Kosovo war not justified, U. Arizona professor argues in new book By Justyn Dillingham
September 21, 2009 Source: <http://www.uwire.com/AffiliateProfile.aspx?id=146054> Arizona Daily Wildcat, U. Arizona For most University of Arizona students today, the 1999 Kosovo War may be a distant memory. For David N. Gibbs, it’s all too relevant. Gibbs, an associate professor of history and political science, has published a new book, “First Do No Wrong: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia,” which contends that the United States’ intervention into the Balkan wars of the 1990s was not only wrong, but actually made the situation worse. For Gibbs, President Bill Clinton’s decision to intervene in Kosovo marked the beginning of a new era of “humanitarian intervention,” supported by leftists and conservatives alike. Gibbs cites President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq and President Barack Obama’s commitment to “winning the war” in Afghanistan as a continuation of that trend. “To the political left, intervention had been seen as a predatory activity,” Gibbs said. That changed, he said, with the interventions of the 1990s, beginning with the 1991 Persian Gulf War and continuing under the Clinton administration. He found himself at odds with liberal friends who argued that military action was sometimes necessary to prevent genocide or liberate countries from dictatorships. “A large number of people I know advocated more intervention,” Gibbs said. “They dropped their anti-militarism. Increasingly, you had liberals and even socialists supporting neoconservatives like (former U.S. deputy secretary of defense) Paul Wolfowitz.” Gibbs said he found these pro-intervention arguments “naïve and misguided.” He contends in his book that the real motivation for intervention into the Kosovo conflict lay in the U.S. government’s wish to strengthen its sway over international affairs in the face of an “independent” European Union. He also argues that “a certain sense of regret” at the passing of the Cold War, and a desire to create new enemies to take the place of the Soviet threat, lay behind the intervention. American foreign policy is “a self-sustaining machine,” Gibbs said. “Many liberal intellectuals foolishly sign up for the enterprise of justifying it.” Gibbs describes himself as “a man of the left,” but his argument has found favor with many conservatives “despite this unfortunate deficiency,” as he jokingly put it. His book has received positive reviews in the right-leaning Washington Times from a former Reagan administration official, and from the World Socialist Web site. Gibbs spent ten years working on the book, which marked a new direction for him after his first book, about the Congo crisis of the 1960s. “It was a totally new field for me,” Gibbs said. “I was trying to gain an understanding of the basic change that had occurred with the end of the Cold War. “I was trained as a political scientist during the Cold War. It took a while for me and others to get a handle on that.” Despite his disdain for most military interventions, Gibbs is careful to disassociate himself from paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan, who has gone so far as to allege that America’s entrance into World War II was unnecessary. Gibbs said he thinks that some of America’s past wars, such as World War II and the Civil War, have been justified. He also said he “probably would not have opposed intervention” to stop the Rwanda genocide in 1994. But he added that even justified wars create a dangerous precedent. “Each intervention increases the likelihood of further intervention,” Gibbs said http://wildcat.arizona.edu/news/kosovo-war-not-justified-prof-argues-in-new-book-1.524321 Comments W.Dorich Mon Sep 21 2009 14:41 The argument here should not be about the number of victims but how conveniently the West, especially the Clinton Administration, lied to the American taxpayers. He took us to war without an Act of Congress, a vote at the UN, in violation of the Helsinki Final Act, the UN Charter and in violation of the NATO treaty which was a defensive treaty and the Serbs did not attack any NATO country. We now know the hideous lies and distortions that were used in this process. The so called rape of "60,000 Bosnian women," the "Markale Market bombing" where we now know the Muslims killed their own citizens to gain international sympathy for their Jihad, the so called "destruction of Dubrovnik," and the "Racak massacre," used as the pretext to bomb Serbia, all stage managed events in which the American public was hoodwinked. Today Hashim Tachi the PM of Kosovo and a former KLA "terrorists" admitted that Racak was stage managed. The bodies were moved to the alleged crime scene, the clothes of the victims were changed from military to civilian and according to forensic experts from 4 countries the bodies were mutilated after they were killed in battle with Serbian forces.The lack of morality in this alleged "humanitarianism" is exposed by the US bombing of 200 Serbian schools, 178 Serbian hospitals and nursing homes who clearly had the Red Cross painted on their roofs, the destruction of 66 bridges, 75 industrial complexes, 62 agricultural sites, and the bombing of entire Serbian villages like Aleksinac on April 6, 1999 where Gen. Wesley Clark gave orders to level more than 450 Serbian home that were 5 miles from any military or industrial complex. He even bombed 23 Serbian cemeteries to erase the history in those regions. He bombed trains, buses and even passenger cars and the General even resorted to using illegal cluster bombs on civilian populations, a war crime. He then refused for 8 years to release the maps of those cluster bombs to stop people from being killed and dismembered. These were all clearly civilian targets in order to inflict pain on the Serbian population, all war crimes.The immoral Vice President Al Gore, the "chicken little the sky is falling" VP in command when the oil refineries and chemical plants along the Danube River were bombed, polluting that river for 2,000 miles through 9 countries. Gore is such a hypocrite these days earning millions of dollars a year spouting ecological bull crap about the environment when he showed no conscience whatsoever about doing this to Serbia.Since this hideous 78 days of bombing, cancer has risen 40% and birth defects are up 3,000%. Something the talented omission journalists will not talk about. We have literally destroyed the water table in Belgrade and surrounding areas for the next 100 years without a second thought. We now know that Gen. Clark thought that the bombing of Belgrade might kill 500,000 and the bombing of the oil stock piles would bring Milosevich to his knees, instead we contaminated the air around Belgrade with VCMs 10,600 times above acceptable levels and that pollution hovered over the city for more than a week.And what was accomplished in this "humanitarian war"... Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo have more than 40% unemployment. Those who did $90 billion in infrastructure damage are now refusing to pay to rebuild the industrial base in Serbia. We have created the single largest criminal enterprise on the continent in Kosovo where drug lords and pimps have created a network of prostitution and human trafficking in addition to weapons smuggling. Kosovo has become the gateway for 70% of the illegal drugs flowing into Europe. I am beginning to believe that there was so much money at stake that the human tragedy that was created is merely a byproduct of our own greed. Too many people on all sides have enriched themselves at the public trough stuffing tens of millions into their pockets as they preach human rights and equal justice as the Serbs are denied any legal redress because the "partisan press" condemned them to Collective Guilt.Where was Clinton's humanitarian concerns when it came to the Serbian people who have been ethnically cleansed from Croatia creating a religious and ethnically pure state? Or in Kosovo which has the greatest level of genocide including the destruction of 151 ancient Serbian churches and the near complete elimination of all the Serbs who for a thousand years were the majority population until 1941 when tens of thousands were liquidated by Albanian Nazis. After that war, Tito forbade their return guaranteeing that the population would swing in favor of the Albanians. No mention is EVER made by dishonest journalists that today 40% of the Albanians in Kosovo are illegal aliens who cross the border from Albania into Serbia as easily as Mexicans who cross our border each night in San Diego. There is so much shame to go around that this argument about the body count seems trivial when compared to the losses that...
