------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 07 May 1999 18:02:13 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: UPSTAGED BY JESSE JACKSON THE TORONTO SUN Tuesday, May 4, 1999 UPSTAGED BY JESSE JACKSON Despite Jackson's success and President Slobodan Milosevic's peace feelers seeking terms other than those the West tried to impose at Rambouillet, the U.S. has recommitted to this illegal, immoral and undeclared war. By Michael Harris OTTAWA -- With Jesse Jackson playing the president, and Bill Clinton Dr. Strangelove, the undeclared war in Yugoslavia just got curiouser and curiouser -- Alice in Wonderland with bombs and beau gestes. How strange that the man who rallied black America behind the president during Clinton's impeachment agonies should so stunningly upstage Bubba in the current circumstances. How telling that the man who brought home the three U.S. soldiers should be rewarded for his moral leadership by Clinton's refusal to give him the one thing he asked for -- a single day's stop to the cold-blooded destruction of Yugoslavia. From NATO's, i.e., Clinton's perspective, the most humiliating thing about Rev. Jackson's diplomatic coup is that it brought results. The alliance has merely added to the body count of both Serbians and Kosovar Albanians. Jackson accomplished with words what a thousand NATO warplanes have made harder and harder to achieve with their "smart" bombs and dumb strategy. Despite Jackson's success and President Slobodan Milosevic's peace feelers on any terms other than the shotgun wedding the West tried to impose at Rambouillet, France, America has recommitted to this illegal, immoral and undeclared war. U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen said that not only will NATO pursue the bombing of this sovereign nation and UN member that began on March 24, it will intensify the carnage. War crimes I guess he meant what he said. Balancing Milosevic's alleged atrocities, NATO's list of war crimes is growing by the air raid. First it was a convoy of refugees mistaken for the "enemy," then a passenger train that somehow found itself in an F-18's bomb sites, next it was journalists who got the death penalty for putting out the news as they saw it, and most recently it was 47 civilians who died outside Luzane in Kosovo because one of our bombs wasn't smart enough to know the difference between a tank and a bus. Having brazenly violated Article 51 of the UN Charter, America is feeling its oats. Unbelievably, the once defensive alliance turned into a motorcycle gang by Clinton is laying plans to enforce an embargo of Yugoslavia-bound oil, even though the enterprise is clearly another illegal act. Worse, the general in charge of NATO's technocide against the Serbs, (not Milosevic the dictator and brute, but against the Serbs) blurted out recently that NATO should bomb any Russian ships that venture into the Mediterranean Sea with oil for Belgrade! A White House flack tried to slough off Wesley Clark's musings by saying the general needed sleep. What he needs is a new assignment that would include a hospital stay until he gets better. The one thing NATO has on its side, besides enough firepower to wipe out an enemy who is fighting back with the equivalent of sling shots, is the short attention span of North American audiences. When the war began, it was big news if a civilian died in Yugoslavia as a result of NATO bombing. Now 47 die and that makes Page 12, while Page 1 is devoted to three well-treated and released U.S. prisoners of war. I will never understand why a life lost to violence in a distant country is any less important than a life lost at Columbine High, but it is. In a way, I guess that's the problem. A failure of the imagination and the heart. Which sums up Canada's role in this sorry mess. We have become the whited sepulchres of the international community -- a country historically committed to peacekeeping, but not averse to blowing up innocent civilians from the air when our American masters dip a little too deeply into the Viagra and need a few bum boys to legitimize an enterprise that the UN never would. It's pathetic to see our foreign affairs minister in Mozambique for mutual backslapping over last year's treaty banning land mines, while Canadian pilots are wiping out human life in Yugoslavia as though it were all a video game. Is it any wonder the Russians weren't anxious to return phone calls from the Canadian government, which wanted to talk peace while it was helping to turn Yugoslavia into a 24-hour fly-through where death is the only thing on the menu? Axworthy disgusting Equally disgusting is Axworthy's heartfelt hope the United Nations can broker a diplomatic solution to the war in Yugoslavia, provided, of course, Annan can help implement the points NATO is "proposing." Not proposing, Lloyd, no, nor even dictating. Brutally imposing. In the old Canada, our foreign minister would be actively aiding and abetting a peace settlement by doing what we do best, talking belligerent people into a peaceful settlement that we would help police. Now we merely wish others good luck in that noble enterprise, while we charge up San Juan Hill with our belligerent buddies to the south. I wonder, have our prime minister and his paper warriors in Ottawa considered what will happen in Yugoslavia if the Serbs haven't given up by the time all the bridges, TV stations, factories and roads are blown up? At 600 sorties a day and the weather improving, the pedigree of our targets will surely have to change. What next? Subversive day-care centres, hospitals, or just a massive land invasion to finally finish the job with a little ethnic cleansing of our own? Since Viktor Chernomyrdin has come to Washington with the framework of a peace plan, the United States would be wise to stop the bombing until it is satisfied a solution can't be reached. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't like to die while the big cheeses busy themselves dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Besides, it's the least Bubba could do for Jackson, who may have saved his seedy presidency.
[PEN-L:6562] (Fwd) UPSTAGED BY JESSE JACKSON
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Sun, 9 May 1999 21:46:39 -0500