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Fraggin'

By Bill Shunas

Many members of VVAW are supportive of the NATO bombing for what seems to be either or both of two reasons. One is humanitarian concerns. The Serb army is involved in the ethnic cleansing of Kosovar Albanians, which is a nice way of saying murder, rape, pillage and the creation of the misery involved in making hundreds of thousands of refugees. Therefore, no matter what the motive is behind the bombing, if it punishes the Serbs for ethnic cleansing, it should be supported because it might get them to stop.

The second reason given to support bombing seems to be that it will give the Kosovo Liberation Army the time and space to grow strong enough to enable it to liberate Kosovo from Serbia and establish an independent state, which is only just and right.

The problem with these lines of reasoning is that these are not the motivations of NATO. Motive determines policy. Already you can see where NATO actions are not in line with what should have been done if this was a humanitarian operation. There may be some element of punishing Serbia for what it is doing, but there is no element of preventing Serbia from what it is doing.

Maybe 10% of Bill Clinton's heart acted for humanitarian reasons or maybe someone in NATO pushed for this action because that someone believed it was just. Humanitarianism is not, however, the motivation behind U.S./NATO action. Rather, humanitarianism is the propaganda hook by which Clinton and company gain public support for their action. Remember, good propaganda uses truth (like the evident murder, rape and pillage) to encourage support for action that may or may not be aimed at what the public wants - in this case, ending ethnic cleansing.

What are NATO's motives, and within that, what are the U.S. motives? Humanitarianism? To showcase the new NATO? To test weapons? To level down ordnance so that arms manufacturers may profit through resupply? To become the policeman for the New World Order? I suspect a little of each of the above are behind NATO's action with the dominant motive being the policeman role for the New World Order. Deviants like Milosevic represent instability that inhibits the spread of global capitalism. Having said this, I suspect the basic motive is changing. They've bombed for six weeks with little effect. Bombing has increased the Serb will to resist. Like the last eight and a half years of Vietnam, the motive now is to save face.

I think it was evident from the start from NATO's military strategy that these actions had nothing to do with humanitarianism. The bombing would not inhibit or punish ethnic cleansing in a way that the humanitarians wished. To do that would have required troops on the ground. That would have required troop staging before the fact and would have been a tremendous logistical problem. For example, supplies would have to be railroaded through mountains where sappers are supreme. (Maybe if there was a suitable airstrip in which to run supplies, you could have dropped in the 101st to take it with a bloody battle, but no one talked about this.)

Troops on the ground raises all kinds of other questions, but the point is that NATO didn't do it. For their purposes, they don't need troops until after some kind of cease-fire happens. Therefore, with only high altitude bombing, there was no prevention of ethnic cleansing in this picture. Some say the bombing speeded up and increased atrocities, and some say it would have eventually happened anyway. It didn't make any difference who was right with the strategy NATO used.

As for the argument that NATO action will give the KLA time to develop, I suspect that NATO will turn against the KLA. Early peace talks, which included NATO and the Russians, mention disarming the KLA as part of the deal. I foresee a time when peace is declared, and either NATO or the UN or a combination of their troops will be sent to enforce it. These troops will spend more time and energy fighting and/or disarming the KLA than they will with the Serb army. The little time and space created for the KLA created by high altitude bombing will rapidly disappear.

Some of us in VVAW are automatically opposed to U.S. military intervention anywhere in the world. That's not where I'm coming from. Once I even thought sending in the troops was a good thing - in Haiti. It turned an impoverished, starving, brutalized people into an impoverished, starving people with space to breathe - not much good, but something. Intervention in Yugoslavia serves not even that much purpose, and it would be only accidental that the motives of NATO coincided with the best interests of the Kosavars. That accident didn't happen.

One more thing: I think you sometimes have to recognize the role individuals play. I think the Commander-in-Chief was really stupid, and he was being advised by a secretary of state with a vacuum tube between her ears. Bill Clinton seems to like bombing. After being labeled a draft dodger, maybe he felt the need to exude testosterone beyond the girls in the office. So he bombs. He bombs Iraq a couple of times and Sudan and Afghanistan for which he gets some good publicity on the home front . Then against all military advice, Bomber Bill hits Yugoslavia, and now we're all in deep shit.

Bill Shunas is a Vietnam veteran, author and editor of the newspaper for the American Postal Workers Union at AMC-O'Hare. He's a member of VVAW's Chicago Chapter.