Don't know if this was posted. A must read:
Friday March 26, 1999
Alan Keyes
'What are we doing?'
There are signs all over the country that many Americans have grave doubts about the wisdom of
President Clinton's military adventure in Yugoslavia.I have to add my voice to the concerns of those
Americans.
In reading over Bill Clinton's speech attempting to justify the bombing,something really struck me.
Clinton points truly to the fact that this has been a very volatile region in the course of the 20th
Century. He points to the fact that World War I ignited in this region, when Archduke Ferdinand was
assassinated.
What he fails to point out, however, is that the reason the region became a flash point for conflict was
that external powers could never resist the temptation to meddle in its affairs. It is indeed a volatile
region, but it has been a focus of disputes that led to European-wide and global conflict precisely
because there were external nations with larger interests who superimposed those interests on
Yugoslavia and its ethnic and religious strife. Thus internal conflicts became a flash point for the
competing interests of external powers.
Before NATO intervened, a province within a country was disputing with its government. That
government, in turn, responded with excessive force and brutality. We must also remember that the
Kosovo forces on the other side are not saints either, and have themselves not been above the practices
of atrocity and terrorism, and of cultivating ties with criminal elements throughout Europe. So we are
considering a dispute within a country between two sides, neither of which has been conducting itself in
the conflict in a particularly savory manner. But it has been a conflict confined within the borders of
the country, concerning the relationship between the government of that country and one of its
provinces -- almost the classic definition of a civil war.
It is true that there are ethnic ties that spread across "national" boundaries. It would certainly make
sense for external powers to make clear that any sign that the conflict was being taken across those
boundaries through aggression or intervention would be reacted against and contained. But think
carefully about this particular case. The NATO Alliance involves all of the countries that at one point
came together to face down the old Soviet Union. That alliance is now intervening in Yugoslavia. Boris
Yeltsin yesterday withdrew the Russian Ambassador who had been at least formally working on
cooperation with NATO. Yeltsin yesterday explicitly "reserved the right" to take measures if the
conflict spreads, including measures of a military character, "to defend Russia and the security of
Europe." Yeltsin called the attack on Yugoslavia "nothing other than naked aggression."
Let's review: President Clinton points out that this is a volatile region which has led to international
conflict in the past. In fact, it led to such conflicts precisely because external interests couldn't keep
from meddling in its internal affairs. He has now taken the lead in getting a group of countries to
meddle. In doing so he has introduced the very element -- conflict between external interests -- that in
the past has led this region to be a flash point for larger conflict.
Left to its own ugly logic, and with proper prophylactic measures taken by others in the area, it is not
clear that the strife in Yugoslavia, in and of itself, would lead to a confrontation between larger
European interests. What is clear is that NATO action introduces that larger element. It puts the
Russians in a situation of possible temptation to start thinking in terms characteristic of the Cold War.
NATO action invites, if not compels, the heirs to the former Soviet Union to view this action by the
alliance with a revival of the Cold War sense of danger and threat. We have a president who is warning
us about the dangers of escalation in the Yugoslavian situation. Yet he is possibly setting up a
self-fulfilling scenario of international war. He himself is leading those
whose unwarranted involvement introduces into that situation the very
danger he is pointing to -- a larger European conflict that results from the situation in the Balkans
acting as a flash point for conflicting external interests.
This is not about peace-making. This is about war-making. Bill Clinton and others clearly have decided
that there are good and justifiable reasons that we should make war on the government in Yugoslavia.
But I don't think they know what they are doing. We have not been in any way attacked by the
government of Yugoslavia. Our direct interests have been in no way threatened by this government. We
are confronted with no circumstance or alliance that represents a larger threat to our interests in
Europe or a
global threat of any kind. None of these things, which in the past could have been invoked under certain
circumstances to justify the need for our military intervention, exists in this instance.
In this case, we became involved to help bring a peaceful conclusion to a civil conflict that did have
some implications for the region, but that was confined within one country. If you read between the
lines, the situation now is essentially that NATO is taking this military action as a negotiating tactic.
Instead of being an honest broker, we have become a party to the negotiations. And in order to force
one side to accept what at this point they regard as unacceptable, we are introducing the element of
military force into the negotiating process -- using military force as part of the negotiations.
