While a lot of this is imperialist shit, it is worth reading.
(The National Post is Canada's most right-wing jingoistic rag.)
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date sent: Tue, 18 May 1999 11:39:42 -0700
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: NATO IS ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR
The National Post Tuesday, May 18, 1999
NATO IS ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR
By Graham N. Green
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is about to lose
the war against Yugoslavia. Unless the alliance
immediately changes its tactics and demonstrates clearly
its determination to win, Operation Allied Force will go
down in history as one of the most colossal military and
political failures of the 20th century.
As the world's most powerful military alliance with the
best trained personnel using the most sophisticated
weapons ever developed, it should have been no contest
between NATO and the Yugoslav armed forces. But
being the most powerful has not made NATO the
strongest side in this war. A strong alliance needs strong
leadership, and NATO has shown clearly these past two
months how weak and cowardly its leaders really are.
While much of the criticism for this leadership failure
has been directed at U.S. President Bill Clinton, other
alliance leaders, including Prime Minister Jean Chretien,
must share the blame. Blame for spouting principled
rhetoric while being afraid to commit all the military
assets needed to uphold that rhetoric. Blame for
allowing their original principles to be weakened by
Moscow and Beijing, even though those concessions
make it less likely the Kosovo refugees will ever go
home again. And blame for pursuing an exclusively air
campaign when all NATO's top military officers have
made it clear air strikes alone will not reverse ethnic
cleansing in Kosovo.
NATO's political leaders are also to blame for allowing
this war to be fought in the name of the alliance when
all its major decisions are made in Washington, not
Brussels. This was highlighted in a private exchange
between Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema and
Mr. Clinton before the air strikes began. D'Alema
reportedly asked what the United States would do if
Yugoslavia refused to back down in the face of NATO
bombing, to which Sandy Berger, the national security
advisor, responded: "We will continue the bombing."
And so we have. In nearly two months of bombing,
NATO aircraft have flown more than 6,000 strikes on
more than 500 target areas, destroying oil refineries and
storage facilities, most of the bridges over the Danube
River, two-thirds of Yugoslavia's fleet of MiG 29 fighter
jets, more than 40 other aircraft, 450 pieces of Serbian
equipment such as tanks, artillery and armoured
personnel carriers, and the main studios of Serbian radio
and television. Despite this, Serbia remains defiant,
seemingly prepared to hunker down and take the
punishment while continuing its ethnic cleansing of
Kosovo and waiting for NATO solidarity to collapse.
More than 700,000 ethnic Albanians have been forced
into exile while the bombs keep falling.
NATO's response? More bombing. Never mind that the
Pentagon's chief spokesman has admitted that nobody
ever believed air power would be able to stop the
depopulation of Kosovo. And never mind that the
exclusive reliance on smart bombs dropped from five
kilometres above their targets has resulted in several
high-profile "mistakes" -- including the destruction of
the Chinese embassy -- killing hundreds of innocent
civilians and weakening public support in some NATO
countries for continuing the war.
According to the "Berger Doctrine," you just keep on
bombing. And bombing.
With no end in sight and with China threatening
unspecified retaliation for the destruction of its
embassy, NATO leaders are still afraid to commit
ground troops to the war. Instead, the alliance has
turned to Russia and Finland to try to broker a peace
agreement with Belgrade, even though a negotiated
settlement will mean even more compromises to
NATO's original objectives. But further compromises,
particularly on the crucial issue of a credible
international security force to guarantee the safety of
returning refugees, will mean that almost none of the
refugees will ever go home again.
Let us be clear about this. The sell-out of the Kosovar
Albanian refugees has begun and it is all because
alliance leaders have not shown the courage of their
convictions to do what is necessary, right, and just to
win this war. NATO may be the most powerful military
alliance in the world, but it is increasingly revealing itself
to be weak and cowardly in the face of a tyrant whose
ethnic intolerance has resulted in hundreds of thousands
of deaths and millions of displaced persons in three
Balkan wars this decade.
Unless NATO leaders summon up the courage to do
whatever it takes to defeat Serbia's ethnic cleansing in
Kosovo, we can almost certainly add another casualty
to the list: the NATO alliance itself.
It should not have turned out this way.
Graham N. Green was ambassador to Croatia (1995-97),
and comments on international affairs from Ottawa.
[PEN-L:7002] (Fwd) NATO IS ABOUT TO LOSE THE WAR
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Tue, 18 May 1999 22:25:22 -0500
