[PEN-L:6697] (Fwd) MISTAKES OF THE BLITZ ARE BEING REPEATED

[ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224]]

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Date sent:              Tue, 11 May 1999 12:04:22 -0700
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From:                   Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:                MISTAKES OF THE BLITZ ARE BEING REPEATED

The Daily Telegraph                                             Tuesday 11 May 1999

MISTAKES OF THE BLITZ ARE BEING REPEATED

        By John Keegan, Defence Editor 

        The Defence Secretary, George Robertson, was right to 
reprove me for suggesting that Nato's Supreme Allied Commander 
should be replaced. A political leader must stand by his military 
men. 
        Nevertheless, the word is that Gen Wesley Clark is not up to 
the job. He certainly gives no impression of leadership, as Gen 
Norman Schwarzkopf so strikingly did during the Gulf war. 
Meanwhile, President Milosevic's stature grows by the day. Given 
the way Nato has decided to run this war, that is not surprising. 
Unsuccessful air wars make the target country and its leader look 
good, while making whoever is launching the bombs look 
bumbling, if not bullying.
        That was certainly the effect of Germany's bombing campaign 
against Britain in 1940, with which analogies can increasingly be 
drawn. History does sometimes repeat itself, if the same factors 
apply. The factor of geographical inaccessibility was as important to 
Mr Churchill's survival in 1940 as it is to Milosevic's today.
        The Battle of Britain rightly remains a national epic. It was, 
moreover, a genuine victory, in which the RAF defeated the 
Luftwaffe, so successfully defending this country against German 
invasion. It is important, however, to remember what the RAF was 
defending. Its own airfields, of course, and the fighting power of 
the Royal Navy. Yet in the last resort it was defending the English 
Channel. As long as the RAF's fighters flew over the Channel, the 
Germans dared not launch their enormous army on to the waves.
        The more the Germans bombed, moreover, the worse they 
made themselves look in the eyes of neutrals, particularly in 
American eyes, and the better - because braver - they made the 
British look. The better they made Mr Churchill look also. He was 
not, in 1940, a world figure, merely a recently appointed Prime 
Minister in a precarious position. It was his magnificent articulation 
of Britain's determination to resist the Luftwaffe's bombing which 
both inspired his own people to do so and won him moral 
superiority over his much stronger political opponent. Yet it was in 
Britain's inaccessibility that his real superiority lay.
        Milosevic also enjoys geographical inaccessibility. It is provided 
not by the sea, for Serbia is landlocked, but by the Balkan 
mountains. Yet, by Nato's analysis, the mountains are equivalent to 
a sea: a sea of ambush places, natural anti-tank obstacles, fire traps 
and every other sort of terrain favourable to Serb defence and 
unfavourable to Nato attack. 
        So Nato, in its understandable anxiety to check Serb aggression 
against Kosovo's Albanians, decided to bomb. It is still bombing 
and still insisting that bombing will break the will of Milosevic and 
the Serbs, without the necessity to commit ground troops. This 
seems, again by analogy with 1940, a faulty analysis.
        The English Channel was only an obstacle to the German army 
as long as it was defended by the RAF. Had the RAF been beaten, 
the military problem would have become equivalent to no more 
than "a large river crossing", as the plan for Operation Sealion put 
it. Whatever Nato's warplanes do, however, the Balkan mountains 
will remain a formidable obstacle to any invader who shrinks from 
incurring casualties.
        So, in a sense, Milosevic and the Serbs have to do nothing. 
They are in an even stronger position than the British in 1940. They 
do not have to maintain an active defence, as the RAF did. Their 
mountains are an instrument of effective passive defence and will 
remain so as long as Nato prepares no ground offensive. What 
makes everything more lamentable is that a thoroughly bad man is 
being transformed, in public view, into a symbol of stern, even 
admirable national resistance, by the exercise of the very means that 
was supposed to topple him from power.
        Should Nato's air war drag indecisively on, and more of its 
bombs go astray, a time will come when phrases like "We can take 
it", "We shall fight them in the hills" and perhaps even "We shall 
never surrender" will begin to issue from Belgrade. They will sound 
fine to the Serbs, and perhaps to a wider audience. Who on Nato's 
side can speak up with a voice of real leadership?