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Date sent: Thu, 20 May 1999 11:50:22 -0700
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From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: IF NATO'S BRIEFINGS WERE HONEST - A Soldier's View
The Vancouver Sun May 20, 1999
A Soldier's View:
IF NATO'S BRIEFINGS WERE HONEST
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea strings a predictable line at his
daily performances. Here is what he should say — but won't.
By Lewis Mackenzie
OTTAWA — With hope, in the not too distant future, NATO's war
with Yugoslavia will be over and we can get busy documenting the
lessons learned during the conflict for the benefit of future leaders
when they face a similar crisis.
Come to think of it, that will probably not preclude those
leaders from making the same mistakes, as too many of us turn a
blind eye to history's lessons believing that somehow we must be
smarter than our predecessors. Dumb conclusion.
One lesson that I would put near the top of my personal list
would state simply: "Do away with the daily NATO press briefing!"
I do not know it for a fact but I suspect that as much discussion
goes into preparing the daily briefing as is dedicated to the running
of the war itself. Unfortunately, the repetitiveness of the script and
the irritating, lecturing style of NATO spokesman Jamie Shea is
counterproductive to NATO's cause.
By now, those of us who force ourselves to watch the daily
performance from NATO headquarters could answer just about
every question asked by the media in exactly the same words used
by Shea. His responses are so stereotypical they frequently lack
credibility.
To be fair, I think anyone who had to deal with the same subject
and similar questions day after day would suffer the same fate. It's
the media's responsibility to search out the real stories and not have
them assigned on a daily basis by NATO.
If the argument I've heard is true — that the briefings are also a
message to President Slobodan Milosevic — then surely our
diplomacy has hit an all-time low. A briefing a week, if there are
any significant developments, would be fine. The briefer should be a
senior member of NATO's civilian staff, a senior elected
representative from one of the 19 member nations, or one of the
alliance's military commanders.
IBM, Microsoft, General Motors and others, have spokesmen.
Military alliances don't need one. However, if NATO insists that it
must employ one during peacetime, it should not place him front
and centre during a war.
Just once, I wish Shea would lose his carefully prepared, ap-
proved script and talking points and tell it like it is. I can hear him
now:
"Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the
umpteenth day of the war. We continue to degrade Milosevic's
military, the very instrument that keeps him in power, but quite
frankly things are not going particularly well. The 19 members of
the NATO council met in special session for over 10 hours last
night and this morning and I have been asked to pass on their
conclusions.
"Quite frankly we never expected that we would actually have
to bomb Yugoslavia. We knew that Milosevic had cut his losses in
Slovenia and Croatia in '91 and turned his back on the Serbs in
Krejina and Bosnia four years later. He always compromised when
his own position was threatened so we figured he would fold once
we pre-positioned our aircraft around Yugoslavia.
"When we started bombing we anticipated that he would
capitulate after a day or two. I guess you could say that we misread
his reaction to our bombing of Serbia proper. Regrettably, just
about everyone in Yugoslavia that wanted to see the back end of
Milosevic leaving office is now supporting him, not because they
love him but because he is the leader of their country which is under
attack by outsiders.
"Because we expected an early victory we were caught with our
pants down when hundreds of thousands of Albanian refugees
crossed into Macedonia and Albania. It's a real mess because now
there is almost no chance whatsoever that they will be able to return
to Kosovo in the near future.
"That being said, we have to get them ready for winter which is
but six months away, a point reinforced a few days ago by Canadian
General Maisonneuve, who just completed six months in the area.
The presence of the refugees is putting a lot of stress on Macedonia
and Albania and has great potential to destabilize the entire region.
"At the same time, we are forced to get in bed with the Kosovo
Liberation Army, which hasn't exactly been a paragon of human
rights and virtues. Damn, I tell you, this situation gets worse by the
day.
"We are spending billions, yes billions, on the war and all we
get is a bad press when we kill innocent civilians. I guess we should
have told you there would be a fair number of innocent people
killed before the mistakes and accidents happened.
"Our biggest problem is the fact that NATO has a role to play in
the security of Europeans and North Americans and we can't let it
go down the tubes because of something as relatively insignificant
as Kosovo. We have created a vital NATO interest in Kosovo out
of good intentions, we shouldn't be ashamed of that but we have to
move on.
"Based on the fact that, even if we resolve the current crisis in
Kosovo we have not stabilized the region, the NATO council calls
upon the United Nations to convene an international conference at
the presidential/prime-ministerial level to address the future political
structure and territorial boundaries of Yugoslavia and its
neighbours, particularly Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania
and Croatia. NATO feels it is time to correct some of the injustices
of the past, perceived and otherwise, by negotiation rather than the
gun and will do its part in helping to implement any peaceful
solution."
I won't hold my breath.
Major General Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops
during the siege of Sarajevo during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
[PEN-L:7094] (Fwd) IF NATO'S BRIEFINGS WERE HONEST - A Soldier's View
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Thu, 20 May 1999 19:11:45 -0500
