Counterpunch, June 24, 2004
Clinton, Kerry and Kosovo The Lie of a "Good War" By DIANE JOHNSTONE
For U.S. politicians, if all wars are good, some are better than others. Democrats prefer Clinton wars and Republicans prefer Bush wars. But in the end, they almost unanimously come together to support all wars. The differences concern the choice of official rationale..
To suggest subtle criticism of the Republican war against Iraq, while making it clear that they are by no means opposed to war as such, the 2004 Democratic election campaigners can be expected to glorify the Kosovo war. The prominence of General Wesley Clark in the Democratic camp makes that quite clear.
John Kerry's foreign policy adviser Will Marshall of the Progressive Policy Institute, author of "Democratic Realism: the Third Way", points to the exemplary nature of the 1999 "<U.S.-led> intervention in Kosovo". It was "a policy consciously based on a mix of moral values and security interests with the parallel goals of halting a humanitarian tragedy and ensuring NATO's credibility as an effective force for regional stability".
The "humanitarian" rationale sounds better than the "weapons of mass destruction" or the "links to Al Qaeda" which never existed. But then, the "genocide"from which the NATO war allegedly saved the Albanians of Kosovo never existed either.
But while the WMD deception has been exposed, the founding lie behind the Kosovo war is still widely believed. It effectively distracts from the very existence of the what Marshall calls the "parallel goal"of strengthening NATO. Aside from the crippling material damage inflicted on the targeted country, the Kosovo lie has caused even more irreparable damage to relations between the Serb and Albanian inhabitants of Kosovo.
The situation in that small province of multiethnic Serbia was the result of a long and complex history of conflict, frequently encouraged and exploited by outside powers, notably by the support to Albanian nationalism by the Axis powers in World War II. Each community accused the other of plotting "ethnic cleansing" and even "genocide". But there were reasonable people on both sides willing to work out a compromise solution. The constructive role of outsiders would have been to calm the paranoid tendencies in both communities and support constructive initiatives. Indeed, the Kosovo problem could have been easily managed, and eventually solved, had the Great Powers so desired. But as in the past, the Great Powers exploited and aggravated the ethnic conflicts for their own purposes. In total ignorance of the complex history of the region, sheeplike politicians and media echoed and amplified the most extreme nationalist Albanian propaganda. This provided NATO with its pretext to demonstrate "credibility". The Great Powers have in effect told the Albanians that all their worst accusations against the Serbs were true. Even Albanians know who know better (such as Veton Surroi) are intimidated and silenced by the racist nationalists backed by the United States.
The result is disastrous. Empowered by their official status as unique victims of Serb iniquity, the Albanians of Kosovo -- and especially the youth, raised on a decade of nationalist myth -- can give free rein to their cultivated hatred of the Serbs. Armed Albanian nationalists proceeded to drive the Serbian and gypsy populations out of the province. Those remaining do not dare venture out of their ghettos. Albanians willing to live with the Serbs risk being murdered. Ever since the NATO-led force (KFOR) marched into Kosovo in June 1999, violent persecution of Serbs and Roma has been regularly described as "revenge" -- which in the Albanian tradition is considered the summit of virtuous conduct. Describing the murder of elderly women in their homes or children at play as acts of "revenge" is a way of excusing or even approving the violence.
Last March 17, following the false accusation that Serbs were responsible for the accidental drowning of three Albanian children, organized mobs of Albanians, including many teenagers, rampaged through Kosovo destroying 35 Serbian Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries, some of them artistic gems dating from the fourteenth century. Well over a hundred churches had already been attacked with fire and explosives in the past five years. The objective is quite clearly to erase all historic trace of centuries of Serb presence, the better to assert their claim to an ethnically pure Albanian Kosovo.
The self-satisfaction of the "international community" was severely shaken by the March violence. The occasional KFOR units that tried to protect Serb sites found themselves in armed clashes with Albanian mobs. In the wake of the rampages, Finnish politician Harri Holkeri resigned two months before expiration of his one-year renewable mandate as head of the UN Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) supposed to administer the province. He was the fourth to get out of the job as fast as he could. Apparently on the verge of a nervous breakdown, Holkeri lamented to a press conference that UNMIK has no intelligence service of its own, and had received no prior hint of the March pogroms. In short, the mass of international administrators, military occupation forces and non-governmental agencies have no idea what is going on in the province they are theoretically running. Indicating his awareness that the only role left for UNMIK was that of scapegoat, Holkeri warned of "difficult days ahead". That is a safe prediction.
full: http://www.counterpunch.org/
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