[This commentary by Kim Scipes offers some suggestions on what we can actually DO to shift the direction of policy on this issue. I commend this for your consideration, along with a companion piece by David Bacon, sent separately. Pass these on to others. M.E.] Subject: War Against War-making: one US veteran's perspective April 15, 1999 Dear Folks-- The war in Yugoslavia is a terrible tragedy. Thousands of people have died, and hundreds of thousands have been forcibly removed or have fled in terror. A British reporter who has done some wonderful reporting, Robert Fisk of the Independent, has called it a tragedy "of Biblical proportions." This war will only get worse if we don't stop it. The latest reports that I have heard, as of today, is that US/NATO plans to continue the bombing campaign until the summer "when the weather gets better" for bombing. To me, I want to try to turn this tragedy, this crisis, into an opportunity. I want to find ways to use the Western "leaders" lust for power and turn it back onto itself. I want to try to find ways to not only stop the war, but to try to use this war to stop future wars, and certainly wars by imperialist powers against other nations, other peoples. I'm not sure how to do it, but I have some ideas and I would like other people to try to think along these lines--I think we can figure this out, or move along towards figuring it out: our mission, in my opinion, should be not only to stop this war but any war. Knowing little about Yugoslavia before the US/NATO attacks, I began searching for information--the Internet has been very useful. The best source I've found, as I've stated before, has been ZNet, at <www.zmag.org>. Once you get in there, check out their material on KOSOVO/NATO. They have some excellent analyses posted there--I think the material by Diana Johnstone is excellent, and I recommend everyone to check her work out. (She also has an excellent piece in the winter 1999 issue of "Covert Action Quarterly"--see their site at <www.covertaction.org>.) They also have excellent analyses by Chomsky, Herman, Said, Gunder Frank, and several others. In addition to the material Z Net has posted, they also have a set of links with an amazing number of organizations around the world. Check out, for example, ProtestNet. There are others. If you can take the time to peruse Z Net carefully, you'll find it an incredible resource. Having gone through these things, I have come to a relatively simple--but I think important--conclusion: the rationalization for this war is on extremely flimsy grounds and these cannot hold up to any sustained questioning. Let me elaborate. I am convinced that this war is about "proving" the necessity for, and providing the legitimization of, NATO in the post-Cold War world. Once the Soviet Union collapsed, NATO lost any military rationale for existing. Yet, billions of dollars of war production contracts are at stake, as well as the immense resources that must continue being mobilized to support the military machine that is NATO. Plus, it is an extremely powerful military force in and of itself. But to justify all of this continuing in the face of no obvious enemy, NATO had to come up with a mission for itself that would keep public support--and resources--for itself. I believe the war in the Balkans is "just what the doctor ordered": a reason, a justification, for the continuation of NATO. (There are some who believe that the purpose of the war is to project, ultimately, US power into the Caspian Sea region to "protect" the oil that corporations like Chevron want to extract there. That certainly is very plausible, and may be totally correct. However, I'm skeptical: I think the continued existence of NATO as a military power that can be projected any time and any place is the prime consideration, and thus the ability to project this military power is much more important in and of itself than any particular goals it may or may not achieve.) One of the things that I've become clear in my researching the Balkan situation is that the situation itself has been CONSTRUCTED by governments (particularly the US and it's lap dog the UK, but also by Germany) as requiring a MILITARY solution. I seriously question--and others know much better than I--whether there has really been any effort to solve the crises politically. But I am certain that the US/NATO "intervention" has been constructed as a military situation requiring a military solution FROM THE BEGINNING. The reason I say this is that a military solution REQUIRES a simple, an easy, a clean, an unambiguous situation. No military anywhere likes complexity, ambiquity. After all, they have to get their soldiers to risk their lives to achieve the mission, and to do that, especially in the face of a competent foe, they must imbue their troops with a purpose that morally justifies the risk each soldier takes and legitimizes the destruction that the military creates, especially non-combatant (i.e., civilian) casualties. And ambiquity undermines this. I have been struck from early on how simple the US/NATO position has been: the Serbs are the "bad guys," they're