U.S. out of Kosovo

Sunday, April 4, 1999

There are images of human suffering emerging from Kosovo which touch the human heart. Few can remain unmoved by the tears and tragedy of war. But a nation cannot make policy out of sentiment alone. Tears may melt the heart but they have little effect on bombs and bayonets.

Here are twenty-one reasons why we have no business in Kosovo:

1. Kosovo is in Europe. We would not expect the Germans to intervene in Quebec or Tijuana. Europe is rich enough; they have the interest, men, equipment, and proximity to police their own neighborhood. We lose our objectivity when we take sides in a civil war. We also lose our ability to broker a settlement.

2. While WWI was triggered by an assassination in the Balkans, it was not caused by events in the Balkans. WWII causes were also irrelevant to the Balkans, Clinton's assertions notwithstanding.

3. What is happening in Kosovo is not 'genocide'. To call it genocide is an insult to the victims of real genocide.

4. If this was real genocide, the trains would travel to gas chambers, not borders. There is cruel dislocation and human suffering in war. War is ugly enough. It is quite an exaggeration to call every brutality of war 'genocide.' To do so steals meaning from that horrid word.

5. What is happening is ugly. But the world is full of ugly events and people. More people die in Rwanda in one day, (for many, many days) than died in Kosovo in two years. The same is true of the Sudan, Congo, and Cambodia.

6. Milosevic is no Hitler. He is a petty tyrant we are solidifying in power by bombing his people into his arms. Any people unite in the face of a foreign threat. Iraq did. Germany did. Russia did. We are that threat, engendering hatred, taking civilian lives, incurring great risks, and like a dull, lumbering giant, provoking consequences we do not intend.

7. Kosovo is not strategic to us. Other places are, such as Korea, Taiwan, or dare I say the Panama Canal (which we are losing this year). Because we are committed in Kosovo, we are less capable of defending our real strategic interests elsewhere. Significantly less capable.

8. Munitions and supplies are at a dangerous low. For example, cruise missiles have not been built in more than seven years, and the Air Force is almost out of ammo. Assembly lines are long ago shut down. We may have to buy from France to equip our own troops. France contributes no troops to NATO. France is two skips and a jump from Kosovo.

9. The re-manufacture of munitions such as cruise missiles will take several months to re-tool -- months we would not have if another crisis blossoms while we are bogged down in Serbian mountain forests sending home body bags.

10. We do not have the men nor the material to fight another mid-intensity conflict if it should arise, should we be committed in Kosovo. In WWII, it took the Germans twenty-seven divisions and they could not subdue the Serbs. We don't have twenty-seven divisions!

11. The Serbs were our allies in WWII against Hitler and rescued over 800 downed pilots, mostly Americans.

12. The Serbs are not Nazis; they fought Nazis. The Albanians were allied with the Nazis.

13. Less than two years ago we identified the KLA as a terrorist organization, fed with drug-running money and sponsored by the likes of Bin Ladin. They have not changed.

14. The KLA murder and burn and steal and terrorize in Kosovo. Horrifically. And we propose to arm them in a civil war? Do we disarm them after the war is over? We should be discriminating and sophisticated enough to know how media may be manipulated to achieve the ends of propaganda.

15. The 'war' between the Christian Serbs and the Moslem-Ottoman Turk Albanians has been going on for more than 600 years. It is not our war, nor is it the only tribal/religious war going on in the world. It is a relatively minor one; Unless we choose to make it a major war. We have the power to do that.

16. The Russians have moved six warships off the coast and propose major war games. This opens a dangerous prospect for miscalculation, accident, or compromise of operational security for our seaborne command and communications in theatre.

17. Boris Yeltsin is obsessed with the Serbian action in Kosovo. He is not well physically, perhaps mentally. Russia has a sense of being disrespected and of having an ancient ally on its near-border threatened and attacked. Yeltsin has on hand thousands of modern missiles armed with nuclear weapons. What do we do if he arms Serbia? Bomb Moscow; or just threaten to?

