KFORMYASS!!!
Especially for KFOR's actions in Kosovo...

This page is dedicated to our reader mr. Mathews
(Mr. P. Matthews' letter can be found here)

If you believe only "communists" opposed aggression against Yugoslavia and Kosovo occupation FORce, then you are in the RIGHT place! Please read below:

• The Millennium Conflict: America First or World Government
• Chad Nagle's Letter of 2/22/00 to the Washington Times.
• THE TRAGIC BLUNDER IN KOSOVO
• The Big Lie: NATO's Campaign of Deception in Kosovo
• Too Terrible to Believe? It’s Probably Not True
• Kosovo truth and Dubrovnik hoax
• Enforcement comes from military
• NATO is organization of liars
• NATO Celebrates Its Fiftieth Anniversary by Destroying Yugoslavia
• US Army Col. wants to volunteer for Yugoslav Army
• A poem for the NATO pilots
• Kosovo, a year after the ceasefire
• KOSOVO – A TRAGIC ANNIVERSARY
• NATO's War Crimes
• And now some questions to mr. Matthews...

Five years ago, historian Christopher Lasch published The Revolt of the Elites.
It was a book about how our national elite was literally seceding from America.
Pointing up the huge and growing gap in incomes between the elite and the middle
class, Lasch argued that a more ominous gap existed in how each perceived
America.
The old elite, Lasch wrote, had a sense of obligation to country and community.
But the new ruling class, more merit based, brainy, and mobile, congregates on
the coasts and puts patriotism far down the list in its hierarchy of values.
Indeed, said Lasch, "it is a question of whether they think of themselves as
Americans at all."
Lasch did not name names, but the new elite is not difficult to identify. A few
years ago, Ralph Nader wrote to the executives of 100 giant U.S. corporations,
suggesting how they might show their loyalty to "the country that bred them,
built them, subsidized them and defended them." At the annual stockholders
meeting, Ralph said, why not begin with a pledge of allegiance to the flag?
Only one company responded favorably. Half did not respond at all. Many sent
back angry letters declaring that they were not American companies at all.
Motorola denounced the request as "political and nationalistic." Other companies
likened the idea of a pledge of allegiance to loyalty oaths of the McCarthy era.
Why were the heads of these corporations outraged? Because for years they have
been trying to sever their bonds to the country of their birth.
In 1997 the head of Boeing told one interviewer he would be delighted if, twenty
years hence, no one thought of Boeing as an American company. My goal, said Phil
Condit, is to "rid [Boeing] of its image as an American group."
Back in the 1970s, Carl Gerstacker of Dow envisioned a day when Dow would be
free of America. "I have long dreamed," he said, "of buying an island owned by
no nation and of establishing the World Headquarters of the Dow Company on the
truly neutral ground of such an island, beholden to no nation or society." A
spokesman for Union Carbide agreed: "It is not proper for an international
corporation to put the welfare of any country in which it does business above
that of any other." In any test of loyalties, for such as these, the company
comes before the country.
Early in the 1970s, Zbigniew Brzezinski, later Jimmy Carter's national security
adviser, wrote, "A global consciousness is for the first time beginning to
manifest itself...we are witnessing the emergence of transnational
elites...composed of international businessmen, scholars, professional men and
public officials. The ties of these new elites cut across national boundaries,
their perspectives are not confined by national traditions...and their interests
are more functional than national." The one force that can derail the rise of
this new elite, warned Zbig, is the "politically activated masses," whose
"nativism could work against the cosmopolitan elites."
Brzezinski knew that the creation of any New World Order would have to proceed
by stealth. As Richard Gardner, Carter's ambassador to Italy, wrote in 1974:
"The 'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up. An end run
around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much
more than an old fashioned frontal assault."
Advancing on little cat's feet, they have done their work. By 1992 Mr. Clinton
could appoint as Deputy Secretary of State his roommate from Oxford days who
openly welcomed the death of nations and the coming of world government. Wrote
Strobe Talbott:
All countries are basically social arrangements. Within the next hundred years,
nationhood as we know it will be obsolete. All states will recognize a single
global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid 20th century, citizen
of the world, will have assumed real meaning at the end of the 21st.
Last year in Istanbul, Bill Clinton declared himself "a citizen of the world."
This, then, is the millennial struggle that succeeds the Cold War: It is the
struggle of patriots of every nation against a world government where all
nations yield up their sovereignty and fade away. It is the struggle of
nationalism against globalism, and it will be fought out not only among nations,
but within nations. And the old question Dean Rusk asked in the Vietnam era is
relevant anew: Whose side are you on?
Last fall, accepting the highest award of the World Federalist Association, the
Most Trusted Man in America declared his loyalty.
...[I]f we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must
strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government... we
Americans will have to yield up some of our sovereignty. That would be a bitter
pill. It would take a lot of courage, a lot of faith in the new order.
Indeed it would, Mr. Cronkite.
Walter went on to urge U.S. ratification of the UN Law of the Sea Treaty
rejected by Ronald Reagan, of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty rejected by the
Senate, and of the Rome treaty for a permanent international war crimes
tribunal. He urged America to surrender its veto power in the Security Council,
and called for a standing UN army to enforce the peace of the world. We now no
longer see as through a glass darkly, but face to face, the internationalists'
vision of world government.
But the American ship of state has long been shifting course to that
destination. In October 1991, President Bush told the UN that a New World Order
was America's goal. In 1993, the Clinton White House, in a secret national
security directive, declared its intent to put U.S. troops under UN command.
When young Americans were killed in an accident over Iraq, Al Gore offered his
condolences "to the families of those who died in the service of the United
Nations."
In a lame-duck session of Congress in 1994, both parties voted to ensnare the
United States in a World Trade Organization where America gets one vote out of
135, and gives up its right to negotiate reciprocal trade treaties that serve
America's national interest.
Under the treaty on global warming Al Gore brought home from Kyoto, the United
States must radically slash its use of fossil fuels like oil and coal, while no
commensurate cut is demanded in the fossil fuel use of 132 "underdeveloped
countries," including China.
The house of world order is indeed being built from the bottom up; but
resistance is also beginning to build. In December globalists were astounded
there was so much anger in Seattle at the WTO. But our trade-uber-alles elites
do not understand America, or American history. It was the will of this people
to be masters in their own house that steeled our first patriots to stand up to
the troops of the British Empire, just outside this city in 1775. A spirit of
liberty is bred in our bones. Let me tell you about an American who put trade in
its proper perspective.
Thomas Nelson, a merchant, was Governor of Virginia and head of its militia at
Yorktown. As his artillery was firing on the British, Nelson walked up to the
gunners to demand to know why they were avoiding one sector of Yorktown where
his own home was located. "Out of respect to you, sir," came the reply. Nelson
had the cannons turned and ordered them to fire at his own house. It was shelled
to pieces.
But when that spirit of patriotism dies within a nation's elite, the aspirants
of global power smell opportunity. Two years ago, a Mr. Bacre Waly Ndiaye of the
UN Human Rights Commission came to the U.S. His mission: Tour U.S. prisons to
determine if they are up to UN standards. Mr. Ndiaye interviewed condemned
killers on death rows to see if their human rights were being violated.
There is, of course, something comical in a UN official from a continent where
the criminal justice system is still, shall we say, pre-Miranda, ripping the
U.S. for its prison system. But the issue behind the Ndiaye tour is deadly
serious. For he insists he has the right to investigate our prisons because his
UN commission speaks for "the world"-an authority higher than the United States,
and he claims the 1992 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,
signed by President Bush, justifies UN inspections of U.S. prisons.
Last month, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson toured northern
Mexico. Her concern: the U.S. Border Patrol. By heavily patrolling the
accessible crossing points, said Ms. Robinson, our Border Patrol is "forcing"
illegal aliens to take more perilous routes into the United States. It is,
presumably, a violation of the human rights of people breaking into our country
to "force" them to seek out less safe passages across our borders.
It is easy to see where Mary Robinson and her colleagues are heading. They seek
a regime where UN bureaucrats from Third World despotisms demand that America
open her borders and grant sanctuary to all who wish to settle here. Americans
who wish to control their borders will be told that sovereignty is outdated, and
that our great fertile plains and cities are, compared to Bombay and Lagos,
under-populated.
>From UN declarations of "world heritage sites" in the U.S, to putting U.S.
troops under UN command, to creation of a UN war crimes tribunal with the power
to seize and prosecute U.S. soldiers, we are on the road paved by Bill Clinton
when he said that he hopes to leave America tied down in a web of global
institutions.
Last month, we learned that the UN tribunal to prosecute war crimes in the
Balkans has opened a file on U.S. Air Force pilots. The chickens of globalism
are coming home to roost.
Another milestone was crossed last year when UN Secretary General Kofi Annan
asserted that only the Security Council can authorize the international use of
force; and a nation's sovereignty no longer protects it from intervention, if
the UN determines that human rights are being violated. The Brezhnev Doctrine of
Limited Sovereignty has been replaced by the Annan Doctrine.
Upon what meat has this our Caesar fed? The United Nations was not established
as a world government, but a forum for settling disputes. Kofi Annan is not the
conscience of mankind; he is a civil servant, an employee of the UN; and he
should begin behaving as such.
But it was not Mr. Ndiaye, Mrs. Robinson or Mr. Annan who announced the death of
the nation-state. That was Strobe Talbott, Richard Gardner, and those
Republicans who have made the Global Economy a Golden Calf to fall down before
and worship. And the political globalists have their own Fifth Column of fellow
travelers inside the conservative elite.
Wall Street Journal editor Robert Bartley has been quoted as declaring "the
nation-state is finished." He calls for an amendment to the Constitution to
throw open America's borders to immigration from all over the world. Bartley's
vision of America as Global Mall, is embraced by the global corporations that
advertise in the Journal and seek access to an inexhaustible supply of low- wage
foreign labor. As British author John Gray writes, America's neo- conservatives
have become little more than "ranting evangelists of global capitalism."
Let it be said: Loyalty to the New World Order is disloyalty to the Republic. In
nation after nation, the struggle between patriotism and globalism is underway.
In England, the Tory Party draws a line in the sand at giving up Britain's
pound. In France, farmers riot to preserve a way of life. In Canada, the fight
to preserve the national culture is gaining recruits. In Germany, Gerhardt
Schroeder makes a political comeback by embracing economic nationalism.
And Mr. Cronkite's talk of world government ushering in world peace
notwithstanding, the end of sovereignty means endless war. Trampling on the
sovereignty of Yugoslavia, President Clinton demanded that the Serbs surrender
Kosovo and cede domination of their country to NATO. When Belgrade rejected his
ultimatum, Mr. Clinton began 78 days of bombing, using as his casus belli
allegations of Serbian genocide against Kosovar Albanians. We now know there was
no genocide. We now know it was Clinton's bombing that spurred the killing. We
now know Clinton's War did not create a "multi-ethnic democracy," but a vengeful
little statelet where Serbs are burned out of their homes for sport.
If ever sovereignty becomes obsolete, we may expect America's involvement in
endless wars until, one day, we pay the horrific price in some act of
cataclysmic terror on our own soil. For interventionism is the spawning pool of
international terror.
Admonishing Russia for her war on Chechnya, Madeline Albright declared, "Killing
the innocent does not defeat terror. It feeds terror." Exactly, Ms. Albright.
But that is as true of Serbia, as it is of Chechnya.
If we wish to see the future our globalists have in mind, we need only look at
the superstate rising in Europe. The nations of the European Union have ceased
to be sovereign. They have given up control of their currencies, their budgets,
their borders, and are giving up control of their defense. Britain has been
forced to comply with a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights requiring
the British army to accept homosexuals. Earlier, the court demanded that Britain
end corporal punishment in its schools. "What doth it profit a man if he gain
the whole world, and suffer the loss of his own country?"
In 1939, in his work, The New World Order, H. G. Wells wrote: "Countless
people...will hate the New World Order...and will die protesting against it...we
have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents..."
Well, Mr. Wells, we are your malcontents. But we're not going to die protesting
your New World Order; we're going to live fighting it. And Seattle may just
prove to be the Boston Tea Party of that New World Order. "I believe
globalization is inevitable," Bill Clinton told Larry King at year's end. Well,
I don't.
My vision of America is of a republic that has recaptured every trace of her
lost sovereignty, independence, and liberty, a nation that is once again self-
reliant in agriculture, industry, and technology, a country that can, if need
be, stand alone in the world.
My vision is of a republic not an empire, a nation that does not go to war
unless she is attacked, or her vital interests are imperiled, or her honor is
impugned. And when she does goes to war, it is only after following a
constitutional declaration by the Congress of the United States. We are not
imperialists; we are not interventionists; we are not hegemonists; and we are
not isolationists. We simply believe in America first, last, and always.
And we don't want to be citizens of the world, because we have been granted a
higher honor - we are citizens of the United States. Asked on his deathbed to
make a toast, John Adams, the great Bostonian, declared: "Independence,
forever!" That is my vision for America; that is our cause; and it shall
prevail.

