HIS
LORDSHIP INTERVENES
In
a
highly unusual announcement, Lord
Robertson, NATO secretary general, disclosed that he has
been in touch with the Bushies and "received reassurances"
from George W. Bush's campaign team not to take Boy Dubya
too seriously. After all, as
one analyst put it, everyone knows that
"If
the Republican candidate wins, [Bush's] seasoned foreign policy
team will talk him out of his stated plans to pull U.S. troops
out of the Balkans and press ahead with an extended anti-missile
shield regardless of international opposition." His Lordship
went on to say "I am not taking sides in this election campaign,"
His Lordship went on to say, "but I am concerned that no ally
would want to unilaterally pull out of what is a common mission
in Bosnia and Kosovo."
ALL
TOGETHER NOW
Translation:
We're all in this quagmire together, and don't you Americans
forget it. Robertson, meanwhile, was determined to forcefully
remind the Bush camp by going public with his fears. Backed
into a corner, the Bushies were forced to admit that Lord
Robertson had indeed called Bush security policy advisor Stephen
Hadley, and, as the Reuters story put it, "Lord Robertson
apparently found his words reassuring." I'll bet. After getting
an earful from His Lordship, can't you just imagine Hadley's
end of the conversation? –
"Look,
your Lordship, don't worry about Dubya. He's dumb as a doornail,
and, besides, he'll do anything we say. And don't forget,
we can always bring in the father."
OVER
THERE
According
to His Lordship, Hadley, who served the senior Bush as assistant
secretary of defense with special responsibility for the European
front, assured him that "there will be no unilateral action
taken in relation to peacekeeping forces by a President Bush
administration, if that is the choice." In other words: if
the choice is to withdraw from the Balkans without the sanction
of our NATO "allies," or stay in, then we're in – to
stay.
SPIN
AND WEASEL WORDS
That
no one has taken notice of this outrageous intervention in
American politics by a top official of the NATO alliance,
and a British Lord to boot, is the measure of how decadent
and basically spineless our ruling elites have become. How
dare this Blairite s.o.b. presume to pontificate on
American politics and try to get his two cents in a week before
the election! The Bush reply to the Brits should have consisted
of two words: bug off! Instead, they cravenly "reassured"
London not to worry, it wasn't going to happen immediately
– in effect pushing the prospect of a US withdrawal into
the far distant future. What is truly indicative of the ordeal
we face if Bush is elected President is that the Bushies are
still maintaining that they haven't changed their position.
The Clintonization
of the Republican party proceeds apace: Clinton's "legacy,"
if it can be called that, will be to enshrine "spin" and weasel
words as the official language of the American presidency.
DUBYA
THE STATESMAN?
There
can be no doubt that Bush's remarks during the second debate
sent shockwaves through the foreign policy establishment:
especially all that stuff about how America can't go around
the world imposing its will. That, after all, is what an empire
does. But what Dubya himself thinks about the subject
will have little to do with the actual policy that is carried
out. At least for the moment, Lord Robertson, it seems, has
more clout on this issue than the candidate himself. Will
this situation change once he's in office? The Presidency
confers an automatic gravitas that can only have a
transformative effect on even the most prosaic personality,
but in Dubya's case this will probably not mean that
he will somehow become a statesman with the vision to stand
up to the foreign policy establishment of both parties. As
one European security official put it:
"If
Bush came to NATO with those positions, it would be a recipe
for a real crisis. But I think in the end, if there is a Republican
administration, they will soften their positions. This talk
of a division of labor where the Americans would do the 'big
war' and the Europeans would do the 'soft security' tasks
of long-term peacekeeping is a bit simplistic. A messy world
is not going to allow such a mathematical division, even if
it were desirable, which it isn't."
YOU
PLAY, YOU PAY
Yes,
a messy world – made all the messier by the machinations
of our faithless "allies." In the age of the American imperium,
our satraps are our worst enemies: they can be counted on
to badmouth and resent us, to lobby shamelessly and endlessly
badger us, even going so far as to blatantly intervene in
the final days of a presidential election. They carp and complain,
bitterly averring that "everyone knows that the Europeans
provide more than 80% of the troops" in Kosovo and Bosnia,
while failing to mention the
cost of the war itself – roughly $1 billion a month,
all of it borne almost entirely by US taxpayers. Ah, but if
you want an empire, then you have to pay for it: this is a
lesson the Brits learned, to their sorrow, and now it is our
turn.
A
PYRRHIC VICTORY
If
the polls are right, Dubya's doubletalk on the Balkans is
just a hint of what we have in store for us – and not
just on the foreign policy front. Four years of a Bush presidency
will have conservatives – of every stripe – in a
ceaseless lather. As soon as the euphoria of their final triumph
over Clinton wears off and the honeymoon is over, conservatives
will discover that their great victory is a Pyrrhic one.
