The San Jose Mercury News Friday, May 28, 1999
Editorial
LOSING THE MORAL WAR
President Clinton should be ashamed of the attacks on civilians
Admittedly, the line separating the justifiable from the
inexcusable in NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia is not clear. But
wherever it is, we crossed it this week.
We got into this nasty little war to save innocent civilians in
Kosovo. Now we are punishing innocent civilians in Serbia.
This is no longer just the occasional bomb or missile gone
accidentally astray, although that continues as well; an 8-year-old
boy and his 5-year-old sister died Thursday when NATO bombed
their home in a Belgrade suburb. Now, however, such accidents
occur in the context of a cynical, calculated campaign by NATO to
victimize the entire civilian population -- to make life such hell for
them that they turn against their elected president, Slobodan
Milosevic.
By all accounts, it is not working. ''Reduced to a 'Caveman'
Life, Serbs Don't Blame Milosevic,'' a Page 1 headline in the New
York Times said Tuesday.
The story quoted a Serbian woman who had worked for the
American embassy in Belgrade. She is 64, and remembers the city
being bombed by the Nazis and the Allies in World War II.
''If NATO wants to overturn the government, this is not the way
to do it,'' she said. ''I am absolutely certain this will not make people
revolt against their government -- they will revolt against whoever
is doing this to them. NATO is terrorizing 6 million civilians in
large cities in Yugoslavia. Making people's lives miserable is not
solving any problem.''
Other Serbs say the same: far from loosening Milosevic's hold
on the nation, the bombing solidifies his power and makes it
impossible for others to oppose him.
Now, in the heaviest bombing yet, NATO has targeted Serbia's
electric power grids, blacking out much of the country. That had
been done before. But this time the damage is more devastating and
less easily repaired. Without electricity, water pumping stations and
filtration plants don't work. Hospitals cannot bathe patients or
sterilize instruments. In private homes, scarce food is spoiling in
freezers.
Cold, dirty, thirsty and hungry, the Serbs are pleading with the
United Nations and other international agencies to intervene.
Officially, NATO still says it is bombing military targets. But
this week senior military officials admitted they also want to
damage the quality of everyday life for the people of Serbia.
Bill Clinton should be ashamed. He began this war by promising
that the bombing would be confined to military targets, and that
ground troops would not be used. Steadily, little by little, those
assurances are eroding. NATO has authorized 50,000 soldiers,
calling them ''peacekeepers.'' Obviously they could also fight.
Clinton and other NATO leaders are frustrated that the air war
hasn't succeeded, and they are stung by criticism that they
undermined its effectiveness by taking ground war off the table.
Now, they are putting it back on.
At the same time, they are intensifying the bombing. NATO
now has 1,000 planes over Yugoslavia, about 700 of them ours.
The bombing goes around the clock, up to 500 missions a day.
Thursday it began to hit suburbs around Belgrade.
This week also brought the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic as
a war criminal, which he surely is. But whatever impact that might
have had on Serb civilians is overwhelmed by their conviction that
NATO is committing war crimes against them.
This war has taken a subtle but sure turn for the worse.
President Clinton's earlier denials that we were at war with the
Serbian people apparently are ''no longer operative,'' as Richard
Nixon would have put it. We are destroying Yugoslavia, little by
little, day by day.
Our side began this war with a moral imperative. This week we
lost it, somewhere in the skies over Belgrade.
