Spring arrived suddenly in the Champlain Valley last weekend. Crocuses and hyacinths resolutely pushed green shoots through soil still damp from melting snow. Church Street was thronged with people, who having sat indoors for months, needed to do nothing more than stroll in the sun. Buskers and food carts were out; the more enterprising restaurant managers hurried tables out to the street.
On the block between Bank and Cherry streets, the peace and justice demonstrators lined up with their placards facing the sun. Some placards were new, some were recently revised, “Yugoslavia” having been squeezed in next to “Iraq” above the plea for an end to sanctions and bombing. The Saturday demonstration is a regular event, but passers-by seem less indifferent now that spring is here. Instead of hurrying past, many stop to take a fact sheet and chat for a moment.
Perhaps it’s not just the weather, something else seems to be happening. For the past 10 days, I’ve been talking to people from across the political spectrum about Kosovo. The remarkable thing about these conversations is that they are free of predictable reactions I’ve come to expect in discussions about American military intervention. Everyone seems confused and everyone seems confused for the same reasons. Here are the common themes:
1 – No one wants to stand by while atrocities are committed. Everyone agrees Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs are conducting a war of terror against the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. This century has seen too much killing, from murder to massacre to genocide and no one wants to be complicit with silence and idleness as it begins to happen again.
2 – NATO bombing is not improving the situation. From pacifists who oppose all bombing on moral grounds to militarists who oppose this bombing for lack of strategic objective, everyone seems to recognize that NATO bombing has made a bad situation worse. Like a theater company responding on cue, Serb forces escalated their terror campaign as soon as the bombing started and their tools – gun and knife and flame – cannot be touched by cruise missiles. Now refugees stream across every border. By not bringing their air defenses on line, the Serbs give NATO planes less to attack; by using air defenses sparingly, they can hope to pick off a plane here and a plane there and those planes go down with a crash that is deafening in Washington and Brussels. To stop bombing will hand a victory to Milosevic; to continue bombing will result in the death of Serb civilians and little military advantage. Terence MacSwiney was right when he said, “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer.” The Serbs have learned that well, perhaps from Iraq.
3 – Political instability is spreading. Analysts worry that Albania and Macedonia will be destabilized, a crisis in Montenegro is all but assured. Russia is making bad noises, embassies are under attack, stress fractures are starting to appear in NATO. As one person said to me: “Failure to bomb might have destroyed NATO, now it seems bombing may destroy NATO.”
4 – No one wants to send in ground troops. The terrain is difficult and troops will not know who is friend and who is foe. If we go in, we’ll be years getting out. Just dealing with the refugee situation created this week will take the better part of the next decade.
Post-modern terror warfare has brought all points of view along the political spectrum to the same conclusion. We do not know what to do.
Post-Modern Terror Warfare
Spring arrived suddenly in the Champlain Valley last weekend. Crocuses and hyacinths resolutely pushed green shoots through soil still damp from melting snow. Church Street was thronged with people, who having sat indoors for months, needed to do nothing more than stroll in the sun. Buskers and food carts were out; the more enterprising restaurant managers hurried tables out to the street.
On the block between Bank and Cherry streets, the peace and justice demonstrators lined up with their placards facing the sun. Some placards were new, some were recently revised, “Yugoslavia” having been squeezed in next to “Iraq” above the plea for an end to sanctions and bombing. The Saturday demonstration is a regular event, but passers-by seem less indifferent now that spring is here. Instead of hurrying past, many stop to take a fact sheet and chat for a moment.
Perhaps it’s not just the weather, something else seems to be happening. For the past 10 days, I’ve been talking to people from across the political spectrum about Kosovo. The remarkable thing about these conversations is that they are free of predictable reactions I’ve come to expect in discussions about American military intervention. Everyone seems confused and everyone seems confused for the same reasons. Here are the common themes:
1 – No one wants to stand by while atrocities are committed. Everyone agrees Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbs are conducting a war of terror against the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. This century has seen too much killing, from murder to massacre to genocide and no one wants to be complicit with silence and idleness as it begins to happen again.
2 – NATO bombing is not improving the situation. From pacifists who oppose all bombing on moral grounds to militarists who oppose this bombing for lack of strategic objective, everyone seems to recognize that NATO bombing has made a bad situation worse. Like a theater company responding on cue, Serb forces escalated their terror campaign as soon as the bombing started and their tools – gun and knife and flame – cannot be touched by cruise missiles. Now refugees stream across every border. By not bringing their air defenses on line, the Serbs give NATO planes less to attack; by using air defenses sparingly, they can hope to pick off a plane here and a plane there and those planes go down with a crash that is deafening in Washington and Brussels. To stop bombing will hand a victory to Milosevic; to continue bombing will result in the death of Serb civilians and little military advantage. Terence MacSwiney was right when he said, “It is not those who can inflict the most, but those that can suffer the most who will conquer.” The Serbs have learned that well, perhaps from Iraq.
3 – Political instability is spreading. Analysts worry that Albania and Macedonia will be destabilized, a crisis in Montenegro is all but assured. Russia is making bad noises, embassies are under attack, stress fractures are starting to appear in NATO. As one person said to me: “Failure to bomb might have destroyed NATO, now it seems bombing may destroy NATO.”
4 – No one wants to send in ground troops. The terrain is difficult and troops will not know who is friend and who is foe. If we go in, we’ll be years getting out. Just dealing with the refugee situation created this week will take the better part of the next decade.
Post-modern terror warfare has brought all points of view along the political spectrum to the same conclusion. We do not know what to do.