the ones causing problems, they are conducting "ethnic cleansing," etc., etc. All evil has been attributed to the Serbs, and the Serbs only. While there is no doubt that the Serbs have carried out considerable amounts of violence particularly against the ethnic Albanian Kosovars--and I categorically denounce this violence, and the level of Serbian responses to provocation--there is absolutely no question that the Serbs have not been the only ones carrying out violence in the region. In reality, there are NO good guys in the region: they all have been conducting violence against their foes. If you need any examples, here are two of violence against the Serbs: (1) in the early 1990s, somewhere between 100,000 and 800,000 Serbs were forced out of Croatia; and (2) the amount of violence initiated by ethnic Albanians against the Serbs in Kosovo in the 1980s was so great that by 1988--BEFORE Kosovo's autonomy was rescinded by the Yugolavian central government--people were predicting civil war in the country. Again, I am not using these facts to "justify" or "legitimize" Serbian violence, but to point out they are not the only "bad guys" in the region. Once we understand this, that violence has been carried out by all sides in the region, then we automatically recognize that this is NOT a simple situation--on the contrary, this is an amazingly COMPLEX situation. Complex situations cannot be resolved by military force, no matter how powerful: all the military can do is make things worse. In short, US/NATO's entire justification for the war is a lie. Their military activities are not being undertaken for any humanitarian reason--such as protecting the ethnic Albanians from the Serbs--but to justify the existence of NATO. But, this is not justification for NATO in Europe: it is a qualitative expansion of NATO's role, from being confined to the defense of Europe, to accepting NATO's intervention anywhere in the world, at any time, and in any situation. Call it what you want: the "new colonization," imperialism, or what ever. But this expansion is what is being tried, and acceptance by people of the world implies legitimacy. And this means we will see it again and again if we don't stop it now. So, how do we stop it? Like I said, I don't have a lot to say on this--I hope others will join in and create a global dialog that moves our collective efforts forward. But I have some thoughts.... First of all, living in Chicago, in the upper midwest of the US--a fairly conservative, patriotic area where one would expect to see a lot of support for US troops overeas--I'm seeing almost no active public support for the war. No one is talking about it on the subway trains or busses that I've been on, I haven't heard discussions on the street, and I haven't even heard it mentioned it in my workplace. I've seen no indication of any desire that the US get engaged in this war outside of the media or outside of "leading government officials" like President Clinton or Secretary of State Albright. The Chicago Tribune--a fairly conservative and influential newspaper, although not as conservative or as influential as it used to be--has even editorialized that the US Government's "justification" for its efforts have been shaky, and it has suggested (implored?) that the government get its act together as a precondition to continuing this war. One of the Tribune's more popular columnists who appears on page 3 several days a week, John Kass, has even called for the US to end the war, and withdraw from the region. If this is happening in the Tribune, this suggests quite strongly to me that there is considerable doubt about US involvement/leadership in this war. Besides writing a "letter to the editor" (which has not been published yet), I wrote John Kass a letter, and then went to the Tribune's web site <www.chicagotribune.com> where it identifies staff by name and position and provides e-mail addresses. I then sent over 20 people--each who was identified as having a position relating to foreign or national affairs and/or editorial board--a copy of the letter, with a personalized salutation and a "thought you might like to see this" note. My thinking is that these are the people who are making decisons about what is to be covered and how it is to be covered, and how the Tribune will respond editorially, and I want them to know that I am personally opposed to US involvement in the war. In short, I think when activists relate to the media, they usually confine their efforts to things like "letters to the editor" or even "op-ed" pieces, but each media outlet has a "gatekeeper" that can cause even the most eloquent and closely reasoned writing to get thrown in the trash can--when this happens, this not only keeps the public from learning about alternative viewpoints, but it also acts to keep newsmedia STAFF from learning about alternative viewpoints. If the staff doesn't know there are alternative viewpoints, then they will not seek to find them and report them--and they won't end up in the paper. To date, besides a response from Kass himself--albeit criptic--I have received replies from four different