Christopher Hitchens writes of Hillary Clinton's involvement with US policy on Bosnia beyond her 1996 trip with Sinbad and her daughter (tip to Instapundit):
In particular, what had happened to [Bill Clinton's] 1992 promise . . . that genocide in Bosnia would be opposed by a Clinton administration?
. . . President Bill Clinton had not found it convenient to keep this promise. Let me quote from Sally Bedell Smith's admirable book on the happy couple, For Love of Politics:
Taking the advice of Al Gore and National Security Advisor Tony Lake, Bill agreed to a proposal to bomb Serbian military positions while helping the Muslims acquire weapons to defend themselves—the fulfillment of a pledge he had made during the 1992 campaign. But instead of pushing European leaders, he directed Secretary of State Warren Christopher merely to consult with them. When they balked at the plan, Bill quickly retreated, creating a "perception of drift." The key factor in Bill's policy reversal was Hillary, who was said to have "deep misgivings" and viewed the situation as "a Vietnam that would compromise health-care reform." The United States took no further action in Bosnia, and the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs was to continue for four more years, resulting in the deaths of more than 250,000 people.
I can personally witness to the truth of this, too. I can remember, first, one of the Clintons' closest personal advisers—Sidney Blumenthal—referring with acid contempt to Warren Christopher as "a blend of Pontius Pilate with Ichabod Crane." I can remember, second, a meeting with Clinton's then-Secretary of Defense Les Aspin at the British Embassy. When I challenged him on the sellout of the Bosnians, he drew me aside and told me that he had asked the White House for permission to land his own plane at Sarajevo airport, if only as a gesture of reassurance that the United States had not forgotten its commitments. The response from the happy couple was unambiguous: He was to do no such thing, lest it distract attention from the first lady's health care "initiative."
It's hardly necessary for me to point out that the United States did not receive national health care in return for its acquiescence in the murder of tens of thousands of European civilians. But perhaps that is the least of it. Were I to be asked if Sen. Clinton has ever lost any sleep over those heaps of casualties, I have the distinct feeling that I could guess the answer. She has no tears for anyone but herself. In the end, and over her strenuous objections, the United States and its allies did rescue our honor and did put an end to Slobodan Milosevic and his state-supported terrorism. Yet instead of preserving a polite reticence about this, or at least an appropriate reserve, Sen. Clinton now has the obscene urge to claim the raped and slaughtered people of Bosnia as if their misery and death were somehow to be credited to her account! Words begin to fail one at this point. Is there no such thing as shame? Is there no decency at last? Let the memory of the truth, and the exposure of the lie, at least make us resolve that no Clinton ever sees the inside of the White House again.
How does that work: does someone in the press corps dare to broach this? Or do they leave it alone, knowing that they will be persona non grata on the campaign bus and never get another interview or juicy off-the-record remark again?
I see no reason why President Clinton and Senator Clinton shouldn't be allowed to meet future presidents in the White House. I see no reason barring Chelsea Clinton from being elected president some day. I see no reason why the decendants of New York Governor DeWitt Clinton (gov. 1817-1822), or any other Clinton, should be barred from being elected president some day.
If you could point us to the mission statement or the policy or whatever, let us know and we can debate it.
My memory is a bit hazy, but iirc, some of the VC bloggers have had the gall to post pictures of their children without bothering to comment about the effects that their offspring had on the application of tax and property laws.
I think one of the VC bloggers even posts song lyrics some weeks without making a legal issue out of it.
And to make matters even worse, there's a subculture of people on this blog who are interested in language and word usage, completely independent of its connection with the interpretation of legal texts.
Once you find that policy, I think there'll be a strong case for shutting this blog down.
And don't even get me started about whether this post has any place on a supposedly libertarian blog.
It's really pretty simple: the function of journalism is to provide cheap, entertaining filler to go between the ads. Asking questions can only add to the expense of producing filler and in the worst case could make some filler unusable. Therefore, no questions are asked except for those that can be depended on to fluff out the already-established filler.
Come now.
I hate the Clintons as much as anybody, but the student who asked the question was being incredibly crass. Outrage at the question is probably the ONLY legitimate response to what amounts to, "What do you think of your mom's response to the initial allegations of your dad's notorious adultery?"
For those who think otherwise, stop and think a bit. Would it be legitimate to ask McCain's daughter whether her mother was truly outraged at the NYT allegations that her husband had an affair with a lobbyist? Would it be within the bounds of good taste?