Is this justified? Only if it is right for us to draw the sword in order to save face for NATO because
NATO has issued unwise ultimatums. So in order to rescue a bad rhetorical policy, we must take
military action. We are taking a military action, by the way, that may or may not produce a satisfactory
result. It is hard to tell just what the desired result is. The bombing is first of all intended to
rhetorically punctuate the negotiating process. In terms of concrete objectives, the best that Clinton
has had to offer is that the alliance wants to do something to damage Milosevic's war-making abilities.
But what will constitute sufficient damage? Milosevic has 40,000 troops on the ground, moving against
an unarmed population in Kosovo. So the task would appear to require an actual intervention on the
ground between the Serbian Army and their potential victims. It is not clear how bombing can achieve
that purpose.
If Milosevic simply digs in and is able to secure, under these
circumstances, the support of a people rallied by their belief that they are being victimized by
external forces, we may very well need to
intervene on the ground. Is it worth it? How shall we answer that
question?
Let me remind you of something that we should always consider.
When American troops are put into action, and danger, we must always be concerned. But the concern
must go beyond a concern just for their
physical well-being. When we use our military forces we must always be
certain that what we are doing can be clearly justified in terms of our right -- that is, just -- interests.
It is crucial that there be no underlying moral question about what America is doing, because we are
asking that American troops kill people. And every time we make a decision that involves killing people,
we are making just about the most weighty moral decision there is.
So when we decide to use young Americans as instruments of force to inflict death and destruction, we
better be very clear that what we are doing makes sense, is morally justified, and is absolutely
necessary. Going to war must be a last resort. This does not mean simply that it is the last thing we do.
It means that we must go to
war only when the resort to war is necessary as an essential measure to achieve goals that are morally
justified, and are presentable to the American people and to the world in those terms.
Is that the case here? Especially in view of the fact that the bombing is unlikely to achieve the one
objective that might be most morally justifiable -- the cessation of atrocities? If we are witnessing the
infliction of mass atrocities against a population, we certainly are justified in weighing the necessity of
intervention to stop those atrocities. But one part of that weighing would have to be consideration
whether our intervention will occasion more or less killing. Because, of course, if by intervening we are
actually going to introduce a larger element of conflict, and result in greater death and destruction,
then intervention would not be a good moral judgment. Even if the atrocities on the ground are terrible,
if the war that we commence produces results that are even more terrible, then we haven't made a
proper moral and political decision.
In the current case, we must be particularly careful because there have already been attempts to
exaggerate the extent of atrocities on the ground. It is, of course, immoral to invent justifications that
don't really exist, because one desires for other reasons to take military action. We simply can't know
what Bill Clinton's real motive is in this case -- to save face for NATO, or to distract the world from
the latest batch of scandals concerning China. What we can know is that in dealing with Bill Clinton we
must suspect that the motive isn't a good one.
I find it unacceptable for this man, who has demonstrated repeatedly that he has no ability whatsoever
to engage in any kind of decent moral reasoning, to cite "moral duty" on the part of the United States.
The very phrase ought to choke him. He has no claim, no authority whatsoever, to speak for me or any
other decent person when it comes to moral judgment. This is one of the reasons, of course, that he
should not be commander-in-chief. When he stands before us and tells us that intervention in Kosovo is
our moral duty, we have the temptation to laugh. But we cannot laugh, because he is in charge of our
armed forces, he will put our people in danger, and he will use them as instruments to kill people
according to his whim. As a result, we as a people will be implicated in whatever death or destruction
occurs. If his moral reasoning is not correct, then we will be implicated in the immorality of the action.
That is what we get for having an individual like this for commander-in-chief. This is what our
distinguished senators should have had the modest vision to have considered when they were acquitting
the impeached Bill Clinton. It is certainly what I think of now, as we look at the situation in Yugoslavia.
Bombs are falling -- our sons are dropping bombs -- on people we do not know. As a people, we don't
know what we are doing or why, or what it will lead to. And we have settled for a President who is
incompetent morally and in matters of state, and who cannot tell us what we need to know. It is a time of
great and increasing moral danger for America, and Americans. |