                          The bombing of Yugoslavia in the closing days of
                              the 20th century has raised disturbing and
                              unresolved issues about international security
                              that must be addressed. Hailed as a victory for
                              the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the
                              bombing, on closer analysis, can be seen as an
                              unmitigated failure with far-reaching implications
                              for world peace. Canada must demand more of its
                              political leaders before they lead us into another  war.

                        Canada's participation in this undeclared war against a
                        sovereign state was carried out without public awareness
                        or debate in Parliament. The bombing was conducted
                        without the approval of the United Nations Security
                        Council and was a direct violation not only of the UN
                        Charter but also of Article 1 of the NATO Treaty itself,
                        which requires NATO to settle any international dispute
                        by peaceful means and to refrain from the threat or use
                        of force, "in any manner inconsistent with the purposes
                        of the United Nations."

                        Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy and Defence Minister Art
                        Eggleton have assured us this flagrant violation of
                        international law was necessary to stop ethnic cleansing
                        and human-rights violations against the Albanian
                        population of Kosovo.

                        Six months have passed since the end of the bombing. Now
                        the war is over, it's time for sober analysis about why
                        it was fought. The public has been bombarded with NATO
                        propaganda, not only about the reasons for the
                        intervention but also about its results. I believe we
                        have been subject to duplicity and misleading
                        information. The first casualty of the war in Kosovo has
                        been the truth.

                        Our political leaders and much of the media have said
                        that the bombing of Yugoslavia was launched to stop
                        ethnic cleansing and atrocities. This is a myth. All the
                        evidence shows that there were approximately 2,000
                        casualties in Kosovo up to the time of the NATO bombing
                        -- by any standard, not an extraordinary number
                        considering that a civil war had been raging since 1993.
                        By contrast, the number of Yugoslavian civilians killed
                        by the NATO bombing is reckoned to be well above 2,000.

                        The UN estimated that close to 200,000 ethnic Albanians
                        were displaced before the NATO air strikes -- again, a
                        deplorable figure but not surprising given that these
                        people were driven from their homes as a result of the
                        civil war. After the NATO bombs began to fall, more than
                        800,000 Kosovars were forced to flee from Serbian
                        retaliation and from NATO bombs. So much for
                        humanitarian intervention.

                              Following a UN resolution, the Yugoslav government
                              in November, 1998, allowed 1,300 Organization for
                              Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)
                              observers into Kosovo in an attempt to monitor and
                              de-escalate the fighting. As far as I know the
                              official OSCE report was never published. Had it
                              been,
                              we could verify the allegations that ethnic
                              cleansing and atrocities were serious enough to
                              warrant military intervention. The failure to
                              publish the report strongly suggests that the
                              alleged repression in Kosovo did not justify
                              intervention.

                        Moreover, a number of credible OSCE observers have
                        publicly stated that in the weeks leading up to the
                        bombing they witnessed no murders, no deportations and
                        nothing that could be described as systematic
                        persecution. One of these observers, the former Czech
                        foreign minister, Jiri Dienstbier,
                        has further testified that NATO was fully aware that
                        bombing would force the Serbs to expel Kosovar Albanians
                        as a military tactic. Yet our political leaders continue
                        to tell us the bombing was designed to prevent -- not
                        cause -- ethnic cleansing.

                        The immediate reason for the air strike was the Serbian
                        refusal to sign the infamous Rambouillet Agreement -- a
                        57-page document that called for a referendum on
                        autonomy in Kosovo and provided access to NATO forces to
                        all of Yugoslavia. No sovereign state could possibly
                        have accepted such conditions. This document was not
                        made public until well after the bombing
                        was under way. The chairman of the French National
                        Assembly's defence committee did not receive a copy
                        until June 3, after the Serbs had already accepted the
                        terms of the ceasefire! I doubt any Canadian member of
                        Parliament has bothered to request a copy. In any case,
                        the Rambouillet document, drafted by the Americans, was
                        clearly designed to ensure a Serb rejection. NATO needed
                        its war.

                        The bombing began on March 25, 1999. NATO expected
                        Yugoslavia to capitulate in a matter of days. When this
                        did not happen and the bombing was extended to more and
                        more civilian targets, public support in some NATO
                        countries began to wane. The alliance found itself in
                        trouble: None of its objectives had been achieved and
                        the bombing was creating a humanitarian catastrophe and
                        pulverizing a modern European state.

                        A negotiated settlement was essential. But NATO had to
                        save face. Although it had in effect excluded the
                        Russians through the insulting terms of Rambouillet, the
                        alliance now turned to Moscow to get it out of the jam
                        it found itself in. Former Russian prime minister Victor
                        Chernomydrin persuaded NATO to drop the two most
                        objectionable conditions, the referendum and access for
                        NATO troops to Yugoslavia. NATO made further concessions
                        --acknowledging Yugoslav sovereignty over Kosovo,
                        putting the occupation of Kosovo under UN auspices, and
                        letting Yugoslav troops guard Serbian holy sites.

                        The UN approved the terms of this peace agreement; it
                        remains to be seen if NATO will honour them. My guess
                        is, having made a mess of the war, NATO will make a mess
                        of the peace. Already, NATO's supreme commander in
                        Europe, U.S. General Wesley Clark, has warned that NATO
                        will prevent any attempt by Yugoslavia to return troops
                        to Kosovo. One can hardly read this as a sign of NATO's
                        respect for the UN.

                        The bombing of Yugoslavia was a tragic mistake. There
                        have been dreadful human and financial costs. Ethnic
                        cleansing and murder continue in Kosovo. More seriously,
                        NATO's illegal action has fractured the framework of
                        world security that has existed since the end of the
                        Second World War. It has destabilized the Balkans and
                        alienated the other great nuclear powers, Russia and
                        China. NATO has abandoned the rule of law and lost any
                        moral stature it might have had during the Cold War
                        years. By forsaking diplomacy and resorting to force,
                        NATO has reduced the democratic countries of the West to
                        the level of the dictatorships it was created to oppose.

                        Canada's foreign minister would have us believe Kosovo
                        marked a turning point in the way the international
                        community is to react in future when human-rights
                        violations take place within the borders of a sovereign
                        state. We are asked to believe that the long-standing
                        principle of state sovereignty can be overruled in the
                        interests of humanitarianism intervention. We are asked
                        to embrace new concepts of "soft power" and "human
                        security." Mr. Axworthy assures us that Canada will
                        always make its own foreign-policy decisions
                        independently.