While that is certainly true, the problem is that if she did advocate against Bosnian intervention, it is incredibly dishonest and hypocritical 15 years later to falsely place herself in a dangerous situation on the ground in Bosnia to create the impression she was on a mission to bring peace there, and liberate people from the suffering she in fact was determined not to stop. It's one thing to make a hard decision and stand by it. It's quite another to spin lies to create the impression you were a leader in trying to stop the slaughter.
Outrage at the question is probably the ONLY legitimate response to what amounts to, "What do you think of your mom's response to the initial allegations of your dad's notorious adultery?"
I agree with this. She was a teenager when her world was rocked by this, and should not have to answer for her parents' relationship or what her mom said after her husband cheated on her. It is a legitimate question to throw at her mom directly; not their kid.
There's a huge difference between "within the bounds of good taste" and "none of your business." I agree that it was in very poor taste to ask Chelsea a question about her mother's response to her father's infidelity. But I think that Hillary's public responses -- such as choosing to blame a "vast right wing conspiracy" -- are absolutely something that a voter has a right to consider. Hillary is saying that her experience as First Lady is a large factor in her qualifications to be President. As such, her experiences as First Lady are fair game for voter scrutiny and questions.
Well Chelsea's problem was that the question didn't come the way she expected and prepared for it. She said herself that nobody had previously asked her about it in all of her public appearances and the idea that she wasn't prepared for a question on the topic defies reasonable belief.
Moreover, Chelsea is continuing to campaign for Senator Clinton. Asking Chelsea questions about the false statements that the FLOTUS Clinton made on, e.g., the Today Show and has never retracted, is completely appropriate.
If Chelsea were not campaigning for the Senator, then seeking her out to ask such questions would be highly inappropriate.
So ignoring the Holocaust would have been just fine in your book, Asher? So much for the universality of human rights...
Not that I'm a big fan of the Serbs or anything, but one distinct military problem is that Bosnia from 92-94 wasn't just the Serbs from Serbia proper causing trouble. It was the "Krajinan" Serbs - ethnic serbs in Bosnia; Bosnian ethnic Croats; Croats from actual Croatia; and a couple hundred or more Jihadists working hard to radicalize the Bosnian Muslims-in-name-only, with Iranian and Saudi presence in Bosnia; not to mention a couple mercenary outfits - not contractors like Blackwater but really low-rent, untrained freebooters, basically - who wreaked havoc. Oh yeah, and the Bosnian Muslims themselves were pretty treacherous, having pulled a few manuevers to push their own civilians into the line of fire, in order to gin up world sympathy for their cause. And don't forget the organized, and disorganized crime, that made humanitarian relief pretty damned difficult.
The belligerent parties made it a bit hard for the US and Western Europe to figure out where to go, and whom to support - though Russian sympathies with the Serbs were pretty evident everywhere. Yet it's not like there were front lines to go to. Within various sectors there were ragged lines, but you're talking about a civil war - little pockets of one faction or another, sometimes getting along with the next faction (e.g. Bosnian Muslims and Croats) and sometimes not. Hopping into the middle of that would have likely been comparable to hopping, without any battlefield prep, into Iraq, circa 2004-2005, and trying to cool down the Sadrists, the 1920's Brigades, the Iranian paramilitaries, and the local bandits all at once. You can compare it to war but it's more like policing; yet the people needing policing were all interspersed among each other and the civilian populations and they had heavy weapons, eg. crew served weapons and occasionally tanks and the like.
There was also the issue of the UN's mission and rules. It was one of those "can't we all just get along" missions. The UN mission in Zagreb was notoriously reluctant to let the "UN soldiers" - battalions from a couple dozen national contingents - actually fight back or take proactive steps. So you had absurdities like one faction or another sweeping through a UN outpost meant to stop the aggression, and the outpost, though heavily armed, could not use force to stop the onslaught because they themselves were not targeted. The fighting itself wasn't stopped by sanctioned military action, so much as by the creative violation of UN rules of engagement by a handful of the Western military contingents present, and the belligerent parties themselves getting burned out and tired of open warfare, at least for now. A couple of the national contingents still occupy a warm place in my heart for figuring out creative ways to define 'self-defense,' resulting in a battering applied to two or three of the belligerents at once - an activity that seemed effective for creating a local peace, but which would have sent the UN chief screaming to Turtle Bay in outrage. The Dutch standing idly by during the massacre at Tuzla was a pretty good example of a national contingent following the rules of engagement established by the UN mission - they did exactly what they were supposed to do, and since the Serbs weren't taking them under fire, they had no grounds to fight the Serbs, per the rules. Other national contingents would likely have flattened Arkan's boys, but they would have done so at their own legal risk. Wouldn't a warcrimes trial initiated by Serbia against some poor Dutch lieutennant and a handful of troops, in the Hague for violating the prescribed UN rules of engagement, have been a pretty thing?
