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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (41850)	4/8/1999 9:05:00 AM
From: Bill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 67261

Perhaps I did. Hitler and Stalin weren't proven RAPISTS!

To: Neocon who wrote (41850)	4/8/1999 9:42:00 AM
From: Les H	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Bombing Empty Buildings By Charles Krauthammer Thursday, April 8, 1999; Page A31 Remember the Dutch pilot who shot down a Serb MiG in the first days of the Kosovo campaign? You don't remember him because the Dutch government would not allow his name to be released. It allowed no official celebration. It would not even allow the pilot to make the traditional mark on his fighter to commemorate his "kill." NATO doesn't glorify killing. NATO doesn't even admit to killing. NATO simply carries out "air campaigns." Early in this one, Italy asked for a bombing pause over Easter, in part because the war might scare away holiday tourists from Venice. And NATO took the presidential palace of Slobodan Milosevic, the man we call Hitler, off the bombing target list because of "cultural" considerations. It is chock-full of heritage. And it contains a Rembrandt. This is war? This is war as waged by humanitarians, idealists and the flotsam of the counterculture. This NATO war machine is being directed by whom? By a German foreign minister from the pacifist Green Party. By the head of NATO, Javier Solana, who vigorously opposed his nation's entry into NATO lest Spain develop close military ties to the United States. By an American secretary of state who supported the nuclear freeze and opposed the Gulf War. And by an American president who -- well, forget his military history. Listen to what he said on the eve of this little war: "I think if the American people don't know anything else about me, they know that I don't like to use military force, and I do everything I can to avoid it. But if we have to do it, then that's part of the job, and I will do it." Now there's a rallying cry. Can you imagine Winston Churchill telling his nation, "I really don't like to fight the Hun, but it's part of the job"? (Part, mind you.) The anti-warriors -- anti-Vietnam War, anti-Cold War, anti-contra war, anti-Gulf War -- go to war. Their first instinct? To ensure that nobody dies. A noble instinct, but somewhat self-defeating. It is one thing to wage war so that none of your soldiers dies. It is another thing to wage war so that none of the enemy dies either. Hence the now infamous Phase 1 of the Kosovo war. It lasted a full 10 days, during which NATO attacked Serbia with excruciating selectivity and ineffectiveness even as Serbia was terrorizing and driving out hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians. The apotheosis of this exercise in humanist warfare occurred on Day 10 (April 2). NATO finally went to the heart of Belgrade. What did it hit? Two office buildings (housing the interior ministries), undoubtedly empty, it being the middle of the night. Nice symbol. Nice bonfire. Great TV pictures, wonderful for rousing Serbian nationalism, perfect for muting Milosevic's opposition. And militarily pointless. For days NATO had telegraphed in the press that these buildings were on its target list. The Serbs had moved their operations elsewhere. This is not war. This is "asset" depletion. But no surprise: This bombing of empty buildings has long been a preferred Clinton method for appearing muscular. (In 1993 he bombed an empty building in Baghdad between 1 and 2 a.m. in retaliation for the plot to kill President Bush.) Of course, the Kosovo campaign has been a debacle because of the lack of any strategy. But the deeper problem is lack of seriousness. A committee of reluctant warriors is so reluctant to go to war that it launches a facsimile of war, then acts surprised when every one of its aims -- saving Kosovars, stabilizing Kosovo's neighbors, preventing the crisis from spreading -- is subverted. In and of themselves, pacifism, humanitarianism, even sentimentalism are not to be denigrated. People who hate war, who refuse to participate because they believe it does more harm than good, who cannot bear to kill their fellow man in the name of any cause, deserve the highest respect. But they shouldn't be running wars. War needs to be carried out by people who are serious about what it is and what it costs. It took 10 days and half a million refugees for Clinton and the NATO leaders to begin to acquire seriousness. Finally they are hitting targets -- power plants, fuel depots, bridges, airports, television transmitters -- that may indeed kill the enemy and civilians nearby. Those who, like me, opposed this campaign from the start can only applaud this dawning of seriousness, because it provides the only possible way out of this war short of abject defeat. When will we know our leaders have become serious? When they are prepared to hit a Rembrandt.