Poll: Did you support the Kosovo war?

[JackRiddler]

Let's get a sense of DU community opinion on the Kosovo War.

Please if possible let's keep this thread neutral and factual. Please vote only once!

Please don't treat this as a pro- or anti-Clark thing. (Full disclosure: I'm definitely anti, but I'm only voting here once and I am conducting this poll out of genuine curiosity.)

Let's just get a sense of opinion. Let's not turn this into a debate about the Kosovo war or a flame war.

I ask you please to give your opinion back in 1999, when the war happened, and not your current opinion. If your opinion has changed since then, please add a comment about that.

In the spirit of the above, when posting comments here, I invite you humbly to follow these guidelines:

-- either it's a simple kick, so that we can get the poll done...

-- or, if your opinion about the war changed SINCE the war, you let us know (briefly) why.

[Frederic Bastiat]

1. I guess the people that opposed the strikes

...were content to see the ethnic cleansing and raping of Kosovo go on unabated. I was there in 1999 and we were damn glad to be there.

[bpilgrim]

2. no evidence of that then nor now

and we caused more harm by bombing civilians than good.

The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia
November 1999

In 1999, the U.S. national security state -- which has been involved throughout the world in subversion, sabotage, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, and death squads -- launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia for 78 days, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing thousands of women, children, and men. All this was done out of humanitarian concern for Albanians in Kosovo. Or so we were asked to believe. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S. forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major overseas support bases -- all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, and humanitarianism.

While showing themselves ready and willing to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of an ostensibly oppressed minority in Kosovo, U.S. leaders have made no moves against the Czech Republic for its mistreatment of the Romany people (gypsies), or Britain for oppressing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, or the Hutu for the mass murder of a half million Tutsi in Rwanda -- not to mention the French who were complicit in that massacre. Nor have U.S. leaders considered launching "humanitarian bombings" against the Turkish people for what their leaders have done to the Kurds, or the Indonesian people because their generals killed over 200,000 East Timorese and were continuing such slaughter through the summer of 1999, or the Guatemalans for the Guatemalan military's systematic extermination of tens of thousands of Mayan villagers. In such cases, U.S. leaders not only tolerated such atrocities but were actively complicit with the perpetrators -- who usually happened to be faithful client-state allies dedicated to helping Washington make the world safe for the Fortune 500.

Why then did U.S. leaders wage an unrestrainedly murderous assault upon Yugoslavia?

The Third Worldization of Yugoslavia
more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html

see also...

To Kill A Nation
The Attack on Yugoslavia

For ten years, US and NATO forces have waged a campaign to dismember Yugoslavia, including 78 days of round-the-clock aerial attacks in 1999 that killed or injured upwards of six thousand people. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished material (mostly Western sources) and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999 shortly after the bombings, Michael Parenti challenges the mainstream media demonization of Yugoslavia and the Serbs, and uncovers the real goals behind Western talk of "genocide," "ethnic cleansing," and "democracy."

To Kill A Nation reveals a decade-long disinformation campaign waged by Western leaders and NATO officials in their pursuit of free-market "reforms." The political and economic destabilization of Yugoslavia continues today, Parenti shows, as does the forced privatization and Third Worldization of the entire region.

more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/ToKillANation.html

peace

[Lexingtonian]

9. Oh yes, who can forget the Serbian fascist p.o.v.

Notice how only Serbian civilians matter as war casualties in those accounts. Albanians/Kosovars don't. Get the numbers, and these misrepresentations become laughable. Under 1,000 Serbians killed, via NATO, and ~20,000 Kosovars to 99% by execution squads. In careful reenactment of Auschwitz, several thousand corpses of executed Kosovars were destroyed in the coke-fired ovens of a regional steel works.

The basic condition of Yugoslavia prior to its partitions was that of a state partially subsidized by the Soviet Union and held together via suppression of ethnic hostility. Croatia and Slovenia got most of the worthwhile bits of the Yugoslav economy, Serbia proper most of the rest, but none of them can fairly be considered to have been economically competitive around 1992.

These pieces of...writing...convict the U.S. of doing exactly what domestic (aka fascist) interests of rump Yugoslavia were doing throughout the '90s- dealing in vice, gangland behavior, and crony 'capitalism'. Croatia was almost as bad as Serbia, to be sure, but the Serbians were more venal and just refused to learn the lessons of Bosnia. The U.S. has no substantial role in the elites of these countries selling out the public interest as they have, and undercover Americans (CIA, maybe) taught Serbian activists the minimally violent approach that toppled Milosevic in October 2000.

So Bill Clinton's triumphant recent visit to Kosovo reflects better what the American role in the region is percieved to be than Mr. Parenti's incoherent ramblings.

[bpilgrim]

11. wrong, this is a respected american political scientist pov - more...

Two Print Interviews
and Two Audio Interviews
With Noam Chomsky

MLF: Do you think that, by in large, you and we are getting a reasonably accurate picture of what is going on in this war?

NC: I think the reporters on the ground, many of them, are producing quite accurate stories: the way the framework and the interpretation handles the facts is another question. Inaccurate isn't the word for it, it is ludicrous.

MLF: Well tell us about that.

NC: This is presented, well I haven't read the Canadian media, but in the United States and what I've seen of Europe, its presented as an humanitarian endeavor, and that is repeated over and over. Well, if anything is obvious, it's the opposite, it cannot possibly be considered by a rational person as having humanitarian motives.

MLF: You don't believe that the reason for the NATO action was to rescue the Kosovo Albanians from oppression?

NC: It is virtually inconceivable on rational grounds and there are simple reasons for that. One reason is simply Kosovo itself. Up until the US/NATO bombing March 24th, there had been, according to NATO, 2000 people killed on all sides, and a couple of hundred thousand refugees. Well, that's bad, that's a humanitarian crises, but unfortunately it's the kind you can find all over the world. For example, it happens to be almost identical in numbers to what the state department describes as the last year in Colombia: 300,000 refugees, 2 or 3 thousand people killed, overwhelmed by the military forces and the para military associates, who the US arms, and in fact arms are going up. That' s the way the US, Britain and other countries act when there are humanitarian crises, namely they escalate them. Now, what happened in Kosovo, well in fact the same thing. There were options on March 23rd, and they chose an option which, predictably, changed the situation from a Colombia style crisis to maybe approaching a disaster, and that was a conscious choice. The effects? Let me quote the US/NATO commanding General, Wesley Clark: two days after the bombing he said it was "entirely predictable" that the reaction of the Serb army on the ground would be exactly as it was.

MLF: I must interject here and say that our own foreign Minister has said nobody foresaw the scale of Milosevic response.

NC: That's ridiculous, maybe they didn't foresee the exact scale, but when you bomb people they don't throw flowers at you. They react

MLF: Let me ask you what you think the motive was.

NC: One thing is that any kind of turbulence in the Balkans is what's called in technical terms a crisis. That means it can harm the interests of rich and powerful people. So if people are slaughtering each other in Sierra Leone, Colombia, Turkey, or whereever, that doesn't affect rich and powerful people very much, therefore they are glad either to just watch it, or even contribute to it, massively as in the case of Turkey or Colombia. But in the Balkans it's different, it can affect European interests and therefore US interests, so it becomes a crisis, any kind of turbulence. Then you want to quiet it down. Well, how do you do that? The US flatly refuses to allow the institutions of international order to be involved, so no UN, and that's pretty explicit. So they have to turn to NATO. Well, NATO the US dominates, so that's acceptable and then you turn to force. Why force? Well, several reasons, and here I think Clinton, Blair, and others have been pretty honest about it. The point that they reiterate over and over is that it is necessary to establish the credibility of NATO. Now all we have to do is translate from Newspeak. What does credibility of NATO mean? Are they concerned with the credibility of Italy or the credibility of Belgium? Obviously not. They are concerned with the credibility of the United States. Now what does the credibility of the United States mean? Well, you can ask any Mafia don, and he'll explain it. So, suppose some Mafia don is running some area in Chicago, what does he mean by credibility? He means that you have got to show people that they better be obedient or else. That's credibility.

more...
http://www.softmakers.com/fry/docs/chomintyug.htm

see also...
http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/news/articles/kosovo/chomsky.htm

peace

[Lexingtonian]

15. You need to find some credible sources

I happen to live in the same town as Chomsky. I went to the university at which he's on the faculty. One of my siblings dated one of his kids, too. So I happen to know just a little more about his credibility and analytical take and such than you do. His kids went to the high school I did and got a lot of sh-t even then from other kids about his public views on I/P.

