I’m curious to hear from Europeans (most) and many Americans as to why they and the UN so ardently supported the ousting of Slobodan Milosevic who is believed to have killed 200,000 and yet they were/are so steadfastly against the war in Iraq to remove/replace Saddam Hussein who is believed to have killed many more people.
I’m not asking this in an accusative tone, I’m honestly interested to hear what the difference between the two situations are that cause such a difference in opinion.
the removal of Saddam Hussein should have been done through the UN, in as peaceful means as possible with War as an absolute last resort, rather than by unilateral action supported by a tissue of lies.
Personally, I do advocate intervention (under UN auspices) in order to bring about regime change. I would have supported an Iraqi invasion if, like Kosovo, a solely humanitarian justification had been proposed.
The trouble was, it wasn’t. What was proposed was, in my opinion, possibly going to do more harm than good.
In any case, there was undeniably a genocide in progress in Kosovo (eg. Racak) at the time of the intervention. This was not the case in Iraq, and the numbers Saddam killed on a daily basis were simply not in their high thousands as some hysterical reports suggested. It is true that many thousands died in the political purge following Gulf War I but one could not really call this “genocide”. The Marsh Arabs were driven off their lands but, not all that many were put to death.
And even the gassing of the Kurds at eg. Halabja in 1988 might have been Iranian in origin.
So brutal? Yes. But no more so than many other current regimes worldwide.
Genocidal? Perhaps not.
The fact that the auspice of WMD came ahead on the list of reasons given to remove Saddam rather than the welfare of the Iraqi people (which was mentioned in the buildup to the war) makes a difference in whether or not the war was justified?
I may be completely wrong about this, but I think it is a matter of international law. The crimes Milosevic is on trial for were committed during war, and are therefore war crimes. As such they are very clearly illegal under international law. While Saddam was also guilty of genocide, he was head of a sovereign state at the time. This makes the situation less clear cut legally speaking I think.
However if you’re asking what is the difference morally, i would say very little. Both men should be fairly tried for their crimes i think.
I assume you are referring to Kosovo campaign, so I’ll try to refresh some facts in relation to it.
There was no UN authorization for Kosovo campaign, simply because Russia and China were absolutely against it and would veto any resolution in support of it.
Remember how Russian foreign minister was flying to Washington with the latest proposal to avert NATO military campaign and turned his plane back when he learned that Clinton started bombing Yugoslavia? Remember how the whole world kind of hold its breath for few days after that? Remember how Russian commandos suddenly occupied a strategic airfield and Gen. Clark wanted to attack them, only to be told by his subordinants that they will not be responsible for starting WWIII?
Remember how difficult the Chinese were, maintaining diplomatic mission in Belgrad, which US bombed, killing some diplomats (Absolutely accidentally. Honest.)? Those were nervous few days, too.
In view of these facts, people denouncing Bush for failing to secure Russian and Chinese approval on Iraq invasion are talking with their sphincters. At least Bush didn’t get to the point of outright hostilities against those two countries.
My mistake New Iskander. I was thinking the capture of Milosevic was sanctioned by the UN, given the lack of outcry against the action in comparison to what has been seen with regard to the situation in Iraq.
Still, from all I’m seeing and hearing, I can’t see a great deal of difference between the two situations save for the fact that Milosevic was operating in Western Europe’s back yard while Saddam was comparatively worlds away. Out of sight, out of mind, so to speak.
Am I wrong here, or is there some other reason that the majority of Western Europeans and many Americans were so eager or at least resigned without much resistance to removing Milosevic but removing Saddam has caused so much gnashing of teeth?
I sincerely believe that if Clinton or Gore would do the deed, there would be a whole lot less “gnashing of teeth”. So, the answer must be: “Bush did it!”. I read an article by a “liberal hawk” recently (in Atlantic), where the author expressed support for everything Bush has done and finished with exact words, “but Bush was a wrong man to do it!”. Just like that.
Is there anything more pathetic than Libs pretending to be for Peace? Only one thing: Cons lapping up the whole BS and saying, “Yup, them’s pink peacenik pussies, us is the warmongers!”
New iskander, Clinton drew his share of animosity for the course of action he accepted regarding Serbia, but he was definitely not driving for war in Serbia the way Bush was driving for war in Iraq. One was more or less well-intentioned and a fairly capable statesman if rather misguided on the Kosovo matter, the other is a pampered fanatic with the intellectual capacity of a retarded mole and a family vendetta. But this isn’t about Clinton/Bush, so let’s take a closer look at the situations as the OP asks.
