First:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/03/politics/03CND-GORD.html?hpThen: With so called "progressives" like these, who needs Rush Limbaugh?Zoltan Grossman's article, loaded with factual errors and innuendo needs a clear response.
Here it is.
Hours after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999, the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign began, expelling hundreds of thousands of Albanians, and creating an enormous refugee crisis.
The ethnic cleansing began before the bombing, and Milosevic was already under investigation for War Crimes by the UN, he would be indicted during the course of the Kosovo campaign. He had attempted to purge and conquer the Krajina region of Croatia, had backed the ethnic cleansing by "The Serb Republic" in Bosnia, and the siege of Sarajevo.
The The BBC timeline says
September 1998:
"Heavy fighting continues despite Serbian assurances that the offensive is over. At least 36 ethnic Albanian civilians are reported to have been massacred in three separate incidents."
And also in October of 1998:
"Following intensive diplomatic efforts by US envoy Richard Holbrooke, Yugoslavia agrees to allow a 2,000-strong monitoring force into Kosovo to ensure it complies with UN demands, averting the immediate prospect of NATO airstrikes."
Far from being "the stick", it was Milosevic who continued to order and direct atrocities, for which he is now on trial, in an effort to break the back of the Kosovar people. There was, unlike in Iraq, a clear breach of the peace.
As The UNHCR report makes clear, the Serbians were planning to destroy the identity of the Kosovar people, and the blame rests with them. Before the bombing there were 100,000 displaced Kosovars in Europe, and 266,000 displaced within the former Yugoslavia, as well as a million refugees of other ethnic groups from previous Serbian attempts to uproot whole peoples in pursuit of a "greater Serbia". The March 24th attacks did not "create" a humanitarian crisis - over 1.5 million refugees is a humanitarian crisis. Many of the people who Professor Grossman labels as being turned into refugees, already were, they were merely displaced and still inside areas under Serbian control, some in makeshift concentration camps.
The Serbian democratic opposition strongly condemned the bombing as undermining and delaying their efforts to oust President Milosevic, and as strengthening his police state.
Milosevic was driven from power in the wake of his defeat in Kosovo, a year later he was in hiding - despite having held on through months of protests previously, and survived numerous elections where he seemed like a sure loser before the attack. Unlike in Iraq, the civilian inhabitants retained power and sovereignty over Serbia. The bombings also began the process by which Montenegro was able to break away from Serbia.
Second, the NATO bombing alienated Serbian civilians who had led the opposition to Milosevic. Cities that had voted heavily against Milosevic were among those targeted with bombing. U.S. jets dropped cluster bombs on a crowded marketplace in Nis. Civilian infrastructure, such as trains, busses, bridges, TV stations, civilian factories, hospitals and power plants, were repeatedly hit by NATO bombs.
As for the litany of complaints about war itself, rather than getting into a detailed rebuttal based on the mechanics of target selection, and reminding readers that the target list was approved by every single NATO country, let me quote one of the harshest critics of the blunt instrument of military force, as reported by The Guardian:
The general who led NATO's forces in Kosovo believes the bombing campaign might not have been necessary if new electronic methods of waging war had been used to force President Slobodan Milosevic into submission.
General Wesley Clark, the outgoing supreme allied commander in Europe, stunned a recent session of the US senate armed forces committee by calling for a complete rethink of western strategy and questioning the need for the aerial assault on Serbia, which caused an estimated 1,500 civilian casualties and came close to losing the propaganda war.
His testimony last month was the highest level of endorsement so far given to the use of forms of "cyberwar" which, their supporters argue, could have stopped Serb ethnic cleansing faster and with far less bloodshed.
In otherwords, the military weapon was the tool, which he had, but, even then, he regarded it as dangerous and potentially obsolete. Reading Waging Modern War finds Clark similarly skeptical about treating new "smart" weapons as clean and surgical, rather, they are prone to error, limited in their use, and dangerous.
Obviously Professor Grossman has no problems standing around while people elsewhere are slaughtered. That's between him and his conscience, if he can sleep at night knowing that genocide is on the menu elsewhere, and feels no compunction about letting it happen, just so long as he is not involved, that is, of course, his karma. He also seems to have no problems simply recycling articles: there is nothing new in his ranting, and nothing other than ranting to connect it with current events. It seems, in fact, that he hates successful intervention even more than blundered expansionism.
However, one reason that many humanitarians strongly support Wesley Clark is detailed in Samantha Power's book A Problem from Hell - Clark was the only high ranking US official to push to prevent the genocide there - one that was not stopped, and which lead to 500,000 people being hacked to death, and touching off a war which has killed, according to the UN, perhaps as many as 3,000,000 people. Obviously Professor Grossman can sleep at night with that too, on his conscience.
What is amusing is, after excoriating the US for the ill effects of the bombing campaigns, he then screams that "America did not drop one bomb to stop Croatian ethnic cleansing". In otherwords, after screaming that we used force, he screams we didn't use it faster and more often. After accusing us of killing civilians for a good end, he accuses us of not killing enough of them fast enough.
According the UN there are Croatians wanted or on trial for crimes against humanity, including their former chief Army officer - clearly something was done, and done without dropping bombs. The US - with Wesley Clark as one of the "quiet heroes" of the process - forced a negotiated peace in Bosnia. Clark himself acted as military attaché to Richard Holbrooke during the process, and risked his life to try and save three diplomats in an overturned Armored Personnel Carrier - something that I doubt Professor Grossman has the courage to do.
