From: Steven1997@aol.com
Subject: SNET: Fwd: [newsviewz] Clinton & NATO: A Fog that Descends from Above
Date: 12 May 1999 09:47:24 -0400
To: snetnews@world.std.com


->  SNETNEWS  Mailing List


--part1_9b5974f6.246adb6c_boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 

--part1_9b5974f6.246adb6c_boundary
Content-Type: message/rfc822
Content-Disposition: inline

Return-Path: 
Received: from  rly-zc03.mx.aol.com (rly-zc03.mail.aol.com [172.31.33.3]) by
	air-zc04.mail.aol.com (v59.4) with SMTP; Wed, 12 May 1999 09:23:47
	-0400
Received: from mu.egroups.com (m4.egroups.com [207.138.41.151] (may be
	forged))
	  by rly-zc03.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0)
	  with SMTP id JAA04790 for ;
	  Wed, 12 May 1999 09:23:39 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [10.1.1.21] by mu.egroups.com with NNFMP; 12 May 1999 14:21:19
	-0000
Mailing-List: contact newsviewz-owner@egroups.com
X-Mailing-List: newsviewz@egroups.com
X-URL: http://www.egroups.com/list/newsviewz/
Reply-To: newsviewz@egroups.com
Delivered-To: listsaver-egroups-newsviewz@egroups.com
Received: (qmail 23979 invoked by uid 7770); 12 May 1999 13:20:59 -0000
Received: from imo17.mx.aol.com (198.81.17.7)
  by vault.egroups.com with SMTP; 12 May 1999 13:20:59 -0000
Received: from XcongressX@aol.com (14371)
	by imo17.mx.aol.com (IMOv20) id aWXCa13994
	 for XcongressX@aol.com; Wed, 12 May 1999 09:19:50 -0400 (EDT)
From: XcongressX@aol.com
Message-ID: <51c0711f.246ad9f2@aol.com>
Date: Wed, 12 May 1999 09:19:46 EDT
To: XcongressX@aol.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Mailer: AOL 4.0 for Windows 95 sub 13
Subject: [newsviewz] Clinton & NATO: A Fog that Descends from Above
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

National Review 

May 3, 1999 issue 

The author, Mr. Helprin, is a novelist who served in the Israeli army and Air 
Force, and is also a contributing editor of the Wall Street Journal. 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Though the fog of war usually rises from the field of battle, sometimes it 
descends from the top. Like many in his generation, President Clinton refused 
to study war and held all things military in contempt. He arrived in the Oval 
Office purposely ignorant of the most important challenge of any presidency, 
a tremendously difficult subject that can baffle the greatest statesmen. Even 
among generals only a small minority have war in their bones; the rest are 
bureaucrats. 

Seldom has a president been so preternaturally unprepared, and seldom has his 
unpreparedness shone so brightly. In his promiscuity he has extended, to the 
Ukraine, guarantees of which it is hard to judge which is greater, their 
dangerousness or their meaninglessness. And in his confusion he has 
established the principle of directing our shrinking military capacity always 
to where it is needed least, as in nation- building in Mogadishu, the 
counting of endangered animals, or the destruction of African pharmaceutical 
factories. 

He accomplished the groundwork for the present failure by simultaneously 
reducing NATO's military capacity to approximately 40 percent of what he had 
inherited, while expanding its geographical range and its roster of missions, 
and changing its orientation from that of a barely manageable defensive 
alliance to a proactive instrument of gargantuan size and spread. For half a 
century the brilliance of NATO has been its massive power held in reserve for 
essential application -- but no longer. 

This may seem a heartless pronouncement in the face of hundreds of thousands 
of refugees driven from Kosovo, of mass executions, and of old people and 
babies dying of exposure in the inhospitable severities of early spring, but 
none of it would have happened absent American support for ethnic Albanian 
separatism. Always uncertain of cause and effect, and deeply in love with the 
lie, the administration pretends otherwise. But its stated aims for bombing 
Serbia were to force upon it the terms of Rambouillet, and the president's 
representatives were warned that such a course might unleash an attack 
against civilians. When the administration seeks to remove itself as a cause 
it says it knew that what has happened was going to happen anyway, but when 
it maintains that it didn't go against the advice of its generals it says 
that it had no idea that what has happened was going to happen at all. 