The long story short on Chomsky, short of making a psychiatric diagnosis as the underlying reasons (but his excessively paranoid interpretations will have some basis in his own life), is that he misgeneralizes from his 1960's understandings of American politics and his firsthand experiences in I/P and in Nicaragua, where one of his children has lived since the early '80s.

He certainly doesn't understand the Anglocentric/Eurocentric perspective on politics that the heavily Anglo-Saxon American elites do (though decreasingly) hold and that is why problems of European politics have privileged standing. The way Europe is/was on one plane of importance, and the rest of the world (aka Third World, there not really being a Second World other than an transient form of state along the lines of the Soviet Union) on the other for American foreign policy.

He is more or less right on I/P and largely right about Latin America, Africa, Asia. But not Europe. And he doesn't really understand religious conflicts for what they represent for the people involved.

So this interview isn't any serious kind of evidence- Chomsky's p.o.v. is sort of an asymptote of Left thinking on foreign politics; everything reasonable to say lies to one side- more moderate- and even his best stuff needs certain kinds of systematic corrections. That is why he's not taken particularly seriously anymore outside of certain sections of Brooklyn. There are French 'postmodernists', e.g. Leotard, who have taken his politics and hijacked to even greater disconnect and Manichaean heights, and that's where the 'cool' of this approach has gone. (His linguistic work has also gained something resembling the cultic status of the Schools of Psychoanalysis, though his '50s work- like his '60s look at I/P- remains impeccable and a breakthrough- again, it's the additions and revisionism and generalizations and disconnect he's engaged in that trouble the other serious professionals.)

I agree that the war proper was not well executed- it was badly hampered by lack of intelligence and intra-Pentagon and NATO politics- but in the end it achieved the result sought. And that embarrassed every other party involved in the conflict. A war on purely and unambiguous moral grounds is something people hate. Look at Hannibal's campaign in Italy to free it from Roman hegemony- it turned when the Romans sacked Capua and let their allies plunder the place. After that Italians flooded to Rome's side, 'cause that's where the loot was to be had, morals and ideals be damned.

But my real point is this: you have not distinguished the Parenti or the Chomsky assertions from the flood of Serbian fascistic propaganda claims and efforts. And I think you won't be able to. The myth of Serb victimhood is untenable, any look at their claim to Kosovo finds that it follows on a 18th/19th century land grab on their part, any honest look at Milosevic's regime finds in it the destruction of institutions and wealth and moral fiber that Serb fascists project on the U.S.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bpilgrim]

41. you dismiss two giants parenti and chomsky how about howard zinn?

Their Atrocities--and Ours, by Howard Zinn in the July '99 issue
http://www.progressive.org/zinn9907.htm

First question:

Tactics aside, was it right for NATO to intervene in the Kosovo conflict? In other words, is this mission a moral imperative? Did NATO have any options left, besides the use of force?


Responses:
(click on the person's name to see their full response)

Phyllis Bennis:
The question begs the answer. I think there may well have been (and still is) a moral imperative to intervene -- but NOT for NATO!

Barbara Ehrenreich:
Some of my friends point out that the U.S. and international bodies calmly sat out genocide in Rwanda and against the Kurds in Turkey, as if this were a reason for not doing anything this time around. I don't follow that logic.

Diana Johnstone:
The assumption underlying the question is that Kosovo was NATO's problem; that NATO had to do SOMETHING about Kosovo. This assumption is totally false and far-fetched

George Kenney:
Moral imperatives cannot, by definition, apply only to specific circumstances. To date I have not seen, nor can I imagine, an argument for a moral imperative in Kosovo that would not apply even more aptly to at least half a dozen other conflicts around the world.

Howard Zinn:
Where people are suffering, there is a moral imperative to act. But how one acts is crucial, because there are interventions that make things worse.

George Kenney responds:
The situation in Kosovo prior to the bombing didn't call for humanitarian relief above the norm. The refugees do now, thanks to NATO.

more...
http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/kosovo/forum/kosovo.html

peace

[tinnypriv]

46. Chomsky didn't support or oppose the Kosovo war

He said the question of whether to bomb was "unanswered".

So, irrelevent name-dropping aside, you obviously know shit about his views on the matter.

[Selwynn]

80. Neither do you - see post #79 for some help

[tinnypriv]

81. What does this BS have to do with my post?

I've read every word Chomsky has written about Kosovo in the Znet forum.

He neither supported nor opposed an attack on Kosovo.

[maha]

73. Thanks for this.

I know people who think Chomsky walks on water, but he always seemed a tad flakey to me.

[JackRiddler]

12. So how do you know about the 20,000 Kosovars in the coke ovens...

no, seriously. The mass graves (which are not automatically conclusive as to which ethnicity the dead were) have yet to reveal the kinds of numbers that were bandied about during the war. It was being claimed in the first days that "200,000 missing men" had been executed (complete bulldada), that the Pristina stadium was in use as a prison (shown otherwise by LAT reporter Paul Watson). Now you tell me this about the coke ovens. What's your source?

[Lexingtonian]

19. New Yorker

A long piece about the numbers. Couldn't find it on Google; it was in 2001 or so. They had been missing about 1,000 corpses of people killed in ones and twos and threes by local Serb paramilitaries (nice word for 'organized thugs'). They traced them to curious late night truck pickups and found one of the drivers. The driver led them to the steel works- there is only one in Kosovo, medium to smallish- where they found shoes and some clothing that had been pulled off by the grates and rollers of the coke feeder belt. These were later identified as belonging to some of the missing.

[WoodrowFan]

20. Link? Lexis Nexis?

Is there a way to find it on Lexis Nexis or Proquest? The New Yorker site has very limited archives/..

[MrPrax]

59. The New Yorker also

had a long piece on Al Queda operating in Colombia's blackmarket!!

It won a national award and is total garbage...
I do like the New Yorker's new york pieces, tho ;-)

[dudeness]

95. I agree with you bpilgrim

..

[union_maid]

4. Very reluctanlty supported them

I was very sad at the thought of going to war, and going to war under a Democratic president, no less, but it sure seemed like something had to be done and that we'd sat by and let this happen for way too long already.

[JackRiddler]

7. please...

You and others, either side, save the arguments for another thread... Let's not have a flame fest on this thread, though I don't mind a good one on occasion. And let's not speculate about the motives of those who were for or against the war. Let's first (try to) get a picture of what the opinions were, and please do post if your opinion changed either way between 1999 and today.

[Selwynn]

79. Chomsky in his own words:

Because I was so wrongfully uninformed at the time it was happening, I've had an interest in thinking about it in hindsight. Of the the numerous important voices from all over the ideological specturm that I've appreciated in thinking about these things has been Chomsky, reguardless of the kind of fanatical feelings for or against him he usually inspires.

Here he is in his own words:

Noam Chomsky On Kosovo from the ZNet Forum

Chomsky was asked first about support among progressives for the position that "military intervention is needed to stop Milosevic from committing genocide, regardless of whether NATO's motivations are pure," with comparisons about "WWII being necessary to stop Hitler, even if the U.S. did not have truly humanitarian objectives." As well as, "Is the Yugoslavian government genocidal" and "Will the NATO intervention have the effect of stopping Milosevic and/or saving the people of Kosovo from extermination?"

I don't want to say anything about the people you are referring to, because I don't know, but it seems to me reasonably clear that if we think the matter through, the arguments you report are untenable, so untenable as to raise some rather serious questions.

First, let's consider Milosovec's "genocide" in the period preceding the NATO bombings. According to NATO, 2000 people had been killed, mostly by Serb military, which by summer 1998 began to react (with retaliation against civilians) to guerrilla (KLA) attacks on police stations and civilians, based from and funded from abroad. And several hundred thousands of refugees were generated. (We might ask, incidentally, how the US would respond to attacks on police stations and civilians in New York by armed guerrillas supported from and based in Libya). That's a humanitarian crisis, but one of a scale that is matched or exceeded substantially all over the world right now, quite commonly with decisive support from Clinton. The numbers happen to be almost exactly what the State Department has just reported for Colombia in the same year, with roughly the same distribution of atrocities (and a far greater refugee population, since the 300,000 resulting from last year's atrocities are added to over a million from before). And it's a fraction of the atrocities that Clinton dedicated substantial efforts to escalating in Turkey in the same years, in the ethnic cleansing of Kurds. And on, and on. So if Milosovic is "genocidal," so are a lot of others -- pretty close to home. That doesn't say he's a nice guy: he's a monstrous thug. But the term "genocidal" is being waved as a propaganda device to mobilize the public for Clinton's wars.

