April 14, 1999

No Left Churn

Where have all the liberals gone? As the bombs fell on Yugoslavia, commentators and pundits listened for the sound of anti-war protest from the left and discerned mostly silence. In the middle of last week, CNN's William Schneider pronounced, "There are no anti-war protests on the left; liberals can rally behind a war for human rights."

Schneider was not far wrong. All the rock-'em-sock-'em, in-the-media action had been on the right. In the Republican presidential crankfest, Senator John McCain (representing the go-get-'em position) squared off against Pat Buchanan (championing the nativistic, isolationist, who-cares-what-goes-on-over-there view). And within the opinion-spinning conservative crowd, pundit/editor William Kristol, a pro-NATO interventionist, dueled with pundit/columnist Bob Novak, a spend-more-do-less Pentagonist. After Kristol accused GOP critics of Clinton's Kosovo policy of being blinded by their hatred of the Miscalculator-in-Chief, Novak feistily took umbrage and declared Kristol a scoundrel running from an honest debate.

There's been precious little high-profile discourse of this sort within the Democratic Party. Could it be that all left-of-center pols and commentators have fallen into line for Madeleine Albright's brilliant mistake? (Pre-bombing stats: 45,000 refugees and 2000 dead Kosovars. After two weeks of bombing: 500,000 refugees, presumably many dead Kosovars.) For a fortnight, no Democrats were challenging the Clinton policy that assumed no-cost NATO bombing could bring peace and stability to this conflict-ridden area and provide protection for the Kosovars. When Clinton pushed the button, Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley issued an unforceful four-sentence statement noting he had "serious questions" and worried that "we run the risk of becoming bogged down in a quagmire." After the United States and NATO expanded the bombing campaign, Senator Paul Wellstone, the highest-ranking progressive in the federal government, expressed "alarm" that the target-pickers were selecting sites in downtown Belgrade. But he still supported the bomb-the-Serbs strategy. And Jesse Jackson, once the putative head of whatever might be called the left in the United States, issued a statement a week into the bombing endorsing U.S. intervention in Kosovo and implicitly okaying the bombing. He could not even bring himself to call for an Easter halt to the assault, noting only that "during this high holy season, it may be the moment... [to] end the bombing." (Emphasis added). May? That does not sound like the Jackson of old. Then a week later, Jackson reversed course, calling the bombing a "monumental miscalculation" and proclaiming "we must work harder to seek a peace than we do to expand the war." It was not until last Thursday that an elected Democrat broke ranks. Representative Dennis Kucinich, a fiery populist from Cleveland, sent Clinton a letter urging him to accept Slobodan Milosevic's Orthodox Easter cease-fire offer and to use it as an opportunity to reopen peace talks. But in the letter, Kucinich did not criticize the Clinton-Albright policy. The following day, Kucinich, whose family hails from Croatia, went a step further, promoting his polite disagreement with Clinton in a New York Times Op-Ed article. "What has this bombing accomplished?" he asked. "It has not stopped the ethnic cleansing or the grim procession of hundreds of thousands of refugees." And he added, "I must challenge NATO's justification for its military campaign against civilians.... NATO's actions will destabilize the region for decades to come."

In lefty circles, there have been plenty of folks who think this illegal war -- have you seen a congressional declaration of war, an invocation of the War Powers Act, or an UN resolution authorizing this use of force? -- is a bad move. It's just they're mostly wonks and scribblers, not the sorts to register much on CNN's radar. Days after Clinton said to Milosevic, "So tell me, punk, do you feel lucky?" (the answer: yes!), The Nation magazine, my homebase, ran a marvelous critique of the strikes by Benjamin Schwarz, the former executive editor of The World Policy Journal, and Christopher Layne, a MacArthur Fellow in Peace and International Security Studies. Barbara Ehrenreich, one of the best essayists on the left, has produced eloquent opposition to the strikes. But CNN's Schneider was correct in a limited sense. Until Kucinich, no official Democrat had spoken against the latest in Clinton's mini-wars. That was not because all on the left are hot for "a war for human rights." But since little opposition arose from Democrats and Washington liberals, Clinton, in CNN-land, could be portrayed as getting a pass from the left. If only Milosevic had rolled over so easily.

Damage Done

When civilians are killed in military attacks, the Pentagon describes such horror with the euphemistic term "collateral damage." The collateral damage of NATO's attack extends beyond the bodies of civilians caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. As Vojin Dimitrijevic, a human rights activist in Belgrade, noted on the web site of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, "NATO's air offensive against Yugoslavia has not simply 'degraded' military installations. It has also taken its toll in human lives and is progressively destroying the economic infrastructure of our impoverished country. In the long run, however, the biggest collateral damage is likely to be to the prospects for democracy in Serbia.... I fear that the only durable result of the undeclared war will be a permanent state of emergency." Dimitrijevic argues that "a democratic Serbia is the only real cure for Kosovo and it would also help achieve stability in the Balkans." There has been a nascent movement in Serbia for human rights and democracy. But that movement has received little attention and support from the policymakers of Europe and Washington. "In one night," Dimitrijevic writes, "the NATO air strikes have wiped out ten years of hard work of groups of courageous people in the nongovernmental sector and democratic opposition."