We made this war. Without our intervention the Serbs would not have felt the 
need to visit their atrocities upon the Albanians, and they would not have. 
If an ethnic Albanian refugee states a similar view he is brought into line 
by the KLA. If an American does, Madeleine Albright will pigeon-puff. 
Nonetheless, it is true. 

Had the administration not made the United States the instrument of radical 
ethnic Albanian separatism (as the French might say, comment?), Kosovo would 
have remained, as it had been since the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, a 
restive and unhappy province like so many other areas of the world in which 
populations are oppressed or yearn for political unity with an adjoining 
state. Is it the policy of the United States to support irredentism, 
separatism, and secession wherever they may be close to ignition and war? 

The administration's answer is that the Balkans are "in the heart of Europe." 
The Balkans, of course, are not in the heart of Europe. They are a backwater 
separated from the European heartland by mountain ranges and salt water, they 
are entirely unastride the major routes of communication or axes of invasion, 
and they are strategically and economically inessential. In citing them as 
the origins of the First and (incorrectly) the Second World Wars, and 
therefore as justification for his policy of internationalizing their 
conflicts, President Clinton seems not to comprehend that one of the reasons 
for the First World War was that the great powers of the time stupidly, 
mistakenly, and fatally internationalized the conflicts there. 

Shall we join with the Basques in their struggle, or the Catalans, the 
Chechens, the Armenians, and Azerbaijanis? Which shall we support in Northern 
Ireland, the IRA or the RUC? Do not forget persecuted Russians in the Baltic, 
and the huge and irredentist Russian minority in the Ukraine. If these do not 
suffice, Germanophones of the Alto-Adige would like very much to reattach 
themselves to Austria. And what about the balance of Huguenots and Walloons 
in Belgium? Has that been attended to of late, or the plight of ethnic 
Germans in Poland? And in regard to the question of secession, is the 
president carrying secretly in his breast pocket the-in some 
quarters-long-awaited apology to the South? 

INCONSISTENT AIMS 

The policy of the United States has generally and sensibly been not to 
support irredentism (as in the case of the Sudeten Germans) or separatism (as 
in the case of Quebec) except in very special circumstances. We bombed the 
Bosnian Serbs to indicate our opposition to their drive to merge a crescent 
of predominately ethnically Serbian territory with adjacent Serbia, and at 
the same time armed and supported the Croats in their successful effort 
(complete with atrocities) to rid their Krajina region of the bulk of its 
inhabitants, 300,000 Krajina Serbs. These aims and actions, which we call 
humane and just, are precisely the opposite of our present policy, in which 
the ethnic Albanian drive for independence and eventual union with adjacent 
Albania is deemed worthy of our urgent support, and in which the expulsion of 
an ethnic minority from its geographical territory is seen not, as in the 
case of the Krajina Serbs, as a desideratum, but, rightly of course, as a war 
crime. 

The only way to justify such inconsistencies is to demonize the Serbs, which 
is why the tenor of the press is now unfortunately reminiscent of the weeks 
before both the Crimean and the Spanish-American wars. Otherwise sober 
commentators lace their columns with epithets worthy of a Stalinist ministry 
of information-butcherers, thugs, war criminals, monsters-and literally call 
for the shedding of Serb blood. At present, because they are the most 
powerfully equipped and at the center of events, the Serbs do have the most 
blood on their hands, but they hardly have a monopoly. And whereas they were 
our allies in two world wars, those whom we now back without moderation were 
the willing acolytes of the Nazis in repression and genocide. The way of the 
Balkans is intensely and unreasonably violent, but to attribute this to the 
Serbs alone is unsupportable and, I think, mainly a blind from which to 
exercise a policy riven with contradictions. 

