First, let's eavesdrop on a commander-in-chief, brooding on the great themes of war and death: "'We're not inflicting pain on these fuckers' [The President] said softly at first. 'When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.' Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising and his fist pounding his thigh 'I believe in killing people who try to hurt you, and I can't believe we're being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.'"
LBJ at the time of the Tonkin Gulf resolution? Nixon during the Christmas bombing of Haiphong? No. This was Bill Clinton, as recalled by George Stephanopoulos in his recent memoir, privately ranting at the time US "humanitarian" intervention in Somalia was falling apart, back in 1993. In other words, the first post cold war president's instinctive reaction to challenge from a foreign adversary, however diminutive, is exactly the same as those of commanders-in-chief in the years of the cold war, who walked noisily and flourished big sticks.
And alas, one can imagine Clinton ranting this week in the Oval Office to his national security advisor Sandy Berger just as he did back then to Stephanopoulos and to Berger's predecessor, Tony Lake. Is the "two bit prick," President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, still defiant? Then bombard Serbia's cities ever more heavily with high explosive! He still won't succumb and acknowledge NATO's writ? Send in the infantry!
There is a rhythm to these imperial forays, and we should understand clearly the stage to which we are now arriving, for Clinton war policy is in the process of congealing into a long-term military strategy of truly appalling contours. As always, the initial predictions were optimistic, the rhetoric ebullient and the public reaction firmly adverse. The NATO bombing was to be of Serbian military units, and brief in duration. Milosevic would soon come to his senses. The committal of ground forces was out of the question. Public opinion was hesitant even on the bombing, and dead set against any ground war.
So, the bombs and missiles have been falling steadily. There are even more refugees heading into Belgrade than out of Kosovo into Macedonia. Belgrade itself is going the way of Baghdad, on exactly the same US targeting strategy: bridges gone, power plants gone, sewage treatment destroyed. Missiles will go on killing civilians as they did the other day in Novi Sad. The limitations of air power are once again being exposed.
Surveying the infinite worsening of the misery and flight of the Albanians of Kosovo, the NATO generals and some of the Joint Chiefs are saying that they knew this would happen. There are increasing rumbles about the need for a ground invasion by NATO to finish the job. Meanwhile, American public opinion is massaged by State Department propaganda bulletins and unending footage about the plight of the Albanian refugees. Sure enough, under this barrage, American public opinion is beginning to shift. Maybe a ground war is the only way.
Then everything congeals. Policies get set in stone, sometimes for years, because now American "resolve" is under duress. It's not difficult now to look down the tunnel and see a NATO troop build up in Macedonia, Albania and other more distant NATO allies: a land onslaught; a bloody war; a devastated region; 100,000 NATO occupiers in Kosovo; and Serbia in rubble. Contrary to some predictions, American public opinion would endure body bags and would rally to the flag. Any peace movement here would take a long time to get off the ground. Most of the crucial organizers, seemingly unable to think of more than one thing at a time, are presently preoccupied with the campaign for Death Row prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. Many liberals and so-called progressives favor the bombing.
Or maybe, for logistical reasons, the recalcitrance of allies, fear of too many casualties, there won't be a land war, but just continued bombing of Serbia, along with such economic and trade sanctions as can be imposed. Serbia will be shoved back into the living conditions of a very poor third world country, as was Iraq after the 1991 war. Public opinion will tolerate this, just as it has the dreadful toll, particularly on Iraq's children, caused by the sanctions against Iraq.
So now, as Clinton's policy starts to congeal, let us retain a sense of realism and proportion. The lot of the Kosovars, of the refugees, awful though it may be, was no reason to go to war. The US didn't bomb Croatia in the mid-1990s when President Tudjman sent in Croat troops to ethnically cleanse Serbs in the Krajina. To the contrary, US military advisers helped him target Serb towns, thus prompting even more Serb refugees moving east (about 800,000) than Albanians out of Kosovo. The US's humanitarian credentials are not robust.
The bloody Vietnamese quagmire owed much to the insistence of US presidents Johnson and Nixon that there was no viable "exit strategy." Of course there were many, but those available were withheld from public discussion here. It's the same now. Milosevic's recent suggestion of a ceasefire was brushed aside as somehow unthinkable. The efforts of Russian premier Primakov and of the Vatican have been scorned.
We're already hearing derision about the "fainthearts"
in NATO. Maybe some corner of Clinton's brain reckons that bombs on Serbia
will extinguish Monica Lewinsky from popular memory. But what man of mature
judgment and compassion would not prefer to be remembered by the Starr report
than by bomb craters? Many people thought Clinton was the first president
who somehow would prefer Starr's volume as his epitaph, however embarrassing.
But no. Like all the others, he wants bomb craters as his requiem. CP
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