When NATO started its dirty little war in Yugoslavia, its leaders
told us that they had to bomb Serbs for humanitarian reasons. After all,
if they didn’t kill Serbian soldiers, police officers and paramilitary
people first, those nasty Serbs would surely kill the Albanians of
Kosovo. Bill Clinton said that since Kosovo was in the “center of
Europe,” we had no choice but to attack to prevent ethnic cleansing from
spreading from the “heart of Europe.” Bill, if Kosovo is Europe’s heart,
your heart is in your feet.
None of these arguments made any sense on March 24. Let’s look at
what NATO accomplished with seventeen days of continual bombing.
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians have lost their homes.
Milosevic’s forces are using tens of thousands of Kosovar Albanians as
human shields. Albania, the poorest country in Europe, Macedonia and
Montenegro, are on the verge of economic and social collapse. Oh yes,
Milosevic has almost completed his goal of “cleansing” Kosovo of
Albanians. Not bad for two weeks of work; it’s just that this is not
what was supposed to happen.
The only way NATO can protect Kosovar Albanians is to invade
Yugoslavia with ground troops supported by tanks, artillery, helicopters
and A-10 “tank buster” planes. From the beginning, however, Bill Clinton
and his NATO pals said this was the one thing they would not do. We now
know that NATO generals said that ground troops were the only way to
accomplish the “announced” mission. Why did the politicians reject
ground troops out of the box?
If NATO wanted to protect the Kosovar Albanians, it had to prepare
“safe zones” in Kosovo to protect Albanians from retaliation once the
bombs started falling. NATO also had to prepare for some level of
refugee flow out of Kosovo into the neighboring countries. No one in
their right mind would assume that Milosevic would not escalate his
attacks in Kosovo if we were killing his soldiers and civilians in
Serbia. The only question would be the size of the exodus.
Nevertheless, NATO did nothing.
In fact, it took NATO two weeks to start shipping in food, medicine
and tents for the refugees. Yet from the very first day, we saw a
heart-breaking wave of refugees fleeing
Kosovo. Why did it take NATO two weeks after the bombing to start
helping these refugees? Did NATO want to use daily images of refugee
suffering to inflame western public opinion against Milosevic?
A week ago, brave Serbian citizens put targets on their chests and
dared NATO planes to bomb bridges in their country. It didn’t take a
rocket scientist to go from using Serb civilians to Albanian civilians
as shields. So why did NATO allow Milosevic to close the borders and use
waiting refugees as human shields?
One week after NATO started bombing, they sent three American
soldiers, in an unarmored Humvee to “survey” the border between Kosovo
and Macedonia. Most NATO Humvees have a heavy machine gun mounted on the
roof. Theirs didn’t. All NATO soldiers approaching the border are
supposed to have “Soldier 911” G.P.S. devices. These satellite-based
systems help them keep from crossing the border and make it easier to
find them if they encounter trouble. The captured soldiers did not have
this device, although their mission took them perilously close to the
border during war. Why did NATO allow this to happen? Did NATO want the
Serbs to capture American troops to further inflame western public
opinion?
NATO’s military leaders are now calling for heavier firepower since
the bombing is not working. They have asked for and have received
permission to use Apache attack helicopters to target Serbian tanks,
armored personnel carriers and troop congregations. Nevertheless, they
tell us it will take ten days for the Apaches to fly from Germany to
Kosovo. Excuse me, but you can drive from Germany to Kosovo in one day.
Why will it take ten days? Isn’t there a sense of urgency? What is
really going on?
Think about NATO’s big three, Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair
of the UK and Chancellor Gerhard Schroder of Germany. All are socialists
who believe in the supremacy of the U.N. Herr Schroder is on record
calling for the end of nation states in Europe. All are “Third Way”
advocates who want to meld socialism and capitalism. Strobe Talbot,
Clinton’s second-in-command National Security Advisor, is on record
calling for the end of nation states. Sandy Berger, Clinton’s National
Security Advisor, used to be a lobbyist for the Chinese Communist
government.
NATO will turn 50 in two weeks and its reason for existence is over.
We created it to defend Western European countries from a Soviet
invasion. That dog is dead. So now, according to Madeline Albright, NATO
has the right to go “outside its territory” to protect the interests of
Europe. That is a frightening idea. Because, if NATO can invade a
sovereign country because some of NATO’s members don’t like what the
government is doing, how long will it be before the U.N. says, “Let’s do
this also”?
Bill Clinton says that we have to kill innocent Serbs to save
innocent Kosovar Albanians.
However, ten years ago, Kosovar Albanians were killing innocent
Serbs. What did NATO do then? Nothing. When the U.N. cut the deal to
partition Bosnia, Serbs living in the Kirina region were forced to leave
their homes because they lived in “Muslim” areas. What did NATO do then?
It helped cleanse “Muslim” Bosnia of Christian Serbs. And why does Bill
Clinton sneer when he says the word Serbs? Doesn’t he realize that the
Serbs were on our side against the Nazis in World War II? Doesn’t he
remember that the Croats and the Bosnians “cleansed” Serb civilians
during his presidency?
NATO’s war on Yugoslavia has destroyed the growing opposition
movement of Serbs opposed to Milosevic. Before the bombs started to
fall, opposition newspapers and radio stations openly opposed Milosevic.
Now, Milosevic has shut them down. Before NATO’s attack, most Serbs were
opposed to Milosevic’s government. In fact, the people of Serbia held a
massive general strike to protest Milosevic’s government during
Christmas, 1996. Now, faced with an unprovoked attack against their
nation, most Serbs now reluctantly support their government.
Clinton, Blair and Schroder are all rabid gun control advocates. So
why are they bombing the hell out of Yugoslavia? If the Kosovar
Albanians had their own guns, would we be in this mess now? Isn’t the
mass exodus of the Kosovar Albanians exactly what happens when you take
guns out of the hands of civilians and leave them in the hands of the
government? Isn’t Kosovo the best argument for expanding gun ownership?
Isn’t it criminal that confirmed gun control nuts are using every non
nuclear weapon in NATO’s arsenal to kill innocent Serbs and Albanians?
One final question. Have you noticed how pro-war Democrats have
suddenly become?
They didn’t want to go to war when Saddam Hussein invaded Iraq. They
didn’t want to help free the sovereign nation of Kuwait. They did
nothing when more than 1,000,000 Africans were killed in civil wars in
Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Why are they hell bent
to intervene in a dirty little civil war between the KLA and Milosevic
that had only killed 2,000? What’s their real goal?
Too many wolves are running around in sheep’s coats for me to believe
anything that NATO says. Something else is going on, and it has nothing
to do with humanitarianism.
Syria and America’s bloody diplomacy
Mike Pottage