This McCain article is a fine example of the sort of political crap that makes me question why we're even in Kosovo in the first place. Aside from the relatively transparent posturing and backhanded bragging about his POW history (McCain in 2004?), it's just an enormous pile of steaming bullshit.
>...vital for the future of NATO to secure a victory over the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Kosovo.
Why? If the conventional wisdom that the Soviet Union is a thing of the past is true, then NATO shouldn't have a future. This is an organization that was created to be an alliance against the Soviet Union and the eastern bloc nations. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, their reason for being vanished. Of course, all the people who had created a cushy life on the NATO payroll didn't vanish. They're still hanging around wanting to get paid.
So apparently, since they no longer need to protect us from the Soviets, they instead decide that it is "vital for (their) future" to protect one ethnic group in one of the former Soviet states from another ethnic group in the same state. Huh?
And of course, there's the minor hitch that they're failing to protect said ethnic group. Well, that and that the analysts apparently predicted that failure.
>"It is absolutely necessary in a war that you are prepared to do whatever is necessary to gain victory. We must do that. We have to do that now and I hope that that option isn't necessary but for us not to be prepared is a terrible mistake. You can't win a war if you're not going to wage it,"
This is (perhaps not surprisingly from McCain) the standard hawk spin on Vietnam. They trot out this notion that the mistake isn't going in somewhere where we don't belong in the first place, but rather not trying hard enough after we get there, as if those two things aren't intertwined. We will never have the will to win in a situation where the people don't particularly care about the outcome. We keep getting fed this "we must save the ethnic Albanians" crap, but: #1 Most of us wouldn't know an ethnic Albanian from, oh say... a Serb, #2 It seems every time we turn around somebody's genociding somebody else (can you say Rwanda?), so what's so special about this one? and #3 anybody who watches any form of news can see that we are not saving the ethnic Albanians, but are rather hastening their demise. So we know that this is crap, and no amount of "you gotta fish or cut bait" kind of exhortation is going to inspire the kind of will necessary to actually win a war.
>"It is in our national interest now and the interest of the maintenance of the future of NATO that we win this conflict so therefore for us to rule out any of the capability we have to bring this war to a successful conclusion is a mistake."
Unless there is some sort of brass ring in Kosovo that we don't yet know about (e.g. Southeast Asian heroin, Central American cocaine, Middle Eastern oil), the only reason it's in "our national interest now" to escalate this war is because we've already stuck our necks out as far as we have. But at this point, we aren't going to stop the genocide and the flow of refugees. At this point, all we can hope to do is to "punish" Milosevic, or to damage his military ability. We've all seen how well that strategy has worked on Saddam Hussein. Of course, if it's in our national interest to create another bogeyman for our collective closet, well then we're doing just fine. As for NATO's future, who, other than the NATO employees and representatives, cares? Again, this is an organization whose sole reason for being no longer exists.
>"Remember this is a guy that got beat by the Croatian army.
Of course, they had a personal stake in that victory.
This is a place the size of Ohio with 10 million people.
That's an odd statement coming from a Vietnam vet. He should know that size doesn't matter.
We can, will and must prevail otherwise the consequences to our credibility, the future of NATO and not to mention the tragedy ensuing as we speak, will weigh heavily on our conscience and on our future."
Yes, there will be serious consequences to our credibility, but we don't really have much to lose as far as credibility goes anyway, so...
Again, as for the future of NATO, who cares? And as for "the tragedy ensuing as we speak" well, #1 it's already ensuing as we speak, and #2 there's not diddly we can do to stop it. As for our conscience, Rwanda didn't seem to bother us too much, so what's so special about Kosovo? I suspect that if we hadn't done anything our conscience would be fine. And of course, we might still be talking about Juanita Broaddrick and such things. But that's not to say that I believe that Kosovo is about taking the heat off of Clinton. I don't think that even he is stupid enough to believe that getting into this situation would be a good thing for him. But I don't know, maybe the aspirin factory whetted his appetite for civilian targets.
>"In Pyongyang and Baghdad and Tripoli, they are paying close attention,"
I consider this to be the only undeniably true statement in the entire article.
"The costs of failure are infinitely greater than the price of victory,"
Nice try at an immortal quote, but the problem is, very simply, that we've already failed. We went in there with the expressed objective of helping the ethnic Albanians, and instead we have made their situation worse.
>"Can anyone contemplate the prospect of taking our leave of this century with the greatest defensive alliance in history in tatters after losing a war in Europe?"
Well maybe the problem is that "the greatest defensive alliance in history" has started trying to be an offensive power. If they do indeed end up in tatters, I'd have to say it's their own damn fault.
Barring a better theory (if anyone's got one, I'd love to hear it), it still seems most likely to me, given the prediction of the failure of bombing, and the ensuing reality of the failure of bombing, that somebody (I would have to assume NATO) actually has a vested interest in destabilizing that region. Either that or the world's run by idiots.
-BLT
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