There are an enormous number of significant differences between the two situations, and they do not reduce well to simple “bad man must go” interpretatations such as the above. Very few situations ever do.
Milosevic had a serious problem on his hands and he dealt with it extremely poorly. Kosovo, both historically and politically, is Serbia, although Albanians have been flooding into the region for a long time, generating ethnic tension (especially because they multiply like rabbits, not only growing rapidly in numbers but also straining the system – education, social services, unemployment, health care, etc.). Out of this tension rose the KLA, one of Europe’s worst terrorist bodies. This is the organization that European states and the US chose to assist (and cooperate with) when they decided to wage war against Serbia.
The KLA was involved in guerrilla (read: terrorist) war against the Serbian state in Kosovo, at first by murdering policemen and officials in the streets, then by inciting rebellion against Serbs and fanning ethnic hatred and separatist movements. There’s one thing you can definitely say for Serbs: you can’t intimidate or strong-arm these people, whether it be one of the mightiest powers of its day (like the Ottoman empire) or present day’s superpowers. Unfortunately, Milosevic was Serbian through and through. Faced with an escalating problem in Kosovo and the distinct risk of losing the territory to what he perceived as a rapidly-breeding Albanian rabble (the assessment is not that far off), Milosevic took drastic action. Officially, Milosevic’s men were engaged in an attempt to root out members of the KLA entrenched in the ethnic Albanian Kosovar population. It was a hardline effort against terrorism and, had it been implemeted correctly, would even have been worthy of praise. However in practice Serbian special forces were unable to identify KLA members and leaders sufficiently well, and ended up slaughtering entire male populations in villages they strongly suspected of KLA involvement and so forth. This gave rise to the mass shift of the Albanians, which attracted a lot of international attention in part thanks to a particularly active pro-Albanian lobby in Washington.
When the world’s eyes turned to Serbia, they saw only Serbs killing Albanians and driving them out of Kosovo. The KLA, incredibly, was protrayed as a liberation army instead of the drug- and sex-trafficking terrorists that they are. The US and Europe mobilized, and a number of sociopathic leaders (some facing strong opposition, particularly populist opposition as in the recent case of Spain during the Iraq affair) decided that bombing the shit out of Serbia was going to solve the problem. This was a convenient solution, since it would keep troop casualties low (and, if you listen to some sources, it would also use up inventories of armaments that were expired or nearing expiry).
Serbia was carpet-bombed. Ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, as soon as the world got involved, followed the KLA’s lead and started massacring and ethnically cleansing Serbian populations in Kosovo to the point that today there are almost no Serbs left there, in the ancestral Serbian heartland.
Later, Serbs deposed Milosevic in a bloodless coup, mainly because he had led them in three intense wars and lost all of them.
The West’s objective, at least the stated one, in attacking Serbia was to put a stop to Serbs ethnically cleansing Albanians from Kosovo. Good objective, but utterly idiotic way to go about it on the part of the Europeans and Americans, since all they accomplished was handing a victory to a bunch of Albanian terrorists and criminals who promptly capitalized on the opportunity by killing or driving the majority of Serbs out of Kosovo. The KLA’s objective, if we leave aside the public crap they used to issue for PR purposes, was a Greater Albania; Albania is and has been for decades a haven for drug, sex, and contraband traffic, it is rife with organized and disorganized crime, it has an abysmally low average socio-economic status, it is in fact a mess of a country. Albania has been bleeding emigrants for decades to surrounding lands, meaning that every year there are larger and larger ethnic Albanian communities in bordering wealthier states (just about any state is wealthier than Albania).
A Greater Albania, in which ethnic Albanian communities seize land bordering on Albania and become the de facto rulers/owners, would simply be a boon for criminals like the KLA, in addition to allowing informal territorial and economic expansion such as happened in Kosovo. Kosovo is, at least socially, now part of Albania; this was such a successful outcome for the KLA that they later attempted the same shit in Macedonia, although it didn’t go nearly so well there.
My view is that intervention on Serbia/Kosovo was a good thing. It would have been rather nice if the intervention had been carried out with a bit of foresight and intelligence, as opposed to the utterly reckless decision to simply try to bomb Serbs into submission, which created many more problems than it solved. Yes, Clinton and all the other leaders can be criticized for this. But they had an objective and they tried to accomplish it (in a hare-brained manner, but they still tried).