It was really a bloody mess until a couple of the Western armies knocked the crap out of a few of the belligerents in a couple localities, and those belligerents got tired of fighting. Maybe the ethnic cleansing did it's job too - not so much the genocide as the forced relocation of minority groups into ethnically distinct enclaves. Note that this is a political solution as much as a military solution. The NATO IFOR then came into a situation that was resolvable, or at least containable, by military means.
Yes, from '92 to '94 you could have put in U.S. troops, but the question a soldier has to ask, is "where, and to what benefit?" Soldiers are generally good at accomplishing clear missions, and "don't just stand there, do something!" isn't exactly a 5 paragraph op order. I don't judge U.S. non-intervention in Bosnia as harshly as some because I don't see it as clearly resolvable as so many of you do. Perhaps you should try and enlighten me as to where I have it all wrong.
If we'd intervened, I expect we'd have had different ROE.
Still, there was a report that Canadian soldiers needed counseling because various folks would bring victims up to a Canadian position and commence to rape and torture them, and laugh at the Canadians. Makes you wonder about the utility of discriminating munitions.
Is there actual evidence of this happening? Do you have a source for this?
She also claimed to have lobbied within the administration for intervention in Rwanda. That was almost certainly a lie. Combine that with the Bosnian exaggeration, and the Northern Ireland exaggeration, and you get the picture. Does she care about people and policy? I think so. Is she a frightfully lousy politician that treats voters like they are too stupid to see through her prevarications and rationalizations? Yes.
Right off the top -- there never was a "massacre at Tuzla". Tuzla was, and remains to this day, a "mixed" city - in that all of the "ethnic" groups lived there before, during and after the conflict, as they do today. Some of the survivors of the Srebrenica massace were taken to Tuzla (and the Dutch Bat troops were the ones over-run at Srebrenica -- while USAF F-16s flew up and down the Adriatic, ran low on fuel, were replaced, which replacement sorties did the same thing, awaiting a decision from UN officials authorizing the use of force to repel the attack on Srebrenica. When Srebrenica was over-run, some 8,000 people (mostly men and boys) disappeared, the UN decided that there was no reason for it to make a decision.)
For much more detail, I'd suggest reading "Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation" by Laura Silber and Allan Little, or watching the BBC mini-series (which follows the book fairly well). Caution, the mini-series is essentially an 8 hour snuff film, so it's not for the queasy.
It took very little force to end the conflict. Croatian forces were armed and trained. Operation Storm over-ran the Knin area fairly easily, and moved on into BiH to break the siege around Bihac, and kept pressing forward. Ignoring the arms embargo so that troops of the BiH Federation were equiped was also important. When the conflict began, an arms embargo was ordered as to Croatia, BiH and Serbia. However, before the conflict, Serbia was an arms exporter, and Croatia had its border with Hungary and the Adriatic coast over which arms could be "smuggled" (Is is smuggling when it's authorized and facilitated by the local government?) into Croatia easily. Germany facilitiated much of the arms shipments into Croatia. It was only the Bosniaks (Yugoslav Muslims) who were denied arms, ammo and equipment. Additionally, scraping the UN Rules of Engagement was essential. Many of the national contingent troops who were part of the IFOR/SFOR operations had previously been there as part of UNPROFOR. When their hands were untied (i.e., no longer had to obtain permission from UN officials in order to act), they proved effective and efficient at stopping the violence. In addition to a lot of other factors, there was also the use of US and NATO military force. US and NATO aircraft bombed Pale -- which made the point that, unlike the UN, there would be more than hand-wringing as a response. Combat troops from various nations, not just US, moved into BiH, and it was an open secret that the NATO and US Rules of Engagement allowed (and sometimes mandated) use of deadly force in response to "hostile intent". That phrase was not defined in the ROEs (sort of, a we'll know it when we see it -- and you'll find out by becoming dead -- type of situation). Unlike the situation under the UN -- one of certainty that no or no effective response would be made -- this created uncertainty among the various factions as to how far they could provoke the IFOR/SFOR forces. From personal experience I can attest to the amazing calming qualities of looking someone in the eye, smiling, and chambering a round. The person looked at calms down very quickly, and sometimes becomes very polite and apologizes profusely for any misunderstandings.
