Wesley Clark on Kosovo: What a Riot!

While Bush deposes despots and spreads democracy in the Middle East, this week in the Wall Street Journal Wesley Clark reminds us how he and Clinton dismantled a democracy and helped create yet another mono-ethnic (Islamic) state, this time in Europe's underbelly — Kosovo.

Not in so many words, of course — Clark merely meant to endorse and outline independence for the former Yugoslavian province. That's why, for those who have not been following recent developments in the region, I offer a translation of Clark's assessment.

Translation: With each passing day, Muslim Albanians grow angrier that there are still some Christian Serbs living in Kosovo.

Translation: It is rather difficult to live with Albanians when they keep trying to kill you.

Translation: In furtherance of the 1999 UN-NATO position that Kosovo would be granted autonomy but never independence, Serbia's avowed aim is to prevent Kosovo from becoming an independent Islamic terrorist doorway into the rest of Europe, which it already is anyway.

My gripe is also largely aesthetic.

I just want some different and more interesting writers in the conservative journals.

The neos dominate the outlets because their parents dominated before them--it has become a dreary legacy, an insular sandbox wherein a "not our kind, dear" mentality dominates . Kristol is the hardest to take--he ought to stay away from TV because he is so insufferably haughty. He and his cousins rode a wave of hubris during the early Balkan involvement, and has little loyalty to the GOP. Mostly he's loyal to his own lofty notions of hegemony. And, yes, he used to love to throw that word around a lot.

Brooks is another, only his specialty is examining his sociological navel, which can be amusing at times. Frum got kicked out of the WH because he put feathering his own literary nest before loyalty to W. Now he's the pro-choice editor of NRO. Oh, goody.

Krauthammer is all part of the same very insular club. In a single week, both he and Brooks came out with articles with the basic premise that evangelicals should not have a chair at the table of political influence because they didn't really have anything to do with GW's re election. It was the increased number of blacks, hispanics, and women who voted.

Well, duh. And duhble duh. Those blacks, women, and hispanics were very likely evangelicals. If Brooks and Kraut ever got outside their little sandbox, they'd know that Hispanics are not Catholic in the numbers they were before. This is the kind of cluelessness I'm sick and tired of--they just wanted to spite the evangelicals. Stupid, stupid, stupid--I don't care what Ivies they went to.

Krauthammer also went stark raving berserk over Gibson's Passion.

Many of the neos happen to be Jewish, which I believe more an outcome of family "legacy" as I mentioned before than anything else. They are pro-Israel, unlike liberal Jews. But they are very disdaining of conservative Christianity unless they happen to be in the driver's seat. It's the same old problem--Baptists are worse than Arabs...I don't what will happen to US support of Israel with this poor leadership here.

I'd like to see more writers like Ann Coulter and even John Gibson take charge of conservative intellectuality--and bring us into a post-neo conservativism.

For actual body count in Kosovo, the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics figures come to 8252 killed & missing in a 2003 press release:

“4019 bodies of victims of the conflict have been recovered ... According to the latest version of the Consolidated List of Missing Persons, 4233 persons are still reported as missing ... 3324 victims would be Albanian and 909 non-Albanians.”

Apply the Albanian/non-Albanian missing ratio to the dead and you get a total of 6480; or around 6,000-7,000 dead Albanians. Not inconsiderable if you are a Kosovar Albanian; especially since the proportional equivalent of that many deaths in the USA's population would be approximately 1.1 million deaths--the equivalent of about 350 9-11 attacks. Using the same methodology, non-Albanian deaths would equal 1772; again a not inconsiderable amount given the numbers involved.

There may be some updated numbers, but at this point they shouldn't change too much; although you never know for sure: "Secret Police in Kosovo Cover-up"

The KLA was a branch of Al-Queda ,

That is oft-asserted, but there is no evidence to support it and lots to refute it; went over that in this post.

I've got well over a year on the ground in Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania plus more years spent on military staffs working Balkans issues. Trust me, everybody is looking for Al Qaeda. And nobody, not the Serbs, not UNMIK, not KFOR, and not the United States government or military has found evidence of Al qaeda operations in Kosovo over the past five and one-half years.

Everyone knows the USA is at war with Al Qaeda. And in the Balkans, everyone want the USA on their side. The Serbs to a very large degree and the Macedonians to a lesser degree scream and shout Al Qaeda every chance they get, but there's never any evidence. In places where Al Qaeda actually exists, there's lots of evidence--dead and injured Americans and other westerners, suicide bombs, captured Al Qaeda members, promotion of Islamist ideology, videotapes of executions, mullahs calling for sharia and imams pushing for jihad. In my military career, I've been in those kind of places as well. Kosovo isn't one of them.

or actual body count in Kosovo, the Office of Missing Persons and Forensics figures come to 8252 killed & missing in a 2003 press release: “4019 bodies of victims of the conflict have been recovered ... According to the latest version of the Consolidated List of Missing Persons, 4233 persons are still reported as missing ... 3324 victims would be Albanian and 909 non-Albanians.”