The objectives in Iraq, however, were totally unclear. At first there was all that bullshit about the WMD and terrorism, with, on one side, the rather incredible claims being pumped out by the US and Britain, and on the other a healthy dose of scepticism from just about everyone else. Particularly embarrassing was how a large number of Americans fed on a steady diet of low-grade TV and gossip rallied around their propaganda-spewing president, seizing on the attacks of 9/11 – which were entirely unrelated to Iraq or Saddam – as a justification for war (heck, if I remember correctly Saddam even offered his condolences to the US for the attacks). Do you remember the armies of half-wits entering a debate on the impending war in Iraq with such gems as “they attacked us first”?
It went downhill from there (as has been discussed hundreds of times in great detail on these boards) with the inclusion and wild exaggeration of human rights atrocities etc., etc. Consider this: Saddam Hussein, ruthless bastard that he is, nonetheless spent considerable effort and resources in providing health care and facilities for his people, built roads, schools, and hospitals, fiercely fought against Islamic fundamentalism in its many forms, ran a country in which the status of women was arguably the best of any Arab state and so forth – but of course the hysterical accusations we heard from Dubya et al carefully avoided these issues and focused instead on the convenient ones – some of them highly suspect, such as the gassing of the Kurds and the fabricated claims of impending danger out of a country that didn’t give any indication whatsoever of bothering anyone outside its borders. Yes, he was a dictator, he certainly ruled with an iron fist, but there are worse examples of more dangerous men out there, such as Mugabe in Zimbabwe or Dear Leader in North Korea.
There’s also the matter that Serbia, of course, is European, and Europeans tend to get very skittish when things like ethnic cleansing happen on their doorstep – especially in the problematic former Yugoslavia, which has been crumbling ruinously since the death of Marshal Tito. In addition to the work of the Albanian lobby in the US, the White House was also receiving requests for assistance from European leaders unsure how to deal with the problem. From what I recall the US was somewhat reluctant to get involved in this matter, not counting raving psychopaths like General Clarke who as someone mentioned above appeared ready to ignite WW3 (he was removed from his post shortly after the Kosovo crisis).
There simply was no excuse for what happened in Iraq. Who apart from the lobby of the Kurdish minority, some exiles, and a very few others, requested any assistance regarding Iraq? As those of us who bothered to inform ourselves knew well, there was no credible evidence of chemical biological weapons stockpiles or development, nor of involvement in terrorism beyond very minor items such as alleged compensation to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers (distinctly minor stuff compared to the grossly inflated claims generated by US officials). The decision to attack Iraq was planned long ahead of time. All the jawing about WMDs, human rights violations, terrorism, etc. were nothing more than a cover to justify a predetermined policy outcome.
These are just some of the fundamental differences between the two situations. Don’t let the surface similarities fool you. Yes, we are talking about two dictators and two states where violence along ethnic lines appeared sanctioned by the ruling party, but almost all other factors involve very, very different considerations that must be weighed carefully when deciding whether to support one or the other.
Most definitely so. If we are to countenance such radical action as invading a sovereign state, we must be crystal clear about why it is necessary, what the objective is, and when we can stop interfering.
The justification for regime change was solely presented in terms of threat to the US:
So, it was not even that “there are many brutal, inhumane regimes and Iraq is the worst”. Brutality and inhumanity barely got a look in, because if they had, many other places in the world would benefit more obviously from intervention, such as most of Africa for starters.
Abe makes the point that even Kosovo was outside UN auspices. While I wish for the disposal of the dreaded UNSC veto, I recognise that clear evidence of actual genocide (such as the findings of Dr. Helena Ranta at Racak) is a far more compelling justification for intervention than a situation which has remained unchanged for several years, as in Iraq.
I believe that a long civil war in Kosovo, costing hundreds of thousands of lives as in Bosnia, was inevitable without intervention. This case simply cannot be made in Iraq. And any other justification for Iraq surely means that we are about to intervene in Africa, Burma or North Korea. I am not holding my breath.
Abe,
Very interesting take on Kosovo and it’s comparison with Iraq.
However, in the spirit of a spirited debate,
Yes, Clinton was a whole lot more reckless and unilateral. He didn’t even bother going to UN and he was seriously challenging Russians and Chinese in the most hostile manner. So, to return to OP, why no “gnashing of teeth”? Even more, US Right deserves a huge credit for not saying anything about the “legality” of Kosovo campaign. They were sceptical, but not disruptive.
