This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline
Return-path: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Envelope-to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
by pop.uniserve.com with esmtp (Exim 1.82 #4)
for jmusselm_rpa-outgoing; Thu, 13 May 1999 17:39:56 -0500 (EST)
Message-Id: <l03102813b36104f2c71f@[172.16.10.208]>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Date: Thu, 13 May 1999 15:39:38 -0700
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Phil Gasper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Dismantle NATO
Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
The Independent (UK)
May 13, 1999
An Atlantic alliance that has brought us to this catastrophe should be wo=
und up
Robert Fisk
How much longer do we have to endure the folly of Nato's war in the
Balkans? In just 50 days, the Atlantic alliance has failed in everything =
it
set out to do. It has failed to protect the Kosovo Albanians from Serbian
war crimes. It has failed to cow Slobodan Milosevic. It has failed to for=
ce
the withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo. It has broken international la=
w
in attacking a sovereign state without seeking a UN mandate. It has kille=
d
hundreds of innocent Serb civilians - in our name, of course - while bein=
g
too cowardly to risk a single Nato life in defence of the poor and the we=
ak
for whom it meretriciously claimed to be fighting. Nato's war cannot even
be regarded as a mistake - it is a criminal act.
It is, of course, now part of the mantra of all criticism of Nato that we
must mention Serb wickedness in Kosovo. So here we go. Yes, dreadful,
wicked deeds - atrocities would not be a strong enough word for it - have
gone on in Kosovo: mass executions, rape, dispossession, "ethnic
cleansing", the murder of intellectuals. Some of Nato's propaganda
programme has done more to cover up such villainy than disclose it.
And, as we all know, the dozens of Kosovo Albanians massacred on the road
to Prizren were slaughtered by Nato - not by the Serbs as Nato originally
claimed. But I have seen with my own eyes - travelling under the Nato
bombardment - the house-burning in Kosovo and the hundreds of Albanians
awaiting dispossession in their villages.
But back to the subject - and perhaps my first question should be put a
little more boldly. Not: "How much longer do we have to endure this stupi=
d,
hopeless, cowardly war?" but: "How much longer do we have to endure Nato?
How soon can this vicious American-run organisation be deconstructed and
politically 'degraded', its pontificating generals put back in their boxe=
s
with their mortuary language of 'in-theatre assets' and 'collateral
damage'"?
And how soon will our own compassionate, socialist liberal leaders realis=
e
that they are not fighting a replay of the Second World War nor striking =
a
blow for a new value-rich millennium? In Middle East wars, I've always
known when a side was losing - it came when its leaders started to compla=
in
that journalists were not being fair to their titanic struggle for freedo=
m/
democracy/human rights/sovereignty/soul. And on Monday, Tony Blair starte=
d
the whining. After 50 days of television coverage soaked in Nato
propaganda, after weeks of Nato officials being questioned by sheep-like
journalists, our Prime Minister announces the press is ignoring the pligh=
t
of the Kosovo Albanians.
The fact that this is a lie is not important. It is the nature of the lie.
Anyone, it seems, who doesn't subscribe to Europe's denunciations of
Fascism or who raises an eyebrow when - in an act of utter folly - the
Prime Minister makes unguaranteed promises that the Kosovo Albanians will
all go home, is now off-side, biased - or worthy of one of Downing Street=
's
preposterous "health warnings" because they allegedly spend more time
weeping for dead Serbs than the numerically greater number of dead
Albanians (the assumption also being, of course, that it is less physical=
ly
painful to be torn apart by a Nato cluster bomb than by a Serb
rocket-propelled grenade).
President Clinton - who will in due course pull the rug from under Mr Bla=
ir
- tells the Kosovo Albanians that they have the "right to return." Not th=
e
Palestinian refugees of Lebanon, of course. They do not have such a right.
Nor the Kurds dispossessed by our Nato ally, Turkey. Nor the Armenians
driven from their land by the Turks in the world's first holocaust (there
being only one holocaust which Messers Clinton and Blair are interested i=
n
invoking just now).
