[PEN-L:6562] (Fwd) UPSTAGED BY JESSE JACKSON

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

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Date sent:              Fri, 07 May 1999 18:02:13 -0700
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From:                   Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:                UPSTAGED BY JESSE JACKSON

THE TORONTO SUN                                 Tuesday, May 4, 1999

UPSTAGED BY JESSE JACKSON

        Despite Jackson's success and President Slobodan Milosevic's 
        peace feelers seeking terms other than those the West tried 
        to impose at Rambouillet, the U.S. has recommitted to this 
        illegal, immoral and undeclared war.

        By Michael Harris

OTTAWA -- With Jesse Jackson playing the president, and Bill 
Clinton Dr. Strangelove, the undeclared war in Yugoslavia just got 
curiouser and curiouser -- Alice in Wonderland with bombs and 
beau gestes.
        How strange that the man who rallied black America behind 
the president during Clinton's impeachment agonies should so 
stunningly upstage Bubba in the current circumstances. How 
telling that the man who brought home the three U.S. soldiers 
should be rewarded for his moral leadership by Clinton's refusal to 
give him the one thing he asked for -- a single day's stop to the 
cold-blooded destruction of Yugoslavia.
        From NATO's, i.e., Clinton's perspective, the most humiliating 
thing about Rev. Jackson's diplomatic coup is that it brought 
results. The alliance has merely added to the body count of both 
Serbians and Kosovar Albanians. Jackson accomplished with 
words what a thousand NATO warplanes have made harder and 
harder to achieve with their "smart" bombs and dumb strategy.
        Despite Jackson's success and President Slobodan Milosevic's 
peace feelers on any terms other than the shotgun wedding the 
West tried to impose at Rambouillet, France, America has 
recommitted to this illegal, immoral and undeclared war. U.S. 
Defence Secretary William Cohen said that not only will NATO 
pursue the bombing of this sovereign nation and UN member that 
began on March 24, it will intensify the carnage.

War crimes

        I guess he meant what he said. Balancing Milosevic's alleged 
atrocities, NATO's list of war crimes is growing by the air raid. 
First it was a convoy of refugees mistaken for the "enemy," then a 
passenger train that somehow found itself in an F-18's bomb sites, 
next it was journalists who got the death penalty for putting out 
the news as they saw it, and most recently it was 47 civilians who 
died outside Luzane in Kosovo because one of our bombs wasn't 
smart enough to know the difference between a tank and a bus.
        Having brazenly violated Article 51 of the UN Charter, 
America is feeling its oats. Unbelievably, the once defensive 
alliance turned into a motorcycle gang by Clinton is laying plans to 
enforce an embargo of Yugoslavia-bound oil, even though the 
enterprise is clearly another illegal act. Worse, the general in 
charge of NATO's technocide against the Serbs, (not Milosevic the 
dictator and brute, but against the Serbs) blurted out recently that 
NATO should bomb any Russian ships that venture into the 
Mediterranean Sea with oil for Belgrade! A White House flack 
tried to slough off Wesley Clark's musings by saying the general 
needed sleep. What he needs is a new assignment that would 
include a hospital stay until he gets better.
        The one thing NATO has on its side, besides enough firepower 
to wipe out an enemy who is fighting back with the equivalent of 
sling shots, is the short attention span of North American 
audiences. When the war began, it was big news if a civilian died 
in Yugoslavia as a result of NATO bombing. Now 47 die and that 
makes Page 12, while Page 1 is devoted to three well-treated and 
released U.S. prisoners of war.
        I will never understand why a life lost to violence in a distant 
country is any less important than a life lost at Columbine High, 
but it is. In a way, I guess that's the problem. A failure of the 
imagination and the heart. Which sums up Canada's role in this 
sorry mess. We have become the whited sepulchres of the 
international community -- a country historically committed to 
peacekeeping, but not averse to blowing up innocent civilians from 
the air when our American masters dip a little too deeply into the 
Viagra and need a few bum boys to legitimize an enterprise that 
the UN never would.
        It's pathetic to see our foreign affairs minister in Mozambique 
for mutual backslapping over last year's treaty banning land mines, 
while Canadian pilots are wiping out human life in Yugoslavia as 
though it were all a video game. Is it any wonder the Russians 
weren't anxious to return phone calls from the Canadian 
government, which wanted to talk peace while it was helping to 
turn Yugoslavia into a 24-hour fly-through where death is the only 
thing on the menu?

Axworthy disgusting

        Equally disgusting is Axworthy's heartfelt hope the United 
Nations can broker a diplomatic solution to the war in Yugoslavia, 
provided, of course, Annan can help implement the points NATO 
is "proposing." Not proposing, Lloyd, no, nor even dictating. 
Brutally imposing. In the old Canada, our foreign minister would 
be actively aiding and abetting a peace settlement by doing what 
we do best, talking belligerent people into a peaceful settlement 
that we would help police. Now we merely wish others good luck 
in that noble enterprise, while we charge up San Juan Hill with our 
belligerent buddies to the south.
        I wonder, have our prime minister and his paper warriors in 
Ottawa considered what will happen in Yugoslavia if the Serbs 
haven't given up by the time all the bridges, TV stations, factories 
and roads are blown up? At 600 sorties a day and the weather 
improving, the pedigree of our targets will surely have to change. 
What next? Subversive day-care centres, hospitals, or just a 
massive land invasion to finally finish the job with a little ethnic 
cleansing of our own?
        Since Viktor Chernomyrdin has come to Washington with the 
framework of a peace plan, the United States would be wise to 
stop the bombing until it is satisfied a solution can't be reached. I 
don't know about you, but I wouldn't like to die while the big 
cheeses busy themselves dotting the I's and crossing the T's.
        Besides, it's the least Bubba could do for Jackson, who may 
have saved his seedy presidency.