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

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (10174)	5/28/1999 6:27:00 AM
From: JBL	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 17770

Ron and Yaacov, it is a coincidence, but in today's Boston Globe is an article by a WW2 aviator who dropped bombed in France about the morality of NATO's bombing in Yugoslavia. Maybe you will respect his opinion more than mine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Deadly Semantics of NATO bombings Boston Globe May 28, 1999 Howard Zinn Isn't it time we stopped using the word ''accidental'' to describe the NATO bombing of Yugoslavian hospitals, residential neighborhoods, buses, trains, trucks, and refugees on roads that has killed or maimed at least 1,000 civilians, including children? The word ''accident'' is not an accurate description of the mayhem we have caused in Yugoslavia. True, the world ''deliberate'' does not fit either. It is understandable that Serb leaders would call it ''deliberate,'' just as it is understandable that our leaders would call it an ''accident.'' Both words are propaganda devices that blur a reality more complex than that two-word vocabulary can convey. An accident implies something unforeseen. True, a recent bombing - to take an example of the hospital bombed in Belgrade - may have been unforeseen as a specific consequence of bombing the city. But it was foreseeable, given the magnitude and nature of the bombing, that some hospital, school, village, or bus would at some point be hit, and civilians would die. If I drive my car at 80 miles an hour down a street crowded with children, and 10 of them are killed, I cannot dismiss this as an accident, even if I had not intended to kill these particular children. When an action has inevitable and terrible consequences, it cannot be excused as ''accidental.'' That is an imaginary situation, but let me describe a real one. Just before the end of World War II, flying as a bombardier with the Eighth Air Force, I dropped canisters of napalm on a French town on the Atlantic coast of France. I have no idea how many civilian inhabitants died because of what I did - my target was ''military,'' that is, a bunch of German soldiers waiting for the war to end. But can I claim that the deaths I caused - how many were children I have no way of knowing - were the result of an ''accident''? When Serbian troops in Kosovo kill Albanians, the proper word is ''deliberate.'' But when our planes drop cluster bombs on a residential neighborhood and children are either killed or left in agony because of the steel fragments penetrating their bodies, that should not be passed off as an accident, even if it is not ''deliberate'' in the same sense as Milosevic's evil deeds. Both are war crimes, legally and morally. I am focusing on children as victims because they are true innocents. We are bombing Yugoslavia every night, and citizens there report that their children cannot sleep and live in constant fright. Bombing a city at night is a form of terrorism, because even if the target hit is a ''military'' one, the entire population must live in fear. Indeed, whether in World War II or Vietnam, the terrorizing of the civilian population has always been an objective of bombing, no matter how official propaganda denies it. We can expect NATO and US officials to use language intended to absolve their guilt. But why do reporters, who are not supposed to parrot the propaganda of governments, keep using words like ''accidental'' and ''mistake,'' which suggest an innocence not appropriate to the massive bombing of towns and cities? The attempts by officials to defend the deaths of civilians border on the absurd. In defending an airstrike on a village, the administration said that Kosovars were used as ''human shields.'' Do ordinary civilians not live in villages? Were the patients who died in the devastated hospital forced into their beds? Were the civilians killed on the bombed train deliberately sent on that trip? That explanation brought back the ugliest of memories of My Lai and other Vietnam massacres, justified by ''the Vietnamese babies are concealing hand grenades.'' It also brought Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's response afer Pakistani troops had fired into a crowd of Somali citizens: ''They are using civilians as shields.'' Another explanation used by the administration is that the deaths caused by NATO bombings don't compare to the numbers that Milosevic has killed. Does one horror excuse another? In the simplest of moral mottoes told to all of us as children: Two wrongs do not make a right. For us to react to violence with more violence is especially reprehensible when our violence has no effect in stopping a catastrophe and, indeed, makes it worse, as it is clear our bombing has made things worse for the Kosovars we claim to care about. If we cannot deny culpability in the killing of large numbers of innocent people by claiming ''accident,'' if these deaths are the inevitable result of our policy, the conclusion should be clear: We must stop our bombing. And we must go to the negotiating table - not deliver ultimatums with the arrogance of a superpower - to end the horrors committed by both sides in Yugoslavia. Howard Zinn is professor emeritus at Boston University and author of ''A People's History of the United States.''