18. Clinton lies. He ruthlessly manipulates words, people and events for narrow self interest and political gain. The whole world has observed this. He is personally undisciplined, singularly ignorant and inhospitable toward the military. His character cannot be trusted in a crisis. Yet Clinton is an avid and astute student of history. He knows historical greatness in presidents is achieved through overcoming foreign crisis, preferably military crisis. Time is running out on his scandal-sogged presidency. Kosovo intervention provides both a distraction from scandal and a last chance to notch a military success in the gunstock of his morally tattered legacy. Largely as a consequence of Clinton's arrogant blundering, the humanitarian need in Kosovo is now great. But to assert that the Clinton-Kosovo intervention was for 'humanitarian reasons' ex post facto, is the consummate hypocrisy. Eliot would call it, "The greatest treason." It merely continues a legacy of lies.

19. The Clinton White House is increasingly isolated and keeps its own counsel. The 'inner circle' draws ever inward, ever smaller, ever more defensive. No one in that small circle has any military experience and they have been unprecedentedly dismissive of military advice and hostile to the military culture. This intervention was not a NATO idea. It was not a military idea. It was a White House idea.

20. Air Power is flashy, makes great visuals for CNN, but air power does not win wars. Troops win wars. Boots must follow bombs. If they do not, you merely leave behind a more united, entrenched and hostile enemy. Clinton has been told this by the best military counsel. He chose not to listen. Now he is in a tight spot. We are in a tight spot. Many will die - are dying - because of this miscalculation and arrogance. They will not all be Serbian or Kosovar.

21. Finally, Kosovo is a wonderful distraction, and has done wonders for CNN ratings. It dominates the news. It has almost totally displaced the vastly more important story of China's threat and theft of U.S. nuclear secrets, and the wholesale export of vital delivery and targeting technologies to China by a White House grown fat on Chinese money. Where is the Cox Commission Report? Stonewalled by the White House, while Kosovo dominates the news and wags the dog, again.

It is now up to us to make the best of a bad situation. Here is one solution consonant with our national interests and humanitarian proclivities together.

• We should declare a cease fire for a determined period of time, heeding perhaps an orchestrated call from the Pope.

• We should swiftly move substantial ground troops into Macedonia and Montenegro to address security and humanitarian concerns. We need to show a 'victory' and that victory will be preventing a spread of violence across the borders of Kosovo.

• We should invite the Russians to participate in this peacekeeping.

• We reapproach the Russians and the Pope, and convene a Balkan Regional Interest Stability Conference [BRISC -- the brisker the better]. The Russians would be key players, and the 'good offices' of the Greeks and Turks would participate in economic, humanitarian and political re-construction of the region. Romania could also be a player.

• We would get out as soon as the humanitarian needs were substantially under control and secure borders were assured. We would not participate in BRISC, as we are a now poisoned party. We would merely help facilitate it, as would the Vatican.

• The Kosovo Question would be resolved by partition of the country, as a work of the BRISC. Northern Kosovo would be integrated into Serbia; Southern Kosovo would become a semi-independent part of Albania under Kosovar governance.

• Substantial U.S. aid, and European aid, should be directed toward the BRISC, and trade incentives given to participants.

• NATO has outlived its original intent and is no longer justified as an entangling alliance for the United States. It is properly a European joint venture. We would reposition ourselves in NATO as a secondary partner akin to the current French membership status. Reassessment of our current NATO relationship should take place at the upcoming 50th NATO convention in Washington this month.

Streams of refugees and tears on TV can cloud our judgment. Kosovo is not an easy question. It is not explained in six minutes, nor is it solved by six days of bombing.

Maybe we should take a hint from God. Maybe we should rest on the Seventh. Maybe we should rethink where we are, where we are going, and what real dangers lie ahead. If its not too late for rationality.

This, from a Marine Lt. Col. who has seen war, and prefers peace. Most veterans do.