATO victory.
The reason states capitulate is because one side's military might is beaten
or because they will gain an advantage for a pause. Now this is not a new
shocking revelation, but it seems that Gene has missed it.
We now have a negotiated settlement in Kosovo. Did the U.S. not have
the same type "peace" in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Bos nia? Do we still not
have troops in three of those countries and still show the scars of the other
one? I guess what we will need is a military that is twice as big to keep units
deployed around the world to ensure Gene's type of victories.
CHRISTOPHER S. STANGER
Maumelle
(ADG, 6/30)
"Let's Face it, Clinton won the War"
Nobody thought the bombing would last 79 days and that planes,
themselves secure from attack, would hit military and non-military targets all
over Yugoslavia. Nobody imagined that when NATO ran out of military
targets, it would start killing civilians and deprive the innocent people of
Serbia of basic human needs.
Only when it became clear that our NATO allies were completely under
Clinton's spell and that they would let him bomb Serbia forever unless he got
his way did Slobodan Milosevic crumble.
Stopping atrocities being committed against Kosovars was a task that had
to be done. Whether the end--killing Serbs--justified the means is open to
question.
What Americans should worry about is his promise, made almost as an
aside, to go to war in defense of human rights elsewhere in the world. Will
Rwanda be next? The Sudan? Tibet? And what are we going to do if our
good friends, the Russians, get involved in another Chechnya or Afghan
istan? Or if our even better friends, the Chinese, decide to realize a 50-year
dream and annex Taiwan?
...
It is regrettable that Clinton could not get through his 10-minute victory
statement without telling one more lie. He said that the option of using
ground troops was never taken off the table. If that was true, then he lied to
us in March when he said for the umpteenth time that he would not use
American troops in a combat situation.
A true accounting of what happened in Yugoslavia may tell us that more
Kosovars died because of the bombing than would have died if the United
States had not decided to meddle in a civil war.
(Starr, ADG 6/13)
The war in Kosovo is the most blatant trampling of the Constitution in
modern times, however. There were none of the conventional justifications.
We could not claim to be protecting American property or lives. Moreover,
we could not claim to be acting pursuant to any treaty obligation because the
NATO treaty cannot plausibly authorize offensive military action. The
NATO treaty obligates signatories to come to the aid of any other signatory
country that is attacked. The treaty cannot authorize NATO to take
offensive military action against a non-member state that has not threatened
or attacked a member state.
Congress must share the blame. The partisan residue of the impeachment
debacle made it difficult, if not impossible, for Congress to debate these
issues. Republicans, who never found a military action they didn't like during
the Reagan-Bush years, suddenly became peaceniks. They could not bring
themselves to support anything Clinton did. Democrats, who voted almost
unanimously against our involvement in Iraq, suddenly became hawks. They
could not afford to stand against the president they had only recently
rescued.
In the end, the Constitution and the rule of law suffered.
Bill Clinton's legacy may have nothing to do with his impeachment.
Rather, his legacy may be that he placed the power to make war solely in
the hands of the president. And that will have more serious and long-lasting
consequences for the rule of law than the tawdry little Lewinsky affair ever
will.
And The Winner Is ... Saddam
In the argument about sectors, NATO sounds more like an invading
Army, dividing the spoils, than people looking for the easiest way to keep
the peace.
NATO is trying to spin the war story to its advantage. It says Serbia's
crackdown on Kosovo's Albanians began shortly before NATO started
bombing. Generally, it has been reported that the worst of the atrocities
were committed after the bombing started.
There has been no estimate of how many Yugoslavians were killed by
NATO's bombing, but the number is in the thousands.
...
There is general agreement that ethnic cleansing in Kosovo had to be
stopped. There will be continuing disagreement over whether bombing
Yugoslavia back into the 19th Century was the best way to stop it.
...
The biggest winner--maybe the only winner--in Bill Clinton's war is
Saddam Hussein, ruler of Iraq. Iraq has been forgotten, and has been free
for almost six months to manufacture any weapon of mass destruction that
suits its fancy.
ADG 6/24 (Unknown Editorialist)
AS THE passage of time shrouds memory and obscures fact, our president
and nominal commander-in-chief may get away with devising his own
personal history of the latest Balkan War. Naturally he will play the part of
both Patton and Clausewitz, tactical genius and strategic thinker. To do so,
of course, he'll have to dodge some pointed questions, mainly about his
failure to deploy a decisive number of ground troops before or even during
the conflict.