You described well, how useless and counterproductive were results of Kosovo campaign. Today’s news from Kosovo are about 30 people dead, mosques and churches on fire, Albanians hunting Serbs in Kosovo, Serbs marching in Belgrade with placards “Kill Albanians”, stand by… Nice aftermath. Still, no “gnashing of teeth”! Compare this to Iraq, where prospects are constantly improving, and Left can’t stop whining more and more.
Did you put this in to provide balance?
Re: “vendetta”. Bush Sr. was against removing “Saddam and his sons”. Clinton formulated this goal as an urgent US gov. objective. Bush Jr. inherited it from Clinton.
Because they had by comparison very little to gnash their teeth about, since Clinton (driven primarily by Albright and to a lesser extent people like Dole, this was emphatically NOT a Clinton initiative as you portray it) was ostensibly defending the interests of NATO, European allies, human rights in the developed world, etc. Don’t forget that involvement in the former Yugoslavia was hardly born full-fledged when “allied” (loosely speaking that is – this was an alliance that stressed NATO as rarely before) forces decided to bomb Serbia. As for engaging in disruptive behaviour, need I remind you of the extended Republican farce consisting of character assaults (and derivatives) based on Clinton’s private life?
Aside from having an extensive anti-Clinton legal and PR campaign prepared on the basis of Clinton’s sex life, certain Republican elements would have looked idiotic in the extreme if they’d attacked Clinton on the basis of intervention in Kosovo, since help was actively requested by a number of European countries and UN officials, and was itself a strong initiative at home (albeit misguided and perverted by the likes of Piggy Albright). The nature of that assistance to the European continent (raining down bombs on a long-standing ally and causing ethnic Serbs to be cleansed out of Kosovo) was most definitely questionable, however intervention in Kosovo was nowhere near as objectionable as the Iraq affair for the reasons already stated.
Although I agree that Kosovo was a disaster of an outcome and a ticking time-bomb, I would suggest you take a closer look at the Yugoslav situation and the systematic demonization (particularly in the media) that the Serbs underwent throughout the 1990s. The behaviour you see today is a backlash against years of (internal) misrule and (external) perceived injustices, of which Kosovo is the icing on the cake – how would you like it if Mexicans or Canadians started stealing chunks of American land rich in heritage by simply immigrating there en masse and claiming independence from Washington? Obviously it wouldn’t be tolerated. Goodness knows the Albanians have their own problems, but in all fairness they tend to cause problems in a lot of places they end up (such as Serbia and Macedonia, but also look up the issues other countries, e.g. Italy, have with Albanians).
Secondly, regarding your implied question of why no teeth-gnashing, perhaps we can blame this on the famous attention deficit of the American public and media? I don’t know, are you trying to attribute the lack of “gnashing of teeth” to the nobility and rectitude of Republicans? In my opinion there was little gnashing of teeth because (to my recollection, and it might well be hazy since I don’t bother thinking in terms of party lines too often) Republicans had in principle very little to disagree on the matter of intervention in Kosovo – apart from the hare-brained isolationalists of course.
And of course, because Clinton was a superior statesman to Bush. Bush has been asking for trouble with the majority of his policies, which are poorly conceived and even more poorly justified. His cadre of hardline (extremist even) noeconservatives certainly aren’t helping.
The whining arises from a multitude of valid factors, including flagrant US policy disregard for institutions upheld by the US itself and the laws of the land! If there weren’t any of this whining, I would have some serious concerns – and you’d probably be living in a country like China, where “whiners” (i.e. dissenters) are crushed and swept under the carpet.
I think I provided enough balance to allow myself a few sallies against the Idiot in Chief.
So Bush Jr was in fact following up on Clinton’s wishes by attacking Iraq? Let me touch very briefly on something that has been explained numerous times on these boards. Removing Saddam wouldn’t necessarily have been a bad thing – we can all agree he was certainly one of the world’s worst leaders. Not THE worst by any means, but certainly one of the bad boys. It’s the process of removing Saddam and trampling on all sorts of accords and agreements and relationships that has been called into question. The systematic lies fed to the US public and the world in order to justify a predetermined policy outcome, those are highly objectionable too and by no means indicative of justice or freedom. And the back and forth as Bush and Blair desperately sought to persuade key allies (including the UN, at which they failed miserably) to buy their line of cagal, well that was downright crimina. Uh yeah, terrorism from the one Arab state ideolgically opposed to the primary generator of terrorism in the world – nice job there to all the people who actually swallowed that rubbish, may I recommend some courses in critical thinking. Clear, justifiable objectives are required, and their lack is what has contributed to much gnashing of teeth, not only in the US but all over the world.
