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<A HREF="aol://5863:126/alt.conspiracy:510612">Historians Note Flaws in
President's Speech</A>
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Subject: Historians Note Flaws in President's Speech
From: "Brigitte Stewart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, Mar 28, 1999 9:22 AM
Message-id: <7dlojh$q66$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subj: Historians Note Flaws in President's Speech
Date: 3/28/99 11:28:44 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Activist Mailing List)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Activist Mailing List)
Activist Mailing List - http://users.westnet.gr/~cgian/
Historians Note Flaws in President's Speech
By ETHAN BRONNER (New York Times)
About a dozen historians and Balkan specialists consulted
Thursday said that President Clinton's use of history in justifying
the decision to bomb Serbia to the American people was imprecise and
misleading.
The scholars, most of whom said they approved of the decision itself,
were unhappy with the speech's allusions to World Wars I and II, the
most destructive conflicts of modern history, to explain what is,
after all, limited U.S. military involvement in a limited conflict.
"I have trouble equating Bosnia or Kosovo with World War I and II,"
said Bruce Russett, a professor of international relations at Yale
University. "He is overstating the stakes. World War II brings to
mind the landing at Normandy. He clearly doesn't want to do that."
Many specialists were also struck by Clinton's assertion in his
Wednesday speech that, earlier in this decade, "many people believed
nothing could be done to end the bloodshed in Bosnia." They said the
president and his aides were among those people.
"I was amazed," remarked Raymond Tanter, professor of political
science at the University of Michigan. "President Clinton was of the
mind that because of ancient hatreds it was not possible to do much
about the situation in Bosnia. He now has moved away from that
position.
"It is an irony that the president doesn't include himself in the
camp of those who were part of the problem."
Tanter and others acknowledged, however, that the task of explaining
U.S. military involvement in Serbia was unenviably complex.
"President Clinton has a very difficult job in persuading the
American people that this is a necessary risk to take," said Fritz
Stern, professor emeritus of history and former provost of Columbia
University.
"He has been honest in saying that it is a risk. And he has been
defending it in part by historical explanation to a public that is
increasingly unhistorical. I don't criticize him for that. But as the
past itself has shown, any effort at facile historical analogy may do
us more harm than good."
The president began his speech by asserting that the United States
was acting "to protect thousands of innocent people in Kosovo from a
mounting military offensive," to which no expert queried had any
objection.
Their uneasiness set in when he added that the United States needed
"to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice
before in this century with catastrophic results."
The feeling was compounded when Clinton said of Kosovo, "All the
ingredients for a major war are there," and added: "Sarajevo, the
capital of neighboring Bosnia, is where World War I began. World War
II and the Holocaust engulfed this region."
The historians said that there was nothing factually inaccurate in
those words but that they found their implications troubling. Clinton
seemed to be suggesting, they said, that, when left alone, the Balkans
explode. Yet, historically, it has been foreign involvement that has
escalated conflicts in this region.
"The situations really don't seem analogous to me," remarked John
Lewis Gaddis, a historian at Yale, comparing the current conflict in
Kosovo and the two World Wars. "In both of the earlier situations, the
problems were created by involvement of great powers --
Austria-Hungary and Nazi Germany. This time it is not violence from a
great power but from a small power that fears becoming smaller. And by
taking this step we have alienated a great power -- Russia.
"Part of the problem is that we are talking about a very limited
military response," he said. "To draw a link with the origins of two
world wars is a great oversimplification of history."
Bernd Fischer, a professor of history at Indiana University, Fort
Wayne, said he was also troubled that in describing the recent
deterioration of the situation in Kosovo, Clinton did not mention the
formation early last year of the Kosovo Liberation Army. That is the
ethnic Albanian guerrilla group that has carried out attacks against
the forces led by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
"The president spoke only about peaceful resistance by the Kosovars,
but some elements of Kosovo gave up the notion of peaceful
resistance, and Slobodan Milosevic's serious acts of repression began
in conjunction with the work of the KLA," Fischer said.
Richard Ullman, a professor of international affairs at Princeton,
said Clinton had explained U.S. military involvement to the public in
two ways. First, the president said the conflict in Kosovo was in
danger of spreading dangerously into a wider war, an argument Ullman
did not find very convincing. Second, Clinton spoke of American moral
revulsion, which Ullman accepted but acknowledged to be the more
difficult point to make to the public.
"Americans might reasonably say that, deplorable though the Serb
behavior in Kosovo has been, we can't go around the world fixing
these situations, and so the Albanians have to make peace with the
Serbs any way they can," he said.
"Nonetheless, I wish the president had emphasized the need to stop
the repression. In 1999, we have come far enough to regard that sort
of behavior as reprehensible, and the sending of Western armed forces
to protect the abused people of Kosovo is an appropriate response."
A number of the scholars speculated as to why Clinton had agreed to
use military force now, whereas in previous conflicts in the region he
had hesitated. Some thought him more comfortable with the military
now; others suggested that he had finally accepted that there could be
no other approach with Milosevic.
David Phillips, a professor of preventive diplomacy at Columbia, said
that he believed Clinton simply had seen the situation for what it
was, a moral outrage.
"The policy today is motivated by a clear sense of right and wrong,"
he said. "Early in the administration, there was not the same level of
experience navigating complicated foreign policy interests. Today, at
the end of the second administration, the moral compass prevails."
-----
Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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