The world will never know how many casualties, military and civilian,
Albanian and Serb, might have been avoided if air power had been backed
up by troops on the ground. Could the war have been ended sooner if all the
resources of the Allies, not just air power, had been ready to go?
Michael Short, the Air Force general who commanded the war from the
skies, has an answer: Yes.
---
THESE ARE the sort of details that tend to get lost in our president's ever
more sweeping claims about "the right war fought the right way," but they
provide some insight into how things really worked. And things seem to have
worked out successfully despite, not because of, NATO's curious strategic
decisions. Or rather indecisions.
---
No ground troops? Very well, said NATO commanders like General
Short, we'll find our own. And they did--in the Kosovars, poor devils.
Recruited from Albanians around the world--waiters and busboys who had
taken refuge in Italy or England or America, young execs who would really
have rather been trading stocks, and the motley crew of psychos and
patriots, thugs and heroes who are attracted by any war. They came when
called, this uneven collection of fighters from a nation dispersed, and they
stood and fought. They held the hilltops, acting as live bait to draw the
Serbs' armored battalions into the open, where they could be smashed by
NATO's strictly air war.
---
AS FOR this Great Debate over whether ground troops should have been
used, it turns out to be as slippery as a Clinton apology. NATO had 'em all
along--on loan.
---
What a pity our boy president waited to take his ROTC course till now,
when real lives were at stake and real suffering was inflicted. This was
no field exercise and, despite every warning, the West was caught by
surprise. In response to Slobodan Milosevic's heartless war-by-refugees,
Cadet Clinton had only air power. It proved enough, thanks to a ragtag
army of Kosovars, but at what a cost.
One would like to think that our slow-learning commander-in-chief will
not make this mistake again. He's supposed to be a quick study, but
Slobodan Milosevic has been allowed to get away with his Balkan Wars for
seven years now without being definitively defeated. Only his people--and
others--have paid the terrible price. And he is still a wanted man on the
loose.
Oakley, ADG 6/25
Obviously, war is a messy business with byproducts not easily or quickly
cleaned up and cleared away. Clinton's War--one of several, but for now
the one for which he is destined to be best remembered--remains unresolved
in so many ways. Perhaps in too many ways to allow for his legacy to be
fixed in the few months remaining in his presidency.
That's "fixed" as in repaired, not firmly established.
Milosevic and Serbs won the war
Someone's hung up on the Jewish Holocaust. Slobodan Milosevic may be
a tyrant, but he's no Hitler.
Where are the ovens? Where are the emaciated bodies, bloated bellies
and sunken eyes while we count every bone? I saw only fat babies,
grandmas and healthy, well-dressed adult refugees coming out of Kosovo.
When this war started, only 100 deaths were laid at Milosevic's feet.
NATO has provided plenty of fodder, i.e. deaths, to satisfy everybody,
besides destroying the infrastructure of a nation. NATO appears more like
Adolf Hitler (London) in bombing civilians, trying to destroy their will to
resist.
What has this war accomplished? It has inflated Tony Blair's and Bill
Clinton's egos. Germany's government was ready to call for elections and
both France and Italy were ready to abandon NATO if the war continued.
The Russians have arrived--to stay.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was the primary cause of this war, trying to
separate Kosovo from Serbia using guerrilla tactics. That is still their stated
agenda. Thugs and drug runners, this Mafia-type, bully-boy army of the
Balkans was given official status when invited to the bargaining table. That's
like placing our own Mafia dons in charge of our banking system.
The worst scenario is that Yugoslavia may become communist again
under Russian control. I imagine this looks better to them at this point than
does Western democracy. NATO will not send the bombers in again. Not
with a full complement of Russian military hardware and men nearby. Who
wants World War III? Milosevic and the Serbs won this war.
J.F. COLEMAN
McCaskill ADG 6/28
A Perfectly Clintonian Doctrine
The war against the Serbs in Kosovo was an exercise not of any global
village but of the great powers, and the great powers pick and choose
their moral causes. The great powers stood complacently by in the summer
of 1995, when the Croats ethnically cleansed their turf in Bosnia of
300,000 Serbs, and they are standing by now, as the Kosovo Liberation
Army and returning Albanian refugees rapidly cleanse Kosovo of 200,000
Serbs.
Some victory.