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EVIL EMPIRE II - Everyone has read all the celebratory rhetoric about our glorious victory in the war in Kosovo. G21 lost readership for implying that the truth wasn't out yet. Now let's take a closer look at the American Way of war. Here's what Newsweek had to say the in a May edition:
An antiseptic war, fought by pilots flying safely three miles high. It seems almost too good to be true --- and it was. In fact --- as some critics suspected at the time --- the air campaign against the Serb military in Kosovo was largely ineffective. NATO bombs plowed up some fields, blew up hundreds of cars, trucks and decoys, and barely dented Serb artillery and armor. According to a suppressed Air Force report obtained by NEWSWEEK, the number of targets verifiably destroyed was a tiny fraction of those claimed: 14 tanks, not 120; 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220; 20 artillery pieces, not 450. Out of the 744 "confirmed" strikes by NATO pilots during the war, the Air Force investigators, who spent weeks combing Kosovo by helicopter and by foot, found evidence of just 58...The damage report has been buried by top military officers and Pentagon officials, who in interviews with NEWSWEEK over the last three weeks were still glossing over or denying its significance. Why the evasions and dissembling, with the disturbing echoes of the inflated "body counts" of the Vietnam War? All during the Balkan war, Gen. Wesley Clark, the top NATO commander, was under pressure from Washington to produce positive bombing results from politicians who were desperate not to commit ground troops to combat. The Air Force protested that tanks are hard to hit from 15,000 feet, but Clark insisted. Now that the war is long over, neither the generals nor their civilian masters are eager to delve into what really happened. Asked how many Serb tanks and other vehicles were destroyed in Kosovo, General Clark will only answer, "Enough."
In one sense, history is simply repeating itself. Pilots have been exaggerating their "kills" at least since the Battle of Britain in 1940. But this latest distortion could badly mislead future policymakers. Air power was effective in the Kosovo war not against military targets but against civilian ones. Military planners do not like to talk frankly about terror-bombing civilians ("strategic targeting" is the preferred euphemism), but what got Milosevic's attention was turning out the lights in downtown Belgrade. Making the Serb populace suffer by striking power stations --- not "plinking" tanks in the Kosovo countryside ---threatened his hold on power. The Serb dictator was not so much defeated as pushed back into his lair --- for a time. The surgical strike remains a mirage. Even with the best technology, pilots can destroy mobile targets on the ground only by flying low and slow, exposed to ground fire. But NATO didn't want to see pilots killed or captured.
Slobodan Milosevic --- as was implied in much of G21's reporting last year --- got away with his army almost completely intact. What really happened was that "collateral damage" from three miles in the air was supposed to bring down his regime. It didn't. Like Saddam Hussein, he is still in power. He is rebuilding Serbia faster than the NATO allies have rebuilt Kosovo.
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I want you to think about that for a moment, Gentle Reader, because what we are talking about here is CLEARLY making the civilian population the TARGET of these supposedly "surgical" military strikes. What we are talking about here is inflicting death and destruction on families; women, children, old people, in order to achieve military objectives.
That is what the American Way of war is being exposed to the world as being increasingly about, from Iraq to the former Yugoslavia. The American Way of war is about targeting civilians. Period.
You don't have to be a Fellini to understand that a train going into a tunnel is a sexual metaphor, and you don't have to be Kissinger to understand that targeting civilians is a form of terrorism.
Can any American of conscience support this type of foreign policy? We here at The World's Magazine don't think so.
It's a given that Milosevic is a war criminal and worse. We have condemned him here, repeatedly, on our Bottom Ten List for years running. Our correspondent from Belgrade, Dragana Vicanovich, as been a vocal spokeperson against his infamy. But, at the same time, she has been highly eloquent in pointing out that what NATO did in the former Yugoslavia should also be considered a war crime. And she's right.
We have yet to look at the ecological implications of recent American military interventions around the world, and we need to now.
We have yet to review the exposure of our own troops to toxic chemicals and radiation. And we need to now.
How does one define an "Evil Empire?" Ask yourself that question, Gentle Reader.
I would like to suggest that it begins with Big Lies, cover-ups, corruption, and a total disregard for human life.
Should we accept this kind of attitude from the most powerful nation on Earth? G21 doesn't think so.
Is dissidence necessary when faced with the harsh reality of this type of cynicism and brutality? Yes.
RDR RECOMMENDED SITE OF THE DAY: Okay, yeah, we are pushing points of Light these days. You'll love our pals from Ess Eff, The Thin Green Line. Tell them we sent you!
