Date: Fri, 16 Apr 1999 14:00:22 -0700
From: Dave Hayman <dhayman-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Nato intervention


Here's a good article I got on another list. I don't suppose it will
change anybody's mind; I can't understand why some people think what
NATO is doing is "better than nothing."

http://www.preamble.org/columns/weisbrot%20II/kosovo.htm

Knight-Ridder/Tribune Media Services (April 6, 1999)

The Debacle in Kosovo: Will Ground Troops Be
Next?        
By Mark Weisbrot

The bombing of Yugoslavia is turning out to be a foreign
policy debacle of disastrous proportions, yet most of
the chattering class insists that we can turn things
around if we only commit more troops. We have heard that
before.

Nearly two weeks into the war, our government (which has
the dominant voice in NATO) has actually helped to
create most of the worst case scenario that its
intervention was supposed to prevent. Nearly 400,000
people have fled Kosovo since the bombing began. The
influx of refugees has already begun to destabilize the
region. Macedonia, for example, has a large Albanian
population, and the arriving Kosovars will increase
tensions there. There are potential ethnic and national
conflicts throughout the region, and almost every
neighboring country has reason to be nervous.

Meanwhile, the population of Belgrade, furious at the
bombing of their city, has rallied around Yugoslavian
President Slobodan Milosevic as perhaps never before.

Yet the talking heads on TV implore us to send ground
troops to finish the job. That's easy for them to say:
they won't be getting shot in the Balkans fighting
someone else's war. And neither will their kids. Recall
that out of 535 members of Congress during the Gulf War,
only four had children in the Persian Gulf. We have an
economic draft in America: working class, poor, and
minority kids will be the ones most likely to die for
the preservation of NATO's credibility.

Anyone who thinks the Serbs will be easily subdued in
ground combat is dreaming. The Axis powers had 40
divisions in Yugoslavia during World War II, and the
Nazis were particularly brutal. They killed hundreds of
thousands of Serbs -- mostly civilians -- and many
others. But they failed to destroy the Yugoslav
resistance.

Many liberals (as well as conservatives) insist that we
"cannot just stand by" in the face of atrocities. But as
we have seen, our military action is only capable of
making things worse. This was true even before the
bombing started, because the prospect of NATO
intervention probably made the Kosovar Albanians less
willing to reach a negotiated solution.

In fact, we are sending a very dangerous message to
every ethnic minority that wants an independent state:
just keep killing people -- including civilians -- and
you could wind up having NATO for your air force. 

Americans are understandably sympathetic to the plight
of the Kosovar Albanians being driven from their homes.
But it would be a mistake to believe that our government
is waging this war in order to help anyone. We now know
that US intelligence anticipated that Milosevic would
respond to the bombing with a massive "ethnic cleansing"
of Kosovo. Yet they not only went ahead and bombed, they
did nothing to prepare for the ensuing refugee crisis.
Why? Because they do not really care about the Kosovars.
Although they are now airlifting some of the displaced
Albanians to safety, the amount that the Clinton
administration allocated for refugee since the bombing
began is telling: $58.5 million dollars. That's about
the cost of 29 air-launched cruise missiles fired at
Belgrade. 

As for Milosevic, he would probably rank somewhere in
the middle of a list of war criminals, dictators, and
other despots that our government has sponsored over the
last 50 years. Human rights have not been a serious
concern of U.S. foreign policy, and it would very naïve
to think that things have suddenly changed.

In Vietnam we were also told that we were "saving" the
people there, even as we defoliated their forests and
covered vast areas of land with moonlike craters. And of
course our national security was supposedly at stake.
But the communists won, and the only resulting threat to
America's security has been Nike's ability to hire
Vietnamese factory workers at $1.60 a day.

After these deceptions, the public became highly
skeptical of involvement in foreign military adventures.
But our foreign policy elite is disdainful of such
isolationist tendencies among the citizenry. These
people consider themselves not only technically but
morally superior to ordinary Americans, because of their
concern with strategic interests and their ready
willingness to go to war against whomever our government
chooses as its "enemy-of-the-month."

But the average citizens who may or may not be able to
find what remains of Yugoslavia on a map care a lot more
about human life -- both here and abroad -- than the
average pundit or politician. They are a lot less
interested in ruling the world, or how foreign policy
will "play" in the next elections. Let's hope they can
hold their own this time against the steady stream of
pro-war propaganda on the tube.