                        Yet when great issues were at stake in Kosovo -- issues
                        of life or death, of war or peace, of ignoring the UN
                        Security Council, of violating NATO's own treaty --
                        Canada's voice was not heard. We eagerly joined the war
                        without question and without consultation with the
                        representatives of the Canadian people.

                        It didn't have to be this way. Another Canadian foreign
                        minister faced a similar decision back in 1956. In the
                        early days of the Suez crisis, Lester Pearson came out
                        against the bombing of the Suez Canal by Canada's French
                        and British allies and played a key role in getting the
                        UN to halt the invasion.

                        If Canada is to play an effective role in international
                        affairs it must continue to stand for the rule of law,
                        for the UN charter and for democratic decision-making
                        when its military could become involved in aggressive
                        action against sovereign states.
 

                              If Mr. Axworthy is serious about pushing a human
                              security agenda, let him demand that NATO reaffirm
                              its adherence to the UN Charter and its commitment
                              not to resolve international disputes by the
                              threat or use of force. This simple reaffirmation
                              would reassure Canadians that as we enter the new
                              millennium we all know that the ground rules have
                              not changed.

Citizens of a free country ought to expect they won't be burdened with the kind of propaganda barrage that has come to be associated with Nazi "interior ministers" such as Josef Goebbles or Soviet "media spokesmen" like Vladimir Posner. However, the more information that comes out about the NATO war in Kosovo, the more evident is the fact that NATO made an apparent "policy decision" to lie about Serbian atrocities. It seems the western democracies "stole a page from the play books" of their former totalitarian adversaries in Germany and the Soviet Union.

Writing recently in Liberty Magazine, David Ramsey Steele points out that in Kosovo we were told before the bombings that there was mass genocide occurring, the figure of "100,000 or more" was tossed around even though there was no evidence to back-up this claim. One media pundit suggested the number would be a quarter-of-a-million dead. NATO even gave a name to this "campaign of mass genocide," it was dubbed "Operation Horseshoe" but, as Steele says, the factual basis for the existence of such a genocide is spurious at best. In fact, Steele likens it to the Bryce report that reported falsified claims of genocide in Belgium in World War I.

Later after the NATO bombs began dropping, the official NATO claim was dropped to around 10,000 as it became clear no mass graves or killing fields even existed. The actual number of people found in the reported mass-graves totals slightly more than 2,000, a far cry from the hundreds of thousands that we were told originally. The loss of 2,000 lives is a great tragedy, but there are more Americans than that killed domestically every year and it hardly warrants the kind of violent response we saw in Kosovo. In fact, Mr. Steele states that Kosovo was safer than any major U.S. city prior to the NATO bombing. Moreover, as Steele shows, it is hardly evident that each of those bodies was killed as a result of a campaign of genocide.

Finally, Steele points out that the stories about Kosovo came not only from NATO officers but also from officials of the United Nations as well as from our own government. However, a few sources closely followed developments and seemed to get the story about right. Pablo Ordaz of El Pais magazine, Audrey Gillan of the London Review of Books and even two members of an inspection team sent to Kosovo for the purpose of investigating purported mass graves all challenged the stories of the propaganda machine.

Steele also shows that while we were told of ethnic cleansing and Kosovars who were being forced from their homes, the truth of the matter is they were being forced from their homes because of the danger and destruction being caused by NATO bombing in the region. If anything, this so-called ethnic cleansing appears as a direct result of NATO action. In fact, as Steele states, now that NATO and the KLA have control of Kosovo there have been widespread reports that the people we were supposedly protecting, the Kosovars, are now engaged in a murdering spree against the Serbians.

Instead of hearing the truth from our leadership, we were fed emotional tales of mass killing that were entirely blown out of proportion in order to justify force and violence in the region.

The sad trail of lies in Kosovo merely reinforces two facts. The first is that our republic depends upon a press that will question the claims of our leaders instead of just accepting them. The second is that Congress has shirked both its Constitutional responsibility to declare war before U.S. troops are sent into battle and its oversight responsibility to closely monitor the administration in its carrying out of foreign policy.

Murder will out, and so, it seems will non-murder. A few weeks ago, The Wall
Street Journal ran a front-page story under a headline saying, “Despite Tales,
the War in Kosovo Was Savage, but Wasn’t Genocide.” The heart of The Journal’s
story was that in “Kosovo last spring, Yugoslav forces did heinous things. They
expelled hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians, burning houses and
committing summary executions. It may well be enough to justify the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing campaign and the war crimes indictment of
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. But other allegations – indiscriminate
mass murder, rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead – haven’t been
borne out in the six months since NATO troops entered Kosovo. Ethnic-Albanian
militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each
other to give genocide rumors credibility. Now, a different picture is
emerging.”
The different picture is that genocide, the Nazi-like systematic attempt to
eradicate a whole people by planned murder, did not take place. It never
happened. Atrocities were committed, lots of them, but as the recent allegation
of American atrocities during the Korean conflict ought to remind us, terrible
things are often done in wartime, especially so, as was the case in both Korea
and Kosovo, where one side is not able to distinguish between civilians and
enemy soldiers.
It will take some untangling to understand how and why a profoundly inaccurate
depiction of the situation in Kosovo was disseminated so widely that anyone
expressing doubts about the wisdom of America waging war in the Balkans ran the
risk of being scored off as a Pat Buchanan or a full-fledged, modern-day Nazi.
The convincing of the public that the Serbians were committing “mass murder,
rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead” effectively ended any chance
for a sensible debate of this newest use of force. We have to do it, you heard
from every side, or the Serbs will kill every Albanian to the last man, woman
and child.
The polite custom when something has gone very wrong is to say there’s plenty of
blame to go around and then pass on to the next topic without ladling the blame
out to any of the culpable parties. But this is a lulu of major proportions, so
let us tarry at least long enough to drop a bucketful of blame on American
journalism.
Print and broadcast, the news business couldn’t pile the genocide story on thick
enough or often enough. Was the urge to sell papers and snag viewers so
invincibly powerful that none of the ethical considerations the industry glories
in claiming for itself counted for anything when it mattered, when it wasn’t
what movie star was fucking what professional athlete, when it was peace or war,
life or death?
The primary guilt should be assigned to the executives and editors who run the
news industry. It falls on AOL Time Warner, on the big national dailies, on
General Electric (NBC), on Cox Communications, Walt Disney and so on. They
broadcast these untruths everywhere. They supervised the media with the false
message. Did they knowingly purvey cock-and-bull stories about nonexistent
genocide to boost their ratings or were they caught up in the furor and too
emotionally involved to exercise professional editorial judgment? Was it a
combination of motives and was there also a desire to go along with an
administration that controls the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department
and appoints the members of the Federal Communications Commission and the
Interstate Commerce Commission, regulatory bodies before whom these companies
have much business?
What about the reporters and lower-down editors? Were they too frothed and
lathered to realize the stuff they were passing on to a supine public was
unsubstantiated fiction? Where was their curiosity, the questioning mind that
separates the journalist from the second-rater, the careerist and the hack?
Could they have been so transfixed by what had happened in Bosnia, where the
Serbs, perhaps more than the others, committed awful butcheries, that they
assumed the same was happening in Kosovo? Were they so emotionally predisposed
against the Serbs that they manufactured what they took to be facts without
realizing they were concocting stories? Were the reporters gullible idiots? Or
had their career ambitions turned them into patsies for propagandists? Or were
the reporters simply professionally incompetent? Are they men and women so
schooled in human-interest journalism they can be had for any kind of whopper if
you provide them with an interviewee who will shed tears in front of the camera
while passing on heaven knows what rumor?
The unfounded story doesn’t have to come from a trembling refugee. I remember
that for several days during the aerial bombardment of Yugoslavia every TV news
channel was displaying a picture taken from a satellite in which clusters of
oblong white forms were pointed out as mass burial sites. Sometimes squirm
language such as “believed by the military to be mass graves” was used, but
often it was not.
An incurious and respectful press corps did not ask how reliable the military is
at reading such photographs. In the last few months, we’ve learned that it can
be piss poor at it. Stories out of Yugoslavia these past weeks have revealed
that the enemy armor that we were shown being destroyed were more often not real
tanks but decoys. So much for high-altitude photographic evidence of genocide.
Much of this spurious information was given to the media by “humanitarian”
organizations – but humanitarian is not a synonym for neutral. Much came from
the American Government or NATO, which is the same thing. NATO spokesmen used
the expression “killing fields,” a term heretofore reserved for Oliver
Stone-type movies and references to Pol Pot’s proven genocidal mass murders in
Cambodia.
There’s no telling if the Clintonians believed genocide was being carried out in
Kosovo or if they believed that the American public had to be led to believe it
was to get the support needed to go ahead with the war. Given that even
consecrated Democrats were having Wag the Dog misgivings about the Kosovo
adventure and the President’s motives, the administration may have thought it
needed something as horrifying as genocide to get people to stop rational
discourse and start letting out war whoops.
Now that the shots have been fired, Yugoslavia lies in ruins and the dead are
done with their dying, does it matter that people were told fables whether by
hysterics angling for humanitarian war or calculating liars? The modern American
swims in a bath of half-truths, distortion and misrepresentation. We are
surrounded by commercial propaganda, untruth in advertising, lies, misleading
statements and prevarications of every kind. The national milieu is a fog bank
of dishonesty. But we can navigate in it. We’re used to it or it doesn’t dawn on
us that we’re being euchred out of our money or our votes. What’s the harm? Free
speech, free market. Lies told are soon forgotten, truth is imperishable, is
that the way it goes?
Lies unmasked have their consequences. In 1917, when the United States went to
war against the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, the country was flooded
with misinformation about German atrocities committed against civilian
populations in occupied countries. After the war, the public came to learn that
most of these tales were untrue, that the country had been manipulated by
propagandists.
The consequences of this lying would be seen 20 years later when Hitler came to
power and did commit unspeakable crimes. Large numbers of people, remembering
how they had been tricked before, simply refused to believe the reports of what
was happening in Germany. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on
me. A now-skeptical public turned isolationist and antiwar. In fact, the antiwar
sentiment was so strong that even as late as 1941, it probably would have been
politically impossible for the United States to enter the war had the Germans
not declared war on us when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
The genocide fables will also come back to bite when next there is a need for
armed intervention. By horsing around and doing nothing for years and then
concocting the genocide cover story before taking military action, the
Government has upped the ante on itself; it has made genocide the condition for
direct action in a world where the use of force must be considered in dozens of
different nongenocidal situations such as, most recently, the business in East
Timor.
Situations like Kosovo are next to impossible to handle cleanly. Regardless of
how intelligently done, the peacekeeper army will always look like klutzes and
serve as an argument for staying home and doing nothing. That’s unavoidable, but
clumsy lies and wild tale telling are not. A few more genocide fables and
isolationist sentiment will win over the country, if it hasn’t already.

