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Ok, once more, slowly...
News-Minute
April 19, 1999 Lonnie Shoultz
Everyone needs to just relax, take a deep breath and calm down. There is
nothing coming from Washington that we have not
heard from this White House, in one form or another, in the past. We
heard "ethnic-cleansing" in Slovenia, Rwanda, Croatia,
Ethiopia, and Bosnia. "Humanitarian crisis" has been the rallying cry in
Somalia, Haiti, Rwanda, and in the Sudan. The biggest
difference in this latest Balkan adventure and the others is that this
time Slobodan Milosevic may have a better legal defense
than ever before.
Clinton warned of the end of Western Civilization and began the ensuing
bombing campaign in Kosovo on 24 March, 1999.
Anyone still in doubt about the reason we are scorching the earth in
rump Yugoslavia needs to log onto USA Today, or any
other good Internet news site that allows you to read the news on a
certain date, and read the news stories that were
dominating the mainstream news in the few days before the bombing. You
will find the news beginning a drumbeat about
declassifying the Cox Report, the "Chinagate" spy scandal, and Johnny
Chung's decision to turn "state's evidence" against his
Chinese spymasters and the American politicians who took their money.
What could save President Clinton from being
branded a traitor and his National Security Advisor, Samuel K. Berger, a
former registered lobbyist for Communist China,
from following him before the bar of justice except a good, old
fashioned war. Lo and behold, up jumps Kosovo.
While you are surfing the Internet reading about the genesis of the
crisis in Kosovo, surf on over to the NATO website. Yes,
NATO has a website. Read "The North Atlantic Treaty." Unless you just
want a souvenir, don't even bother to download the
Treaty. The Preamble, all fourteen Articles, and the footnotes only
cover a scant four printed pages. You don't need to be an
international lawyer to understand the language. Even one of President
Clinton's high-priced mouthpieces couldn't dissemble the
straight talk in this Treaty.
The Preamble of the North Atlantic Treaty begins, "The Parties to this
Treaty reaffirm their faith in the purposes and principles
of the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace
with all peoples and all governments." That seems to be
plain enough. The signatories acknowledge the supremacy of the United
Nations in international affairs. The first four articles
are equally as benign as the Preamble. The members of NATO simply pledge
to settle disputes peacefully, strengthen their
democratic institutions, agree to maintain their individual armed forces
to help in aiding the others, and agree to consult with
each other before they collectively beat the tar out of someone. Article
five of the Treaty is the "action" clause and needs to be
stated here in full since it governs the action in Kosovo.
"The parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in
Europe or North America shall be considered an attack
against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed
attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of
individual or collective self-defense recognised (sic) by Article 51 of
the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or
Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert
with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary,
including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security
of the North Atlantic area.
Any such armed attack and all measures taken as a result thereof shall
immediately be reported to the Security Council. Such
measures shall be terminated when the Security Council has taken the
measures necessary to restore and maintain international
peace and security."
Now, what is tough to understand about that? If attacked, all members of
NATO agree to defend one another until the Security
Council of the United Nations can restore order. However, the Treaty
does specifically require that "all measures taken as a
result thereof shall immediately be reported to the Security Council."
Uh-oh, that means that Clinton, Blair and Schroeder are
about three weeks late in getting to the Security Council. We all
understand why they have not taken the problem in Yugoslavia
to the United Nations. Russia and China (and possibly France) would use
their permanent membership on the Security Council
to block any action in Yugoslavia. But the Treaty the NATO allies all
claim as the Bible for the crisis in Kosovo states they
must IMMEDIATELY report their actions to the Security Council. If you're
in a penny, you're in for a pound. If the NATO
allies want to use their Treaty as the legal cornerstone for bombing
Yugoslavia, they cannot only follow the parts of the Treaty
that are convenient. They must adhere to all of its provisions.
