Libya: Not the New Kosovo
Lorne Gunter, one of the wiser columnists in the media, opines in the National Post that there are a lot of parallels between the war in Libya and the 1999 NATO war against Serbia in Kosovo.
While there are some parallels in the air war, that’s where the comparison ends.
Kosovo was a phony war orchestrated by the U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on the fabricated grounds that Slobodan Milosevic was waging genocide in Kosovo. The U.S.-NATO air attack was advertised to last 48 hours, at which point Milosevic and Serbs would capitulate.
Seventy-nine days later it was over – a proclaimed triumph for America and NATO. Forensic people poured into “liberated” Kosovo to document genocide and exhume mass graves. A Canadian team of forensic doctors and RCMP investigators set up a base in Kosovo and went to work.
They found evidence of atrocities – both by Serbs and by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) -- but no mass graves.
Louise Arbour, then chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague, arrived at the Canadian forensic site for a photo opportunity, and proceeded to indict Milosevic and others for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Even though the Mounties told her they found no mass graves, she believed they were somewhere, and the search went on.
Last week marked the 12th anniversary of the air attack on Belgrade and select Serbian targets, yet in that 12 year period, no mass graves have been found.
Investigations showed that prior to the air war, atrocities abounded in Kosovo on roughly a 50% basis – half by Kosovars, half by Serbs.
One of the prime reasons for the war was a so-called massacre of 45 Kosovar civilians by Serbs at the town of Racak. William Walker, head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, investigated, looked at dead bodies and wrote a graphic account of the massacre.
Ms. Arbour and the likes of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch condemned the massacre that tipped the scales to launch the air war.
Thanks largely to French journalists and forensic investigators from Finland, it became more likely (depending on one’s objectivity) that the Racak victims had been killed during fighting between Serbs and the KLA, and the bodies moved and arranged to appear that they’d been massacred.
Examination showed most had been killed from a distance -- little evidence to indicate executions. Nonetheless, the cursory walk-through by William Walker led to charges of massacre against Milosevic which, had he not died before his trial was completed, might have been a huge embarrassment to NATO and the International Court.
The air war over Kosovo was not the U.S.’s or NATO’s finest hour.
When one examines the reasons for attacking, there’s little parallel between Kosovo and Libya.
Hypocrisy in the Libyan “war” is the pretense that it is not motivated by the desire for a regime change – to get rid of Muammar Qaddafi. Barack Obama’s insistence that “Qaddafi must go” doesn’t wash with his statement that America’s only goal is to save the lives of Libyans.
Accusations that Obama “dithered” are unfair. What he was doing – or the effect of his “dithering” – was to galvanize Britain, France, Europe, the Arab League and the UN Security Council, into taking action.
Otherwise America would be carrying the ball alone, to be the target of criticism when things go wrong with the rebels – as they eventually will.
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