Congratulations on your evenhanded reporting concerning the Yugoslav wars in The Montreal Gazette of Sunday 27 February 2000 . That's rare. Concerning Kosovo you have succeeded.

However, you omit much, such as the destruction since 1991-2 of 200 Serb churches by Croats and Muslims, when you write of the "path already trod by Serbs themselves. In Sarajevo, Banja Luka and other Bosnian cities, the Serbs blew up historic mosques and Islamic shrines, as well as burning the Oriental Institute and the National Library." UN forces reported that the Muslims mounted and fired weapons from the latter, as well as from Koshevo hospital. You omit the 1995 "ethnic cleansing" of hundreds of thousands of Serbs with American help, their living in the open that winter. As for Banja Luka you omit the WW II destruction of the Orthodox church there in WW II by Muslims and Croats, the fact that the Franciscan monastery there had been home to the Ustasha Franciscan who ran the death camp at Jasenovac.You omit the 1992 expulsion of 30,000 Serbs from Mostar and the turning of their cathedral there into a pissoir.

Regarding Dubrovnik you have been ill-served by officialdom and the media. You should speedily correct their misrepresentations to avoid catching the blame for sins.

Mr. Bumbaru remarked on public radio [WBEZ Chicago] in May 1992 that "90% of all buildings in Dubrovnik have been more or less damaged." That is as vacuous as saying they were damaged or not. That source does not merit the trust you show in your paragraph:

"In 1992, following Yugoslavian attacks on the magnificent Croatian city Dubrovnik during a previous Balkan war, Bumbaru led a UNESCO-sponsored mission to assess the damage. International funds were provided to help Croatia, and Dubrovnik has largely been rebuilt."

How much money was provided? Where is the accounting? What is the name of the director of the restorationproject? Maybe you could interview him, if he exists. Who were his workers and how many were they?What companies had the contract?What was the budget? Was a financial report submitted to UNESCO? Could you order government or commercial satellite photos to ascertain the condition of Dubrovnik before, during, and after the "destruction"? What are the dates of the restoration work? What journalists filed reports during the works?How is restored structure marked, as opposed to original. Who got the money? How much?

Firstly, Dubrovnik has been "Croatian" only since 1945, when the Stalinist Tito re-drew the borders and packed the Pearl of the Adriatic with fanatics from Western Herzegovina. The Byzantine decoration found by restorators beneath paint in the Dominican monastery attests the Serbian and Greek origins of Dubrovnik. This war is the latest chapter in the predation ofOrthodox lands by the Western Church. (I'm RC,by the way.) The only building in the Old City of Ragusa to be gutted by explosives and fire was the library and treasury of the Serb Orthodox Church, which housed a priceless collection of medieval manuscripts and icons. It was not navy guns that did the damage, but 'plastique' and incendiary devices planted on the spot by Croatian forces, across the street from the Orthodox church.

As of December 1991, 3,000 Serb and 7,000 Croat refugees from Dubrovnik had taken refuge --in Belgrade.

That aside, the story of the detraction was a sheer hoax, orchestrated by the notorious Lie-for-Pay firm Ruder Finn in Washington. Both the death and resurrection stories are fraudulent.

Since 1991 the press has dozens of times printed the hoax that the Pearl of the Adriatic was reduced to rubble. Those stories were fakes. That Dubrovnik has been rebuilt is exponentially fake.On March 25, 1992, Ivisited Dubrovnik to see for myself the truth about the war. The Old City of Dubrovnik was never destroyed. It was barely scratched.

Roof tiles blown offby concussion had all beenreplaced when I visited the city three months after the "destruction", ana presumably the "reconstruction".

Dubrovnik's destruction was aninvention of PR companies in the hire of the war criminals who broke up Yugoslavia without negotiations. The big bombardment was from PR fakers, not navy guns. -- like the Kuwaiti incubator babies hoax used by President Bush to stoke up war fever. PR liarsHill & Knowlton, Ruder Finn, Marson Bursteller, and Waterman Associates have earned millions in fanning the flames of this -- and other -- wars.

The "Serb-dominated federal navy" off Dubrovnik was commandedby Admiral Stane Brovet,a Slovene. The target was notthe Old City, but the Napoleonic fort of St. Sergius far above Dubrovnik and hotels outside the city walls, where Croatian forces were billetedand because ofthe presence of refugees, had set up gun positions from which they fired on the federal forces in order to provoke death and destruction.Zagreb's aim was to provoke a Western attack on the Serbs.

See Susan Woodward's book on this. [ See postscript.] Also see Stephen Kinzer NYT on the non-destruction.

On December 5, 1991, Croatian forces mounted a mortar on a flat bedtruck running up and down the Stradun taking potshots at naval forces in order to provoke counterfire.

The "Dubrovnik burning" pictureswere shot with long lenses. This compresses perspective, making it look like there is no distance between objects that are quite separated in real space. Thus, columns of smoke billowing up from the harbor are superimposed on the walled city. The photographic effect is as stagedas the stabbing of the lady showeringin Hitchcock's movie "Psycho."

That smoke was from the fuel tanks of two pleasure boats burning in the Old Harbor --outside, of course,the walls. Dubrovnik's Old City never burned. Bullet holes -- I have filmed them -- along Stradun were from gunfireinside the walls, at ground level at close range in a fight on the street between rival Croatian factions. Scaffolding was set up in front of facades in anticipation of the shooting to come.

Video tapes of gunfire along the ancient walls, run backward, show clearly that thegun smoke is from outgoing, not incoming fire. "Western" reporters in Dubrovnik since they cannot read Serbo-Croatian, do not mentionthe graffiti calling for the lynching of Serbs: "Srbe na vrbe"[literally "[hang] the Serbs on the willow trees"]. My videotapesof Dubrovnik from25 March 1992,have been aired on Chicago Cable Access TV, Channel 19. Want to see them?

Susan L Woodward:"An assault on Dubrovnik (beginning in early October), which was protected under the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), was particularly significant in creating antagonism toward Serbia and the Army: the Croatian government had calculated in using sharpshooters on the Dubrovnik walls to provoke a YPA attack on the city, knowing that Dubrovnik would attract more attention than the obscure city of Vukovar "--Susan L Woodward. 1995. Balkan Tragedy. Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War. Washington: The Brookings Institution.

The hoax was planted by the PR firm Ruder Finn Inc., whose officer Jim Harff has boasted that getting there fustest with the mostest in PRneutralizes later denials.

Thanks to Prof JP Maher for the following: Note the reference in this article to the deliberate targeting of civilians and civilian infrastructure- even churches- by the KLA before, during, and since the NATO bombings. Note also the smile-and-do-nothing Canadian response to these atrocities perpetrated with the help of Canadian tax dollars.

Sadly, much of this information was common knowledge and available to all Canadian parliamentarians before Canada contributed to atrocities against civilians with CF-18s starting on March 24 last year.

That's why Canada didn't have a vote in their House of Commons- to avoid the embarassing questions,some of which are raised here in this article. cs

 F. S. went to Kosovo with a yearlong mission to restore law and order to the war-torn land. He has returned home six months later, deflated of energy, shaken by the experience and frustrated with the lack of support by the United Nations.

Now, the former  police officer must decide whether to return and complete the challenge or give up the handsome salary that went along with the job.

``I'm not sure yet,'' he said Wednesday from his ranch, where he was enjoying a vacation from the overseas mission. ``The conditions have not discouraged me -- I can do without electricity; I can do without heat; I can do without good food. But just the sheer futility of it, of just going out there every day, seeing the same problems, and no one will address it.''

It's far from the adventure he planned.

Lured by the promise of $100,000 in tax-free money to join an international peacekeeping force for a year, the veteran police officer quit his post at the Aiken Department of Public Safety last summer. He went through a vigorous application process that challenged his physical and mental abilities and tested his mental competence to handle conflict. When he passed -- only 100 out of 2,000 applicants qualify -- he underwent a week's training in Texas to prepare.

Then, he stepped off the plane in Kosovo.

``We get over there, and you can see the tracer fire and the grenades going off. I mean, it's still World War III,'' he said. ``You're policing a war is what you're doing. You're policing a civil war.''

Officer S.'s original mission was to restore law and order and train the Kosovo police force in law enforcement techniques. But he found it hard to restore law and order without any laws on the books. Kosovo officials and the United Nations have not agreed on basic criminal laws. Albanian prosecutors turn most suspects loose.

``The United Nations has yet to set up the first court to deal with the first crime. What frustrates you is the lack of UN support. You catch a man burglarizing a shop ... You say, `Don't do this anymore.'

