Just Not Sold On A War In Kosovo
July 28, 2016 at 4:25 p.m.
I am glad to see the Kosovo engagement winding down.
But since the beginning I have wondered why we were involved. It is difficult for me to see the national interest.
I am not a big fan of war to begin with, but when we do have to get involved in such matters, I like to think there is a really good reason.
Several conflicts the United States has been involved in seem not to meet that standard.
I could see, for example, the need to get involved when Saddam Hussein took over Kuwait. He probably wouldn't have stopped there.
He probably would have kept going until he had control of most of the Middle East. That wouldn't be a good thing. It would not be in our national interest for Saddam to control the vast majority of the world's oil production.
Now, I know the politicians told us that attacking Saddam wasn't about oil. It was about returning autonomy to the sovereign nation of Kuwait.
Don't believe it. It was about oil. And so be it. Oil is a national interest. We need it. Lots of it. That's unfortunate, but it is a fact.
But I couldn't see the Vietnam thing. No matter how hard I try I can't see the national or humanitarian interest. I can't see how that paltry little North Vietnam was going to spread communism across the globe. I didn't understand it then. (I was barely a teen-ager.) And I don't understand it now even with the luxury of 20/20 hindsight.
I know that Slobodan Milosevic has done some very nasty things to the people in his country. I know there were lots of people suffering there. I suppose there is a part of me that can justify our involvement in Kosovo on the basis of humanitarianism.
But I wonder how we pick and choose where we will be the arbiters of humane conduct.
There are lots of other people in the world that make Milosevic look like a choir boy.
Originally, the Clinton administration justified its position that we needed to start firing missiles by telling us that we had to stop the genocide in Kosovo.
In the previous year, there were approximately 2,000 deaths reportedly due to ethnic cleansing.
At a White House press briefing Clinton noted that we couldn't permit "a wholesale ethnic slaughter and ethnic cleansing and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees."
If that's the case, I would like to remind the president that Pakistan-backed Taliban rebels have massacred thousands of Hazaras, a Shi'a minority. Refugees number somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million.
Of course, I can only assume he already knows this. All he has to do is read a report from Human Rights Watch.
But just in case he missed it, he might also want to know that in Rwanda, Tutsi soldiers massacred thousands of Hutu refugees in 1997-98. Extremist Hutus, who in 1994 massacred half a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, regrouped and have been launching raids of their own again.
In Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army continues to brutalize civilians in the north. In the west, the Allied Defense Forces wage war against the Museveni government.
Conflict between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers party has been going on for about 15 years in Turkey with a death toll of about 35,000 people - mostly civilians.
The estimated death toll due to religious persecution in Tibet since China took over in 1949 is about 1.2 million.
A civil war raging in Somalia since 1991 rages on with 300,000 deaths reported.
In the Sudan, 100,000 Dinka have fled in fear of government massacres. The U.S. Committee for Refugees notes that the people of southern Sudan have suffered more war-related deaths than any other population in the world. The estimate is 1.9 million. Four million more are displaced within the country, huddled in refugee camps.
I think you get the point, so I won't mention Colombia, the Congo, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Iraq, Pakistan or Sri Lanka.
That's why it's hard for me to see the need for action in Kosovo when we have - for the most part - ignored much more heinous abuses in other parts of the world.
I guess the other thing about the Kosovo action is the way it was carried out. It seemed thrown together at the last minute. OK - Milosevic isn't complying with NATO so let's start the bombing.
I think we completely underestimated how long this would have to drag on. Nobody at the outset thought it would last 70 days. At one point, there was concern about us running short of missiles.
And then there are the mistakes.
Serb officials put the death toll from NATO mistakes at around 460. They say 2,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the air campaign March 24.
NATO says that all precautions are taken to avoid civilian casualties, but ... (the following are according to Agence France Presse.)
April 5: A 250-kilo (550-pound) NATO bomb aimed at Yugoslav army barracks in Aleksinac in southern Serbia misses its target and lands in a residential area. Serbs put death toll at 17.