Second, the US ("NATO") intervention, as predicted, radically escalated the atrocities, maybe even approaching the level of Turkey, or of Palestine in 1948, to take another example. I wouldn't use the term "genocide" for such operations -- that's a kind of ultra-right "revisionism," an insult to the memory of the victims of the Holocaust, in my opinion. But it's very bad, and it suffices to undermine the claim that "military intervention is needed to stop Milosevic from committing genocide," on elementary logical grounds.

...

http://www.refuseandresist.org/other_fronts/042499chomsky.html

There's a paragraph where Chomsky comments on going to war (WWII) to "stop hitler" that is painfully true, but its not relevant to our subject here. Basically, Chomskys arguments are made in hindsight (by his own admission). These aguments, summarized (and expounded upon greatly in his book "Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs") are as follows:

(1) The term "genocide" was applied in Kosovo to decribe kinds of acts that were literally going on at the same or worse level in multiple places in the world, one example being in South America, but there was at least one other example from Africa. That does not justify what was happening in Kosovo, but it begs the question "why did we/nato choose to intervene in this case and not others? What was the reason for our selectivity? I do agree with Chomsky that the term "genocide" was deliberately applied to garnish public support for our action.

(2) The action in Kosovo severed to drastically esclate horrors, not de-escalate. It destabalized things further. The argument is, it literaly made things exponetially worse before it was over. And Chomsky's main argument was that this was a fairly obvious and well-predicted consequence of the NATO action, and the real question of importance is why was it carried out, for what ultimate purpose if a) we frequently choose not to invervene when atrocities are committed elsewhere and b) we had significant indications that interverning would escalate the death toll traumatically. Certianly there is room for debate on this point, but it is certainly not cut and dry either way.

[RogueTrooper]

3. I supported the Kosovo war

it was the right thing to do.

[gottaB]

5. Undecided, but....

At the time I favored intervention, but wasn't completely onboard with the way it played out. In hindsight, that's still my opinion.

[bpilgrim]

6. The Rational Destruction of Yugoslavia - Michael Parenti

November 1999

In 1999, the U.S. national security state -- which has been involved throughout the world in subversion, sabotage, terrorism, torture, drug trafficking, and death squads -- launched round-the-clock aerial attacks against Yugoslavia for 78 days, dropping 20,000 tons of bombs and killing thousands of women, children, and men. All this was done out of humanitarian concern for Albanians in Kosovo. Or so we were asked to believe. In the span of a few months, President Clinton bombed four countries: Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq repeatedly, and Yugoslavia massively. At the same time, the U.S. was involved in proxy wars in Angola, Mexico (Chiapas), Colombia, East Timor, and various other places. And U.S. forces are deployed on every continent and ocean, with some 300 major overseas support bases -- all in the name of peace, democracy, national security, and humanitarianism.

While showing themselves ready and willing to bomb Yugoslavia on behalf of an ostensibly oppressed minority in Kosovo, U.S. leaders have made no moves against the Czech Republic for its mistreatment of the Romany people (gypsies), or Britain for oppressing the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, or the Hutu for the mass murder of a half million Tutsi in Rwanda -- not to mention the French who were complicit in that massacre. Nor have U.S. leaders considered launching "humanitarian bombings" against the Turkish people for what their leaders have done to the Kurds, or the Indonesian people because their generals killed over 200,000 East Timorese and were continuing such slaughter through the summer of 1999, or the Guatemalans for the Guatemalan military's systematic extermination of tens of thousands of Mayan villagers. In such cases, U.S. leaders not only tolerated such atrocities but were actively complicit with the perpetrators -- who usually happened to be faithful client-state allies dedicated to helping Washington make the world safe for the Fortune 500.

Why then did U.S. leaders wage an unrestrainedly murderous assault upon Yugoslavia?

The Third Worldization of Yugoslavia

more...
http://www.michaelparenti.org/yugoslavia.html

peace

[bpilgrim]

10. i was undecided then

but i am certainly opposed now after having researched it and more facts have been brought out since, paticularly the media LIES.


very scary to think how powerful the media is in wipping up support for any war.

and so it goes...

peace

[WoodrowFan]

13. michael parenti

Interesting that you use Michael Parenti. He is one of the few still defending not only Stalin but Pol Pot!! Sorry, but I don't trust the moral judgements of someone who still pines for the overthrown Communist (not socialist!) regimes of Eastern Europe.

[bpilgrim]

14. one of the few who speak TRUTH to POWER - an american hero

of course you come with 0 facts to back up what you say, only the tired old one liners repeated about ANY scholar who points out inconvienent facts that leave most with the impression of someone who can not accept any of our own mistakes or crimes.

i am not suprised.

peace

[WoodrowFan]

16. A "useful idiot" and moral midget

How interesting that you sign "peace" on every note, but defend genocidial regimes. Parenti is proud of his defense of left-wing dictatorships, why would you deny it? He is the protypical example of someone who hates the faults of the US so very much he denys the faults of others. On the far right that leads to holocaust denial and defending of Hitler. On the far left that leads to denying the crimes of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and Asia. I'll go with Jefferson and renouce the dictatorships on both left and right.

For a left-wing critique of Parenti see this link.

http://struggle.ws/freeearth/ice_pick.html

[bpilgrim]

17. sure he is...

why is it that folks who speak truth to power always get villified?

I will read that later and if this thread is still around i will respond now i am off to work.

peace

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Blue_Chill]

40. Perhaps you should stop being such a fan

and read what his critics have to say.

One sided views are always wrong.

peace.

[RichM]

61. This is a dishonest & completely false representation.

Parenti does not "defend" Stalin. Rather, he demonstrates that the way American culture portrays Stalin & the USSR is largely a result of distortion & self-interested propaganda.

Of course, someone wishing to dishonestly smear Parenti would call this "defending" Stalin. But no one who has read Parenti and has any intellectual integrity would say it.

[John_H]

97. Classic Parenti

This is quintisential Parenti, pro-authoritarian, intellectually dishonest, frighteningly racist, and just plain dumb:

The action is Yugoslavia was wrong because:

1) We didn't also bomb england.
2) We had the gall to encourage the dismemberment of a fascist state and end the wonderful "public services" it provided.
3) We let those dirty, breeding-machine Albanians fuck themselves into control of Kosovo
4) The Serbs didn't rape, murder, massacre, and repress as many people as we said.
5) During the bombing campaign, we head the nerve to drop bombs.
6) Since bomb dropping does bad things, it's never OK to drop bombs, even when the larger good involves saving hundreds of thousands of lives.

The article is entertaining, though, as yet another piece of proof that the far, far, left just looooves authoritarianism.

[Zynx]

8. I was opposed at the time...

because, at the time, I leaned Republican and anything Clinton did I didn't like.

Luckily, I have since seen the light as I have become a Democrat and realized that it was the right decision to go.

[Padraig18]

18. I supported the war then, and would again

It is always fascinating how the war's critics always seem to say "the US a-n-d NATO", as though this somehow adds weight to their blatantly anti-war stance; in fact, all it does is make glaringly obvious their irrational hatred of the use of ANY AND ALL military force EVER.

The fact of the matter is that NATO---- repeat, NATO--- a regional-security organization recognized under the UN Charter and responsible for addressing situations precisely like the one occuring in Kosovo authorized the use of force in order to stop the 'ethnic cleansing' of Kosovo Albanians by the Serbs. No rational person disputes that it WAS occurring, but resort to dissembling and other incoherent ramblings about the actual numbers of ethnic Albanians killed. :eyes:

Neither Parenti nor Chomsky can seriously be cited as impartial sources of reportage; as is pointed out, Parenti* is still an apologist for Stalin and Pol Pot, ffs!

Were there mistakes made in the Kosovo action? Obviously. Were the intentions of the CIVILIAN authorities who initiated the campaign 'evil'? Of course not. Finally, every military force MUST have a commander; armies and air forces and navies are NOT run by plebiscite--- they are authoritarian by definition, and to demonize the command structure who are carrying out lawful orders from their elected civilian governments is barritry of the worst sort.