One of the beauties of international Treaties is that they leave no
wiggle room. "All" means "all measures taken as a result" and
"immediately" means "immediately." "Immediately," as used in the North
Atlantic Treaty, does not mean as soon as the
"Chinagate" scandal has blown over for President Clinton and his
lobbyist friend turned National Security Counselor, Samuel
K. Berger, or when NATO has finished bombing Yugoslavia back to the
Stone Age or when Russia and China lose their
places on the UN Security Council. "Immediately" means as soon as the
first NATO bomb hits the ground. So far, there has
been no mention by anyone of the NATO actions in Yugoslavia being
"reported to the Security Council" as required by the
Treaty. All we have is a broken Treaty. The Treaty has been broken by
the NATO allied aggressors.
What about the other side in this crisis? I am no apologist for Slobodan
Milosevic. He is a jack-booted thug left over from a
brutal, repressive Communist regime in Yugoslavia. He has shown his
stripes before and the West has never done a good job
of handling him in the past. But, Kosovo is a state of Yugoslavia. It is
akin to Kansas in America. Kosovo does not even have
the standing enjoyed by South Vietnam that was partitioned in an
internationally recognized forum in the mid-1950s from its
Communist-controlled northern neighbor.
The Kosovo Liberation Army is a guerrilla force that is like many others
we have seen this century. The KLA (Kansas
Liberation Army?) is a lightly armed force that cannot stand and fight
against the armored formations of the Serb-controlled
Yugoslavian Army. It must try to make its political points with
terrorist tactics like the outlawed Irish Republican Army did in
Northern Ireland. The KLA uses hit and run attacks against lightly
defended symbols of the Yugoslav Republic such as police
stations, army check-points manned by three or four men, and light truck
convoys armed only with small caliber weapons. The
larger, better equipped Yugoslavian Army strikes at the hit and run
Kosovo Liberation Army, and we have a classic Civil War.
In 1998, during this Yugoslavian Civil War, there were 2,000 deaths
among the 2,000,000 inhabitants of Kosovo. That is a
death rate of about 1 per 1,000 people. The murder rate in the drug
"turf" wars in Washington, DC, was higher than that in
each year served by Mayor Marion Berry. Some Civil War, huh?
One of the oddities of military history is that the victors get to write
the history of the war. When Israel's "terrorist" Haganah
was instrumental in defeating the armies of Arabs in Palestine and
protecting the newly recognized Jewish homeland of Israel,
they were recorded in history as patriots. American colonists who
snipped at and bushwhacked British Army troops from
behind fence posts and tree trunks on the road to and from Concord and
Lexington were described by the British press as
"terrorists." In America, we call them "Minutemen," the first armed
American patriots. The Viet Cong "terrorists" who exploded
parked bicycles filled with plastique explosives outside of Saigon
restaurants that killed many American service men and foreign
journalists are now buried in graves marked simply as "Hero." So, the
labels for the participants in a Civil War are given by the
winners. The Civil War in Kosovo is a work in progress. We don't know
yet who will be the "heroes" and who will be called
"terrorists."
The KLA is reported to be supporting its war against Yugoslavia by
selling morphine base from Turkey to heroin labs in
France. Other funding for the KLA has been traced to Iran and even to
Osama bin Laden, the bomber of American embassies
and the murderer of American service men and women at the Khobar Towers
in Saudi Arabia. Those members of Congress
advocating that we pay for arming the KLA to fight Milosevic are really
trying to put us in bed with some strange people. But,
we got in that bed in Pakistan against the Russians.
No national leader, whether he be a Prince, a Pope or a jack-booted thug
can allow an armed insurrection in his country to go
unchecked. Milosevic was either horribly inept or the intensity level of
the conflict was not very high for the death rate in
Kosovo to be only 1 per 1,000 people last year. Why did it suddenly
become so important that we begin to bomb Yugoslavian
troops? You've got me. But, let me try to explain it under a different
rubric.
