Orlando Sentinel, April 22, 1999
If we're so great, why don't we pick on somebody our own size?
by Charlie Reese
I am, as the baby boomers are fond of saying, conflicted about this war in
the Balkans.
My natural predisposition is to cheer any time American forces go into
combat. On the other hand, I hate a damned bully, even if it's the United
States. I hate it that the politicians in Washington keep using our forces
to bomb little countries because those politicians are annoyed with the
little country's leader.
How about a fair fight once in a while? How about bombing a country more
our size?
I kid you not, but if I were the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, I
would be embarrassed to announce, as it did last week, that the alliance's
bombing campaign was "beginning to have an effect." Wow. That's like a
professional wrestler saying, after going three rounds with a 12-year-old,
"I'm beginning to wear him down."
Combined population of NATO's 19 countries: about 600 million, give or
take 50 million or so. Population of Yugoslavia, 10 million. Combined
armed forces of the NATO countries: easily 2 million or more. Yugoslavia's
total armed forces: 114,000.
And after three weeks of high-tech bombing and missile-lobbing, NATO's air
attacks are "beginning to have an effect." As I said, wow. Good thing
Yugoslavia doesn't have 20 million people; it might take months before
NATO's bombs could "begin" to have an effect.
If President Clinton wants to be macho, why doesn't he bomb North Korea?
Now, North Korea is still a little country compared with us, but it is
virtually all military. It has a million-man army and 4.7 million-man
reserve force, not to mention more than 10,000 surface-to-air missiles.
Now that would be, if we kept the nukes out of it, a bit more of a fair
fight, and all of these armchair generals and all of these pompous
spokesmen for NATO, the Pentagon and the State Department, all of these
bloodthirsty little academics who chatter on television would have
something interesting to talk about. As it is, they mainly have to make
excuses for blowing up passenger trains, bombing refugees and killing some
farmer's dog.
And, of course, boast about the bombing beginning to have an effect.
Yes, I'm conflicted. I really don't want a war with North Korea. It would
be terrible. The official American estimate is that casualties would run
70,000 or more per day during the first 72 hours. Besides, if it takes a
month to move 24 Apache helicopters from Germany to Albania, I don't even
want to know how long it would take to move them to Korea.
As a matter of deadly serious fact, one of the dangers of these Yugoslav
follies is that they may encourage somebody such as the dictator of North
Korea to think that now is the best time to make a move on South Korea.
NATO, frankly, has not been too impressive in its first war, even against
a small country with few resources.
What I wish is that Americans would wake up from their television trance
and realize that our government -- the people we elect -- have been acting
like crypto-fascists in recent years, bombing and starving people in small
countries simply because the politicians are frustrated or need a headline
to distract attention from their personal failures.
We ought to be the good guys, and we aren't. We are meddling in other
people's countries, bullying them, killing them, breaking international
laws right and left, acting the hypocrite and being an all-around jerk of a
nation.
The fault lies with the civilian leadership, not with the military, and
ultimately with us because we elect the civilian leadership. For a self
-governing people, we haven't done such a hot job in recent years.
|