*On Edit: corrected

[WoodrowFan]

21. Parenti, Not Chomsky

Not that I care for Chomsky either, but Parenti is the one defending left-wing dictatorships such as the Yugoslav thugs. Chomsky is a moral giant compared to Parenti.


Peace

[Padraig18]

23. I stand corrected

It was a typo. Thanks! :hi:

[WoodrowFan]

24. no problem

:toast:

[RichM]

45. This is a completely dishonest portrayal of Parenti's position. You

either never read him, or didn't understand what you read.

[Padraig18]

48. Wrong!

I've done both, and it's an unbiased opinion of Parenti's stance. He is somewhere to the left of Mao Zedong.

[el_gato]

56. no facts

just baseless smear

[WoodrowFan]

60. The Only Dishonest People I see here

are those who profess to love freedom but love Parenti's defense of totalitarian dictatorships. If he was a RWer defending the South African Reich you would have been all over his case for defending an oppressive regime. The facvt that anyone outside of the Socialist Workers Party even give Parenti the time of day speaks volumes about the American far left's moral blindness.

[Padraig18]

65. And I would wager...

... that many of Parenti's champions are among the very same who supported intervention in Liberia, etc., to prevent continuing genocide.

[Padraig18]

63. You should know best

Since you have YET to cite a source, and have elsewhere in this thread been intel;lectually dishonest about the entire basis for the NATO intervention.

[el_gato]

68. your opinions are not facts

they are nothing but opinions

if you want to discuss the facts then lets do so

[Padraig18]

76. But yours ARE?

Last time I looked, I have a right to my opinion, and my opinion of Parenti is exactly what I stated. He is an apologist for Pol Pot, and I am incredulous that anyone would defend him. :wtf:

[el_gato]

83. I am concerned with the facts that is all

you present your opinions as fact i.e. "so and so is a commie lovin' bastard so you are wrong blah blah"

that is a bad method of discourse and does not address the issue

I have presented here information regarding bigger plans for the future of that area that were being put in place prior to the breakout of the yugoslav war and yet all you want to do is call people names and act like that is an effective rebuttal. All you have really done is avioded the issue at hand.

[RichM]

86. The truth about Parenti's stance is in post #61. Your position is bunk -

beneath contempt.

[Padraig18]

100. All I see in post #61 is...

... your OPINION! Y-O-U-R opinion--- not mine.

[JackRiddler]

42. Factual Corrections & An Editorial

You write: "The fact of the matter is that NATO---- repeat, NATO--- a regional-security organization recognized under the UN Charter and responsible for addressing situations precisely like the one occuring in Kosovo authorized the use of force..."

Sorry, this is wrong.

Excuse my possible pedanticism, but NATO stands for North Atlantic TREATY Organization.

Here is the treaty of 1949:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/nato.htm

The treaty is extremely clear about the function of NATO: that member states are obligated to a joint defense, if another member is attacked. Even if you think the Kosovo action was right, NATO was absolutely NOT created "for addressing situations precisely like the one occurring in Kosovo," as you write.

ARTICLE 5 NATO TREATY:

"The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all, and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective selfdefence recognised by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually, and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area."

The relevant clauses for NATO military action (Articles 5 and 6) were never invoked until 2001, when the Sept. 11 attack was judged to be such a case.

No such attack on a NATO member occurred during the Yugoslavia wars. Holding an "out-of-area" action under NATO was a very big deal to the Europeans and the subject of much debate. Even among the European supporters of the war, it was understood that the action was not actually covered under the NATO treaty.

There was no UN sanction for the action in Kosovo. NATO is not a UN organization, but explicitly recognizes the UN as an authority in its charter.

Another mistake: The UN Charter does not recognize NATO! That would have been difficult, as the Charter was ratified several years before NATO came into existence.

So, now that you know better, we may proceed...

---------------------------------

AN EDITORIAL

Finally, though now we veer into opinion, I think it's very unfair to argue that opponents of a given war are motivated by "hatred" of the military or of any war any time. Fact is, I don't like militaries because of their authoritarian madness and I do not consider them automatically necessary; I believe at this stage of human history, militaries perpetuate wars. You need wars to justify the keeping of a massive military complex. (There were certainly times when it was the other way around, i.e. genuine aggression necessitated militaries.) This is not "hatred." This is reason.

I very much support our troops - and theirs, too - which is why I don't ever want to see wars. This is not "hatred." This is hope, perhaps naive. The time of war is past; we need only wake up to it.

I am definitely against starting wars, for any reason, and almost always against intervening in other people's wars. Why? Because the record shows this tends to complicate and worsen the situation. Another why? Because the record shows that almost no intervention had a humanitarian basis, although this was always claimed... Behind the scenes, there was always a different interest at work than the one claimed.

Don't come at me with the righteousness of World War II. Nobody forged a coalition to get Hitler because he was evil. Hitler attacked all of the countries with which Germany in the end was at war, including the U.S. (by way of declaration of war on Dec. 11, 1941, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor). So every single country among the Allies was in the war because they were attacked by an aggressor nation, Germany, Japan or both.

Of course I support genuine defense. WWII is arguably the only case of it by the United States in the 20th century.

[Padraig18]

52. Selective reading

"ARTICLE 4
The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened."

In the opinion of SEVERAL NATO member-nations, the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo threatened to spill over into a pan-Balkan war; Greece, in particular, advocated this position, and the NATO member nations concurred.

[JackRiddler]

54. You are really stepping into it...

I speak Greek and I spent the months immediately after the Kosovo war in Greece.

Greece was dragged into the war kicking and screaming. It's no exaggeration to say 90 percent of the people strongly opposed the action, and that this was the main topic of political conversation for months afterwards. The Greek government had done what it could to slow down the war drive, then perforce went along, allowing NATO to use a few bases, etc. (Greece ain't going to screw with US/NATO, you can be sure.) These were the targets of blockades by thousands of protesters. No bombing runs took off from Greece, as the government didn't want to risk the storm that would have come.

Your statement is simply wrong. Please name any state in Europe that said ethnic cleansing in Kosovo threatened to create a pan-Balkan war and therefore supported the action.

I live in Germany, where the drive for war was strongest. At no point was this suggested as a danger. The official justification for the war was always that it was to stop ethnic cleansing - which Foreign Minister Fischer compared to Auschwitz!

Are you just making up things out of whole cloth and hoping no one notices, or do you know you're lying?

[Padraig18]

57. Quit blowing smoke up my ass

Read it and weep. Your bluff and bluster may impress or intimidate some, but impresses and intimidates me not at all. You are wrong---period. You also fail to address your intellectual dishonesty in citing ONLY Article 5, while overlooking Article 4, which is the Article governing the intervention.

http://www.nato.int/kosovo/docu/u990610a.htm

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep1998/n09241998_9809247.html

http://www.nato.int/docu/handbook/2001/hb1501.htm

[JackRiddler]

69. Your three links

The first, archived on a NATO site, is the text of UN Security Council resolution 1244, passed AFTER Belgrade had capitulated, establishing the terms of capitulation. It does not imply that the Kosovo situation was destabilizing the Balkans as a whole previous to the NATO action, or give this as a reason for the NATO action. And this is the point you keep failing to substantiate!

NAME A NATO COUNTRY THAT CLAIMED THE KOSOVO SITUATION POSED A THREAT TO ITS TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OR DEFENSE INTERESTS.

You named Greece, but this is bullshit. Greece opposed the drive to war for as long as it could. The Greeks feared that a NATO action would destabilize the Balkans.

You also will not discover anything to substantiate that point if you follow the links to earlier resolutions mentioned in the text of 1244 (such as 1199 of Sept. 1998). You will find that the earlier UN resolutions call on both parties ("the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" and the "Kosovo Albanian leadership") to comply with a set of demands (basically, to end hostilities). 1244 then expresses disappointment that these demands were not met, clearly implying both sides (FRY and Kosovo Albanians) are to blame, but seeming to apportion more blame to FRY.

Your second link is a U.S. military press release. It mentions Resolution 1199 of Sept. 23, 1998 (a UN condemnation of violence by both sides!) and then presents the NATO activation order of Sept. 24th, as though the two were part of the same package. They were not. NATO took 1199 as its fig leaf, but if you read 1199 you will see that it is misrepresented in the press release celebrating the activation order (with which NATO began its final series of threats leading up to the war).