April 9: NATO hits homes near a telephone exchange in the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
April 12: A NATO pilot fires two missiles into a train crossing a bridge at Grdelicka Klisura in southern Serbia, killing 55 people, according to Belgrade.
April 14: NATO bombs refugee convoys in the Djakovica region of southeast Kosovo, leaving 75 dead, according to Belgrade.
April 28: NATO, aiming for an army barracks in the Serb village of Surdulica (250 kms/150 miles south of Belgrade), bombs a residential area, leaving at least 20 civilians dead.
May 1: NATO bombs a bridge at Luzane near Pristina, killing 47 people aboard a bus that was traveling along it.
May 7: A NATO air raid hits central Nis in southeast Serbia, leaving at least 15 dead and 70 injured.
May 8: NATO mistakenly attacks the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists.
May 13: NATO bombs the village of Korisa, leaving 87 civilians dead, according to the Serbs.
May 20: A Belgrade hospital is hit by a missile at around 1 a.m., killing three patients.
May 21: NATO bombs Istok prison in northwest Kosovo. Alliance officials insist the prison was being used as an assembly point for Serb forces in the province. Serbs say at least 100 inmates and a prison officer were killed.
May 22: NATO admits bombing by mistake positions of the Kosovo Liberation Army at Kosare, near the border with Albania.
May 30: NATO bombs a highway bridge at Varvarin in a daytime raid in central Serbia. The Serbs claim 11 people died while attempting to cross the bridge in their cars.
May 31: Missiles strike a sanatorium at Surdulica, southern Serbia, killing at least 20 people, according to the Serb authorities.
May 31: A NATO bomb aimed at a military compound strikes a four-story apartment block in the town of Novi Pazar.
I keep asking myself, are the people in Kosovo better off now than they were before we started dropping bombs?
As military actions go, I guess this one is a tough one for me to support. [[In-content Ad]]
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I am glad to see the Kosovo engagement winding down.
But since the beginning I have wondered why we were involved. It is difficult for me to see the national interest.
I am not a big fan of war to begin with, but when we do have to get involved in such matters, I like to think there is a really good reason.
Several conflicts the United States has been involved in seem not to meet that standard.
I could see, for example, the need to get involved when Saddam Hussein took over Kuwait. He probably wouldn't have stopped there.
He probably would have kept going until he had control of most of the Middle East. That wouldn't be a good thing. It would not be in our national interest for Saddam to control the vast majority of the world's oil production.
Now, I know the politicians told us that attacking Saddam wasn't about oil. It was about returning autonomy to the sovereign nation of Kuwait.
Don't believe it. It was about oil. And so be it. Oil is a national interest. We need it. Lots of it. That's unfortunate, but it is a fact.
But I couldn't see the Vietnam thing. No matter how hard I try I can't see the national or humanitarian interest. I can't see how that paltry little North Vietnam was going to spread communism across the globe. I didn't understand it then. (I was barely a teen-ager.) And I don't understand it now even with the luxury of 20/20 hindsight.
I know that Slobodan Milosevic has done some very nasty things to the people in his country. I know there were lots of people suffering there. I suppose there is a part of me that can justify our involvement in Kosovo on the basis of humanitarianism.
But I wonder how we pick and choose where we will be the arbiters of humane conduct.
There are lots of other people in the world that make Milosevic look like a choir boy.
Originally, the Clinton administration justified its position that we needed to start firing missiles by telling us that we had to stop the genocide in Kosovo.
In the previous year, there were approximately 2,000 deaths reportedly due to ethnic cleansing.
At a White House press briefing Clinton noted that we couldn't permit "a wholesale ethnic slaughter and ethnic cleansing and the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees."
If that's the case, I would like to remind the president that Pakistan-backed Taliban rebels have massacred thousands of Hazaras, a Shi'a minority. Refugees number somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million.