Aznar in Spain recently paid the price of trampling over democracy and honesty, and I remember mentioning a year ago that his decision to support the assault on Iraq against the overwhelming judgement of the Spanish people would spell political suicide for him. I am less optimistic that anything of the sort will happen to leaders like Bush and Berlusconi and even Howard and Blair, since I don’t really see voter accountability in force for those gentlemen – it’s just a media game, especially so in the US (all right, Berlusconi is in a league of his own, but who could possibly take Italian politics seriously?).
So the Serbia / Iraq comparison is simply not appropriate, not the least because we’re talking about somewhat similar principles, yes, but entirely different policy decisions and implementation.
Abe,
I mostly agree with your take on Kosovo and mostly disagree with your take on Iraq. I suspect you are one of many decent people who would be able to see better the immense good potential of Iraq invasion, if you didn’t hate GW so much. Mind, I’m not saying it’s a sure thing this potential is going to materialize; the whole thing might turn into a huge disappointment yet. But I think what Bush is doing now in Iraq is the greatest thing US gov. has done since WWII. For once, US is going into the heart of troublesome region, removing evil dictator and trying to change the whole state of affairs in the world. It is costly, it is horrific and it might lead to naught; but at least the attempt was made. If it will work out, US will have a natural friend of democratic Iraq right in the heart of Arab world, combined with admiration of people and fear of despots in all surrounding countries. Compare that with Kosovo, where US bombed the most natural ally (Serbia) to aid a clear potential enemy (Albania), at the same time alienating the most important friend (Russia). Polls show that more than 70% Russians used to like US in early 1990-s and more than 70% of them don’t like US now. Polls don’t explain that the turning point was Kosovo: that is when Russian public opinion of US turned around. Most Russians will never understand: how can one bomb Serbians to help Albanians; the memory of this atrocity will be preserved for a long time. Russians don’t care about Albanians or Arabs, but they care about Serbs, and Clinton didn’t give that obvious fact even a moment’s thought. What a capable statesman, indeed! Of course, something had to be done there, and the obvious thing to do was to remove Miloscevic, just like Bush has removed Saddam. Serbians would be grateful, Russians would be supportive, law and order could be enforced in Kosovo, while any Albanian and Serb terrorists would be put down. Instead, there were bombs and nothing but…
May I recommend an expansion of political and historical horizons? As one of my greatest ideological antagonists recently posted here, suspecting collusion between Saddam and Usama is like suspecting collusion between Lenin and Rasputin in early XX- century Russia: an impossibility; which, once you think about it, is the most perfect analogy (at least the man doesn’t censor his own thoughts). Yes, Lenin and Rasputin were enemies - just like Saddam and Usama - but both of them were pushing Russia toward collapse and Communist takeover and both of them had to be removed if one wanted to improve the future prospects for Russia back then, just like both Saddam and Usama have to removed right now, to make the witches’ brew of ME politics at least a bit less noxious.
This is in fact an ad hominem argumentum of sorts. And it’s not like I hate Bush – I am simply filled with impatience and contempt when I see barely disguised ideological stupidity and political incompetence. Would you see the light if you weren’t blinded by admiration for Bush or Republicans or whatever? That’s a rhetorical question highlighting the ad hominem, you don’t need to take it seriously beyond that.
As I mentioned before, that’s not a bad thing in principle if it had been carried out with rather more intelligence and rather less blundering arrogance, and in accordance to the laws the US purports to uphold. Of course, the basic question to ask in this case is “why Iraq”? Saddam was (leaving aside the propagandist bullshit spread about him and his regime) by no means the worst of the candidates to depose. And we were all well aware of the conspicuous lack of evidence linking Iraq and 9/11, yet this was a primary impetus of the campaign against Iraq. As for WMDs, even at the time most if not all credible experts agreed that Iraq was highly unlikely to be a danger in this department, and the UK authorities had to massage items of intelligence to come up with anything threatening at all (thousands of tons of chemical weapons! Nuclear warheads being built!). There are worse human atrocities committed in several other states, a number of them close US allies, so the human rights argument is transparently thin and may even be considered hypocritical.
