Defending the General

I don't know whether Gen. Wesley Clark is qualified to be president, but Peter J. Boyer's profile in this week's New Yorker—which paints him as scarily unqualified—is an unfair portrait as well as a misleading, occasionally inaccurate précis of the 1999 Kosovo war and Clark's role in commanding it.

Boyer relies heavily on some of Clark's fellow retired Army generals who clearly despise him. The gist of their critique, as Boyer summarizes, is that Clark, while a brilliant analyst, "had a certainty about the rightness of his views which led to conflicts with his colleagues and, sometimes, his superiors."

I have met a fair number of generals, and I can't think of a single one who did not have "a certainty about the rightness of his views." There may have been a couple of one-star generals who expressed this certainty in a modest tone, but above that rank—and Clark retired as a four-star general—their confidence easily became belligerent if their opinions were challenged.

Boyer acknowledges that Clark alienated some generals simply because he rubbed them the wrong way. First in his class at West Point, a Rhodes Scholar, an officer who felt at ease as a White House fellow and as a high-level Pentagon planning analyst—Clark's résumé did not fit many traditionalist officers' view of a warrior. However, Clark's most outspoken critics disliked him because of his views and actions during Kosovo, and that is where Boyer misreads both content and context.

Kosovo was the United States' first post-Cold War experiment in "humanitarian intervention." Clark, who was the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (and who, before that, had been a military aide in the Dayton negotiations over Bosnia), supported going to war in order to protect the Kosovars from the savagery of Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had no taste for interventions of practically any sort, opposed it.

For instance, he portrays Clark as not only maneuvering around the chiefs in his advocacy, but also as drawing a lackadaisical Clinton White House—distracted by domestic troubles over Monica Lewinsky—into war. In fact, however, Clinton may have been distracted somewhat, but Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was not. Albright was a fiery supporter of military intervention in the Balkans (many have written of the famous meeting where she appalled the reticent chiefs by saying, "What good are all these fine troops you keep telling us about if we can't use them?"). Albright was the prime mover; many observers at the time—supporters and critics alike—called it "Madeleine's war." And her prime collaborator, Richard Holbrooke, Clinton's envoy to Bosnia, also enjoyed direct access to the president.

So it is more than a bit startling to read, in Boyer's article, the following sentence: "Clark's view, which had the support of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Holbrooke, prevailed." It would be more apt to say, "Albright's view, which had the support of Holbrooke and Clark, prevailed." She welcomed Clark's endorsement, but she didn't need it to make her argument or to win it.

Boyer also distorts the war itself, mischaracterizing it as a senseless adventure. He tacitly takes the chiefs' position on this, without noting that many others besides Clark (and, for that matter, Albright and Holbrooke) held otherwise. Thousands of Bosnians were dying in a war that U.S. military power could have ended. Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans had recently been massacred in a civil war to which neither the United States nor the United Nations raised a finger, much less a fighter plane, in protest. Many of those pushing for intervention—and they included not just Clark but some of the most liberal, customarily antiwar politicians and columnists—wanted above all to avert another massacre. A case could be made—and the chiefs made it—that the United States shouldn't get involved in such messes where our own national security wasn't threatened. But it is false to attribute Clark's passionate lobbying, as Boyer pretty much does, to mere stubbornness.

Boyer is also off base when he likens the Kosovo conflict to George W. Bush's war in Iraq. He notes that Clark recently criticized Bush for invading Iraq without U.N. approval, yet observes that the Kosovo war was also initiated without the Security Council's permission. The bypassing of the United Nations that marked the onset of Kosovo, he writes, "did not seem entirely dissimilar from the prewar maneuverings regarding Iraq," when Bush bypassed the U.N. and resorted to a "coalition of the willing."

In fact, the two wars—both their beginnings and their conduct—were extremely dissimilar. True, when Clinton realized Russia and China would veto a resolution calling for intervention, he backed away from the Security Council. However, he did not subsequently piece together a paltry, handpicked caricature of a coalition, as Bush did for the war in Iraq. Instead, he went through another established international organization—NATO.

From that point on, the aim of the war was not only to beat back Milosevic, but also to hold together the Atlantic Alliance, which was, after all, fighting the first war of its 50-year history. Compromises had to be made in military tactics in order to achieve this political objective—and that, too, was anathema to U.S. officers.

Air Force Gen. Michael Short, who presented Clark with a plan involving a classically massive set of opening-day airstrikes, was "dismayed," Boyer writes, when Clark didn't approve the plan on the grounds that NATO's member nations would never approve it.