For as long as I can remember, there has been a separatist movement in
Canada that wants an independent French-speaking
Quebec. Thus far, the Canadian government in Ottawa has been able to
keep a lid on things and keep Quebec as part of a
greater Canada. However, what if 3,000 to 10,000 Quebec freedom fighters
(the number usually given for the KLA) decided
to arm themselves and fight for their independence from Canada? The
Royal Canadian Mounted Police pride themselves on
always getting their man; but, I'm not certain how successful that
organization would be against a force of freedom fighters
armed with assault rifles, machine guns and mortars. The Canadians would
probably have to use their military to quell the
unrest. Is America ready to begin tossing bombs at Ottawa to stop it
from suppressing an armed internal insurrection in the
Canadian state of Quebec? I doubt it!
Well, what about the refugees who comprise that huddled mass of
displaced people we see on television all day, every day?
The Canadian model above will suffice for this point. Once our NATO
allies, the Canadians, ask for our help in rooting out
their armed guerrilla enemies in Quebec, we'll have no choice but to aid
Canada under the NATO Treaty, right? Canadians
enjoy a standard of living as high as that in America. But, when our
F-15s and F-16s start punching holes in downtown Quebec
City and Montreal, the Canadians are going to jump across the American
border, out of harm's way, faster than Moses led the
Jews out of Egypt. All they will want to be is gone. Many of them might
even end up riding on a hay trailer being pulled by a
farm tractor after their cars become jammed in traffic.
That seems to be pretty much the refugee situation we see in the
Balkans. There is a war between the KLA and Yugoslavian
federal troops going on all around the residents of Kosovo. NATO bombers
are knocking out everything from filling stations to
cemeteries. If we can suppose that Canadians would leave their high
standard of living to leave a war zone, how hard do you
think the decision to leave is for people who live in the poorest
country north of sub-Sahara Africa? People just want to be out
of there. The only refugees who have been reported missing so far turned
up the next day when it was learned that Macedonia
thought it had too many refugees and Albania did not have enough.
Macedonia used every bus in the country and did a
midnight redistribution of the refugees between itself and Albania.
That's not a war crime committed by Macedonia, it's
self-preservation!
So, where do we go from here? The real question is how did we get here?
Congress has gone AWOL on this situation. The
most you can get from any member of Congress is a nebulous statement
about "President Clinton must make his case to the
American people." President Clinton can't make his case to anyone
because he is a prisoner of his past indiscretions.
History has shown us that prisons can take many forms. They can be built
of brick and mortar, steel bars or even ideas.
Clinton's prison is one of his own making when he decided to rule
America by deception. Wherever Clinton goes in public he
draws protests from larger and larger crowds. The only places where he
has made policy statements about Kosovo are from
military facilities such as Barksdale Air Force Base and the Navy Base
in Norfolk, VA. Any service member who would make
a catcall or otherwise demonstrate displeasure with the President during
Clinton's remarks would be skinned. Clinton's other
addresses are replayed from Democratic fund-raisers and one address to a
meeting of newspaper editors. He cannot go among
his fellow Americans without being embarrassed by the protesters. When
is the last time you saw pictures of President Bill "I
feel your pain" Clinton diving into a crowd to commune with the American
public or even working a rope-line where average
people would gather? The only "communing" he does with the American
people is over the airwaves. So, without explaining
why we are in Kosovo, what we want to accomplish there and when we can
leave, Clinton is now calling up the ready reserve
forces to expand this clearly illegal "war" in the Balkans.
To make matter even worse, Senator John McCain, always one of my
favorites, is trying to jumpstart his Presidential campaign
by looking like a moderate who supports the illegal bombing, but wants
to add the option of putting ground forces in combat
back into the mix of forces available. If he and other members of
Congress want to "support the troops," they would read the
NATO Treaty, bring the troops and planes home and park them. That would
protect the troops from the power junkies and
spin doctors running this mess. Or, in the alternative, they could
require that President Clinton follow the requirements of the
North Atlantic Treaty and report our actions in Kosovo to the UN
Security Council as required. Then, we can bring the troops
and planes home and park them. There'll be no fuss and no muss.
