The record is now crystal clear that NATO and the Clinton
administration deliberately lied about Serbian atrocities in Kosovo to
justify their intervention in a low-intensity civil war in the Balkans.
It turns out that as few as 2,108 people were actually killed in
Kosovo over a period of months leading up to and including the period of
heavy bombardment of Serbia by NATO forces.
This is hardly "genocide," as it was billed by Clinton, Defense
Secretary William Cohen, Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., Sen. Chuck Hagel,
R-Neb., former Sen. Bob Dole and David Scheffer, U.S. ambassador for war
crimes.
By whipping up hysteria for an illegal bombing campaign, all of these
men have blood on their hands.
It wasn't hundreds of thousands of dead in Kosovo, as some reports
suggested. It wasn't even tens of thousands. It was, at worst, a couple
thousand over a considerable period of time. That, of course, is still a
dreadful and grisly toll. But, to put it in perspective, no global
authority -- not the United Nations, nor NATO -- ever advocates
intervention in the United States or anywhere else when the annual
murder toll hits 2,000, which it does early in the first half of every
year.
Think of the hyperbole we heard prior to the bombing campaign:
- "By the time the snows fall next winter, there will be
genocide documented on a large scale in Kosovo," said Biden. - "History will judge us harshly if we do not take action to stop
this rolling genocide," said Hagel. - "What we have in Kosovo and what (we) had in Bosnia was genocide,
and that's why I think we should intervene," said Dole. - "There are indications genocide is unfolding in Kosovo," said
State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin. - Cohen characterized the bombing campaign as a "fight for justice
over genocide." - Scheffer said Kosovo was one of the top three genocides since
1950, rivaled only by Rwanda and Cambodia.
But no one laid it on as thick as Clinton. He compared the
atrocities in Kosovo to the Holocaust. Kosovo, he said, "is not war in
the traditional sense. Imagine what would happen if we and our allies
instead decided just to look the other way as these people were
massacred on NATO's doorstep."
Clinton got testy in a June 25 press conference when asked if,
indeed, NATO had actually been the party guilty of war crimes.
"NATO did not commit war crimes," he said. "NATO stopped war crimes.
NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and
genocide."
Yet, there is just no evidence to support Clinton's conclusion. Where
are the bodies? So far, examination of the most likely dumping grounds
has produced only 2,108. That's hardly genocide. It's tragic. But how
does it justify an international bombing campaign that may well have
resulted in far more civilian deaths in Serbia?
Well, explains International Criminal Tribunal spokesman Paul Risley,
the numbers aren't really important, after all.
"You don't need numbers to justify genocide," he says. "Genocide is a
question of intent and organization and the efficiency of that
organization."
A couple of problems with that statement: First, if numbers aren't
important, why did NATO inflate them to justify the war in the first
place? Second, if genocide isn't about numbers, is it simply the latest
in a series of new thought crimes that needs to be judged and punished
before any real action takes place?
Sadly, most of the press went along for the ride with all the pre-war
and post-war propaganda from government and supra-government
authorities. Republicans and Democrats all participated. Officials in
the United Kingdom and the United States led the way.
Thus, once more, we see the grave dangers of transferring power to
unaccountable global authorities. Who is going to keep abuses in check?
How do people have their say? What's to prevent a small elite clique of
power brokers from making war in the future, as they clearly did in
Kosovo?