Of these contradictions not the least is that NATO has gone to war to compel 
a sovereign state to forfeit a portion of its territory. This is what NATO 
was formed to oppose. After all, in the Soviet view the exploited masses and 
persecuted minorities of Europe urgently required, if not total liberation, 
then pressure on their behalf in one form of interference or another. NATO 
was to be the forceful rejection of such license, based on the principle 
that, despite the continuing imperfection of every form of governance, 
respect for recognized and established borders is the chief instrument with 
which to hold off a wave of otherwise perpetual war-but, evidently, no more. 

The counter-argument that the European community could not have been expected 
to sit idly by while the Kosovars were driven from their land is, shall we 
say, weakened by the sequence of events: NATO attacked before the supposed 
justification of the attack occurred. Now, after the fact, the administration 
claims that although it did not know, and was caught by surprise, it also 
knew and was not surprised. How did it know? During the weeks when it was 
holding out the possibility of bombing Yugoslavia if NATO divisions were not 
allowed in Kosovo, Milosevic mobilized a portion of his army and set it 
opposite the area where he was suppressing a guerrilla insurgency. This is 
roughly how we got to where we are, and it is not impressive. 

What then is to be done after precipitating a war in which the humanitarian 
dimension seems to overshadow everything, and in view of the much cited 
danger to the credibility of NATO and the United States? The options are 
limited, especially as they have been played thus far. Although it may be 
possible to bomb Serbia into total submission, the time required to do so 
would make such a strategy almost entirely irrelevant to the fate of 
beleaguered civilians. Though no one remembers from one war to the next, air 
power becomes less and less effective as it rises from the tactical through 
the strategic and to the political. Nor would a ground war accomplish the 
stated aims of its proponents, to protect the Kosovars. Caught between 
combatants fighting in search-and-destroy mode, the civilian population would 
not be safer than in any other bitterly fought war, and civilian casualties 
would be far greater than they have been up to now. 

If one were intent on "saving" the indeterminate number of ethnic Albanians 
who might yet be killed and the several hundred thousand driven from their 
homes, at the cost of perhaps several thousand allied dead, then establishing 
sanctuaries and attacking key Serbian formations with NATO airborne echelons 
might have been an option (though a dangerous option) at the first sign of 
attacks on the civil population. But not only was the opportunity short 
lived, the airborne forces would have required a linkup with heavy divisions 
in far less time than possible given the existing conditions and the studious 
lack of planning. 

The geography of Kosovo, which Milosevic obviously considered in his 
calculations and the president did not, precludes rapid staging for an 
invasion. Albania has poor roads and ports, and its passages into Kosovo are 
narrow and restrictive. A heavy force and its logistical train have only 
three practical routes in: Greece and Macedonia, Hungary, and Croatia. 
Approaching via Hungary or Croatia would mean all-out war with Serbia on all 
of Serbian territory. Expect a hundred thousand dead at the very least among 
all the parties, including civilians. Hungary is itself landlocked and hardly 
needs a war with Yugoslavia, and enlisting Croatia even were it willing would 
mean a Balkan war with no end to the international repercussions. The only 
practical entry is through Thessaloniki in Greece, and Macedonia. Assuming 
that one or both countries would allow this, which, given their domestic and 
regional imperatives, is doubtful, it would still take at least six weeks to 
mount such an invasion, which would be not to save but solely to repatriate 
ethnic Albanians, and to repair the image of NATO. 

Serbia is rich in defensible terrain and the kinds of basic weaponry that, 
while beneath our technical style of warfare, can inflict very large numbers 
of casualties. Serb armored formations would take their share of our men with 
their tanks and self-propelled guns, and then we would make quick work of 
them. After that, however, among the crags and in the forests, in the ditches 
and ravines, Serbia's five or six thousand light artillery pieces, mortars, 
recoilless rifles, anti-tank guns and guided weapons, in the hands of 
determined and sacrificial infantry armed with machine guns, grenade 
launchers, and RPGs, would root like kudzu. Serbia has, unknown to many 
instant military commentators, a reserve system like that of Sweden, 
Switzerland, and Israel, and can field not 75,000 men but half a million. 
They are quite different in outlook and temperament from Iraqis, and their 
country is physically quite different from Iraq. 