Boyer, on balance, takes Short's side on this tale. Under Clark's command, Boyer laments, the United States "could only wage war by committee; the process was so unwieldy that it became, to future American Defense officials, an object lesson in how not to fight a war."

Maybe. But is there much doubt today that Clark was correct in this choice? Does anyone care to argue that intervening in Kosovo was a bad idea, that the Western alliance wasn't (at least for a brief spell) strengthened as a result, or that the war was unsuccessful? Milosevic surrendered, was captured, and is standing trial for war crimes in a court of international law—which is more than can be said of Saddam Hussein. The Serbian defeat was total, unchallenged, and internationally imposed, which may explain why the (truly multinational) postwar peacekeeping forces have suffered minimal casualties in the intervening years.

Clark was fired by Secretary of Defense William Cohen shortly after the war ended—and, just to make sure Clark didn't try to make an end-run, the chiefs leaked the firing to the Washington Post. The reasons for his dismissal seem clear: Clark had pushed a policy that Cohen and the chiefs had opposed (and, even after the war, continued to oppose); he went around them in his advocacy; he was too close, for the chiefs' taste, to Clinton (in signing Clark's release papers, Clinton was led to believe the move was a normal succession, not a dismissal); and, toward the end of the war, he pushed for a ground-invasion option that none of the Pentagon's top officials supported in the slightest.

Clearly, Clark made mistakes. Like many, he thought that merely threatening Milosevic with airstrikes would make him back down; after that didn't work, he thought three nights of bombing would crack his resistance. (The bombing campaign lasted 11 weeks.) But Clark was far from alone in this miscalculation; Clinton and Albright shared it. Clark also delivered a disastrous press briefing in the middle of the war (prompting Cohen to order him, "Get your f***ing face off the TV, no more briefings, period"). But the briefing (which I remember well and reported on at the time) was a disaster because Clark committed truth: He admitted, in a roundabout way, that the air war wasn't going well; he was impolitic, but he was right.

The fact that Cohen hated Clark, shuddered at the sight of him according to Boyer's article, should cause no discomfort to any prospective voter today. Cohen posted the least distinctive record of any secretary of defense in modern memory; he was widely seen as a milquetoast at the time and left no legacy to speak of.

Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is another matter. Shelton has recently and famously said, in a public forum, that Clark's firing "had to do with integrity and character issues," adding that, for that reason, "Wes won't get my vote." Shelton has since refused to elaborate. If there's a story behind his claim, he should tell it, in the interests of the country. If there isn't, he should apologize. Boyer obviously talked with him in the course of researching the story, but the case against Clark—while there very well may be one—remains unmade.

JUSTIN RAIMONDO: IS SELF-DEFENSE A 'WAR CRIME'?

The Bytyqi brothers were members of the "Atlantic Brigade," a band of some 400 Albanian-Americans (and others) who were recruited from abroad to fight in the Kosovo war on the side of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). In spite of US laws forbidding such activities, the Atlantic Brigadeers recruited, raised money, and trained in the United States, and then fought at the KLA's side. The three New York-based brothers arrived in Kosovo just as the war was beginning to wind down. They promptly disappeared without a trace v until police disinterred their bodies from a mass grave outside a Serbian special forces training camp. The bodies were found not only with their New York drivers licenses in their pockets, but also with Serbian court papers indicating that they had been arrested on June 27 and jailed for trying to infiltrate the country. Gee, what a fortunate coincidence!

IN HIGH DUDGEON

Incredibly, these KLA soldiers are being touted as helpless victims of Milosevic's "war crimes." The discovery of these bodies has the US chief of mission in Yugoslavia, William Montgomery, in high dudgeon: he told the Washington Post that the Americans are peeved that the Yugoslavs didn't welcome the Bytyqi terrorist tag-team into the country with open arms: "We need to get real information from the Yugoslav authorities. We are going to insist they do a full investigation."

A VISIT TO MOTHER

But surely Mr. Montgomery doesn't want a full investigation, since that would have to mean an investigation of the true nature and sponsorship of the "Atlantic Brigade," and a determined inquiry into just what the brothers Bytyqi were doing in Yugoslavia, 17 days after the Kosovo war officially ended. He needn't worry: the "mainstream" media are quite content to broadcast the official story: that the three brothers had gone to visit their long-lost mother, and, in the midst of an act of charity v escorting 3 male Gypsies from their mother's neighborhood to safety in Serbia v were detained and killed by those awful Serbian racists.