It would also have helped immeasurably if the US and the UK had demonstrated any sort of adequate planning for Iraq post-war. There was none, the primary concerns and objectives were occupying the country, getting rid of Saddam, and presumably securing Iraq’s riches – funny how they went straight for the oil fields but chaos reigned in the streets for months, entire regions were left without power, hospitals remained under-staffed and under-supplied, etc. Really not that great a thing, especially if one is trying to win the hearts of the locals. As for WWII, what was so great about that? The US tried for years to avoid getting involved while the evil of the Axis grew and grew, and only joined the fray after the vicious attack on Pearl Harbor, when involvement became utterly unavoidable – hardly a moment of moral greatness, although no one can deny the valuable contributions to the war effort once the US finally got involved.
Yes, it’s true that is possible, but it’s looking like a long shot right now. What we’re seeing now in Iraq is a measure of gratitude for removing Saddam, yes, but also high frustration with what are perceived as the many shortcomings in the US plan as far as anything other than oil is concerned, and a strong resistance to occupation. And if (as seems increasingly unavoidable) fundamentalists – those same guys Saddam brutally repressed – have their way and get involved you can pretty much forget about a positive outcome, since Islamic fundamentalism makes a convenient target out of America. I imagine that in five years we will look back and credit the Iraq invasion for the desecularization of Iraq, which would be a tragedy for the region (not exactly a lot of secular states round those parts).
The US didn’t remove Milosevic – they did absolutely nothing of the sort. They called for his resignation, said he had to go, etc., etc., but even the Clinton administration didn’t meddle with another state’s sovereign authority by invading the country and seizing executive control, knowing how dangerous such a course of action could be. Imagine how well the Russians would have reacted to that – in fact Clinton may be credited with keeping the situation under overall control and taking drastic action only with sufficient international support (and he was asked to get involved, he didn’t go around twisting arms until he won enough lip-service support by mighty warrior nations like Iceland and Eritrea to pursue his own agenda). A capable statesman indeed, probably not one of the greats but certainly not one of the bad ones as far as this matter is concerned. Don’t forget that two world wars shared their origins in Serbia, just imagine what a wonderful job someone like Bush would have done, blundering in with all guns firing and the propaganda machinery overheating, or simply ignoring the problem as too troublesome and instead focusing on some oil-rich country.
It was Serbs that deposed Milosevic, mainly because they guy kept losing wars and bringing about misery for his people. The US simply bombed Serbia in an attempt to put a stop to ethnic cleansing and hoped that Milosevic would surrender. It was an ineffective plan. And, as mentioned already, Piggy Albright had more to do with it than Clinton did (Albright has some serious and complex issues with Serbs and was the main --rabid even-- proponent of action against Serbia in the US administration. I have stories of meetings with Piggy that you wouldn’t believe).
Do you really consider Serbia to be worse off than Iraq thanks to the intervention of the US in both cases? I certainly don’t think so. But in Serbia there was indisputable ethnic cleansing and violence going on. In Iraq the problem was rather less significant – I suppose you could cite the Kurds (who were in fact clamouring for a chunk of Iraq) and the Marsh Arabs (who were relocated but not really wiped off) as the main ethnic offences of Saddam, and they aren’t really that significant compared to dozens of other states.
Once again I recommend some review of critical thinking to combat vulnerability to propaganda. Let’s not forget reality here, that Bush et al strenuously tried to make the case that Iraq was an imminent danger, involved with terror, etc. etc. But, specifically, this argument:
is simply untrue, on top of being very vague and highly stretched. Saddam was not pushing ME towards anything like collapse, if anything he was fostering an environment hostile to Islamic fundamentalism (remember what fundamentalism did to Iran 25 years ago? Collapse), and hadn’t made a single significant move outside his borders since the unfortunate invasion of Kuwait (which he undertook only after the US signalled that it may not intervene in such an affair).
Bin Laden we can agree on, scum of the earth and a very dangerous man. But he is not a state leader, he is a criminal just about everywhere, a man on the run and dependent on his own network for survival. The bin Laden problem is ideological in nature and political only by extension, he is religiously opposed to the US and sees it as the Great Satan, etc. Terrorism. If you want to target states that are involved in terrorism, look at Saudi Arabia, Northern Ireland, Egypt, Spain, etc. Hardly Iraq!
Saddam Hussein was a state leader of a sovereign country who wasn’t really bothering anyone outside the borders of Iraq, and who actively cracked down against violent fundamentalism in a way no other Arab state has done (Egypt tried to some extent the last fifty years and the problem of fundamentalism there is worse than ever before, partly thanks to the Islamic radicalization courtesy of Bush’s Iraq efforts). Why precisely did Saddam have to go? There was equal or greater cause to depose someone like Jiang Zemin than there was to depose Saddam.