(I see you don't bother presenting anything about the subsequent Rambouillet negotiations and the impossible ultimatum to Milosevic...)

Your third link is a section of the NATO handbook celebrating how the N.A. Treaty enshrines the UN Charter and the UN Security Council as its standards. Great. This also shows that NATO is not, as you said, "a regional-security organization recognized under the UN Charter," but the other way around. NATO recognizes the UN Charter, which predated it. Which is what I said. Beyond that, we see the history of how NATO has played a greater role within UN actions since 1992, meaning in the Balkan situation, setting up SFOR and KFOR. KFOR comes into existence on the basis of 1244 - AFTER the war!

What you still have not provided is when if ever a justification for the war was claimed under the NATO treaty, article 4 or otherwise.

You know, you can go ahead and claim a justification for the war the way the NATO politicians actually did - on the basis that the ethnic cleansing had to be stopped. Why do you need to manufacture a lie that it was covered by the NATO treaty?

I think this is enough now. You throw out random assertions and links, without bothering to quote the relevant parts or to explicate your argument, and then you toss some insults at me (intellecutal dishonesty, etc.).

Then, I spend 10 or 89 times as long actually reading the texts, discovering they don't support your claims, and writing up the results for this thread. Not a fair relation. So go ahead and have the last word (which will probably take you all of 30 seconds to write).

[Selwynn]

77. edit

[wyldwolf]

22. Several democatic nominee's views on Kosovo: Dean, Kucinich, etc.

Candidates on Kosovo:

Howard Dean

"I told the peace people not to fall in love with me," he told me over breakfast in Manchester, N.H., last week. He said he had opposed Vietnam, but he had supported the first Gulf War, the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, and the war in Afghanistan. In the 1980s he had "mixed feelings" about Ronald Reagan's support for the contras in Nicaragua and opposed a unilateral nuclear freeze. "I'm not a pacifist..."

http://marinfordean.org/article_text.asp?articleid=95

Dennis Kucinich

Voted yes on an amendment to the "Kosovo and Southwest Asia Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act" which would prohibit the use of funds for any invasion of Yugoslavia with U.S. ground forces except in time of war.

Reference: Amendment introduced by Istook, R-OK; Bill HR 1664 ; vote number 1999-119 on May 6, 1999

CONGRESSMAN KUCINICH OPPOSES THE NATO AIR CAMPAIGN WITH YUGOSLAVIA.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/docs99/990521-kosovo07.htm

John Edwards:

Voted YES on allowing all necessary forces and other means in Kosovo. (May 1999)
Voted YES on authorizing air strikes in Kosovo. (Mar 1999)

http://www.issues2000.org/Senate/John_Edwards.htm


John Kerry:

Voted to adopt a resolution to authorize the President to conduct military air operations and missile strikes in cooperation with NATO against Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro).

Bill S.Con.Res 21 ; vote number 1999-57 on Mar 23, 1999


Voted NO on allowing all necessary forces and other means in Kosovo.

Majority Leader Trent Lott motioned to kill the resolution that would have authorized the president to "use all necessary forces and other means," in cooperation with U.S. allies to accomplish objectives in Yugoslavia.
Status: Motion to Table Agreed to Y)78; N)22
Reference: Motion to table S. J. Res. 20; Bill S. J. Res. 20 ; vote number 1999-98 on May 4, 1999

[JasonBerry]

27. Here - Let Kucinich speak for himself

Dennis Kucinich on the NATO war on Serbia....

A piece he wrote for The Progressive

http://www.progressive.org/kuc899.htm

and a Washington Post Op-Ed:

http://www.diaspora-net.org/food4thought/kucinich.htm

[wyldwolf]

29. I'm a little confused then on Kucinich's position...

in the Voice of America broadcast, it was reported, "CONGRESSMAN KUCINICH OPPOSES THE NATO AIR CAMPAIGN WITH YUGOSLAVIA."

It does quote Kucinich as being against ground forces:

THERE MAY BE A BATTLE OVER IN KOSOVO ON THE GROUND. BUT NOT BEFORE THERE IS A TREMENDOUS BATTLE IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES OVER WHETHER OR NOT OUR YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN SHOULD HAVE TO GO OVER THERE TO DIE.

However, in the Post article you gave, :

The world's democracies have a responsibility to relieve the suffering of the people of Kosovo, to insure that the refugees can return to an autonomous nation and to help rebuild the province and prosecute war criminals.

That is why I voted my support for President Clinton's initiatives and for the use of American soldiers in keeping the peace in the region.

On the surface, they seem contradictary. Since Kucinich isn't the candidate I'm most interested in, perhaps you can clarify this for me.

[JasonBerry]

33. With Apologies to JackRiddler

I know we weren't to debate the thing all over again in this thread - but with Clark's campaign, it was inevitable.

Actually the Kucinich position was spelled out in the last two sentences of the WP piece:

"We must demonstrate that we know the difference between a legal and just humanitarian intervention on behalf of a civilian population and an illegal and unjust military intervention against civilians. Otherwise, we will have bombed the village in order to save it, and created a war in the name of ending one."

[wyldwolf]

38. That sheds no light on Kucinich's position on the Kosovo intervention...

...it is only a warning against civilian casualties.

[JackRiddler]

43. Ah, the debate started...

Let it roll... I am encouraged by how it's remained on a cordial and factual level!

[Tinoire]

39. Keep reading from your selection- Kucinich clarifies in next paragraph

Also- Kucinich did vote yes on bill 1664, the one you referenced but bill 1664 was an amendment disallowing the invasion of Kosovo:

Voted YES on disallowing the invasion of Kosovo.
Vote on an amendment to the "Kosovo and Southwest Asia Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act" which would prohibit the use of funds for any invasion of Yugoslavia with U.S. ground forces except in time of war.

Reference: Amendment introduced by Istook, R-OK; Bill HR 1664 ; vote number 1999-119 on May 6, 1999

--------------------------------------------------------

Immediately after your selection from the Post Article about Kucinich having initially supported Clinton, back when there was talk of WMDs, mass graves which, unsuprisingly, were never found, the word yet is crucial because Kucinich explains he was for humanitarian aid, not the obscene war that was waged:

Yet NATO is now engaged in a bombing campaign in which the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia has become part of the strategy to end the war on Kosovo. We say our quarrel is with President Slobodan Milosevic and his army, yet instead of doing all that we can to directly confront that military we are bringing down terror on the Serbian people. What has this bombing accomplished? It has not stopped the ethnic cleansing or the grim procession of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

So I must challenge NATO's justification for its military campaign against civilians -- before we destroy all the bridges in Belgrade and Novi Sad; before we obliterate the power plants, water systems, roads and telecommunications centers that serve civilian populations; before we begin hearing the the phrase "collateral damage" routinely. Otherwise, NATO's actions will destabilize the region for decades to come.

<snip>

Americans will pay a price, too. If we continue to support NATO bombing, we will have muddied our ethics and tarnished our reputation for defending those who live under dictatorships. We need to rethink not only the manner in which we wage war, but also the manner in which we manage conflict and keep the peace. We must demonstrate that we know the difference between a legal and just humanitarian intervention on behalf of a civilian population and an illegal and unjust military intervention against civilians. Otherwise, we will have bombed the village in order to save it, and created a war in the name of ending one.

http://www.diaspora-net.org/food4thought/kucinich.htm

From VOA:

CONGRESSMAN KUCINICH OPPOSES THE NATO AIR CAMPAIGN WITH
YUGOSLAVIA. HE WANTS TO PROCEED IMMEDIATELY TO A NEGOTIATED
SETTLEMENT WITH YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC. AND HE
SAYS HE WILL FIGHT ANY EFFORT BY PRESIDENT AND FELLOW DEMOCRAT
BILL CLINTON TO SEND U-S GROUND FORCES INTO KOSOVO.

-----------------------
More explanations:

IN MY CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE, I read the latest reports concerning a recent Executive Order that hands the CIA a black bag in the Balkans for engineering a military coup in Serbia, for interrupting communications, for tampering with bank accounts, freezing assets abroad, and training the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in terrorist tactics, such as how to blow up buildings.

How this is intended to help establish a democracy in Serbia or Kosovo hasn't yet been explained. Nor has the failure to substantially disarm and demilitarize the KLA been explained. Nor has the reverse ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo by the KLA while NATO rules the provinces been explained.