The basic point on which you are wrong is that the object of war is to overcome the will of the enemy to resist. Essentially this is psychological. You don't care why your enemy quits and goes home, only that your enemy does that. When those behind and who were profiting by the conflict (&you are correct, it wasn't only Serb or Bosnian-Serb or Croatian-Serb leaders and criminals who were responsible), found that they were at risk, the fighting quickly stopped. The facts on the ground in 1995 were essentially the same as in 1993, and probably in 1990-91 even better, for stopping the conflict. However, in 1990-91 the US leadership was focused on Kuwait, and by 1993 the US leadership was afraid of another Somolia. Until the broadcasts on CNN from Sarajevo in 1995 started hurting Pres. Clinton's popularity ratings, there was no political will at the top of the US government to do anything about the conflict.
I promise not to vote for Chelsea Clinton for President.
Sorry, it's been a while and I tend to think of the area as Tuzla since it's in the same neighborhood, and it's been a few years. I was at Srebrenica shortly before the massacre and it wouldn't be unfair to describe the Dutch attitude to performing any actual military activities as desultory, though I was impressed that they were willing to use sattelite assets to provide MTV to troops in the field. I'm not sure what the RusBat in that area - I recall north of Tuzla - did to keep the Serbs in line, but they managed.
It took very little force to end the conflict.
Funny, that's not what I remember based on seeing it in 93-94. My recollection is it involved short but sharp actions on the Canadians' part, near Bihac, and much more extensive activities in Bosnia proper, including the application of a 10-to-1 rule by one of the western contingents there in an area of heavier fighting. That operational rule was put in place after that contingent found itself continually in the crossfire, and it was implemented without UN sanction. Various national contingents also employed considerable lattitude in their use of special ops forces.
It was only the Bosniaks (Yugoslav Muslims) who were denied arms, ammo and equipment.
Really? I seem to recall refitted passenger jets of middle eastern origin, with their own heavily armed security details, showing up in Sarajevo and offloading weapons to the Bosnian Muslims, and the airport security detail being turned away at gunpoint from doing what then passed for a customs inspection.
When their hands were untied (i.e., no longer had to obtain permission from UN officials in order to act), they proved effective and efficient at stopping the violence.
I agree completely about the counterproductive role of the UN, but recall at the time there was also a bit of political complexity. The US was not exactly strongly wanted or welcome by the Western Europeans - my impression was that it was very much a UN/French show, with the Can/UK contingent doing a lot of work, but also strongly desiring the U.S. to step up, while the Russian contingent (which may have been larger than even the French contingent) strongly against it due to their traditional ties to Serbia. I think it's mistaken to put this all on the Clintons because the strategic situation was not eminently clear at the time. This was reflected in what I recall was a bias against this mission between 92-95 on the part of the J-staff, which really pushed to have an end state goal prior to engaging, for the same reason that a lot of people have a problem with the Iraq War, and increasingly with Afghanistan - the U.S. military is not traditionally in the nation-building business, and that's what Bosnia sure-as-shit looked like during the first three years.
The basic point on which you are wrong is that the object of war is to overcome the will of the enemy to resist. Essentially this is psychological. You don't care why your enemy quits and goes home, only that your enemy does that.
How do you figure I'm wrong on that? I made it pretty clear that war is an extension of politics, and the way this one was "won" was that the belligerents got tired of fighting. Seems to me in LIC/MIC, it doesn't matter how you break the enemy's will, as long as it gets broken. Sun Tzu would point out that the best general doesn't have to fight - he can figure out a way to let something else break down the enemy and convince him not to fight. There's nothing wrong with having other factions beat the enemy down. And I'm not entirely convinced the Serbs were wholly 'the enemy' and the Bosniacs were entirely our allies. A friend who was chopped to the UN in a fairly high ranking role prior to the IFOR deployment was the victim of an assasination attempt by the Bosniacs when he was transiting out of Sarajevo, probably in retaliation for his openly-expressed interest in stopping an organized crime linkup between one of the national contingents working for the UN, and the Bosniacs. Similarly, the forensic evidence demonstrating that the Bosnian Muslims were probably the perpetrators of the Sarajevo "marketplace bombing" which brought French and ultimately UN involvement made it pretty clear to me the Bosnian Muslmis weren't entirely clean handed, even if, on the balance, they were more in the right than the Krajinan and rump Serbs.
