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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stormweaver who wrote (4142)	4/16/1999 9:45:00 PM
From: John Lacelle	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

James, The reason Clinton and Albright went to NATO was because they knew that there would be no UN support for an airwar against Yugoslavia. In fact, 2 of the 5 permanent members are voraciously opposed to this bombing campaign. The military action is also a violation of the NATO charter which only allows for military action if a NATO member is attacked. Yugoslavia threatened nobody. All they tried to do was defeat a rebel army that was trying to break away territory that the Serbs have had centuries of cultural, military, and religous ties. Its also interesting to note that Milosevic told Clinton that he would ethnically cleanse the region if NATO bombed. I guess Clinton thought he could stop him. Bubba was outfoxed on that one. -john

To: Stormweaver who wrote (4142)	4/17/1999 5:49:00 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

James, You said: Even if Milosevic is the worst thing since Hitler, NATO miscalculated terribly by using the bombing campaign as a way to get him to sign a very one-sided agreement un-altered. This thing was NATO's to win or lose from day one and they choose to lose it; through diplomatic and political incompetence. You are wrong: the U.S. perfectly calculated their jingo-cleansing campaign over the Balkans! What's your alternative Plan B, after all? Only a FOOL would have launch a ground operation from the start in Kosovo!! Just imagine: Abraham US tanks storming through Kosovo, air-protected by Apaches... NATO infantery entangled in urban/guerilla warfare with the Serbian military and... Oh! BTW, we've got still all those civilian Kosovars in the middle... The Serbs didn't have the time to expel them from their villages because of NATO's blitzkrieg landing, so they get caught in the midst of the belligerents' fire power! If this was your ''Plan B'' for the US to deal with Serbian Fascism then I hope you'll never make it to the Joint Chief of Staffs! The bombing campaign of Serbia was instrumental in forcing Milosevic to get out of the bush and show the world his real nature. It was also necessary for the White House to get support from the American public opinion... But how best can you get such an isolationist people as the Americans fully supportive of a massive intervention abroad? By showing them masses of refugees pushed around by an evil dictator! It may not sound ''highly moral'' since it, somehow, manipulates the Albanians' misery but it was the only practical strategy. Just think about WWII: what would non-interventionist, isolationist Americans have said, back in the 1930s, if all of a sudden F.D. Roosevelt had taken the initiative to bomb Berlin in 1937? James Nicoll and others would have accused Roosevelt of precipitating Nazi extermination of the Jews!! God-fearing people would have said: ''Look, prior to the bombing of Berlin, all these German Jews were kindly pushed to the borders with a 100 Reichmark note as a severance pay... But now, because of all these B-29 buzzing over his head, Hitler's just gone mad! He ordered to liquidate all the Jews on the spot! And it's all your fault, Franklin!!''