<snip>

Once a war begins, individual members of Congress are ill-equipped to manage the pace of events. Congress, like the public, is vulnerable to manipulation by war managers. Part of the story of this war is how the Administration and NATO used events and sentiment to suppress criticism of the war and shroud the multitude of violations of international law.

<snip>

I did not anticipate that the U.S. and NATO, in the name of a humanitarian cause, would undertake the bombing of Serbia and thereby violate the U.N. Charter, the NATO Charter, the Congressional intent in approving the North Atlantic Treaty, the U.S. Constitution, and the War Powers Act. The U.N. Security Council was the proper forum for debating such offensive action. In the 1949 Senate debate on the founding of NATO, Senator Forrest C. Donnell, Republican of Missouri, worried that such an organization could supersede the War Power of the U.S. Congress. Now, U.S. planes were dropping U.S. bombs on Serbia in the name of my country, in the name of NATO, but without the approval of the U.S. Congress.

Suddenly, the United States had a clever new spokesperson, Jamie Shea, from England, who talked cheerfully of damage done, of punishment being meted out, of NATO power and NATO air superiority. When a few members of Congress observed that such action was a violation of the Constitution, Article I, Section 8, we were told our objection was academic, pedantic, and, worse, insensitive to the plight of the Kosovar Albanians.

<snip>

I thought NATO was a defensive organization. At least that's what its charter said. But NATO's war moved along like a giant unconscious force. Soon NATO was prepared to blockade Russian ships in Montenegro's harbor, prompting Vladimir Lukin of the Yabloko party to warn that such an action was "a direct path to nuclear escalation." He didn't have to say it.There were numerous quiet discussions taking place around Washington and across the country of people who were beginning to sense that NATO was out of control. They understood that NATO was moving into that fuzzy circumference of high violence where the possibility of nuclear war, on purpose or by accident, was beginning to be real.

<snip>
I WORKED WITH several members of Congress, building opposition to giving the President war powers authority. The decisive moment was April 28. On that day, the House of Representatives voted, in a test of the War Powers Act, not to give the Administration full authority in the war, including the ability to use ground troops. This single vote may well have been the turning point of the war. The White House and Democratic leaders held a relentless series of meetings to lobby for the war, including small focus groups with members of Congress, caucus meetings, and whip meetings to organize floor counts and check and recheck the vote. They were stunned when the vote ended in a tie, defeating the measure and forcing the Administration to look toward diplomatic channels to end the conflict.

<snip>

One of the myths of this war is that it was won by air power. Peace activists ought to demand that Congress appropriate money for a strategic bombing survey. This survey, conducted by an independent, non-defense-related organization, should examine where the bombs fell, as distinct from their intended targets. It would analyze the purpose of the specific bombing campaigns and whether the purpose was accomplished. For instance, NATO bombing was supposed to cripple the Serbian military. A strategic bombing survey would show that nothing of the sort happened.

A classic maneuver for politicians caught in a foreign policy morass is to declare victory and get out. In Kosovo, the President and Secretary of State have declared a NATO victory and are staying. Troops will be there to ensure the KLA has a shot at independence--circumstances that will only bring the people of Kosovo more violence. What did we win? We won more war.

NATO's victory talk only sets the stage for the next war, creates a false sense of security about its power, puts faith in arms instead of negotiation, and covers up the endless series of blunders in the execution of the war.

http://www.progressive.org/kuc899.htm

Congressman Kucinich was one of the leading Democrats in opposition to the Balkan war and to NATO's bombing strategy. On April 28, 1999, Congress voted overwhelmingly against declaring war on Yugoslavia (H.J. Res 44). Congressman Kucinich was also instrumental in the defeat of a bill (S.Con.Res. 21) that would have legally sanctioned the Administration to wage a larger war. The resolution was defeated in a 213-213 tie vote. As a result, the War Powers Resolution's restriction on the length of an unauthorized military campaign remained in place, and was one factor leading to the war’s quick end.

On April 30, 1999, a bipartisan coalition of Members of Congress, including Congressman Kucinich, filed a lawsuit to compel the President to follow the Constitution and halt U.S. armed forces from engaging in military action in Yugoslavia unless Congress declared war or granted the President specific statutory authority.

http://www.house.gov/kucinich/issues/internationalrelations.htm

Extra++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Prior to the sixty days expiring Congressman Tom Campbell, a Republican, introduced various resolutions that would require a congressional vote on whether to approve the war. It was his view that the Constitution and WPR had to be complied with and if they were not, all troops had to be withdrawn. As was stated earlier, none of these resolutions passed; the key resolution which would have given the President authority to continue the war past sixty days failed to pass by a tie 213-213 vote. Thus, as the war continued it was clear that the President did not have the constitutional authority to have initiated the war, nor the statutory authority to keep fighting past the sixty day by which the WPR mandated termination.

The sixty day termination date passed almost unnoticed by the press, Congress and the pundits. Only Congressman Tom Campbell ((who happens to be quite progressive)), Congressman Dennis Kucinich and a few others brought up the issue and no one paid attention. It was a remarkable moment. Here was a statute, the WPR, which had been written because of the debacle of Viet-Nam; it was meant to keep the U.S. out of wars that did not have congressional approval. One could say the statute was literally written in the blood of the Americans and Vietnamese who died in that war. And now the statute was treated as nought; as if nothing was learned from the Viet Nam war. The bombing of Yugoslavia was continuing; people were being killed and the country was being destroyed; and it was all a clear violation of U.S. law.

A few courageous members of Congress decided to take the issue of the illegality of the war to the federal courts. The leader of this group was Congressman Tom Campbell and he gathered a dozen or so Republicans to join with him. He asked the Center for Constitutional Rights to bring the litigation on his behalf. The Center had brought a number of lawsuits previously challenging illegal uses of U.S. military force in Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Iraq. All of these suits had been against Republican presidents and the majority of not all of the congressmen plaintiffs had been Democrats. Now that the shoe was on the other foot, and a Democratic president was unilaterally going to war, Democratic plaintiffs were hard to come by. Many Democrats did not like the war, thought it was illegal, but did not want to buck the President and say so publicly whether by way of speeches or by joining a lawsuit. It was an amazing demonstration of political opportunism. On the issue of should the U.S. go to war, probably the most fundamental and important decision a politician can make, these Democrats sold out. The only two Democrats to join the suit were Dennis Kucinich and March Kaptur.

http://www.humanrightsnow.org/kosovo.htm

[wyldwolf]

44. ok. Makes sense now...

[Rowdyboy]

25. Of course I supported the war then

And nothing has happened since to make me change my mind. I only wish Clinton has intervened earlier.

[poskonig]

26. I opposed it then; lukewarm about it now.

In retrospect, everything appears to have worked out nicely. At the time, I was concerned about turning Serbia into a parking lot and accelerating the cleansing between various ethnic groups, who I believe were all guilty.

[KharmaTrain]

28. This Was Genocide That Was Spreading

I supported both the Kosovo campaign in light that the Balkans had already suffered nearly a decade of brutal war and now another area was being cleansed. Also, remember there were real concerns of this spilling into Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and even parts of northern Greece. If using military force was needed to stop the "forward agression" that Milosevic was conducting and put him in a box, like Saddam, and it meant more lives saved than lost, then it's a battle well fought.

Also, we weren't acting alone. For years our European allies...those damn French and German...had tried to handle the problem through the EU and failed, we provided the military and moral leadership that has turned that has brought relative peace to that region. Was it worth it? Hell yes! Would I say do it again? Be it a Liberia or East Timor or anyplace where people seek true self determination, where our military could save lives, I feel that's worth the investment in capital and human treasure and where our might best serves all humanity.

[el_gato]

32. bombing the shit out of another potential competitor

on the global economic scene

that's what this was about

there were other options but the die had already been cast

the breakup of yugoslavia was on the table

destabilizaton was the catalyst

[KharmaTrain]

49. The Break-Up Was Well Underway By Kosovo

The break-up of Yugoslavia was all but complete with the Dayton Accords in '95, so what was left? I miss your point here.

And who was going to benefit from a civil war between Serbs and Albanians?

There were no economic interests at stake...that's why BushI stayed away and it took Clinton nearly 4 years to do something about the bloodshed in Bosnia. Milosevic wasn't going to stop agitating for ethnic superiority in the region...that was the only destabilization, unless you know different.

