End
Clinton's War Now!
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Outwitted and defied by a crafty and ruthless Balkan dictator, NATO is now smashing a tiny country to retrieve its lost credibility, and restore a status quo ante that existed before it began this war. The great issue now dividing the warring parties – Slobodan Milosevic wants UN peace keepers in Kosovo; NATO insists that the "international security force" contain its own troops as well. Does having our way on this triviality justify an invasion by 100,000 American ground troops? Only wounded pride says yes. Let us cut a deal and end this wretched war now. The only winner thus far has been Milosevic, who has earned a niche in Serb mythology for defying the "most successful alliance in history" and "the world's last superpower," rather than surrender at gunpoint the sacred cradle of the Serb nation. The losers? Serbia is smashed; the Kosovo Albanians we went to protect have been murdered and raped, a million or more driven from their homes. The southern Balkans have been destabilized. U.S. relations with Russia and China have been set back years.
But NATO has attained air superiority – above 15,000 feet.
More serious has been the exposure of the alarming disrepair of the armed
forces Ronald Reagan bequeathed his nation. Daily, we read of F-16s cannibalized
for parts, of U.S. bombers running low on laser-guided munitions, of our
7th Fleet denuded of carriers, of Apaches taking weeks to be deployed,
of U.S. "smart" bombs hitting hospitals, trains, buses, jails, refugees
and a Chinese embassy that did not appear on the 1994 map U.S. "intelligence"
was using.
Yet, says John McCain, we must do whatever is necessary to win, lest we
be "perceived by our enemies as an uncertain foe, and by our friends as
an unreliable ally."
Wrong, John. If a war is unwise, unjust, or unwinnable except at exorbitant
cost, a statesman's duty is to end it on the best terms attainable, as
Eisenhower did in Korea, DeGaulle did in Algeria, and Gorbachev did in
Afghanistan. With the cause for which we went to war – to protect the
Kosovars – lost, it is as immoral to smash Serbia, to punish Milosevic,
as it would be to persecute the family and destroy the neighborhood of
a felon who refused to give up.
Our war is with Milosevic, Mr. Clinton says. Yet, we refuse to target
and kill him because U.S. law prohibits it. Instead we smash Serbia. In
our rage and exasperation, we have begun to emulate the empire our Founding
Fathers overthrew. Is it any wonder the Serb people who once so admired
us now so despise us?
How do we extricate ourselves?
The U.S. should make Belgrade an offer: Recognition of its sovereignty
over Kosovo, control of its holy places, and a bombing halt. In return,
the Serb army will cease ethnic cleansing, withdraw most of its troops,
and permit the Kosovars to return. Let Russians and soldiers of NATO nations
that did not bomb police the peace. And let us keep all U.S. soldiers
out of Kosovo, as any sent into that cauldron of hatred could expect to
be shot in the back for what we have done.
The U.S. might then call, as Bismarck did, call for a Congress of Berlin
to repartition the Balkans. For giving up part of Kosovo, Serbia could
be compensated with Serbian sectors of Bosnia. As for the Kosovo Liberation
Army, even with U.S. air power fighting its war, it was routed. We have
no interest or stake in a KLA victory.
Finally, as America financed a Marshall Plan for Europe, Europe should
finance a Jospin-Schroeder Plan for the Balkans.
This was never America's war, but a civil and ethnic war in a distant
peninsula where Americans have never fought before and no vital U.S. interest
was ever at risk. That Mr. Clinton desperately wishes to avoid even a
single U.S. casualty so testifies. He and the bellicose little magazines
may beat the drums for "humanitarian interventionism," but Americans are
not going to send their sons to die in Wilsonian crusades led by the children
of Woodstock.
Kosovo was the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with
the wrong enemy. America is not threatened by Serbia. If any nation is
a potential threat to the United States, it is that mighty tyranny in
Asia that persecutes Christians, robs our nuclear secrets, threatens Taiwan
with missiles, and targets out cities with atomic weapons – the nation
Mr. Clinton calls our "strategic partner."
America, with placid neighbors north and south, separated from a blood-soaked
Eurasia by two oceans, should heed anew the sage counsel of our greatest
men: No permanent alliances, keep out of foreign wars, speak softly, and
carry a Big Stick.
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