THOSE WONDERFUL BOYS

The New York Times piece is pure agitprop, depicting the Bytyqis as noble idealists who gave up a comfortable life in a beach town in the posh Long Island Hamptons for a cause greater than themselves. These were "wonderful" boys, we are told, and their father extols their vaunted heroism, saying "they gave up the couch" and an easy life to liberate their people. Embedded in the midst these extravagant panegyrics is a key nugget of information: INTO THE MURK

"They were," the Times informs us, "apparently not engaged in combat when they were captured, witnesses and investigators said." Who are these witnesses? The Times doesn't elaborate, and so we have to turn to the International Herald Tribune's version of the story. Another Bytyqi brother, Fatos, who now lives in Kosovo, confesses that "he initially lied about his brothers' war activities, but later explained that he had been 'advised' not to discuss their membership in the Atlantic Brigade." Young Fatos blurts out that, as far as he knew, his brothers were on their way to meet up with some buddies from the Atlantic Brigade in Pristina. The last anyone saw of them, they were heading north in a Volkswagon. At this point, a witness v Miroslav Mitrovic, one of the Gypsies supposedly along for the ride v enters the picture, proffered by the Belgrade-based "Humanitarian Law Center."

THE 'HUMANITARIAN' WITH A GUILLOTINE

Anything that the "Humanitarian Law Center" has to say is suspect, since the HLC is the creature of Nastasa Kandic, who has made a career out of accusing her own people of being incorrigible murderers. Kandic v the perfect incarnation of what Isabel Paterson, the Old Right author of the 1940s, called "the humanitarian with a guillotine. She is currently suing the Serbian Socialist Party for "hate speech" and demanding that they be banned. Heavily subsidized by interventionist sugar-daddy George Soros, Kandic is a weird, isolated figure in Serbian politics, one of the few who openly sided with NATO during the bombing.

SABOTEUR WITH A PASSPORT?

Kandic's "witness" isn't proving all that helpful, for we are told by the Tribune that "there is a dispute between Fatos and Mr. Mitrovic over why the brothers did not have their U.S. passports with them on the journey." Although we are not told the nature of this dispute, it isn't hard to fathom: for since when does a covert agent on an important military mission carry his passport? According the family lawyer, the brothers were stopped by Serbian police in the village of Merdare, well over the border with Kosovo. What would 3 members of the Atlantic Brigade be doing on the wrong side of the border (even if there's some truth to the story that they were merely acting as a military escort for the Gypsies)? The obvious conclusion is that this incursion was a precursor of the wave of KLA terrorism that erupted in the border zone last year, as yet another "liberation army" sprang up, this time in southern Serbia.

BRIBERY AS TRUTH SERUM

The Gypsies were allowed to pass, but the brothers Bytyqi were sentenced to 15 days in prison for illegal entry into Yugoslavia, and on June 27 they were imprisoned at Prokuplie, in southern Serbia. The HLC has gotten a former police inspector, Zoran Stankovic, to testify that the three brothers were to be released into his custody and that he showed up at the prison to collect them four days before their release date, but they were nowhere to be found. According to Fatos, however, a big bribe to a prison official reveals the truth: that the three were "driven away in a white car and never seen again." Will the ICTFY admit evidence from admittedly bribed witnesses? Believe me, they aren't choosy: anonymous witnesses are not only allowed but positively encouraged, and they can submit their bought-and-paid-for "testimony" in absentia.

A HATE CRIME?

"They were killed because they were American citizens," argues Bajram Krasniqi, a Pristina-based lawyer hired by the Bytyqi family. "There were people in that prison who were in the rebel army and they were eventually released. This is the only case where someone was arrested, taken to court, tried, released out of the prison and then executed. This crime was planned, ordered and conducted without any judicial act, and it was done by Serbian officials in cooperation with officials at the prison. Hopefully, the Serb authorities will now arrest these people and they will be brought to justice."

LEGALITY IN WARTIME

Arrest them v for what? For executing three foreign nationals who were clearly members of a hostile military force, sent into Yugoslavia on a mission to wreak havoc? Fatos tells us that they wore KLA medallions around their necks, and no one denies that they were found on Serbian soil. Krasniqui claims that a "judicial process" was lacking in the sequence of events that led to their deaths, but by this standard every act of resistance to invasion must be adjudicated before a single shot is fired in self-defense.

LOOK WHO'S TALKING!

Krasniqi is head of the Kosovo Albanian "commission for war crimes and missing people," and a former member of KLA leader Hashem Thaci's "provisional government." Under this government, the ethnic cleansing of non-Albanians from Kosovo was similarly lacking in the proper judicial procedures. The judicial process in the conquered province is so corrupt and biased that even the United Nations has had to acknowledge the problem. It has got to be a joke of a particularly grotesque sort that has a top official of the KLA standing on the principle of "legality"!