Hell, the leadership of Iran right next door was and is a lot more worrying than Saddam, and the evidence suggests Iran gassed the much-trumpeted Kurds to begin with! (Incidentally, the Kurds, like the Albanians, have a pretty good lobby in Washington). The majority of African states have always been and look set to remain much worse off under any point of view than Iraq under Saddam, so there’s a disconnect in the argument – unless of course you examine the relevant factors concerning Iraq, including oil, freshwater, Israel, and so forth. Nothing great and wonderful about this matter, in fact I would say the abundance of cheap propaganda and the morally reprehensible manipulation of a tragedy like 9/11 are precisely the opposite of great.
looks like you can’t format message titles. Anyway, good job on picking that up, New Iskander, I think you’re the first in my five years on these boards to mention it!
Speaking as someone who is half-Serbian ( 
), if have to disagree with this just a bit Abe. Kosovo once was integral to the Serbian state. Just as Vojvodina ( now part of northern Serbia ) was once integral to the Hungarian state. But the demography has been changing since the 17th century, sometimes naturally ( Serbs moving out of what had become an economic backwater ) and sometimes not ( Serbs being driven out by Ottoman armies that encouraged the more presumably reliable Albanians to settle - interestingly the first Serbian settlements in Vojvodina probably date from the first wave of Serbians pushed out by the Ottomans in 1690 ). But regardless Albanians have been a solid majority in the region since at least the 19th century, if not earlier. It’s fine if Serbia wants to be a multi-ethnic confederation like the old Yugoslavia - I’m all for that. But to say distant historical connections gave ( or give ) Serbia leave to regard the Albanians as some sort of foreign rabble in a region they have occupied for a few centuries now, is just absurd. The KLA was/is indeed a nasty bit of work - but Milosevic’s self-conscious advocation of tribalism/ultra-nationalism to shore up his power base after the fall of Titoist communism, probably bears a greater share of the blame.
I know you spoke to this as well, but I wasn’t sure if I agreed with your emphasis :).
Yeah, but they’re doing it in half-measures.
I was against this intervention for purely pragmatic reasons. I thought it was a potentially devastating mistake and amateurishly carried out from a propagandistic pov ( whatever else it may or may not achieve, the Bush II administration is not going to go down in history for their accomplishments in the realm of statesmanship ). I think it’s going to fail, possibly horribly ( though lord knows I hope I’m wrong ). But in for a dime, in for a dollar. If you’re going nation-build, don’t fuck it up.
Iraq should be swimming in cash and expertise right now. The number of troops on the ground should have been doubled or tripled ( I won’t speak as to how many should be there now, but what should have been ). The Democrats should be ashamed for opposing the proposed Iraqi funds and the administration should be just as ashamed for lowballing it to begin with. My ( admittedly amateur ) analysis is that a much, much, MUCH larger amount of money and expertise should have been allocated ( same for Afghanistan, by the way ) and if that means the U.S. and U.K. taxpayers have to take it in the shorts for a few years, so be it. None of this “pay with their oil revenues” crap - in my mind when we invaded ( and when Bush somewhat retroactively insisted it was a war of liberation, rather than a “defensive” move ) we made a moral committment to rebuild that country from the ground up on our dime.
The neo-cons, IMHO, are trying to do this on the cheap in both Afghanistan and Iraq and that, again IMHO, is a mistake. In for fucking dime, in for many hundreds of billions of dollars.
Always a pleasure Tamerlane.
Indeed, I think a growing majority was my emphasis, hence my ridiculous example of waves of Mexican immigrants (legal and non) in the US demanding independence for their enclaves. It simply wouldn’t be tolerated in the US, so I find it curious that so many efforts should demonize Serbs for holding on to a cultural and political identity. In some communities in the southern US you won’t hear a word of English for days and the ethnic make-up is overwhelmingly Mexican, but it’s a safe bet that if these locals try to declare independence from the federal government of the US while murdering federal authorities --for whatever reason-- then the army vehicles would start rolling in rather quickly. Which is what happened in Kosovo in the late '90s, regardless of the build-up in the previous decades.