[wyldwolf]

51. He had no point...

Short sentences... no substance.

Just wild accusations with ZERO proof.

[el_gato]

55. the pressure to disolve the republic

back in 1991 with Bush Sr.

1991 Foreign Operations Appropriations Act

some people just don't want to know

[WoodrowFan]

62. The REPUBLIC!!!!???

Sheesh, another dictatorship defended.

[el_gato]

66. sheesh

another attempt at straw man argument

you are just like the people saying crap like

"your a saddam lover!"

a most naked and pathetic showing of pure intellectual dishonesty

[WoodrowFan]

64. Proof?

He don't need no stinkin' proof! Every evil anywhere is the fault of the US MIC. All leftwing dictatorships are good. Stalin was misunderstood. ;( war is peace, freedom is slavery, or in the case of countries like Yugoslavia, Slavery IS freedom!!

[el_gato]

67. lame attempt

you are trying to argue with yourself instead of discussing the issues

notice how you put up an arguement that no one here has presented and then you proceed to knock it down. pretty weak

[rhite5]

31. I was opposed

because I was troubled about getting involved in another war after the first Gulf War (which I also opposed). I did not understand much about it at the time and was not really focused on it.

My opinion has not changed as I learned more.

[IMayBeWrongBut]

34. At the time I was against it.

The main reason I was against it was I went to high school with a few Serbians. It was odd that someone who I sat next in math class just a few years ealier was in Belgrade during the bombings. I have not had the occasion to speak to any of them since the war, I have no idea what they would say to me about it.

Now that said, that's not a particularly rational reason to be against a war. I was definatly conflicted about the situation.

[RichM]

35. I was undecided then, but since have seen it was on a par with Iraq.

The war was said to be a "humanitarian effort to prevent genocide." It since has become clear that there was no "genocide" (there were a few thousand deaths due to ethnic strife, but the numbers were wildly exaggerated to provide a pretext for war); that this pretext was the same type of lie as "going into Iraq to liberate its people."

The main difference in the 2 situations is that in 1999, the US was willing to share the loot with other predator nations. So the European elite were willing to back it.

[On the Road]

36. There Was a Guerrila War in Kosovo

being fought by a separatist group. The year before the war there were about 2,000 casualities in Kosovo. That does not equate to mass slaughter or ethnical cleansing.

The nonviolent separatist movement, led by Abraham Rugova, was actually much more popular and well developed. (For example, they had parallel systems of education and taxation.) They should have been our natural allies.

But guess which one the US decided to support?

[Tinoire]

47. I was totally against it at the time and am totally opposed now

It was no different than the war in Iraq. It was another Soros pushed venture where certain people, Wesley Clark included (by his own admission in an interview), convinced the Clinton administration, that intervention there was necessary. Rwanda desperately needed humanitarian intervention but there were no mines there, no plunder. Soros now controls the fabulous Trepca mines and Yugoslavia is completely destabilized.

At the time of that war, I vigorously protested it along with groups like Veterans for Peace. The lies were absurb and the war against Yugoslavia was no different than the war against Iraq- it was simply waged by smarter men who kept the game out of sight from the public. Had Bush been a wee bit smarter, most Americans would still be behind the war in Iraq.

I am grateful Kucinich and Campbell spear-headed the effort to put an end to that madness. War is too heart-breaking for words.

[Iverson]

50. same here

I was against it both then and now. I'm kind of funny about military adventurism that way.

[rman]

53. it was mostly a farce - genocide was taking place...

NATO did hardly anything except monitor the situation, bomb power stations and the Chinese embassy (the Dutchbat affair is another example of that), while leaders of western nations avoided using the word "genocide" (god forbid they'd actually have to do something about it).

[WhoCountsTheVotes]

58. I was opposed at the time, and marched against it

I wrote my letters to Congress. Lots of Democrats didn't want to oppse the war, since it was Clinton's war, and he was being impeached at the time.

I don't know what happened - but I do know we were lied to quite a bit. I remember the same drumbeat of propaganda against Milosevic as I hears against Quadaffi and Hussein. The famous photo of a man in a "concentration camp" turned out to be a fraud, the rumors of mass murders always had their numbers rounded down significantly, and lots of unbelievable stories were thrown around but never any evidence.

Milosevic STILL hasn't been convicted as far as I know.

Who is responsble for the War against Serbia? President William Jefferson Clinton and the Democrats that supported him - Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, and John Forbes Kerry all voted to support the war I believe, while other prominent Democrats, like Howard Dean, cheerled from the sidelines.

Most Republicans were against the war if I remember correctly. Serbia was a 100% Democratic war. We now even have the NATO General who ran the war - Clark - running for President.

Democrats being anti-war? What a joke!

[T_i_B]

70. I supported it

In actual fact the only war I have opposed in my lifetime was the War on Iraq. Where the arguments for war against Kosovo and then against Afghanistan added up, the arguments for an invasion of Iraq did not.

[swinney]

71. YES--but 70% did not in most polls.

WHAT DISTRESSSS ME IS THE HYPOCRITICAL NATURE OF AMERICANS. THEY HAVE NO HONOR.

70 % OPPOSED INVASION OF THE POWERHOUSE GRENADA.

THEN, REAGAN GOES ON TV TO EXPLAIN HOW WE HAD--WHIPPED COMMUNISM AND VIETNAM SYNDROME AND 70% APPROVED OF THE SLAUGHTER.

57% OPPOSED INVASION OF IRAQ WITHOUT UN INVOLVEMENT.

EASY VICTORY AND THEY WERE 80% FOR IT.

NICE PEOPLE THESE INTELLIGENT CHRISTIAN AMERICANS!!!

[maha]

75. The whole point of Grenada

... was to take our minds off Lebanon. And it worked like a charm.

[Selwynn]

72. I'm very sad to say

That I was in college, in the middle of my own crisis and at that time I did not know anything about why we were getting involved, what was going on, or anything else. It's sad, but true - a mistake I won't make twice.

[David__77]

74. STRONGLY opposed! I was in the streets.

I was in the streets with a bullhorn opposing it, with signs condemning the US-led NATO aggression. It was Albright's war--neo-conservative globalism under a "humanitarian" banner. I cannot see why people opposed the Iraq war, yet saw nothing wrong with war against Yugoslavia.

Of course there were human rights abuses and killings in Kosova. There were violations of the minority Serbs as well as the Albanians in that province. The KLA were certainly not worth supporting. The US and UK had a big hand in destroying the multi-ethnic unity that characterized post-WW2 Yugoslavia, and saw it as a stumbling block on their way to NATO expansion.

It's a shame that so many otherwise anti-empire kind of people were bamboozled simply because the administration was (D) and they made it seem nice and fuzzy.

[David__77]

78. Wow! Few seem to care about national sovereignty.

I think upholding sovereignty is an important principle. In fact, I think it's the basis of international peace and cooperation. The US should not be the world policeman. That means that Yugoslavia was for the people of Yugoslavia, and Iraq is for the Iraqis. They were not carrying out transnational aggression in 1999 and 2003 respectively. Why did the US invade? To project its superpower status and tear down those states not with the program.

Are people here honestly saying that it is the responsibility of the US to bombard countries with missiles and bombs because of human rights abuses? If that is that case, you'll go for any war. Because, guess what?, there are serious abuses in many, many countries around the world. If you agree to this proposition, then you agree with colonialism. After all, the British empire had the best of intentions, thinking it was "civilizing" and "protecting" its subjects. I happen to think that freedom is the most important thing--and that means national independence, and freedom from superpower subversion.

[Selwynn]

82. Unbelievable...

Are people here honestly saying that it is the responsibility of the US to bombard countries with missiles and bombs because of human rights abuses?

It is the responsibility of any nation with means to oppose, resist, and counter human rights violations wherever possible with whatever means possible. I hear your arguments and I don't give a crap about them. No one is saying warfare under the banner of protecting human rights is always the appropriate choice. It should be in fact the choice of absolute last resort. But the United States and any country with power has a moral duty to NOT SUPPORT TERROR SYSTEMATICALLY! I define supporting terror in part as financing, arming, and politically supporting oppressive and murderous (but very Pro-US business) regimes because its profitable for us.