The facts on the ground in 1995 were essentially the same as in 1993, and probably in 1990-91 even better, for stopping the conflict.
First, France and the NATO military forces present, save the Dutch and Spaniards, did a considerable amount of credibility-building between 93 and 95, convincing the belligerents that while the Jordanians or Pakistanis were probably there for the prestige, most of the NATO militaries really meant it when they took the safety off. Second, the idea that the situation was more favorable early on ignores the WMD question, which was a pretty significant consideration following the splitup of Yugoslavia. Finally, it ignores long term history - to view this conflict as starting in 1990 is simply wrong, and misses the long running grievances that still fuel outbreaks of conflict in the region. "Ustashi" is still a slur. Sarajevans are still cognizant of the events predicating WWI. Fights between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Muslim incursions into Central Europe through the Balkans, dating back to the time of the Teutonic Knights, show the cultural fault lines, and even Roman commentators noted the bellicosity and constant warring of the tribes across the Adriatic. We Americans, and our Canadian friends, seem to think that culture is irrelevant, and that we can remake the world. Not everybody has a post-Enlightenment mindset, unfortunately, and that part of the world in particular has a better sense of history and a stronger sense of eternal grievance than we seem able to comprehend.
From personal experience I can attest to the amazing calming qualities of looking someone in the eye, smiling, and chambering a round.
Yeah, but my lasting impression of shows of, or applications of force in the Balkans, is that showing the business end of a gun doesn't create peace, it just creates a temporary pause - maybe lasting a day, a week, or a decade - in the eternal war on the neighbors. I may not like the region but I have tremendous respect for the people I encountered over there because I don't think there's a whole lot of quit in them - they might back off today, or next year, but as soon as the heat is off and a good opportunity is presented, I suspect they will be back at it. Honestly, when we talk about the Battle of Kosovo, we talk about a 99 day bombing campaign seven or eight years ago, and we think that's what's behind the Serbs' dislike of the US and the Kosovars. When the Serbs talk about being pissed about the Battle of Kosovo, they don't mean 1999, they are talking about 1389, and they still haven't gotten over it. It might as well have been yesterday, as far as they are concerned; and for that matter ethnic Croats bear an almost genetic dislike of Eastern Orthodox christians generally and Serbs in particular, and these facts were all known to J-2 and NATO analysts at the time. So this gives me great skepticism that the mission was merited to begin with, when viewed in the long run. We think of nationalism as an ugly thing, but to some extent, 'ethnic cleansing'- not genocide but resettlement, separating the aggrieved populations, seems an almost humane solution compared to likely future outbursts. Sure, we may be establishing a lasting peace, but for it to be deemed lasting by local standards it will have to last at least 500 years, maybe a millenium. What ever in the Balkans' history makes you think that is feasible?
Sorry, it's been a while and I tend to think of the area as Tuzla since it's in the same neighborhood, and it's been a few years. I was at Srebrenica shortly before the massacre and it wouldn't be unfair to describe the Dutch attitude to performing any actual military activities as desultory, though I was impressed that they were willing to use sattelite assets to provide MTV to troops in the field. I'm not sure what the RusBat in that area - I recall north of Tuzla - did to keep the Serbs in line, but they managed.
It took very little force to end the conflict.
Funny, that's not what I remember based on seeing it in 93-94. My recollection is it involved short but sharp actions on the Canadians' part, near Bihac, and much more extensive activities in Bosnia proper, including the application of a 10-to-1 rule by one of the western contingents there in an area of heavier fighting. That operational rule was put in place after that contingent found itself continually in the crossfire, and it was implemented without UN sanction. Various national contingents also employed considerable lattitude in their use of special ops forces.
It was only the Bosniaks (Yugoslav Muslims) who were denied arms, ammo and equipment.
Really? I seem to recall refitted passenger jets of middle eastern origin, with their own heavily armed security details, showing up in Sarajevo and offloading weapons to the Bosnian Muslims, and the airport security detail being turned away at gunpoint from doing what then passed for a customs inspection.
When their hands were untied (i.e., no longer had to obtain permission from UN officials in order to act), they proved effective and efficient at stopping the violence.
I agree completely about the counterproductive role of the UN, but recall at the time there was also a bit of political complexity. The US was not exactly strongly wanted or welcome by the Western Europeans - my impression was that it was very much a UN/French show, with the Can/UK contingent doing a lot of work, but also strongly desiring the U.S. to step up, while the Russian contingent (which may have been larger than even the French contingent) strongly against it due to their traditional ties to Serbia. I think it's mistaken to put this all on the Clintons because the strategic situation was not eminently clear at the time. This was reflected in what I recall was a bias against this mission between 92-95 on the part of the J-staff, which really pushed to have an end state goal prior to engaging, for the same reason that a lot of people have a problem with the Iraq War, and increasingly with Afghanistan - the U.S. military is not traditionally in the nation-building business, and that's what Bosnia sure-as-shit looked like during the first three years.