``If you come to me and say, `This man broke into my shop and stole 500 cartons of cigarettes,' I can't do anything about it. I can arrest him, but they will turn him loose. So the shop owner looks at me and says, `What good are you?'

``We've arrested 11 murderers in the Podujevo district, 10 of which have been released. They are out on no bond.''

The Albanians he was given to train in law enforcement were mostly part of a Mafia organization, known for dealing in drugs, prostitution, car thefts and extortion.

``So what you're doing is letting Al Capone pick the Chicago Police Department. So, all we're getting is these thugs to train,'' he said.

An average day for the civilian officer consisted of answering complaints of stolen cows to firewood theft to accident fatalities, which are high because of the absence of traffic laws.

The only hope for stopping the chaos, Mr. S. said, sits with the military forces, who are able to operate under martial law and hold suspected criminals in stockades for specific violations.

``They're the real deal. We're sort of the Mr. Rodgers,'' he said.

Another negative for Officer S.: the promise of $100,000 turned out to be wishful thinking. Minutes after his arrival there, Officer S. was immediately told his salary dropped by almost 10 percent, blamed on cost of living fluctuations.

Aside from the stress of the job, living conditions are tough there. Winter conditions put temperatures in the single digits, and electricity is available in weekly spurts that last only a few hours because of antique power plants.

Communication systems are ancient, and twice-a-month telephone calls home to South Carolina lasted only minutes because of expensive and complicated satellite phone systems. It took two weeks to get a letter home and two more weeks to get a response.

Officer S. lived with an Albanian couple and their five children, two of which are interpreters who speak English.

The job required him to work 30 days in a row and then six days off. It was demanding, and his police force has only seven cars for 30 officers.

Officer S. said the violence in Kosovo is overwhelming. For instance, a 16-year-old Albanian boy killed his 14-year-old brother over who would drive a vehicle.

``Everything there is violent,'' Mr. S. said. ``That's how everything is dealt with. That's just their answer to it.''

On Jan. 20, he returned home to his wife, Suzanne, and two children for a two-week respite. As he enjoyed the stay on his farm and attended Augusta Futurity horsing events daily, Officer Strom pondered whether he would return to complete an impossible mission.

``I kind of feel bad about just going over there for the money. You know, the money's nice,'' he said. ``But we're not making a difference. The police part is just a joke. And, how long do you do this until you finally say, `Why am I here?'''
 
 

Sidney, March 10 - Former Australian Prime Minister and
current President of the international humanitarian
organization Care-Australia Malcolm Frazer said at a
parliamentary meeting in Canberra that NATO was "organization of
liars" daily Herald Sun reports today.

"The more I listened to NATO officials, the more I became aware
that NATO was ready to lie about this war as anybody else" said
Frazer comparing the role of NATO in Yugoslavia with Spanish
inquisition and the Crusade which had killed millions of people in the
name of Christianity.

In the most severe condemnation of involvement of western allies
in the Balkans crisis up to date, Frazer said that the war of the
West against Yugoslavia was "illegal and immoral".

He particularly criticized American President Bill Clinton and British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, stressing that Serbian people rightfully
considered both of them Hitler's incarnation, says the Australian
daily.

In his sharp and inspired speech, he accused the Americans of
co-operating with terrorists from so-called KLA, adding that NATO
had no legal mandate to carry out attacks on FRY.

"The Americans wanted a war, which was clear after they had
offered unacceptable conditions to Serbs in Rambouillet", Frazer
pointed out and added that "a part of the plan was to separate
Kosovo from Serbia, a condition that no Serbian leader would
accept, since Kosovo is important to Serbs as Jerusalem to Jews".

Frazer said that the war had solved nothing and that members of
so-called KLA, together with criminals from Albania, were
dominating Kosovo.

It should have been obvious to anyone who had been associated with events in
the Balkans since the early 1990s that Kosovo was a powder keg waiting to
explode--particularly after the fighting that resulted in the emergence of
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia (FYROM) as independent nations. It is therefore inexcusable that
the Western powers failed to address the Kosovo issue in 1995 when, led by
the United States, they secured what even by their own rather dubious
standard was a superficial, fragile, and artificial arrangement at Dayton.
Although Kosovo was not directly connected with the events in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the imminence of the current conflict was clear. Was the
oversight a deliberate sop to President Milosevic for what the Western
powers secured from him in terms of assistance with the Bosnian Serbs? Was
it yet another instance of the incompetence of those who seek to run the
international system? Or was it sheer indifference induced by the euphoria
of having secured an agreement of some sort in an environment that promised
none?

Whatever the answer, there can be no gainsaying the fact that someone is
answerable for the lapse. The tragedy, of course, is that when matters came
to their present head, a scapegoat needed to be found. And who better to
fill that role than the evil Serb community (so effectively demonized by the
electronic and print media of the West during the conflict in
Bosnia-Herzegovina), [End Page 15] as personified by Milosevic. All the
arrangements made when the Kosovo crisis first assumed serious proportions
in 1998 fell apart because of military attacks and counterattacks of growing
intensity and strength. The Yugoslav government indicated preparedness to
abide by provisions of an agreement that called for such actions as
implementing a cease-fire, granting greater autonomy to the Kosovar
Albanians, and so on, but they insisted that the status of Kosovo as part of
Serbia was not negotiable, and they would not agree to the stationing of
North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces on the soil of Yugoslavia.

Ultimatums were issued to Yugoslavia to the effect that unless it adhered to
the terms of an agreement drawn up at Rambouillet, NATO would undertake
bombing. To make the decision easier for NATO, the radical Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) leadership, which was also reluctant to sign anything that did
not grant the Albanians of Kosovo independence, were coaxed, cajoled, and
possibly coerced into putting their signatures to a document. With this
concurrence, NATO apparently had all the legal and moral authority it felt
necessary to undertake military operations against a country that had, at
worst, been harsh on its own people.

With the authority of the signature of the KLA on a document drafted by the
Western alliance, on 24 March 1999 NATO launched attacks with cruise
missiles and bombs on Yugoslavia, a sovereign state, a founding member of
the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement, and the home of a people
who had been at the forefront of the fight against Nazi Germany and other
fascist forces during World War II. The Yugoslav armed forces have not
attacked or threatened to attack any other country, yet Yugoslavia has been
attacked in a most vicious and devastating manner by a group of nineteen
countries with some of the best military capabilities in the world and led
by the world's sole superpower. A developing country of about 10 million
people emerging from a traumatic vivisection, Yugoslavia has been attacked
by a group representing a combined population of about half a billion. These
attacks continued with a one-sided aerial bombardment, the ruthlessness of
which was matched only by the apparent indifference of the political
leadership of the NATO countries to the fate of the innocent civilians being
killed, maimed, and rendered homeless and the general destruction of a
nation and its society [End Page 16] .

Having completed a one-year tenure as the force commander and head of
mission of the United Nations forces in the former Yugoslavia from 3 March
1992 to 2 March 1993, I declined an offer of extension in the assignment by
the UN secretary-general and returned to the Indian army, primarily because
I had become cynical about the machinations of the international community
(much of which I was privy to, but none of which could I halt or contain)
and was quite disgusted by the unabashed bias of the Western media. However,
the main reason for not accepting an extension of my assignment was my
assessment (later proved correct) that NATO would assume an increasingly
intrusive and substantive role in the running of the UN operations in the
region.

As things turned out, NATO (led by the United States) used the UN as a front
and a shield for as long as it suited its purpose and then unceremoniously
dumped the UN into the cesspool of history. Just as there is much that some
UN monitors in Iraq (other than the Americans) and some Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe monitors in Kosovo (according to press
reports) have to say about the manner in which their missions were usurped
by the compulsions of pursuing an agenda of the sole superpower, there is a
great deal that could be said of the manipulations and pressures that were
brought to bear on UN activities in the former Yugoslavia.

The ongoing NATO operations against Yugoslavia raise a number of issues that
need objective understanding and analysis to assess the direction in which
we are headed in terms of the establishment of a just and equitable world
order. I cannot resist making the point, however, that if what is being done
by the NATO forces to the people of Yugoslavia reflects the combined will
and understanding of the "civilized world" (which is what the developed
world unfailingly calls itself), I would much prefer to remain in
"uncivilized" societies like India, where we at least continue to have some
traditional values and genuine respect for human life and dignity. Where are
the voices of sanity that we thought existed in France, Scandinavia, and
Greece?

Instead of holding our breath for too long while seeking an answer to that
question, let us try and examine the main issues raised by NATO's actions.
First, it is appropriate to touch on the humanitarian dimension, which, to
say the least, is sad and depressing and becoming worse by the day. It is
the [End Page 17] innocent who are being subjected to displacement, pain,
and misery. Unfortunately, this is the tragic and inevitable outcome of all
civil wars, insurgencies, rebel movements, and terrorist activities. History
is replete with examples of such suffering, whether they be in the United
States during its Civil War, in Spain as a result of the Basque movement, or
in Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Angola, Cambodia, and so many other places.
European civilian centers were bombed indiscriminately during World War II;
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated; and the people of Vietnam were
victimized. The list is endless.

Personally, I have no doubt that, notwithstanding what one hears and sees on
CNN, the BBC, and other Western agencies and in the daily briefings of the
NATO authorities, the blame for the humanitarian crisis that has arisen
cannot be placed at the door of the Yugoslavian authorities alone. In fact,
if I am to go by my own experiences handling operations in Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and FYROM, I would say that the reporting in the
electronic media is largely unreliable, because they invariably broadcast
establishment policy, information conveyed by the propaganda machinery of
the belligerents, or stories designed to result in maximum viewership. Fair
enough, they have to survive, but we do not have to treat what they portray
as gospel.