Madeleine Albright testified Thursday to a House of Representatives
Sub-Committee on Foreign Operations chaired by
Congressman "Sonny" Callahan. Her demeanor, as she talked down to these
elected officials, was repugnant. If she were as
smart as she thinks she is, we wouldn't be in this trap. Congressman
Callahan's sub-committee will be asked to provide around
$750 million dollars for relief of Kosovar refugees. But, Americans are
generous people and it's doubtful that any but the lunatic
fringe would oppose such relief. It would be nice if Congressman
Callahan required that any American aid be a percentage of
what our NATO allies contribute. Since we're furnishing eighty per-cent
of the air crews and planes to do most of the dying, the
least our allies can do is furnish most of the relief.
Another Republican Congressman, Jerry Lewis (R-CA), is the Chairman of
the Defense Appropriations Sub-Committee. His
sub-committee will be asked for upwards of $6 billion dollars, or more,
for this war of Clinton's in the Balkans. Congressman
Lewis is in the exact same position as a loan-shark who is approached by
a thief who wants to rob a bank. The thief has his
target picked out and knows when the money will be there. All he needs
is the "front money" to rent a van, hire a safe-cracker,
and get a wheelman for the job. The Congressman would be well advised to
satisfy himself about the legality of the war Clinton
is waging. The Office of the Independent War Crimes Tribunal at The
Hague might decide that The New World Order, along
the Clinton-Blair-Schroeder axis, is the aggressor in the Balkans.
Congressman Lewis would not like to stand in the same
courtroom as Clinton to answer charges of funding a campaign of murder
in Yugoslavia.
Ok, once more, we'll go slowly this time for those taking notes. Bill
Clinton, or as Tony Snow calls him, Attila the Hick, needed
a diversion from "Chinagate" and jumped into a bombing campaign in the
Balkans. As usual, he underestimated his adversary,
and his incompetent "war Cabinet" advisors did not listen to the
professional military officers assigned to run the show. Now
that he is in a jam with his "enemy" proving tougher than he thought,
Clinton is using such diversionary and misleading language
as "since we're in it, we have to win." Poppycock! We're not "in"
anything. We agreed to furnish the airpower for a back water
NATO sideshow in rump Yugoslavia if our NATO allies would sign on to the
operation that Clinton needed for political cover.
It turned out to be an illegal sideshow and Clinton and advisors just
screwed up by not recognizing the fact that a bombing
campaign would only acerbate the refugee problem in the area. But, I
wouldn't even accuse Clinton of knowing the NATO
operation is illegal. Given his pitiful record in foreign affairs, he
probably didn't know. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
should have known it was illegal, but her expertise is in press
relations with diplomats. She probably didn't know the operation
was illegal either. President Clinton's Director of the National
Security Council, Samuel K. Berger, is a former dental hygienist
in the military and lobbyist for Communist China. I have a tough time
understanding what he knows or even when he should
have known it. But Berger did know that he, as badly as Clinton, needed
some war somewhere to drive Johnny Chung's
testimony to a Los Angeles Federal Grand Jury to the back pages of the
newspapers. In any event, Berger signed on to this
fiasco as a co-conspirator.
I don't know what this mess is in the Kosovo State of rump Yugoslavia.
But I do know, from a personal examination of the
underlying documents at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, as a
NATO operation it is as illegal as a bank robbery. To risk
the lives of any of America's service men and women in this adventure is
Treason.
>From the Column, "EYES RIGHT: A Veteran's View"
__________________________________________________________________ The
author is a Purple Heart veteran
of an 18 month combat tour in Vietnam as a paratrooper with the 101st
Airborne Division and a Green Beret with the 5th
Special Forces Group. When he returned home, he entered police work and
rose through the ranks from uniformed patrol
officer with the City of Birmingham to finally serve as a Special Agent
with the U.S. Treasury Department. He holds a BS in
Accounting, an MA in Military History, and has done extensive post
graduate work toward his doctorate at the University of
Alabama and The George Washington University in Washington DC. He now
resides on the Alabama Gulf Coast in Foley, AL,
and can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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