COMMENTARY

Curt Mudgeon

On Kosovo

April 1999

I object to the role of "policeman" of the world. It looks too much like "let's prevent crime everywhere." That is somewhat feasible only at home where the police are a bunch of local guys whose job is chartered by the citizenry, who are accountable to the said citizenry under the law of the land, and who walk the streets all the time. Being the "policeman" on foreign soil does not satisfy any of these conditions. It doesn't fit either the mission of a soldier, which is to maim people and break things in quantities as large as possible. If the Europeans want to do that, let it be their own business and not ours. Look at what's going on now in Kosovo. We have no national interest there, but we carry out more than 90% of the bombing missions. Our leader and his inept flunkeys claimed some time ago that we would have to provide only 15% of the ground troops. To me, that sounds right, because that's about the percentage of combat boots, which means that we will do the all the fighting while the Europeans will take care of the logistics, distribute bread to the civilian populations, and be the friends of the little kids. Not like those Yankee killers. Watching the French news on the international cable channel, I noticed that they never fail to mention that American planes bombed this, and that American cruise missiles hit that, etc. I am willing to bet-and safely at that-that a few years from now we Americans alone will hold the bag. You see, as the European explanation will go, the US imperialists did the bombing and the killing and they dragged NATO into this disaster because they are the most powerful country in the world and because their president needed a noble war to salvage a tainted legacy. And it is a disaster, because reducing a country to cinders for no good reason is a disaster. It is a disaster because the "pain threshold" will be reached when Serbia is a pile of rubble and only poppies can grow on the ground. The idea of pain will be irrelevant then because the dead can't feel pain. I heard today that the B-52s have been called upon for heavy destruction. We are not talking anymore about surgical strikes. We are talking about flattening a country. This, of course, begs for the fundamental question "why do we do that in the first place?" Well, it's because Slobodan Milosevic is like Hitler, you know. "Did he kick out all these people because of the NATO attack?" Noooo, Slobo would have done it anyway. These noble assertions don't fool me. Slobo is no idiot, whatever else he may be, and he's no Hitler. I know, because I saw Hitler at work. I believe that Slobo could have beaten the KLA with some collateral damage-a little Pentagon lingo here-but nothing like the monumental calamity triggered by the NATO bombing. When the bombing started and refugees began pouring out, I tried to put myself in Slobo's state of mind. Here is the result of the exercise.
Having no intention to cave in, I, Slobo, must be prepared to see my country and my military power destroyed. This will make me extremely vulnerable to Albanian attacks, and I will lose Kosovo for sure. Since the KLA terrorists will be aided by and perhaps recruit more local "ethnic Albanians" emboldened by NATO's destructive aggression, the first order of things is to kick out the bloody Albanians. As a bonus, I'll get them in the way of these righteous NATO do-gooders who will have to dedicate substantial attention to the care of the refugees instead of bombing the Jesus out of Serbia. I oppose autonomy, because autonomy gave the Albanians a free hand in making Serbs unwelcome in Kosovo since Tito checked out. Besides, autonomy is but the last step before independence, which is really what Albanians want, and they will keep making Serbs unwelcome until the last one leaves. Then, who will keep an entirely Albanian Kosovo from declaring its independence or its inclusion in a greater Albania? Tony Blair? Anyway, what France, England, and Germany want is total control of Europe by coaxing every country into NATO, and they know that I won't play that game. That's why they want to get rid of me.
I would perhaps agree on a partition of Kosovo, which is the reasonable, least bloody, and most durable solution, but those NATO energumens don't want to hear about it. My position makes sense, and that's why I have so much support at home since the bullies started pounding us. The NATO politicians don't fool anybody about holding the high ground, because they also said that the "credibility" of NATO made them start the mayhem. This doesn't sound to me like high ground. Credibility? Is there any doubt about the ability of a coalition of industrial countries (pop. 700,000,000) to flatten Serbia (pop. 10,000,000)? It sounds like the NATO clowns committed a monumental blunder, and that instead of trying to make some sensible correction they'd rather cover it up by bombing us into oblivion. That won't undo the blunder, and as a matter of principle, I must not cave in. Someone has to stand up to NATO's New Order. We fought against that sort of thing fifty-eight years ago.
I may be some big SOB - a little George S. Patton quote here to show I know history - but I'm not Hitler. I don't intend to conquer Europe, and I couldn't do that anyway even if I wanted to. I just want to reclaim Kosovo, which is part of the Yugoslav Federation to start with. Why don't the NATO losers mind their own business, try to run their countries, make peace in Northern Ireland, cut taxes, do something about unemployment, and stop being sanctimonious pests. That they call me a communist is rather funny, because they're all pinko retreads. I can't cave in, and the majority of Serbia is with me.
Slobo may know more about life than neoteric Tony, lip-bitin' Willie, mad Madeleine, and nobody Solana. I think that the NATO geniuses have no idea of what they're doing. The Europeans screwed up when they drew the borders of the region in 1912, and they are bent on committing more damage now with the same arrogance and ineptitude. Since their peoples no longer know much about history, they think that a little spin will make their wrong-headedness pass for statesmanship.
Of course, it's time we Americans get out of NATO. NATO's raison d'etre has disappeared, only to be replaced with the New-Order agendas of Messrs. Blair, Jospin, and Schröder, all good leftists. Let them have their own alliance and do their little dirty wars by themselves. That might solve the unemployment problems that their socialist politics have created.

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