The bombing stirred other repercussions. There was a blustering warning from Russian President Boris Yeltsin that Kosovo could lead to world war. But the Russian defense ministry, in a more concrete protest, said it would stop cooperating with the United States on the Y2K computer problem. This is, of course, a stupid move on the Russians' part. But labeling it as such does not provide much satisfaction. The millennium bug could cause problems within Russia's command and control of nuclear weapons, perhaps trigger false alarms on Russia's nuclear early warning system. The Russians, no doubt, will revive the cooperative program. But with computer chips ticking, a week or two of lost time could have serious consequences.

Another victim of the bombing may be the START 2 treaty, which would decrease significantly the nuclear arms maintained by the United States and Russia. Last week, Aviation Week & Space Technology, the Variety of the military-industrial complex, reported "the West's assault on Russia's historical Serb allies could be the death knell" for the treaty. "Although Russia's military leadership has always supported parliament's ratification of the long-stalled pact," the magazine noted, "a lengthy NATO air campaign in the Balkans might unleash lasting and powerful anti-American sentiment in Russia that could poison not only an already-jaundiced, Communist-dominated parliament, but also forthcoming Russian elections." A frost in U.S.-Russia relations could prompt Russia's security apparatus to bolster secrecy and block access to nuclear facilities. "The ultimate proliferation threat -- loose nukes -- is apt to go up," Matthew Bunn, an arms control expert at Harvard, told the magazine.

War Is Crazy

Leave it to Paul Weyrich to come up with the kookiest analysis of the Kosovo crisis. Last we heard from this religious right leader, he was hoisting the white flag and declaring that social conservatives had lost the culture wars. (His evidence: Bill Clinton's unsurprising impeachment acquittal.) Last week, he outdid himself. "Suppose you were Bill Clinton," Weyrich wrote in a column. "Suppose after all these years you really did still loathe the military. Suppose you were now a lame duck President and you were finally in a position to do something about it. What would you do?" Well, Weyrich has figured out Clinton's master plan to wreck the U.S. military. "First, you would get the military involved in all sorts of non-military activities, which would then be hidden in the military budget.... Second, you would overextend the now downsized military forces.... Third, you would continue to spend money on strategic missile defense initiatives which go nowhere [as opposed to anti-missile systems that could be built]... Fourth, you would take an obsolete Cold War alliance, NATO... [and] seek to expand it.... Fifth, you would look to involve the United States in a civil war somewhere." And, Weyrich adds, "you would do this knowing that some stupid Republicans would be outflanking you and telling the American people you hadn't done enough. That way, in destroying the military you would look moderate and responsible. " By now, the experienced column-consumer would be looking for the I'm-not-insane caveat, a line that would go something like: "Of course, I'm not suggesting Clinton is bombing in Kosovo in order to fulfill a lifelong ambition to undermine the U.S. military." Such a sentence never appears. Weyrich does seem to be saying that Clinton is blasting Serbia as part of his scheme to tear apart the military. And Bill Kristol, John McCain and their ilk are in on it. Quick, tell Henry Hyde and Bob Barr. There's still time for one more impeachment.

What a message the Clinton Administration sent when it announced that the Kosovar refugees it had pledged to take in would be airlifted to either Guam or the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In other words, no way, you're reaching the mainland. After deliberation, the Administration settled on America's toehold in Cuba, daring a repeat of sad history. It was a mere four years ago, that the United States corralled over 50,000 Cuban and Haitian refugees in Guantanamo. Fidel Castro, maintaining the Clinton Administration was not negotiating in good faith on an immigration dispute, had exhorted Cubans who wanted to leave his island to paddle or sail toward Florida. U.S. Coast Guard vessels collected the fleeing Cubans and dumped them in Guantanamo. The refugees sat at the base for months -- as Havana and Washington dickered -- and the scene there was pure misery. The base did not have the resources to handle the crowd. It was hot as hell. People were bored to tears. Several refugees committed suicide. There were riots. Lt. General John Sheehan, the head of the Atlantic Command flew up to Washington and reported the base could not handle this mission. He pleaded with the Administration to come to terms with Castro. Clinton and Castro eventually worked out an immigration deal, and the refugees came to the United States. When a U.S. military official last week was quoted as saying the base was not prepared for the Kosovars, it must have triggered bad flashbacks for those involved in the last refugee bash at Guantanamo.

History Deleted

On the subject of Cuba, readers of last week's column should recall that I was in Havana recently. To get there, I hitched a ride with a charter flight carrying 80 school kids from Baltimore and Washington. They were on their way to play baseball with Cuban children, as part of the exchange that brought the Baltimore Orioles to the island to face a team of Cuban all-stars. The State Department, which had to license the children's trip (thanks to the draconian U.S. ban on travel to Cuba), had courteously provided the kids and their adult escorts a briefing book on Cuba. One section covered the history of U.S.-Cuban relations and contained a handy timeline. The chronology starts with 1958, which was convenient. By beginning then, State Department historians did not have to mention the years of U.S. support in the 1950s for the thuggish government of Fulgencio Batista or the occasions earlier in the century when the United States occupied Cuba. More interesting is the omission of any reference to the assassination attempts against Castro that the United States sponsored in the 1960s or the years of sabotage raids conducted against Cuba by US-backed exiles. The State Department hand-out does refer to the CIA-engineered Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. But it neglects to mention these other CIA actions against Cuba, which are no longer state secrets. The assassination schemes -- in one plot, the CIA used the Mafia to try to poison Castro -- were acknowledged in the 1970s during congressional investigations. The CIA's small war against Castro has been expunged from official history by the State Department. Expect the truth about the Clinton Administration's conduct during the Kosovo conflict to be as elusive in the official accounts to come.