Those of us who have had the opportunity to see such situations firsthand do
not fool ourselves into really believing that there is true freedom of the
media in the world's greatest democracy, or in the lesser ones. Whether the
people of Kosovo are fleeing their homes and hearths because of NATO bombs,
Serbian authorities, the KLA, or all three can be debated by those who think
such debate is necessary. To an objective analyst there can be no doubt that
the ongoing human catastrophe has been provoked by NATO's actions in the
form of bombing and air strikes. While we sympathize with the unfortunate
Albanians who are displaced, the world is as yet unaware of the sufferings
of equally innocent Serbs, probably because they are less than human in the
eyes of the dispensers of justice in the Western world.

The responsibility for the humanitarian crisis rests at NATO's doors, and no
amount of meaningless rhetoric can erase that truth. But the rest of the
international community shares responsibility for its incapacity to raise
its voice against such unilateral, one-sided armed action. [End Page 18]

All this brings one to the most serious aspect of the ethics of NATO's
actions. They run directly counter to the charter of the UN. Does the
Western world care for what appears to be an increasingly impotent
organization? The intervention is also against NATO's own charter, which
declared that the alliance can take military action only when one of its own
members is attacked. (This is apparently being revised to allow NATO
operations in other parts of the world; what will then happen to the rest of
the world is not a pleasant thought.) NATO cannot take action under the
umbrella of Chapter 8 of the UN Charter, because it is not a regional
organization as envisaged by that provision but a military alliance. The
attempts to coerce Yugoslavia by threats of bombing to sign on to what was
drafted at Rambouillet are in violation of the Vienna Convention on the Law
of International Treaties.

One hears of the total endorsement of the action by all NATO countries, but
one has to be really naive to believe that U.S. arm-twisting is reserved
only for countries like India. The other members of NATO, as also those
governments that opposed the Russian resolution in the UN Security Council,
know that they have no option other than to fall in line. It would also be
interesting to analyze the modus operandi of the alliance in the execution
of what it calls Operation Allied Force. As a military man, I cannot
convince myself that the methods being adopted in the conduct of present
operations are the preferred option of NATO's military planners; I know they
are a professional lot.

What is being undertaken under the garb of a military operation is the
unprofessional enterprise of some politicians and diplomats, who quite
obviously made a serious miscalculation in assessing the capacity of the
Yugoslav leadership and its people to stand up to such outrageously
unacceptable international behavior. The prime movers of this utterly futile
operation have apparently drawn all the wrong lessons from what transpired
during the conflict in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, particularly in
bringing hostilities to a close in 1995.

The assumption that it was the NATO bombing of the Bosnian Serbs alone that
forced them to the negotiating table is basically flawed. President
Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs went to Dayton and eventually signed the
agreement not solely because of the aerial action then undertaken by [End
Page 19] NATO forces, which in itself had a degree of justification in
international norms, because the Bosnian Serbs had attacked a UN-declared
safe area, Srebrenica. This was an attack on the will of the international
community represented by UN forces, exaggerations of so-called atrocities
and mass murders notwithstanding.

Having been part of the international system for so many years and having
participated effectively in all the activities of the UN in the past, the
Yugoslav political leadership was fully aware of the transgression of
accepted international norms. It is another matter altogether that the
international community represented by the Security Council was not
sufficiently exercised by a similar breach of norms when the Croatian armed
forces attacked UN protected areas in Croatia in January 1993 and again in
1995, when they put to flight the Serb population of the Krajina, estimated
at approximately three hundred thousand.

Another reason for Serbian agreement at Dayton was that the Bosnian Serb
leadership had by then become convinced that its main demand (voiced as
early as November or December 1992, when I was still in command of the UN
operations in the region), that it be recognized as a separate entity (the
Republika Srbska) in control of Serb-majority areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
was to be conceded. The Dayton agreement did in fact concede such an
arrangement, rhetorical postures notwithstanding, and the arrangement
continues to this day. It is another matter altogether that, had this
request been conceded at the end of 1992, much loss of life and destruction
of property could have been avoided.

Another reason why the Dayton scenario could never be the model for actions
relating to Kosovo is that the Bosnian Serb political and military
leadership would have been well aware in 1995 that NATO aerial bombardment
of their positions could be exploited on the ground by the significant
numbers of troops available to the Bosnian Muslims and to the Croats, both
of whom had by then been well trained and equipped by the Americans. There
was no compulsion then for the introduction of U.S. and Western European
ground troops; there were others to do the dirty work. Hence, the Western
powers would have no inhibitions in pursuing the aerial attacks. In Kosovo,
notwithstanding all the assistance that has been provided to the [End Page
20] KLA, it does not yet appear to be in a position to take on the Yugoslav
armed forces effectively.

What are the possibilities that we can, in mid-May 1999, try to forecast?
One possibility is that under the intensity of the aerial bombardment and
destruction of the Yugoslav population and its national assets, President
Milosevic capitulates and agrees to all the conditions set out by NATO. The
second is that opposition to Milosevic succeeds in replacing him and his
cohorts and the country agrees to the conditions set out by NATO. This would
be a desirable response to the message that the United States and its
Western allies have been conveying to the people of the world through the
punishment inflicted on the Yugoslav population--that you will do well to
select representatives who are acceptable to us politically and who are
amenable to our dictates, otherwise you leave yourselves open to bombing and
air strikes. This is an unlikely scenario, with an even more frightening
prospect for the Yugoslav people and the Balkans, since the regime that
replaces Milosevic could well be a radical one that plunges the region into
even greater chaos.

A third possibility is that the American people shake off their self-induced
stupor, awaken to the realities other than what CNN feeds them, and through
their elected representatives force the U.S. administration to call a halt
to the aerial bombardment and strikes. I discount the possibility that the
United States would run out of missiles and bombs. A fourth possibility is
that some saner elements in the NATO framework would feel compelled to
respond to the dictates of their individual and collective consciences and
would be able to stop the hitherto officially condoned genocide.

A fifth possibility is that the United States and the rest of NATO accept a
face-saving arrangement worked out by the Russians; this is not altogether
unlikely, given the sense of desperation creeping in after two months of
aerial bombardment and strikes, and it is the most probable possibility in
my view. What happens after a halt to the unilateral military action then
becomes the paramount question.

Here a very brief look into the recent history of the region may be
appropriate, so that events are placed in proper perspective. An aspect of
significance is that FYROM has a significant Albanian population and that
Kosovo, [End Page 21] Montenegro, and FYROM have common borders with
Albania, from which country, among others, the KLA, the militant Albanian
element seeking independence for Kosovo from Serbia, draws support.

Of relevance also is the history of conflict in the region, particularly
since World War II. Memories of the atrocities committed by the various
communities during that war era are still fresh in the minds of people of
the region. The Serbs particularly are obsessed with what transpired during
the war years, apparently because they suffered more than the others. This
feeling affects all Serbs--those of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The trauma of the fighting in Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991 to 1995 is even more significant. The animosity
that the momentous events of this period generated between the Serbs and the
Croats, both in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; their common animosity
toward the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina; and the fighting from 1992 onward,
in which many Albanian Muslims from Kosovo apparently participated, are
things that will not be forgotten for a long while. Add to this explosive
mix the animosities and sufferings induced by recent events in Yugoslavia in
general, and Kosovo in particular, and one has a recipe for continuing
disaster.

Any optimistic prognosis would therefore be subject to much skepticism.
Nevertheless, it is useful to try and enumerate the solutions that could be
looked at should there be a halt to NATO bombardment and air strikes. The
solutions that can emerge, depending on which of the scenarios for the halt
of NATO armed actions takes place, include the following:

Kosovo becomes an independent entity or nation; Kosovo is partitioned, with
those areas having religious and historical significance remaining with
Serbia and the other part becoming an independent Albanian entity; and
Kosovo remains part of Serbia but with greater autonomy for the Albanian
majority, duly monitored for some time at least under UN auspices.

It is almost inevitable, given the recent history of the region, that an
independent Kosovo has very dangerous implications for the Balkans and
Europe. The emergence of Kosovo as an independent entity would almost
certainly lead sooner rather than later to a movement for a greater Albania,
with consequent adverse fallout on FYROM and possibly some spillover [End
Page 22] effects in due course on Greece and later on Bulgaria. Then Turkey
might be drawn in to the conflict. Such a progression may well lead to a
similar movement for a greater Serbia and perhaps to a greater Croatia to
include Croat-majority areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The seeds for the growth
of a degree of Islamic fundamentalism would then have been sown; there are
some indications that such a trend is already taking root.

Partition of Kosovo probably appears the most practical solution under the
circumstances but suffers from all the disadvantages of producing an
independent entity with the added adverse connotation of probably not being
to the liking of either the Kosovar Albanians or the Serbs. The third model,
enhanced autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia with international monitoring,
appears to have little possibility of acceptance by the KLA and a sizable
section of the Albanian population.

But if the United States and the European powers are genuine about their
protestations that they do not wish to be party to a further breakup of
Yugoslavia, they must bring to bear the requisite pressure for a resolution
of the crisis within this framework. The real danger is that, the West
having taken sides so obviously in treating the Serbs as the villains of the
piece and subjected them to attack, the KLA and its sympathizers will feel
encouraged to provoke the Serbs at every opportunity. Given the persecution
complex the Serbs are steeped in (probably not altogether without cause),
they can be expected to respond heavy-handedly, thereby drawing the wrath of
the United States and some others upon them again, to the satisfaction of
the KLA.