The basic point on which you are wrong is that the object of war is to overcome the will of the enemy to resist. Essentially this is psychological. You don't care why your enemy quits and goes home, only that your enemy does that.
How do you figure I'm wrong on that? I made it pretty clear that war is an extension of politics, and the way this one was "won" was that the belligerents got tired of fighting. Seems to me in LIC/MIC, it doesn't matter how you break the enemy's will, as long as it gets broken. Sun Tzu would point out that the best general doesn't have to fight - he can figure out a way to let something else break down the enemy and convince him not to fight. There's nothing wrong with having other factions beat the enemy down. And I'm not entirely convinced the Serbs were wholly 'the enemy' and the Bosniacs were entirely our allies. A friend who was chopped to the UN in a fairly high ranking role prior to the IFOR deployment was the victim of an assasination attempt by the Bosniacs when he was transiting out of Sarajevo, probably in retaliation for his openly-expressed interest in stopping an organized crime linkup between one of the national contingents working for the UN, and the Bosniacs. Similarly, the forensic evidence demonstrating that the Bosnian Muslims were probably the perpetrators of the Sarajevo "marketplace bombing" which brought French and ultimately UN involvement made it pretty clear to me the Bosnian Muslmis weren't entirely clean handed, even if, on the balance, they were more in the right than the Krajinan and rump Serbs.
The facts on the ground in 1995 were essentially the same as in 1993, and probably in 1990-91 even better, for stopping the conflict.
First, France and the NATO military forces present, save the Dutch and Spaniards, did a considerable amount of credibility-building between 93 and 95, convincing the belligerents that while the Jordanians or Pakistanis were probably there for the prestige, most of the NATO militaries really meant it when they took the safety off. Second, the idea that the situation was more favorable early on ignores the WMD question, which was a pretty significant consideration following the splitup of Yugoslavia. Finally, it ignores long term history - to view this conflict as starting in 1990 is simply wrong, and misses the long running grievances that still fuel outbreaks of conflict in the region. "Ustashi" is still a slur. Sarajevans are still cognizant of the events predicating WWI. Fights between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Muslim incursions into Central Europe through the Balkans, dating back to the time of the Teutonic Knights, show the cultural fault lines, and even Roman commentators noted the bellicosity and constant warring of the tribes across the Adriatic. We Americans, and our Canadian friends, seem to think that culture is irrelevant, and that we can remake the world. Not everybody has a post-Enlightenment mindset, unfortunately, and that part of the world in particular has a better sense of history and a stronger sense of eternal grievance than we seem able to comprehend.
From personal experience I can attest to the amazing calming qualities of looking someone in the eye, smiling, and chambering a round.
Yeah, but my lasting impression of shows of, or applications of force in the Balkans, is that showing the business end of a gun doesn't create peace, it just creates a temporary pause - maybe lasting a day, a week, or a decade - in the eternal war on the neighbors. I may not like the region but I have tremendous respect for the people I encountered over there because I don't think there's a whole lot of quit in them - they might back off today, or next year, but as soon as the heat is off and a good opportunity is presented, I suspect they will be back at it. Honestly, when we talk about the Battle of Kosovo, we talk about a 99 day bombing campaign seven or eight years ago, and we think that's what's behind the Serbs' dislike of the US and the Kosovars. When the Serbs talk about being pissed about the Battle of Kosovo, they don't mean 1999, they are talking about 1389, and they still haven't gotten over it. It might as well have been yesterday, as far as they are concerned; and for that matter ethnic Croats bear an almost genetic dislike of Eastern Orthodox christians generally and Serbs in particular, and these facts were all known to J-2 and NATO analysts at the time. So this gives me great skepticism that the mission was merited to begin with, when viewed in the long run. We think of nationalism as an ugly thing, but to some extent, 'ethnic cleansing'- not genocide but resettlement, separating the aggrieved populations, seems an almost humane solution compared to likely future outbursts. Sure, we may be establishing a lasting peace, but for it to be deemed lasting by local standards it will have to last at least 500 years, maybe a millenium. What ever in the Balkans' history makes you think that is feasible?