Of course, I can only assume he already knows this. All he has to do is read a report from Human Rights Watch.
But just in case he missed it, he might also want to know that in Rwanda, Tutsi soldiers massacred thousands of Hutu refugees in 1997-98. Extremist Hutus, who in 1994 massacred half a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus, regrouped and have been launching raids of their own again.
In Uganda, the Lord's Resistance Army continues to brutalize civilians in the north. In the west, the Allied Defense Forces wage war against the Museveni government.
Conflict between security forces and the Kurdistan Workers party has been going on for about 15 years in Turkey with a death toll of about 35,000 people - mostly civilians.
The estimated death toll due to religious persecution in Tibet since China took over in 1949 is about 1.2 million.
A civil war raging in Somalia since 1991 rages on with 300,000 deaths reported.
In the Sudan, 100,000 Dinka have fled in fear of government massacres. The U.S. Committee for Refugees notes that the people of southern Sudan have suffered more war-related deaths than any other population in the world. The estimate is 1.9 million. Four million more are displaced within the country, huddled in refugee camps.
I think you get the point, so I won't mention Colombia, the Congo, Sierra Leone, Guinea Bissau, Iraq, Pakistan or Sri Lanka.
That's why it's hard for me to see the need for action in Kosovo when we have - for the most part - ignored much more heinous abuses in other parts of the world.
I guess the other thing about the Kosovo action is the way it was carried out. It seemed thrown together at the last minute. OK - Milosevic isn't complying with NATO so let's start the bombing.
I think we completely underestimated how long this would have to drag on. Nobody at the outset thought it would last 70 days. At one point, there was concern about us running short of missiles.
And then there are the mistakes.
Serb officials put the death toll from NATO mistakes at around 460. They say 2,000 civilians have been killed since the start of the air campaign March 24.
NATO says that all precautions are taken to avoid civilian casualties, but ... (the following are according to Agence France Presse.)
April 5: A 250-kilo (550-pound) NATO bomb aimed at Yugoslav army barracks in Aleksinac in southern Serbia misses its target and lands in a residential area. Serbs put death toll at 17.
April 9: NATO hits homes near a telephone exchange in the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
April 12: A NATO pilot fires two missiles into a train crossing a bridge at Grdelicka Klisura in southern Serbia, killing 55 people, according to Belgrade.
April 14: NATO bombs refugee convoys in the Djakovica region of southeast Kosovo, leaving 75 dead, according to Belgrade.
April 28: NATO, aiming for an army barracks in the Serb village of Surdulica (250 kms/150 miles south of Belgrade), bombs a residential area, leaving at least 20 civilians dead.
May 1: NATO bombs a bridge at Luzane near Pristina, killing 47 people aboard a bus that was traveling along it.
May 7: A NATO air raid hits central Nis in southeast Serbia, leaving at least 15 dead and 70 injured.
May 8: NATO mistakenly attacks the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, killing three journalists.
May 13: NATO bombs the village of Korisa, leaving 87 civilians dead, according to the Serbs.
May 20: A Belgrade hospital is hit by a missile at around 1 a.m., killing three patients.
May 21: NATO bombs Istok prison in northwest Kosovo. Alliance officials insist the prison was being used as an assembly point for Serb forces in the province. Serbs say at least 100 inmates and a prison officer were killed.
May 22: NATO admits bombing by mistake positions of the Kosovo Liberation Army at Kosare, near the border with Albania.
May 30: NATO bombs a highway bridge at Varvarin in a daytime raid in central Serbia. The Serbs claim 11 people died while attempting to cross the bridge in their cars.
May 31: Missiles strike a sanatorium at Surdulica, southern Serbia, killing at least 20 people, according to the Serb authorities.
May 31: A NATO bomb aimed at a military compound strikes a four-story apartment block in the town of Novi Pazar.
I keep asking myself, are the people in Kosovo better off now than they were before we started dropping bombs?
As military actions go, I guess this one is a tough one for me to support. [[In-content Ad]]