This is disturbing too...
Chicago Tribune
UNDER FIRE
THE RIGHT WAY TO KILL ENEMY CIVILIANS
May 27, 1999
Stephen Chapman
Americans should be proud to learn that the United States and NATO are
winning the war in Yugoslavia. By this, I don't mean we are defeating the
Yugoslavian army and security forces. Unfortunately, they have achieved
their objective of using mass terror to empty Kosovo of ethnic Albanians and
are firmly entrenched in the province, with no intention of leaving.
But never mind that. The other war is going superbly: We are beating the
daylights out of the country's civilian population. Women and children, the
elderly and the newborn, the sick and the lame--they are no match for the
most powerful military alliance in history.
Since the first day of the air war, we've said that our bombs are not aimed
at civilians. At the same time, we are deliberately doing things guaranteed
to bring about suffering and death among innocent people.
Intentionally bombing civilians would be immoral, everyone agrees. But
intentionally targeting them with equally lethal, though slower-acting,
means of destruction is entirely permissible, according to NATO's reasoning.
After years of being victimized by Slobodan Milosevic, the people of
Yugoslavia now find themselves being pummeled by his enemies. Bombing this
week has cut off electricity to 80 percent of the country. Most residents of
Belgrade no longer have running water. Bread is scarce, and food is rotting
in refrigerators. Medicines are hard to come by.
There is no evidence that blasting the power grid has impeded the Serbian
war on Kosovo. This guerrilla-style operation can manage just fine without
it. About the only military benefit is that the loss of electricity disrupts
communications and radar, neither of which is crucial to Milosevic in riding
out the air assault.
Early in the war, NATO tried to give the impression that any hardship to
innocents or damage to the country's civilian economy was purely a byproduct
of our effort to destroy the Serbs' ability to wage war. Lately, though,
allied officials have admitted that one big purpose is to inflict pain and
suffering on the people of Yugoslavia.
"If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no
gas to your stove, and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying
in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey, Slobo,
what's this all about?' " says NATO air commander and U.S. Air Force Gen.
Michael Short.
There are only two problems with this approach: It's ineffective, and it's
immoral. In previous conflicts, as Dartmouth professor Robert Pape notes in
his 1996 book "Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War," U.S. bombing
"knocked out nearly all power generation in North Korea (90 percent), North
Vietnam (85-90 percent) and Iraq (over 90 percent), but in no case caused
the population to rise up against the regime." The Serbs follow a strange
but familiar pattern: When we bomb them, they don't blame their
government--they blame us.
As for morality, knocking out power is guaranteed to kill people who are
helpless and blameless. Infants in incubators, patients requiring dialysis,
and patients in intensive care are all at grave, immediate risk--and there
are 13,000 of them in Yugoslavia.
As water supplies vanish and sanitation deteriorates, disease will spread,
posing a particularly lethal danger to anyone who is very old, very young or
already ill. The longer the war goes on, the filthier conditions will be and
the more people will be in mortal peril.
Yet NATO continues to insist that it occupies the moral high ground.
Alliance spokesman Jamie Shea says that if patients die because hospitals
are deprived of electricity, that's not our fault. Milosevic, said Shea
Tuesday, "can either use his backup generators to supply his hospitals, his
schools, or he can use them to supply his military. His choice. If he has a
big headache over this, then that is exactly what we want him to have." This
is the logic of a kidnapper: If you don't do as I say, I'll kill my
hostage--and the blame will be on you.
Even Henry Kissinger, vilified as a war criminal by Vietnam-era anti-war
protesters, says this approach goes too far. "What kind of humanism
expresses its reluctance to sacrifice military casualties by devastating the
civilian economy of its adversary for decades to come?" he asks in a
Newsweek essay.
As Kissinger suggests, the reason we are trying to win the war by punishing
innocents is that we aren't willing to fight an army with an army. We're
sacrificing Serbian newborns to avoid casualties among volunteer American
soldiers.
If we don't want to go in with combat troops and armor on the ground--and we
shouldn't--then we need to either abandon the air war or conduct it in such
a way as to minimize the harm to ordinary people who have no more control
over Milosevic than we do. Fighting this way is a blunder. Worse, it's a
crime. |