BURSTING
THE BUBBLE
Unlike
Ralph Nader, Pat Buchanan has made our disastrous Balkan policy
an issue in his campaign. Buchanan's
address to the 1999 Antiwar.com conference received a
lot of coverage, and Pat has continually pounded the point
home: we attacked a country that had never attacked us or
threatened our legitimate interests, and we ought to pull
out now. Team Bush, ever sensitive to the threat posed
by Buchanan in what looks like a real horse race, tried to
cover their flank with a sop to any conservative "isolationists"
thinking of straying from the Republican herd. That's what
the Condolezza Rice Dog & Pony Show was all about. Lord
Robertson did us all a favor by exposing the Bushies for what
they are: indistinguishable from their Democratic opponents
not only programmatically, but also stylistically. Team Bush,
like the Gore camp, will say and do practically anything to
win the White House, and the lies won't stop when Clinton
cleans out his Oval Office desk. Condolezza Rice's proposal
had all the solidity and reality of a soap bubble or a hot-air
balloon, and the Brits did us a good turn – without meaning
to, of course – by pricking it.
THE
KLA FACTOR
Kosovo
is off the front pages, for now, but the place is a ticking
time-bomb, one that could go off shortly after – or before
– the new President takes office. While we were all mesmerized
with our own election, the stunning results of the Kosovo
election were virtually invisible. For the victory of the
determinedly pacifist Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK) over
the fascist "Democratic" Party (PDK) of KLA thug Hashim
Thaci was truly sweeping: the LDK won in 21 out of 27
municipalities. This means that in all likelihood LDK leader
Ibrahim
Rugova – considered the George Washington of his
country in spite of being vilified by the Kosovo Liberation
Army, who accuse him of being a "traitor"
– will represent his country in the delicate negotiations
that will define Kosovo's status in the post-Milosevic era.
The triumph of Vojislav
Kostunica in the Serbian elections opens up the possibility
of a comprehensive settlement of the Kosovo Question without
further resort to violence. But there are forces in the region
– and in the capitals of Europe – who are less than
delighted with such a prospect. President Kostunica's inaugural
speech, in which he denounced nameless European countries
for thoughtlessly surrendering their sovereignty for a mess
of Euro-federalist pottage no doubt struck the Germans as
an open challenge, which it was. As the primary patrons of
the KLA, the Germans are no doubt exercising their considerable
influence over Thaci and the gang to keep cool and accept
the election results, at least for now. In the war-torn rural
town of Malisevo,
long considered a KLA stronghold, the LDK won with over 50%
of the vote. "We thought that the people would vote for those
who sacrificed the most, those that fought": so spoke Deli
Thaci, chairman of the local PDK group: Agence
France Presse reports that
"Thaci
stuck to the line given by his namesake and party leader Hashim
Thaci, that the poll was marked by fraud and that PDK votes
were stolen, but that the party will accept the result 'so
as not to destabilize Kosovo.'"
THE
COMING BATTLE
Kostunica
has already made overtures
to Rugova: the two men, both intellectuals, both committed
to a democratic and nonviolent form of nationalism, seem to
have a lot in common. But the ever-present threat of the KLA,
which was never really disbanded, places considerable restraints
on what Rugova can achieve in this regard. For the ex-KLA/PDK
is armed to the teeth, and what's more they act as a German
fifth column inside the country: they can easily provoke an
incident, one designed to escalate into a three-way battle
between Albanians, Serbs, and NATO troops – with US soldiers
caught in the crossfire.
A
SOLDIER SPEAKS
I
was struck, this morning, while researching this article,
by something that was posted on the popular Free
Republic news-and-comment board, in a "thread"
(scroll down to post #14) discussing Dubya's comments on Kosovo
during the second debate:
"This
post is of personal interest to me being one of the 6500 US
soldiers deployed to the lovely Kosovo for a six month vacation
with all the comforts of home. I have also spent another four
months in the other Balkans paradise, Bosnia. And in all my
travels throughout the country, I can find no compelling interest
for our presence here. When in Bosnia both sides informed
me that they could not wait until we (NATO) was gone, so they
could get back to unfinished business. (Killing each other
for all you liberals out there.) And here, while Kostunica
seems to be more willing to talk to the west making the west
perhaps more willing to let him rule over his sovereign, this
will just cause the KLA to begin targeting the NATO forces
if we are seen to be in cooperation with Serbia. So what is
the solution. Now that we are here, unfortunately we are stuck.
The only way out for such a large mass of troops having such
an impact on the economy is a slow methodical one. Bush, I
believe has given veiled reference to this in his 'careful
review' of contingency missions, as well as a not so veiled
reference proclaiming the need for an exit strategy. That
is why you will find a vast majority of absentee ballots from
Kosovo in the Bush category on Nov. 7, though I am not sure
if I trust the Post Office to accurately or timely deliver
those ballots. But I would hope that if anything our administration
has learned the consequences of election fraud from the events
in the past 24 hours here in the FRY. That is this soldier's
opinion, FWIW."
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