Any UN force deployed to monitor such arrangements must therefore have the
wherewithal and the composition to satisfy both belligerents. It must also
have the capacity to deal sternly and impartially with any violations of
agreements. Finally, where does all this leave the international community?
The portents for the future, at least in the short term, are bleak indeed.
The UN has been made redundant, ineffective, and impotent. The Western
world, led by the United States, will lay down the moral values that the
rest of the world must adhere to; it does not matter that they themselves do
not adhere to the same values when it does not suit them. National
sovereignty and territorial integrity have no sanctity. And tragically,
secessionist movements, which often start with terrorist activity, will get
greater encouragement. [End Page 23] One can only hope that good sense will
prevail, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Postscript

As this essay was being finished, in June 1999, news came of the agreement
for an end to the immediate conflict crafted with Yugoslavia by the European
Union and the Russian president's envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin. There is, of
course, much rhetoric in the statements subsequently emanating from the
leaders of some NATO countries and in some sections of the Western media
that air power succeeded in bringing Milosevic to heel. The fact of the
matter appears to be that an arrangement providing NATO a way out of the
morass it got itself into has been found. From what has been made public, it
seems that the main issues that Yugoslavia could not agree to at Rambouillet
have now been addressed in some acceptable form.

How tragic that there had to be so much loss of life and property and
large-scale displacement of the unfortunate people of the region before some
sense of understanding and accommodation was displayed. I cannot help but
recall the similarities with the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In
October-November 1992, the Bosnian Serbs had asked for recognition as a
separate entity, to be allowed to continue to administer an area under their
control, as a solution to the problem. The idea was rejected out of hand at
the time by the Western powers, led by the United States, because they had
decided that Bosnia-Herzegovina must remain a single unit. After three years
of fighting, destruction, and misery for the people of that republic, the
significant terms of the Dayton agreement in November 1995 more or less
conformed to what the Bosnian Serbs had asked for in 1992; they were allowed
control over 49 percent or so of the land.

Satish Nambiar is director of the United Services Institution of India. A
retired Indian army lieutenant general, he previously served as deputy chief
of staff of the Indian army and as the first commander and head of mission
of the United Nations Forces in the former Yugoslavia, 1992-93.

Belgrade - Retired lieutenant-colonel of the U.S. armed
forces Harold Raffe
recently sent a letter to Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, federal
Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic, federal Defense Minister
General of the Army
Dragoljub Ojdanic, and Chief of General Staff Gen. Nebojsa
Pavkovic, seeking
permission
to be admitted to serve in the Yugoslav Army.

Raffe said he wanted to contribute to Yugoslavia's defense
through media
from
unjustified attacks by NATO countries, or in any other way.

Raffe said he was certain the knowledge and skills which he
acquired during
his 20-year career as a professional soldier (serving in
Germany, South
Korea, Egypt, Jordan) could serve the Yugoslav defense
forces, especially at
the present time, when United Nations forces (KFOR) are
deployed in Kosovo
and Metohija, forces which have not managed to realize a
single of the proclaimed goals of their peace mission.

The retired U.S. officer, who wants to join the Yugoslav
Army at a time when
the ruling political and military circles of the United
States lead NATO
member-states in the continuous non-armed aggression on
Yugoslavia, believes
his experience as a liaison officer in foreign armies, his
college
education,
as well as his open sympathies for the Serbian people, make
him suitable for
service in the Yugoslav
Army.
--------
David Hackworth has already mentioned that a number of US
military officers
have quietly resigned over the illegal and immoral War to
Destroy
Yugoslavia.
At least there are some soldiers who refuse to carry out
illegal orders.

        George W. Bush and Al Gore were both enthusiastic backers of the
NATO war
against Serbia, Madeleine Albright and Bill Clinton’s singular effort to

enforce the “New World Order” with bombs.

        The Europeans went along with the venture—some enthusiastically,
like
Britain’s  Tony Blair, some with misgivings.  European Union official
Javier Solana led cheers for the bombing at the time, but now is having
second thoughts.  Speaking in Greece, Solana described the horrific
situation in present-day Kosovo, where all ethnic minorities are subject
to random killings by the Clinton/Albright backed Kosovo Liberation
Army.

In short, the United States bombed and bombed, won a famous victory,
lost one plane and no soldiers, and generally basked in  self-congratulation
after its demonstrating it vast power. But the result, as Europeans are
now beginning to see, is a violent, hatred filled mini-state in the center
of the Balkans—now policed by American and other NATO forces. One has to
ask what the bombing achieved—besides stirring up a long smoldering
bitterness towards Americans that will not soon die out.

Pat Buchanan was asking this question during the Kosovo War, and asks it
now.  Bush and Gore had nothing  to say then and nothing now: in their
campaigns, they make it clear they will bomb whomever their little
coterie of foreign affairs “experts” tells them to bomb.  If one of them is
elected, Americans can count on more “humanitarian” interventions that
get the United States involved in wars that are not in America’s interest,
wars which sully this country’s good name.

One year after the bombs began falling on Belgrade, the cover-up of
NATO's war crimes continues – but with much less success. The truth is
finally coming out – and the War Party is going into overdrive spinning
the latest revelations. "We were attacking purely military targets,"
avers the lying limey, Jaimie Shea, who in a better world would be
auditioning for bit parts in East Enders instead of speaking for the
most powerful military alliance in the world. "Where accidents occurred
they occurred as a result of tragedies, failure of technology, of human
error that always accompany military operations," he said, "but not
because NATO failed to take due precautions." Purely military targets?
You mean, like that television station they blew up, killing the
janitor, the make-up woman, and 14 other people while viciously wounding
several others? And how about that passenger train going over the
Gredelica Bridge – smoked by a US pilot who clearly saw it in his
viewfinder? This is not to mention the "accidental" bombing of the
Chinese embassy in Belgrade – and the later stories floated by anonymous
NATO-crats that the Chinese were supposedly providing the Yugoslavs with
valuable military intelligence, which all but amounted to an open
admission of guilt. Does Shea even care that no one believes his brazen
lies?

Worse than Shea is the arrogant Carla Del Ponte, the chief UN war crimes
tribunal prosecutor, who airily dismissed the overwhelming evidence of
NATO's criminality: in a speech to the Security Council last week she
told a breathlessly waiting world that "I am now able to announce my
conclusion, following a full consideration of my team's assessment of
all complaints and allegations, that there is no basis for opening an
investigation into any of those allegations or into other incidents
related to the NATO bombing." Whew! Boy, am I glad that's over with –
the suspense was killing me!

As if anybody expected anything other than apologias from Madam Del
Ponte, the chief high executioner of the New World Order crowd, and her
black-robed kangaroo court, the American news media triumphantly
reported this long-awaited revelation as if it were real news. But what
about all those Serbian civilians slaughtered by US and British
warplanes flying over 15,000 feet – and unable to avoid killing
civilians – eh, Carla? It's all the fault of the Serbian government, she
answers: "Since these events, there has literally been no cooperation
with my office. This severely hampers my ability to conclude my
investigations involving Serbian victims, particularly where such
victims are residing in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." She slyly
added that the Serbian government, for some reason, refuses to issue her
and her "investigators" visas to enter the country: ``The fact that I am
unable to gain access to the victims and evidence makes such allegations
rather hollow,'' she said. Perhaps the visa problem is due to the
indictment handed down against practically every member of Milosevic's
government, branding them "war criminals" and calling for their
immediate trial in the Hague. In any case, Del Ponte and her crew of
whitewashers have access to Kosovo, where a great many of NATO's war
crimes occurred.

Among the accusations brought by a wide variety of human rights
organizations, including Amnesty International, is one that fingers the
NATO-crats for bombing refugee convoys and civilians within Kosovo
proper. All this goes unmentioned. Yugoslavia is caricatured as
completely uncooperative, yet Del Ponte admits that Yugoslavia
cooperated to the extent of submitting "a substantial amount of material
concerning particular incidents." In addition, human rights
organizations from all over the world have compiled a large number of
reports. There was plenty of evidence – enough, at least, to warrant a
full-scale investigation.

But Del Ponte was not interested: in answer to Russia's deputy
representative to the UN, Gennadi Gatilov, who rather diplomatically
summed up this obvious whitewash as "premature," the bitch turned to him
and snapped that she was "rather stupefied in particular when it was
said that there is a politicization in our work. I completely reject
that accusation. It is an accusation I will not accept. For months I
have been attempting to get in touch with the authorities of the Russian
Federation to tell them what our work is about and how we do it." Oh,
get off your high horse, Carla, and give us all a break: the Russians
don't need you to tell them what your so-called work is all about and
how you go about peddling your propaganda; they remember the Moscow show
trials, the ritualized purge sessions of the various "People's
Tribunals" that invariably and ceaselessly condemned the "enemies of the
people." They know your kind, Carla, in the East – homeland of Stalin
and the GPU – all too well.

The mentality of these people, the inner workings of the bureaucratic
mind, are fascinating to behold – in the same way that the sight of a
deadly snake or spider is fascinating in its creepy alien-ness.
According to Del Ponte, the Tribunal under Louise Arbor, her Canadian
predecessor, began the whole sham process by appointing a "working
group" in May of last year "comprising military lawyers, military
analysts and other experts to examine and assess all allegations against
NATO." Like the Tribunal itself, this phony "working group" did its
dirty work in secret, with no public testimony and the identities of the
"investigators" unknown – but not unfathomable in the general sense that
most were no doubt officials and military officers of the very
governments that the Tribunal was supposedly investigating. Del Ponte
promised that she would soon release not only the details of her
findings, but the criteria applied – and we await these pearls of
Solomonic wisdom with bated breath. Until then, however, the remarks of
the "US ambassador at large for war crimes" – a kind of roving Andrej
Vyshinsky – will have to suffice. . . .