In the Gulf War, the consensus view was that we would suffer tens of 
thousands of American dead, as in Vietnam. That was wrong. Now the consensus 
view is of a few hundred American dead, as in the Gulf War. That is wrong. To 
understand why, one merely has to read Dobrica Cosic's multi-volume epic, the 
revealing titles of which are Into the Battle, South to Destiny, Reach to 
Eternity, and A Time of Death; or recall the Serb defiance of Austria-Hungary 
in WW I; or that, astonishingly, during most of WW II Tito's partisans tied 
down 33 Axis divisions; or that for the last half century the Serbs have been 
focused on resisting an invasion by the Red Army. Were we to become involved 
in a real war with Serbia, we would lose many thousands of men. There is no 
doubt whatsoever in my mind that an invasion to cover our miscalculations and 
elemental failings, and as an ally of radical ethnic Albanian separatism, and 
after a humanitarian crisis-that we provoked-has passed, is not worth the 
life of a single American. 

Those who hold that it is are unduly generous with other people's sons and 
miscalculate yet again. An infantry campaign in the Balkans will forever 
alter the unstable politics of Russia and provide it with the organizing 
principle for rearmament. This alone will more than cancel out the benefits 
of impressing potential enemies with our resolve. Furthermore, anyone 
seriously planning to challenge American interests will be unimpressed if 
America itself cannot intelligently define those interests and thus 
indiscriminately squanders its military and diplomatic capital. Nothing is 
more comforting to a soldier than to see that the enemy fires wildly and 
wastes his ammunition. 

OVERSTRETCH 

Should the United States embark upon a land war in Yugoslavia sufficient to 
the task, we would be completely shorn of the conventional military resources 
necessary to deal with either North Korea, Iraq, or China, much less the 
three working in concert to stretch us far beyond the breaking point. When 
the president assures us that we can deal with two major military 
contingencies at once, he is doing what he often does: He is lying. Even now, 
almost a fifth of our operational strike aircraft are involved in or approved 
for this campaign. God help us if ever we were at war in the Balkans and Kim 
Jong Il woke up on the wrong side of the futon, or if Mr. Primakov decided to 
surprise the world by reclaiming the Baltic republics as, among other things, 
a Slavic tit-for-tat. 

Republicans terrifically eager for war may have neglected to remember what it 
is to safeguard the interests of the United States, appropriately husband its 
resources, and keep watch 360 degrees 'round. As Churchill urged in regard to 
the Civil War in Spain, "Keep out of it and arm," and he knew whereof he 
spoke. If conservatives follow the president and his secretary of state in 
their recklessness and stupidity merely because they dare not look less 
tough, they make a grave error. If they do so merely to make political hay if 
the administration backs down, they are too cynical by half. And the armchair 
generals of the Republican party are perhaps too safe and too glib, for this 
is a problem to which the United States has contributed its share, and in 
which the damage will not be reparable by means of a corrective war of far 
greater destruction. 

As I write, the administration is simultaneously ratcheting up the bombing 
and softening its conditions (specifying an "international" rather than a 
"NATO" force to monitor refugee return). Eventually the two should combine 
into some sort of settlement satisfactory to no one, but, still, the Balkans 
are not the right place to commit American military power when it is 
inadequate for the defense of far more essential interests elsewhere. This is 
especially so when what we do inflames a situation that we then 
presumptuously assume cries out for our intervention. The present 
administration, which, in another Churchillian phrase, is "brainless, 
spineless, and dangerous," has made a terrible showing, in that it has 
forfeited its inheritance of strength and misdirected what power it has 
retained. There is no need to join it as it grasps one useless nettle after 
another. 

------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Backup - The #1 Online Backup Service
Automatic, Safe, Reliable Backup and Restores. FREE for 
30 Days. INSTALL Now and have a chance to win a Palm Pilot V!
http://clickhere.egroups.com/click/218

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/group/newsviewz
http://www.eGroups.com - Simplifying group communications



--part1_9b5974f6.246adb6c_boundary--

-> Send "subscribe   snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
->  Posted by: Steven1997@aol.com