people among the staff. Their replies have been positive, if not actually agreeing. My sense from all of this is that there are people in the newsmedia who are sympathetic to stopping the war efforts, but we've got to get information and provide support to them so they can push to get this stuff reported and published. (It also is a good idea to pass on copies of good pieces by journalists to other journalists, so they can see that professionally, they are not alone.) Because of the reach of their media, and the legitimization that is implied by publication/transmission, this is an area that I think we activists ignore to our own peril. I think we've got to engage the straight media, even as we publish as much as posible in alternative media outlets: we cannot afford to ignore the mainstream media so we can focus on alternative media--we must do both! (And especially don't forget community and college papers and/or radio stations!) I think if each activist chose just one mainstream media outlet on which to focus--be it newspaper, radio or TV station--and worked hard to identify possible "allies" on staff, get information/provide articles to that person, try to build an on-going and RESPECTFUL relationship with that person so as to encourage that person to see the activist as a "source," and encourage them to project the anti-war position, I think we would have a major impact on how the public is presented information about the war. And while this wouldn't "guarantee" that the public would reject the war or take any other "desirable" position, it would mean that the government and pro-war forces could not simply create support for the war as they wished. We would not concede this incredibly valuable space to our opponents--from which they could mobilize support for NATO and the war. This goes along with another area that we activists tend to concede--and that is elected politicians. No, they are not going to solve the problems, and they are all indebted to large funders, etc., etc.--believe me, I know the issues--but they are another group that we ignore at our own peril, and especially those in the House and Senate. (Obviously here, I am referring to the situation in the US--if you live/act in another country, you will have to operate accordingly, but even the weakest "democracy" is vulnerable to citizen input.) These men and women are going to have to make decisions as to whether support the war or not, and their collective decisions will have major ramifications on the war, how long it continues or when it ends, etc., etc. We HAVE to let them know that we are opposed to the war, that we want them to know it, and that we care enough to watch their positon they take regarding it. (Ideally, we all have strong community-based organzations that can effectively "punish" those that disagree with our position, but even where this isn't the case, they do get concerned when they get even a modicum of pressure--after all, without our votes in their next election--they are just another rich bum that has to get a real job and work 9-5!) These efforts to influence elected politicians will be helped tremendously if they see local newspapers--especially large, city-based morning newspapers with large subscriber bases--printing alternative propositions to the war, and especially if we can get the newsmedia outlets to editorialize against the war. It will also help if we can make sure the politicians see especially published statements by other politicians who condemn the war--like everybody else, politicians are especially susceptible to what their peer group does, especially if they don't have a "hard and firm" position themselves. OK. I've gone on and on. Please forgive me for this, and forgive crosspostings of this that you may receive--I hope this posting gets distributed extremely widely. Please feel free to republish and distribute widely. I hope folks will build on this, so we can stop this war. But I can't help but think of the millions of Vietnamese, the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and hundreds of thousands of Yugoslav citizens--and the hundreds of thousands of US troops that were killed, maimed, wounded or committed suicide after returning from their particular war--who would all be alive or at least better off if we (in all of our respective countries) were able to stop the wars before the US invaded. I believe the time to act is now. I believe that US/NATO have overstretched, and that they are vulnerable if we will hit them, not only for this war but for any war. We cannot refuse to act because we don't have the information--if nothing else, the internet is an incredible resource that allows us to not be limited to official positions or published editorials. We have the connections, the networks, and the information that allows us to take the initiative on this issue. This war CAN be stopped--and sooner rather than later. The only question is: do we have the will to stop this war? If not now, when? If not me, who? People's lives depend on our answers. In solidarity and in the on-going struggle for peace-- Kim Scipes US Marine Corps, 1969-1973
