Warren Zimmermann: NATO's Air War

["John Gelles" <jjgelles@xxxxxxxx>]

	Former US ambassador to Yugoslavia (1992), Warren
	Zimmermann last night on Charlie Rose made the case
	for continuing the air war against the Serbian Army.
		He would prefer it concentrate on forces in
	Kosovo, and not destroy infrastructure far north of them.
	But his emphasis is on removing the murderers from
	Kosovo over the many months air war may have to
	be waged.

	He said the Yugoslavian army had been purged of all
	non-Serbians and of all moderate Serbs -- what is left is
	a an army of murderers.  They are not likely to dump
	Milosevic -- but can be beaten back with low flying
	planes designed for ground war.  They can be forced
	out of Kosovo.

	Once out, negotiations can take place for international
	troops to police an Albanian protectorate -- that may
	have to 	be about 80% of the former province.

	The atrocities now being committed by a nation
	(Serbia) that has been desensitized to its own cruel
	conduct by years of similar murders by its forces in
	Bosnia, will, he predicts, surpass all the atrocities
	of the immediate past in the former Yugoslavia.

	He sees Milosevic as two people -- one rational
	and charming, the New York banker he was, -- the
	other an opportunist, with no conscience to control
	his love of and pursuit of power.  He sees him as
	possibly going down in flames with his army, or
	as possibly continuing in power after an imposed
	peace -- an unconvicted war criminal.

	For the moment, all is military tactics and grand
	strategy (in Washington and Moscow).  Economics
	plays a part -- especially if Moscow opts for money
	over a prolonged limited war -- but economics will
	first play its major part after war ends and peace-
	keepers enter Kosovo to help rebuild.

	We know young men outside Serbia, drawn from
	all NATO countries, especially our own air force,
	are asked to wage this war at the risk of their life.
		Some of their countrymen safe at home
	question the need to kill the Serbian army to save
	Kosovo for poor Albanians, many full of hate for
	Serbia.
		These young men accept the price of
	democracy they pay and critics are exempt from.
	It is a price paid in all wars by nations that tolerate
	dissent within their borders.
		It is a price worth paying -- if we did not
	pay it, we would not know of the KLA murders of
	Albanian moderates and innocent Serb officials.
	We would know less than a democracy ought to
	know of the real nature of men and war.
		Our flyers, if they are fortunate enough to hear
	the likes of Warren Zimmermann, who, in fact, echoes
	the word coming down their own chain of command,
	can fight in defense of humanity, and against the dark
	forces of desensitized murder, knowing Chomsky, and
	those like him, are inadequate to their role as self-
	appointed national leaders.
		In any fair world, Chomsky and company
	would live or die under the rule of Milosevic and not
	in the democracy they malign, imperfect as it may be.

		John Gelles