INQUIRING MINDS WANT TO KNOW

It's lucky for the ICTFY that Milosevic has decided not to retain legal counsel, and has chosen to stand on the "principle" of not answering any of the charges against him v on the grounds that the ICTFY has no legal standing or authority. He's right about ICTFY's illegitimacy, but it does not follow that a lawyer is "unnecessary." For surely this particular charge v the "murder" of the Bytyqi brothers v would be easy enough to refute. Slobo's defense lawyers could call to the stand the organizers and financiers of this mysterious "Atlantic Brigade." The defense could conceivably prove that the Bytyqi brothers, far from being innocent American tourists on a Balkan jaunt, were American mercenaries on a deadly mission. Just as it is Carla Del Ponte's job to personally link Milosevic to the decision to execute noncombatants, so the task of the defense would be to uncover the true nature and origins of the Atlantic Brigade and a give a full account of its activities. What an interesting trial that would be!

Justin Raimondo
Antiwar.com

Kosovo conflict maims Albanian-American fighter

June 23, 1999
Web posted at: 7:43 p.m. EDT (2343 GMT)

Dervisholli, posing in his KLA uniform, top, was hit by a grenade while fighting in Kosovo and the lower part of his right leg was amputated

NEW YORK -- (CNN) Like ethnic Albanians refugees from Kosovo, Albanian-Americans who fought in the latest Balkan conflict are returning home. And some of them are bringing back permanent physical reminders of the experience.

Haxhi Dervisholli, 29, is one of them. In April, he joined about 300 other Albanian-American volunteers in a Yonkers, New York, parking lot where they said goodbye to their loved ones before departing to fight for the Kosovo Liberation Army.

In Kosovo, Dervisholli said he was in charge of heavy machine guns for the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group.

Now he is back home in New York, with a strong sense of pride, but without the lower half of his right leg.

"A grenade fell right near my foot and blew it away," he said. He was hit about three weeks ago and taken to a field hospital where his leg was amputated just below the knee.

He is now undergoing rehabilitation in New York and will soon be fitted with a prosthesis, which his doctor said will enable him to participate in most normal activities.

Dervisholli, who was a construction worker before the war, said he has no regrets about fighting. "I am proud of what I did," he said. "I'm happy. I hope the war is over and we get our freedom."

Dervisholli added that he dreams that his family members who are now in Albania will one day return to Kosovo.

Correspondent Gary Tuchman contributed to this report.

Wrong again, Destro. Wouldn't be an issue if they were killed fighting in Kosovo--that happened to some other Albanian-Americans and that's the price they paid for volunteering. These guys were murdered by Serbs while in Serb custody after the war. Nobody but you thinks any different--even the Serb government says it is a crime.

Belgrade, July 17 - In one of the two mass graves discovered at Petrovo Selo near Kladovo, were found three male bodies believed to have been US citizens of ethnic Albanian origin, the Serbian Interior Minister Dusan Mihajlovic told a press conference on Tuesday.

"Three male bodies, shot at close range, blindfolded and hands tied with wire, were found atop a heap of bodies in a pit at Petrovo Selo, near Kladovo. The Kursumlija Magistrate Court document found on the bodies indicates the identity of the victims as Chicago-born brothers Bytyqui: Agron (1978), Mehmet (1976), Ylli (1974)," Mihajlovic said, adding that no other papers had been found. .

According to him, the Interior Ministry Working Group looked through the records of the Prokuplje Secretariat of Internal Affairs (SUP Prokuplje) and established that on June 26 the Bytyqui brothers had been arrested near the village of Rudare in the municipality of Prokuplje and sentenced to 15 days in jail for crossing the Kosovo-Serbia border illegally. .

"The Bytyqui brothers were released at the request of the prison warden on July 8, four days before the end of their sentence. When, on the same day, the SUP Prokuplje Foreign Citizens Inspector came to the District Prison to hand in the court ruling on the prohibition of entry into the FRY for a period of two years, he was told that the offenders had already been discharged," Mihajlovic said.

"This is a very serious crime, as there is no evidence pointing to the victims having been tried and given a death sentence legally. At the moment we are checking out the possibility of the brothers having been volunteers of the Atlantic Brigade, made up of Albanians living abroad."

"Regardless of this, the crime was committed during peacetime, after the Kumanovo Agreement. This is part of a closely guarded state secret that is now surfacing and which we must come to terms with," Mihajlovic stressed, adding that he had received on Monday the American Ambassador William Montgomery who required a full investigation of the crime.

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