The problem with this article is that it is driven by hate - it will dredge up vague accusations, and try a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attack. Clark is evil for having bombed, he is evil for not having bombed. He's evil for having stopped ethnic cleansing, and evil for having used force. He's evil for bombing too much, and evil because he can't make everything perfect. In otherwords: Grossman is incoherent, irrational and dishonest, and merely wants to scream at the top of his lungs.
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The truth is that the West was unprepared for the break up of Yugoslavia. Tito's Peace crumbled, and the anger and rage - fueled by economic dislocation - created an interlocking series of wars, feuds and problems. Wesley Clark was one man, who was doing what was within his reach: on the ground in Bosnia Clark had Serbian irregulars disarmed - he personally walked into Milosevic's office and walked out with a signature on an interim agreement.
However, that reach was limited by lack of political will, and a lack of vision. Professor Grossman's screaming rant is an example of that lack of vision. Years later he is trying to smear people who went in, and did what had to be done to stop a genocide in progress. The intervention there which, unlike Iraq, turned up the evidence that had been predicted: mass graves, thousands of interviews of women raped, documentation of massacres and ethnic cleansing. One which, unlike Iraq, was not based on false charges and was not sold with false hopes of a oil based recovery, but instead was the culmination of a series of resolutions. One which, unlike Iraq, was supported by all of our allies and the international community. One which the US did not try to sabotage the UN presence sent in, but withdrew only after there had been clear and documented violations. In short - the difference between a war backed by fact, evidence and a respect for international institutions, and one which the US dragged a few allies in, in a search for weapons we didn't find, and oil we aren't getting.
If we are to prevent the need for bombing campaigns, the need is not for more screaming rants, but for the search for a way to prevent the next crisis - and the next one is already happening. There is an intense need to lift up failed states, because it is failed states that generate the violence, coupled with the means to extend that violence, that creates atrocities. Over 60,000 people - most killed by Maoist guerillas, though thousands by Fujimori's military - died in Peru's long war. East Timor has been followed by violence in Aceh. The list goes on. But, instead of creating a basis for engagement and expansion, people like the authors of Counterpunch really want neo-isolationism, a hope that the world would just be fine if we went away. There was ethnic cleansing and genocide before the US came into being, and there will be more, not less, of it afterwards.
This is why Iraq is such a failure - by expending moral and ethical credibility, it saps the very project that is most required: that developed nations actively engage in uplift of states on the margins, rather than treating economic and military intervention as a source of profit.
Clark has stated that America's first and foremost interest is to promote international law, human development and human rights. Professor Grossman screams "Stand aside for Genocide!" and apologizes for Serbian atrocities, as well as engaging in bald faced lying about the chronology of violence. One is tempted to believe that Zoltan Grossman is merely a Serbian hack who is trying to tar Kosovo with the failures of Iraq, where a rational person sees the reverse: Kosovo has gone better in the aftermath, precisely because it was handled differently from Iraq, and by people who did not want to do it, and certainly did not want a repetition of it. Clark, at the end of Waging Modern War, states that was the prevailing mode: that this not happen again. Contrast this with the current Executive which, after Iraq, seemed almost eager to find the next adventurous invasion.
Americans know, by reason, logic and feeling, which approach is truly the more moral and ethical. War is indeed the last resort. However, when that last resort is reached, it is time to stand up and do what must be done.
Posted by: Stirling Newberry at September 11, 2003 09:28 AM
I recently read the book "War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning" by NYTimes war reporter Chris Hedges (I think that's his name). Wesley Clark has a blurb review on the back of it, praising its insight.
Anyway, it is a fantastic, disturbing book. There is quite a bit of analysis about the tragedy of Yugoslavia. At the time I was against the military campaign in Kosovo, but since reading that book and looking more into the history of the conflict I am grateful that we stopped that madness. I consider myself, perhaps wrongly, to be rather well informed regarding world events, but I had no idea what was really going on in the Balkans. I have to assume that those who still argue against it are as clueless as I used to be.
Posted by: Jeff at September 11, 2003 02:19 PM
Progressive humanists will not let the bigger picture hide perceived imperfections and will readily throw away the baby with the bathwater in order to abide by the latest bit of perceived truth. Regressive bestialists are predictably reliable because their willful, blissful ignorance makes them a superstitious, jingoistic, easily exploitable mob. Realizing this, plutocrats and other dictators have long been able to manipulate regressives against progressives and progressives against each other.
Re: General Clark and Ratko Mladic. I worked for many years on human rights in the context of the Bosnian war, specifically advocating for the prosecution of war criminals. I despise no one more than Ratko Mladic, who is responsible for more agony and mental anguish than I care to contemplate. This meeting between General Clark and Mladic was in the thick of the Bosnian war. Almost everyone sent to negotiate with the Bosnian Serbs at this time attempted to persuade these bozos to honor cease-fires, allow humanitarian aid to reach people in need, release POW's, etc.. (Leaving aside the fact that the only language they eventually understood was military force, at that time, engaging them was the wisdom of the day). It is important to understand that it was in this context that General Clark met Mladic. Ultimately, those injured by Mladic ought to be the judge of General Clark's service or disservice to them -- the camp detainees, the torture survivors, the refugees. I certainly can't speak for all of them, but I have spoken to dozens upon dozens of them, and overwhelmingly, they consider Clark a tremendous ally in the struggle against Serb extremists. He is revered by many people in the former Yugoslavia (except, of course, Serb nationalists) and that record really does speak for itself. I spent a decade of my life dealing with the genocide in Bosnia, and my experience is that this guy is overwhelmingly considered a hero.
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