There is no other right choice but to defend the rights and humane treatment of other human beings - always! That does not mean going to war always. The most important thing we could possibly do is to stop funding human rights abusers! Imagine the hypocrisy of speaking of regime change in Iraq because of the horrible human rights abuses when we funded the regime and ignore its atrocities for years and years and years - until Saddam stopped doing what he was told and went "rogue" on the US.

The answer is YES - we should always, and forever as priority number one affirm HUMAN RIGHTS as the ultimate concern of our nation. Becoming wealthy, prosperous and powerful is fine and great, but only when it does not come at the expense of justice internationally. The profit and power we game by supporting a ruthless brutal regime is blood money, and we ought to sacrifice the money and power we gain so that we can look at ourselves in the mirror, with a couple less bucks in our pockets, but a clear conscience.

So, you are wrong in arguing that to say that we should affirm and stand up for human rights always is to support endless war, or colonialism or anything else. Step one in having human lives as our compassionate, merciful priority would be to stop supporting brutal regimes with our arms and cash. Step two then would be to send a clear message that countries who abuse human beings will not participate in the global community, and that the United States will at least STOP ACTING LIKE A ROGUE STATE and support the sanctioning and pressure in human rights abusers to end their reign even if it costs us money. Target #1: Israel. Target #2: Saudi Arabia Target #3: Latin American as a whole.

There is no other acceptable moral position than one that makes human rights, the protection of all human life, and the complete and total commitment to the fight for justice above all else, the number one priority.

[JackRiddler]

87. The U.S. govt lacks legitimacy...

Having supported too many atrocities and evil regimes in the past.

I agree with most of your basic steps:

1) Don't support bad regimes

This to me includes: don't sell ANY arms on the intl market & don't develop the next generation of arms. Pressure all allies to comply; THAT should be a subject of trade talks, limiting and one day ending the arms trade.

2) Work to isolate bad regimes, given OPEN support to democratic tendencies.

3) Stop destabilizing - covert operations to change politics are inherently wrong and tend to create our later enemies (as we see over and over: Noriega, Saddam, Osama.)

But military intervention is nothing the U.S. has a right to do, given its track record. More often than not, U.S. foreign interventions have been against democracy, against human rights. There is no legitimacy for this country as world police - and it is a disaster for our people, who pay the bill financially and in lost soldiers (and finally, even in blowback attacks on civilians).

The U.S. should stay out of foreign conflicts and support building a genuine UN capacity to intervene.

[Selwynn]

89. Agreed --

And my main point is that taking a clear and unqualified stance in defence of human rights, aka justice in the world is our moral obligation as the most powerful society in the world today -- and this does not mean we must be engaged in perpetual warfare premptively. There are plenty of steps to take in the right direction before that.

[DavidNY]

96. I'd say the _UN_ lacks "legitimacy"...

given how incredibly antidemocratic its fundamental structure is. Why should we give such great moral authority to an organization in which dictatorships (and tiny ones, in the case of the General Assembly) have an equal vote to large democracies? If we were talking about "building... capacity to intervene" of a sort of super-democracy in which democracies had votes proportional to their population, that would be one thing (though no one would likely agree to that because of the power it would give India)-- but we're not. We're talking about an organization in which, on one bureaucratic level, China (with its horrible human-rights record) can keep anything from happening, and on another level, the littlest despotism has as much voting power as India or the U.S. or Brazil or Canada.

In the former-Yugoslavia context, it strikes me as particularly ironic to have so much faith in the UN, given its miserable track record (allowing Srebrenica and so on). The U.S. may have a mixed track record, but sometimes it's still the last, best hope for a persecuted people. In Kosovo, and more generally in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia especially, though also Croatia), I wish we had intervened sooner; a lot fewer innocent civilians would have been massacred.

[blindpig]

84. yeah, a good idea poorly executed

Guess I'm barely old enough to consider WWII "the big one", and being of partially German descent I'm real touchy about genocide in Europe.
{Not to say that any genocide anywhere isn't an abomination and that lack of interest in affairs in Rwanda & Indonesia is criminal!}IMHO, the Balkans situation should have been dealt with during the reign of Poppy when it became clear that beastial madness had possessed the region. However, Clinton's tactic of a "bloodless"(for us!) air campaign was a virtually useless debacle. I suppose that the offer of a bloodless victory is too stong a medicine for a politician to resist,nonetheless Bill shouldn't have listened to Air Force generals dispensing the snake oil of Victory by Air. The illusion that wars can be fought exclusivly in the air has been promoted by the likes of Billy Mitchell & Herman Goering, always failing.
By spending weeks playing footsie with Serb AA & bombing infrastructure we allowed most of the atrocities of this episode to occur. If NATO had intervened forcefully on the ground it would have been all over in 2 weeks, the Serb army smashed in combat instead of ethnic cleansing and the noncombatants much less affected.
Consider our current quagmire: overwhelming air superiority guarranteed conventional victory but is mostly useless fighting a guerilla war. These fuckheads never learn.

[SEAburb]

85. anyone who would like to read an impartial view , try this link

http://www.isg.iags.org/newsletters/26/kosovo.html

[Tinoire]

88. Bad link??? Got nothing... n/t

[JackRiddler]

90. kickerooo

200 votes? My poll on 9/11 got 300. I think this should get 400!

[JackRiddler]

91. cheap kick 2

22

[JackRiddler]

92. One mo kick to get mo votes...

And after today I shall declare it closed...

[Mairead]

93. The question is too general

Many people supported keeping the Albanians from being butchered or driven out of their homes, but the same people supported keeping the KLA from going on their own rampage once they were given the upper hand. So such a general question as 'support the war' doesn't work.

[JackRiddler]

98. Thanks for the critique...

You're the first to raise this criticism, but I agree! I chose to simplify in this way-

what was your opinion THEN: where you FOR or AGAINST the DECISION

-so that the question itself would contain minimum editorial content.

This does not cover all the complexities, but if I had tried to present more specific options they would have likely had a higher level of unconscious pitch or spin. I wanted to avoid that, in a question that I feel so strongly about.

By framing the question simply and factually in people's minds, I also hope to encourage sobriety and seriousness in the debate.

EDITORIAL

As for what you say: Back then, we as a nation should have asked what course of legal, open and peaceful action on our part could have helped minimize and end bloodshed and strife among the conflicting parties.

In my mind, only legal (under constitutional and international law) and open action is legitimate. Only that type of action can sustain the legitimacy and moral basis of power in the long run, over many cases. Especially when we are talking about a conflict that in no way touches upon our self-defense.

Many think I am talking about weak-sounding things like international condemnations, boycotts, sanctions (especially on the level of not providing arms!) Sometimes this can be frustratingly limited - how can we stand by when people die? Well, that is exactly what we do in the case of 90 percent of the bloodshed on the planet - why do we pick a couple of conflicts as important, while the rest of humanity is irrelevant? We cannot be the World Police - this path leads to ultimate disaster for both the world and the putative police.

By taking the course of military intervention, especially when this is not covered under law (as with so many other conflicts: not even a declaration of war!), we encourage the same behavior among all other parties.

Russia's action in Chechnya is indirectly justified by ours in Kosovo, at least in the mind of the relevant actor (Russia), wrong as they may be.

Military intervention inevitably puts us in a position where we must take sides. So we stopped the Serb repression of Kosovars, at the expense of in the end supporting the Albanians' ethnic cleansing of Serbs and Gypsy peoples from the province!

However, and now it's time to be honest with ourselves: the United States never had a humanitarian motive in this case. It was about gaining geopolitical influence
- establishing a proxy in the Balkans
- showing the Europeans who is boss (it demonstrated their military impotence at the same time the euro was introduced, though in the end they come out the winners of the actual "booty")
- eliminating an unwanted "collectivist" system
- integrating one of the last pieces on the globe that was not yet a part of the globalized system...

and, more generally, satisfying the need to evoke a demonstration of power. Occasional proofs of potency and will are an absolute necessity to our system, if our might is to continue to make right.

And sustaining our most important industry, military preparation and production and its various outgrowths (not "most important" because it is so great for our people's economy, but because it has the preponderance of power within the state).

We have a system that needs occasional wars, that is the sad reality.

[Darranar]

94. I was against it then...

undecided now.

It seemed then that all the bombing was doing was killing and harming innocent people, just what Milosevic was doing. It seems now that it helped stop the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians.

I still think that a peaceful solution was posssible, and wasn't actively aimed for enough.

[JackRiddler]

99. kick

k