Those figures mean nothing, because there is no indication of how many of them were civilians and how many died in combat. There was a war going on after all, so dead bodies are to be expected.

Furthermore, would you be able to give a break-down of how many of those people were killed before Nato started bombing, and how many after? I don't think so... If you are trying to make the case that Nato did the right thing by bombing Yugoslavia, you cannot support that thesis with bodies which were killed AFTER the bombing started, instead you need to prove that there was already a significant number of dead civilians before Nato started bombing which caused Nato to get involved on humanitarian grounds.

NATO was concerned about Yugo attacks directed against the civilian population and preparing military measures for the 9 months prior to the bombing campaign. Airstrikes were authorized, but not carried out in Oct 98 and Jan 99. NATO goals, as shown below, were both humanitarian and to prevent regional instability. Here are some excerpts from the chronology:

During 1998, open conflict between Serbian military and police forces and Kosovar Albanian forces resulted in the deaths of over 1,500 Kosovar Albanians and forced 400,000 people from their homes.

[NATO was]concerned about the escalating conflict, its humanitarian consequences, and the risk of it spreading to other countries. President Milosevic's disregard for diplomatic efforts aimed at peacefully resolving the crisis and the destabilising role of militant Kosovar Albanian forces was also of concern.

On 28 May 1998, the North Atlantic Council ... set out NATO's two major objectives with respect to the crisis in Kosovo, namely:

... achieve a peaceful resolution of the crisis by contributing to the response of the international community;

promote stability and security in neighbouring countries ...

On 12 June 1998 the North Atlantic Council ... asked for an assessment of possible further measures that NATO might take with regard to the developing Kosovo Crisis. This led to consideration of a large number of possible military options.

UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1199 (23 Sep 98) ... expressed deep concern about the excessive use of force by Serbian security forces and the Yugoslav army, and called for them to a cease-fire by both parties to the conflict. [UNSCR 1199 noted "the excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Serbian security forces and the Yugoslav Army which have resulted in numerous civilian casualties and ... the displacement of over 230,000 persons from their homes" and called for the Yugos to "cease all action by the security forces affecting the civilian population and order the withdrawal of security units used for civilian repression."]

On 13 October 1998, following a deterioration of the situation, the NATO Council authorised Activation Orders for air strikes. This move was designed to support diplomatic efforts to make the Milosevic regime withdraw forces from Kosovo, cooperate in bringing an end to the violence and facilitate the return of refugees to their homes.

[In early 1999] following a number of acts of provocation on both sides and the use of excessive and disproportionate force by the Serbian Army and Special Police ... NATO [agreed]on 30 January to the use of air strikes if required, and by issuing a warning to both sides in the conflict.

At the end [18 March] of the [Rambouillet] talks, the Kosovar Albanian delegation signed the peace agreement, but the talks broke up without a signature from the Serbian delegation.

Immediately afterwards, Serbian military and police forces stepped up the intensity of their operations against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, moving extra troops and modern tanks into the region, in a clear breach of compliance with the October agreement. Tens of thousands of people began to flee their homes in the face of this systematic offensive.

On 20 March, the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission was withdrawn from the region, having faced obstruction from Serbian forces to the extent that they could no longer continue to fulfil their task.

... on 23 March the order was given to commence air strikes..

Those figures mean nothing, because there is no indication of how many of them were civilians and how many died in combat. There was a war going on after all, so dead bodies are to be expected.

Pretty insightful comment about the war and dead bodies, D-lator. If only we had smart guys like you up on the Joint Staff and filling that "whisper in the ear" chair right behind our rep to the North Atlantic Council.

Sarcasm aside, nobody had any problem with the Serbs taking on the KLA. Everybody understood that in that process there would be accidents and mistaken identity and unintended civilian casualties. The problem with the Serb operations wasn't unintended mistakes resulting in civilian casualties, it was operations deliberately directed against the civilian population.

One of the more interesting testimonies in the trial against Milosevic is that of COL Crosland, the UK attache. He describes how in 1998 he exhorted and encouraged the Serb military to go after the KLA on the roads they controlled, to conduct 24-7 counter-guerilla ops, etc. Instead, he would drive thru Kosovo and find the KLA still on their road-blocks, but Serb forces burning houses, slaughtering livestock, driving civilians into the hills and even bulldozing entire villages to ther ground. In addition to the moral and legal lines the Serbs crossed, the highly predictable practical result was the KLA went from a few hundred hard-core types with marginal popular support in 96-97 to tens of thousands of pissed off farmers, villagers, and townspeople widely supported throughout Kosovo in 98-99.

As for how many of the various casualties were killed as result of legitimate combat versus how many were murdered, we're still getting to the bottom of that.

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