Spinning the Clintonian party line to reporters, ambassador David
Scheffer hailed Del Ponte's faux "finding" as the apotheosis of justice.
After all, he said "the Tribunal could have rejected the allegations at
the outset. By taking a year to examine them rigorously, it has been
'bending over backwards to be as fair and equitable as possible." We
ought to consider ourselves lucky that they take such care to go through
the motions – when they really don't have to, now do they? At least we
bother, Scheffer seems to be saying – and for that we are supposed to be
grateful.

While Madam Del Ponte's magisterial remarks to the Security Council were
meant to provide a rationale, however thin, for the doctrine of
"humanitarian" conquest now officially embraced by the Western powers
acting in concert, we must turn to Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO
commander, for the unadorned version of neo-Stalinism with a human face.
The Tribunal, with its careful lawyers’ phrases, puts a bourgeois
liberal gloss on things, but the General gruffly brushed off all such
talk in a speech to the Brookings Institute: "I noticed on the news
today there's criticism of the attack on the Serb media. Well of course,
that was a controversial target, but the Serb media engine was feeding
the war." A television transmitter, a newspaper office, the site of a
server that hosts anti-NATO websites ­ these are no different than, say,
a fortified anti-aircraft position or a Serbian tank. They are all
"engines" of war. In this new equation, as enunciated by NATO’s chief
warlord, a carload of enemy journalists is the same as a column of enemy
troops. Clark later confided to reporters that "you're always making
trade-offs in these decisions, but in this case it was a huge step to be
able to take out this major instrument of provocation." The question is,
a step toward what? He’s right, though – it was a huge step, and one
taken without so much as a whimper of protest from our courtier media.

In the simple mind of Wesley Clark, the rationale for bombing a
television station and murdering civilians is that they weren't
innocent, they were soldiers in Milosevic's war against his own people.
The state media has been "a crucial instrument of Milosevic's control
over the Serb population," and "exported fear, hatred and instability in
the neighboring regions. So it was a legitimate target of war, validated
by lawyers in many countries and validated by the international criminal
tribunal." In other words, the great crime of the Serbian RTS television
broadcasting network was that it wasn't CNN. Instead of the braying
mouthpiece of the KLA, Christiane Amanpour, some other government shill
– albeit one from the other side – was spinning the news to suit their
own purposes. All's fair in love and the information war – including
blowing your enemy to pieces.

The Kosovo issue will not go away: this is going to be a long hot summer
in that "liberated" land. With Montenegro at the boiling point, and
local elections in that flashpoint sub-republic scheduled just in time
to provoke a crisis, continued KLA infiltration of Serbia proper almost
ensures that renewed fighting is bound to break out. It's only a matter
of time – and how much time is crucial. For if the crisis can be
postponed until after the US presidential election, then the War Party
is home free – since both "major" party candidates are firmly in the
interventionist camp when it comes to Kosovo. The recent incident in
which the brother of the president of Montenegro pistol-whipped a
prominent member of the opposition Liberal party (which calls for
immediate secession from Yugoslavia) dramatically underscores the
ongoing low-level conflict that could break out into open warfare at any
moment. No doubt the CIA and allied Western intelligence agencies are
working hard to damp down the fires smoldering throughout the region,
but this may not, in the end, be enough. . . .

It could very well be that Kosovo will be a major issue this
presidential election year – and only one candidate, namely Pat
Buchanan, could possibly benefit from such an unsurprising development.
While Bush has waffled, somewhat, on this issue in the past, his
advisors have infused him with a new enthusiasm for Clinton's war. Not
only did he personally intervene to turn back the Republican majority in
Congress that demanded an accounting, a timetable, and an exit strategy
by a date certain, but he is actively considering the
ultra-interventionist Senator Chuck Hagel as his running mate: Hagel is
reportedly on the short list of GOP vice-presidential candidates. During
the Kosovo war, he was one of the noisiest of the loudmouth hawks,
second only to McCain, and co-sponsored a Senate resolution demanding
the introduction of ground troops. Senator Hagel was one of the few
congressional Republicans to support McCain's presidential bid. In
building bridges to the warmongering McCain, Dubya is also reassuring
the foreign policy establishment that he won't pull out of Kosovo – and
will, in fact, continue Clinton's war on a scale undreamed of by
Clinton, just as Nixon carried to the end the war policy of his
Democratic predecessors.

The political implications of the ongoing crisis in the Balkans are
potentially enormous. Those Republicans who opposed this illegal,
unconstitutional, and immoral war against a people who had never
attacked us, who were not guilty of the heinous crimes attributed to
them, and wanted only to preserve their internationally-recognized
borders against external encroachment – and there are even more of them
out in the hinterlands than in Congress – have only one place to go in
the event of a flare-up, and that is to Buchanan. In a March 24 speech
to the Antiwar.com national conference held in San Mateo, Pat eloquently

summed up the immorality and tragedy of our bipartisan policy in the
Balkans:

"Last year, for 78 days, U.S. pilots flew thousands of missions against
Serbia, destroying bridges, factories, electrical grids, and, yes, even
hospitals, schools and the occasional embassy. Yet, before launching his

war, Mr. Clinton never received the authorization of Congress. But as a
consequence of our triumph over Serbia, young men and women from
California, Kentucky, Florida and Maine are in Kosovo policing territory
that has been violently contested for hundreds of years.

"As of now, we do not know if US troops will end up fighting Serbs, or
Kosovar Albanians, or first one, then the other. But it is a near
certainty that United States will one day be forced to pull out of
Kosovo, after having earned the lasting hatred of Serbs – a people who
never harmed the United States – and of the Albanians, whose aspirations
will not be satisfied until the US helps to carve out an ethnically pure
Greater Albania."

Buchanan is well on his way to winning the presidential nomination of
the Reform Party, and the means to communicate his message to millions
of Americans. The impact of TV ads demanding "Bring the Boys (and Girls)
Home Now!" in the middle of the shooting could be enormous – and a
turning point in American politics. The stage is set, the actors are
ready – and the curtain rises . . .

Last year I asked  "Has NATO Committed
War Crimes?" That column upset some people who questioned my patriotism.
It upset others because they were afraid of the implications of my being
right. Since then, NATO and its PR machine have tried to kill this
issue. However, it won't go away.
Wednesday, Amnesty International accused NATO of war crimes. NATO
violations of the laws of war during Operation Allied Force  must be
investigated. AI's report is of vital importance because it comes just a
week after the U.N. tried to bury this issue once and for all.
Thursday, the New York Times reported that "Carla Del Ponte, chief
prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the
Hague, told the United Nations Security Council that her investigation
had found no basis for charging NATO with war crimes. Mrs. Del Ponte
said that although 'some mistakes were made by NATO,' she was 'very
satisfied that there was no deliberate targeting of civilians or
unlawful military targets.'"
Mrs. Del Ponte's failure to find fault with NATO's action is to be
expected. She is, after all, an employee of the organization that
heartily endorsed NATO's unilateral expansion of its role. AI's report
not only refutes Mrs. Del Ponte's assertions, it gives clear and
indisputable evidence of NATO's crimes.
Amnesty International charges that "NATO forces violated the laws of war
leading to cases of unlawful killing of civilians. ..." This is strong
stuff. Because we are not talking about a country that is under the
thumb of a tinhorn dictator. NATO is the military arm of western nations
that claim to have the highest respect for human rights and
international law. In their report, Amnesty International examines a
number of attacks indicating that NATO did not always meet its legal
obligations in selecting targets and in choosing means and methods of
attack.
"The 23 April 1999 bombing of the headquarters of Serbian state radio
and television, which left 16 civilians dead, was a deliberate attack on
a civilian object and as such constitutes a war crime," Amnesty
International said.
"Civilian deaths could have been significantly reduced if NATO forces
had fully adhered to the laws of war during Operation Allied Force," the
organization added.
The laws of war include prohibitions on any direct attacks against
civilians or civilian objects, and on attacks which do not attempt to
distinguish between military and civilian targets or which, although
aimed at a legitimate military target, have a disproportionate impact on
civilians or civilian objects.
In various attacks, including the Grdelica railroad bridge on April 12,
the road bridge in Lunnane on May 1, and Varvarin bridge on May 30, NATO
forces failed to suspend their attack after it was evident that they had
struck civilians. In other cases, including the attacks on displaced
civilians in Djakovica on April 14 and Korica on May 13, sufficient
precautions were not taken to minimize civilian casualties.
No proper investigation appears to have been conducted by NATO or its
member states into these incidents. No measures were taken against
anyone responsible except in the case of the attack against the Chinese
embassy in Belgrade.
"NATO member states must bring to justice any of their nationals
suspected of being responsible for serious violations under
international humanitarian law," Amnesty International said.
"Other states and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia should also investigate allegations of serious violations of
international humanitarian law during Operation Allied Force."
"The victims of any such violation must receive redress," Amnesty
International added.
Amnesty International is not the only organization to accuse NATO of war
crimes. In February, the New York Times said that Human Rights Watch
claimed that of the "500 or so Yugoslav civilians killed in Serbia and
Kosovo by NATO bombs, half died because of NATO violations of laws and
practices on protecting civilians."
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and John Doggett represent
different political viewpoints, but we all agree on one thing. NATO and
its leaders should not be immune from the rule of international law.
Especially given the political nature of NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia.
What NATO did was wrong and illegal. Each time NATO purposefully
targeted innocent civilians and killed them, NATO committed a war crime.
I can think of no more powerful way to drive this point home than to
quote the New York Times:
"Amnesty International was scathing about the bombing of the television
station, which went off the air only briefly. 'NATO deliberately
attacked a civilian object, killing 16 civilians, for the purpose of
disrupting Serb television broadcasts in the middle of the night for
approximately three hours.'"
We all know what happened when NATO bombs killed three Chinese
journalists. When will we apply the same rules of conduct to those who
purposefully targeted a civilian TV station and killed 16 civilians?