No one can deny that Milosevic gleefully employed all the wrong methods since he came to power – indeed, this has been a Serbian (and ex-Tito Yugoslav) weakness throughout much of history! What I like about Kostunica and the late Djindjic is that they seem aware that sometimes it pays to think things through carefully rather than go down the strongman route. However I have trouble viewing the waves of rapidly-reproducing ethnic Albanians as anything other than rabble. Sure, ethnic Albanians that have been in Kosovo for the last 50-150 years are likely to be fine, pacifist, and integrated people who valued living in a comparatively wealthy progressive country like Serbia (albeit an economic backwater thereof) as opposed to a disaster like Albania; the others tend to be unfortunate socio-economic desperados expanding outwards from Albania and (both intentionally and unintentionally) furthering the cause of foul institutions like the KLA.
I don’t know if I’d agree that Serbian connections to Kosovo are of the “distant historical” variety. All else aside, politically and legally Kosovo was and is a region of Serbia. Now that the majority of Serbs have been violently expelled from the region, does that end the concern of Serbia with the territory? Should Serbia give up the region to the ethnic Albanian population that remains, a large number of whom are relatively recent arrivals? It just doesn’t seem appropriate, in spite of Milosevic’s idiocy and brutality in handling the situation.
Spot on as far as Iraq is concerned, though I’d say the reason Bush and his Neocon buddies are taking half-measure after half-measure is the already titanic deficit, mismanaged beyond all expectations; oil still isn’t any cheaper either, and that revving economy simply is not producing new jobs, so the desire to be re-elected mandates keeping expenditures low where possible (which comes as a shock considering the past supply-side philosophy!). Do things in a shoddy manner, expect shoddy results.
Abe,
Sorry, I didn’t quite catch it, do you agree or not that removing Slobodan was the best way to resolve Kosovo problem, instead of bombing the whole Serbian nation? That’s where I think Clinton was totally wrong. That was also what Bush and Rumsfield got exactly right when dealing with Saddam: they went for the jugular straight away and never let go. Nowadays many complain how there was too much attention paid to assuring swift military success and too little to working out the details of everyday occupation. How quickly people forget, willingly or not! Nobody seems to recall all the speculation on the possibility of quagmire, outright disaster, Baghdad becoming a second Stalingrad etc., so rife before the invasion. Some people that were predicting all sorts of military setbacks for US forces prior to the invasion are now criticizing US high command for making sure those setbacks didn’t happen at the expense of other things that suddenly became important only recently. Also, I see nothing strange in securing oilfields first. Bush adm. declared in advance that they want Iraq democratic, independent and self-sufficient ASAP. For that a steady stream of revenue is needed and the best source of revenue for Iraq is oil, way ahead of all the museums and picturesque ruins. So the oilfields had to be secured, especially considering what Saddam has done with Kuwait oilfields before running away in 1991. Those oilfields are being restored to Iraqis. Are there any reports of any US agency selling Iraqi oil and pocketing the proceeds that I missed?
I really enjoy reading your posts because they are thoughtful and full of good arguments, but I still think that Clinton adm. performance during Kosovo operation was extremely amateurish, misguided and reckless, while Bush adm. performance in Iraq is very professional.
I think you are idealizing the lasting positive effects of dictatorial oppression, however thorough, when praising Saddam for suppressing religious radicalism in Iraq, much better than anywhere in the Arab world. True, he certainly has done that. However, history teaches that results of any dictatorship are extremely short lasting. For example, Soviet Union prided itself for making organized crime non-existent, as long as Communists were ruthless enough to kill as many people as necessary and then a whole lot more, to keep the population in the permanent state of fear. As soon as they went just a little soft, mafia-type groups started appearing out of nowhere and finally criminal syndicates divided the old Soviet Union between themselves. Similar process might have been underway in Iraq. Saddam was clearly getting old and losing control, while no strong leader was anywhere to be seen. That was exactly the recipe for all sorts of long-suppressed movements to spring up with a renewed vigor, as if making up for the lost time, and take control of the country. Dictatorships can achieve some positive results in a short term, but only democratic consensus can make such changes to last, which consensus cannot exist in a repressive authoritarian state.
Why did Saddam have to go? That’s the crux of the matter, isn’t it? That’s what it was all about: removing “Saddam and his sons” from power. When we know the satisfactory answer to your question, we might see the whole situation in a very different light, all of us.
Tamerlane,
I don’t know how close you are to the truth regarding the shortcomings of re-building Iraq, but I would agree in general that once the process was started playing any games, political or financial, is unforgiveable.