-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Kosovo/Vietnam Washington Gripped by Fear of Failure How about some tanks? They did the job in Waco. The humanitarian cruise missiles haven't alleviated the famine. DARK foreboding about the Balkans conflict settled on Washington yesterday as worries increased that President Clinton is bogged down in a war he cannot stop and lacks the will to win. Amid reports that Nato was running out of air-launched cruise missiles, the White House struggled to persuade an increasingly sceptical public that it is in control of the situation and that the allies are genuinely united. Joe Lockhart, the White House spokesman, said: "There is unanimous support in Nato for moving forward our systematic air campaign, and that's what we are doing." The alliance pressed on with attacks against Yugoslavia, although there was no sign after a week of bombing that the Serbs were reducing the intensity of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. Poor weather again hindered planes from hitting Serb military units carrying out atrocities. The imminent cruise missile shortage was a major embarrassment for the allies. While the United States navy has 2,500 cruises with conventional warheads, the air force has only 100 left. It is urgently seeking �30 million from Congress to convert nuclear cruise missiles for conventional tactical use against the Serbs. But Tony Blair insisted in the Commons that there would be no early end to the Nato assaults. He said the alliance would "finish the job" after increasing the range of its targets to include all elements of what he called "the Serb killing machine". The Prime Minister told MPs that air strikes against President Milosevic's forces were being stepped up. He said: "That is what is happening now - today. These attacks being carried out on the actual troops repressing the people in Kosovo will inflict real damage to Milosevic's tanks, artillery and the thugs carrying out this killing and repression in Kosovo." Evidence of the worsening situation in the province emerged when Germany said that it had credible accounts of the Serbs setting up concentration camps in Kosovo. The German defence minister, Rudolf Scharping, said that Serb troops and paramilitaries were rounding up youths and men and murdering or interning them. Nato sources said the Serbs had also begun destroying historical records and archives belonging to the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. Jamie Shea, the alliance's chief spokesman, said: "This is a kind of Orwellian scenario of attempting to deprive a people and a culture of the sense of past and the sense of community on which it depends." As thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees continued to flow into neighbouring Albania and Macedonia, United Nations officials issued a warning of the starvation threat to displaced people still in the province. Catherine Bertini, head of the UN World Food Programme, said: "People in Kosovo who are cut off from food cannot live for long. It's impossible for us to reach them at the moment." The American State Department is sending an initial �15 million in aid to the UN High Commission for Refugees. The state of confusion in Washington over the conduct of the war was evident. Some officials said that ethnic cleansing had been expected and others said it was a surprise. Others said that the air war to protect the Kosovars was going according to plan, while the Pentagon admitted that it had failed to stop a single act of terror. Officials from Nato member states played down reports of disputes over which Yugoslav targets to hit and whether Gen Wesley Clark, Nato's supreme commander, had been overruled in his plan to bomb the defence and interior ministries in Belgrade. But disgruntled voices are emerging in Nato and the focus of the American media on scepticism, splits and misgivings is a grave concern to Mr Clinton's poll-driven administration. The former secretary of state, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and former defence secretary Frank Carlucci, members of President Reagan's Cabinet, called for ground forces to halt the Serbs and create havens for ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Washington insists that it has no plans to use ground troops and there is certainly no sign of mobilisation. John Bolton, a foreign policy scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, accused the American planners of incompetence. He said: "You ask them what they will do if bombing does not achieve their goals and they don't know - they don't know." Nato sources said that 30 Yugoslav aircraft had been destroyed and that serious damage had been done to the air defence network. The Belgrade headquarters of the Special Unit Corps, the Yugoslav equivalent of the British SAS, has also been attacked. But there was still apparent reluctance to use jets at low level to attack Serb tanks and artillery because of the increased risk to the pilots. * A search-and-rescue operation was launched today for three American soldiers serving with Nato forces who have been reported missing in Macedonia near the Yugoslav border. Pentagon officials in Washington said it was feared the three may have been abducted yesterday by members of the Serb military or police while on a reconnaissance mission. A spokesman said: "Nato forces and Macedonian police units are searching for a three-man reconnaissance team after it failed to report." The London Telegraph, April 1, 1999 Kosovo/Vietnam Cash, Not Bombs for Yugoslavia by Ron Pounsett NATO's air strikes against Yugoslavia are costing millions of dollars a day in management, personnel, equipment maintenance and used weaponry. A further $43 million dollars was added to the cost in seconds with the shooting down of a Stealth bomber in the early hours of Sunday morning. There are likely to be more losses of highly expensive military hardware before this conflict is over. And however long it continues, this bid to change policies in Belgrade is going to end up costing NATO member countries, and therefore its taxpayers, billions of dollars -- not to mention the inevitable human casualties on both sides in this conflict. If Western intelligence is correct and Albanian Kosovars are being butchered by Milosevic's forces, and the air strikes do bring this tragedy to a halt, then no one is going to say the price was too high. But could such enormous amounts of money have been spent on more peaceful means to expedite change? There is a growing lobby, especially in Russia, who say 'yes'. If nothing else, Russians have learned fast that cash flow can have a dramatic effect on the change process. Assuming the West can claim it won the Cold War, it wasn't won by Ronald Reagan, Star Wars or military threats. Putting it simply, Soviet communism was given the boot by McDonalds, Coca-Cola, Levi's, Marlboro, Hollywood movies and the whole bundle of Western lifestyle symbols which suddenly became accessible to ordinary Russia people. Of course freedom of speech and know-how transfer played a part. But the real shove for people power came from the universal hunger for material gain and a better way of life. Words, threats and, as in the current situation, bombs don't guarantee the changes you want. People will not be bullied or bombed into change. In fact it can have the complete opposite effect, as we are seeing in Yugoslavia. Such is the widespread anger among ordinary Yugoslav people about the bombing of their country by former allies, even those who have opposed Milosevic in the past, seem to be standing firm behind him in the war against NATO. Has it not been the same in Cambodia, Somalia and Iraq? If you are asking people to change, they seem to need practical, up-front examples of what's in it for them. My Russian friends all seem to be arguing against NATO's tactics as a way of removing Milosevic from power. They say we should forget the violent mobs throwing insults and missiles at the American embassy in Moscow or the wild ramblings of extremists in the Duma over the weekend. Even the angry rhetoric from high places like the Kremlin doesn't really represent the genuine majority opinion in Russia. Yes, people are angry about NATO's air strikes against their Slavic brothers and sisters. But they are angrier about NATO methodology than its declared objectives. They too would shed no tears if Milosevic and his henchmen were toppled. But they say instead of burning money on a war they think NATO cannot win, it would be better if the West tried to buy change. If the cash that is going to used up in this conflict was instead pumped into the Yugoslav infrastructure and support for political opposition groups, the change would come. In may not be as fast as NATO anticipates, but it would be a lot less bloody and, they believe, a lot more achievable. They claim a few billion dollars granted to Kosovo would do wonders for ethnic harmony. Rod Pounsett writes a weekly column for Russia Today. Russia Today, March 29, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. 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