.....The subject [of a conversation between Clark and the New Yorker reporter Peter Boyer] was how the war in Iraq, which Clark calls a "historic blunder," differed from the 1999 war over Kosovo, which Clark commanded. Clark was welcomed into the campaign by many Democrats as the triumphant commander of Kosovo, and he uses the lessons of Kosovo to explain his criticism of the Iraq war. In a speech at the University of Iowa College of Law, on September 19th, Clark had declared that chief among America's mistakes was that it had gone to war in Iraq without "the mantle of authority" bestowed by United Nations approval. But hadn't the Kosovo war also been conducted without the endorsement of the U.N. Security Council? Yes, Clark allowed, and in that regard the Kosovo war was "technically illegal." He went on, "The Russians and the Chinese said they would both veto it. There was never a chance that it would be authorized." That situation did not seem entirely dissimilar from the prewar maneuverings regarding Iraq, when France and Germany said that they would oppose any Security Council resolution authorizing an immediate war; Bush bypassed the U.N. and resorted to an alliance with Prime Minister Tony Blair's Britain and sundry lesser members of the "coalition of the willing." But there was one more important difference, Clark said: the war against Serbia was waged to stop the imminent threat of ethnic cleansing in the disputed province of Kosovo; the war in Iraq, he said, was waged under false pretenses.
Let's go back here. Clark essentially concedes that the war in Kosovo was, under international law, indistinguishable from the war in Iraq. Actually, even that's not entirely true. It should be recalled that the United States and its allies, particularly Great Britain, secured a 15-0 Security Council Resolution demanding complete and unfettered access to potential sites of WMD development--or else--in Iraq. The "else" was subject to debate, but the notion that it ruled out any military action is one only Dominique de Villepin would argue with a straight face. No such 15-0 vote occurred at any time before the Kosovo war. So, if anything, the war against Iraq had more international legitimacy than the war in Kosovo. If viewed as a continuation of the 1991 war--the terms of which cease-fire Saddam had grotesquely and systematically violated--it was impeccably legitimate. The 1991 war, after all, was one of very few post-World War II conflicts that had unimpeachable U.N. credentials.
Moreover, the "imminent threat" of ethnic cleansing is an odd casus belli. By the time of the Kosovo operation, the world had already stood by and watched the slaughter of a quarter of a million Bosnians by the Serbian fascist machine. That had triggered no war from the West. The same could be said for the holocaust in Rwanda, which the Clinton administration (and the United Nations) observed from afar. For Clark to argue that Kosovo was worse than either of those events is bizarre.
The threat of genocide in the Balkans was also, of course, another way in which the two wars were identical in legitimacy. There are an estimated 300,000 mass graves in Iraq today. Saddam's genocidal campaigns against the Kurds and the Shia and the Marsh Arabs are and were no different than the monstrosities of Milosevic--except in scale and viciousness. Does Clark believe that leaving Saddam in power would have removed the "imminent threat" of further genocide and mass murder against the peoples of Iraq? Who is he kidding? Does he think that Uday and Qusay Hussein represented the hope of a more humane future? Of course not. If your criterion for intervention is the "imminent threat" of genocide, then Clark's defense of the Kosovo war necessitates an identical defense of the Iraq war. One more obvious distinction: Milosevic hadn't actually used gas or chemical weapons to kill civilians. Saddam did. Moreover, Milosevic had restricted his murderous military campaigns to the territories of the former Yugoslavia. Saddam had already launched wars against two neighboring states, Iran and Kuwait. A final point: Milosevic hadn't threatened the United States and hadn't attempted to assassinate the president of the United States. Saddam had. On humanitarian and realist grounds, toppling Saddam was far more legitimate than toppling Milosevic.
Now let's take Clark's final point: that the war against Saddam was conducted "under false pretenses." Does he mean that Saddam had publicly and openly disarmed as he promised to do in 1991? Not even Jacques Chirac believed that; and the Kay report has already documented a vast apparatus of concealment and subterfuge to keep the WMD programs alive. Does Clark mean that he knew that no such WMDs existed? Nope. He already opined on CNN that Saddam "absolutely" had WMDs, adding, "I think they will be found. There's so much intelligence on this." Was it because the war turned out to be more destructive than had been planned for and promised? Again, it was a miraculously speedy, humane and successful war, as Clark also conceded on CNN. In the Times of London, as Boyer points out, Clark even went into hubristic mode: "American military power, especially when buttressed by Britain's, is virtually unchallengeable today. Take us on? Don't try!" If the Bush administration's intelligence was faulty, Clark signed onto it at the time. If the administration's strategy was wrong, Clark praised it at the time. He has absolutely no credibility in arguing that the war was conducted "under false pretenses."
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