Mr Blair's childish response to this argument is important. Just because
wrongs have been done in the past doesn't mean we have to stand idly by
now. But the terrible corollary of this dangerous argument is this: that
the Palestinians, the Armenians, the Rwandans or anyone else cannot expec=
t
our compassion. They are "the past." They are finished.
But what is all this nonsense about Nato standing for democracy? It happi=
ly
allowed Greece to remain a member when its ruthless colonels staged a cou=
p
d'etat which imprisoned and murdered intellectuals. Nato had no objection
to the oppression of Salazar and Caetano - who were at the same time busy
annihilating "liberation" movements almost identical to the Kosovo
Liberation Army. Indeed, the only time when Nato proposed to suspend
Portugal's membership - I was there at the time and remember this vividly=
-
was when the country staged a revolution and declared itself a democracy.
Is it therefore so surprising that Nato now turns out to be so brutal? It
attacks television stations and kills Serb journalists - part of
Milosevic's propaganda machine, a "legitimate target", shrieks Clare Shor=
t.
And what about the Chinese embassy? Did the CIA really use an old map? Or
did the CIA believe that because Mira Markovic (the wife of the Yugoslav
President) had such close relations with the Chinese government that both
she and President Slobodan Milosevic might be sleeping in the Chinese
embassy. NATO, remember, had already targeted the Milosevic residence in =
an
attempt to assassinate him. It had already - according to one disturbing
report - tried to lure the Serb minister of information to the Serb
television headquarters just before it was destroyed.
So why not the Chinese embassy? Would NATO do anything so desperate? Well=
,
NATO is desperate. It is losing the war, it is destroying itself.
As for General Wesley Clark, the man who thought he could change history =
by
winning a war without ground troops, we have only to recall his infantile
statement of last month about President Milosevic. "We are winning and he
is losing - and he knows it," General Clark told us.
He did not explain why Mr Milosevic would need to be told such a thing if
he knew it. Nor did he recall that he had once accepted from General Ratk=
o
Mladic - the Bosnian Serb military leader whose men were destroying the
Muslims of Sarajevo - a gift of an engraved pistol. Nor, of course, did
General Clark remind us that General Mladic and his colleague Radovan
Karadjic remain free in Bosnia - which is under the firm control of NATO
troops.
Nor are we going to be given the good news which this war portends for
General Clark's most loyal allies, the arms manufacturers of our proud
democracies. Boeing hit a 52-week high last week with stock trading at ju=
st
under $44 (27) British Aerospace share prices have gained a 43 per cent
increase since Nato's bombardment commenced. The British government said =
on
Tuesday that "military operations" were costing =A337m "excluding munitio=
ns."
Now why, I wonder, did this figure exclude munitions?
All of which makes me wonder, too, if this disastrous war isn't going to =
be
the end of NATO. I hope so. As a citizen of a new, modern Europe, I don't
want my continent led by the third-rate generals and two-bit
under-secretaries who have been ranting on our television screens for the
past 50 days. I don't want Europe to be "protected" any longer by the US.
If that means the end of the Atlantic alliance, so be it.
Because an Atlantic alliance that has brought us to this catastrophe shou=
ld
be wound up. Until it is, Europe will never - ever - take responsibility
for itself or for the dictators who threaten our society. Until then,
Europe will never lay its own lives on the line for its own people - whic=
h
is what the Kosovo Albanians need. Until Nato is dead, there will never b=
e
a real European defence force. And until Nato is dead, there will be no
need to seek the international mandate from the United Nations which
"humanitarian action" needs.
And the UN, ultimately, is the only institution the poor and the sick and
the raped and the dispossessed can rely on. Nato troops are not going to
die for Kosovo. So what is the point of NATO?
*****************************************
Phil Gasper
Chair, Dept. of Philosophy & Humanities
MS 191
College of Notre Dame
Belmont, CA 94002
650-508-3732
