NATO blurts out the truth

28 May 1999

David Morgan
Vancouver

Greetings:

In the article below Gee quotes the US officer in charge of NATO's bombing, boasting that the purpose is to break the will of the Serbian people.

Marcus Gee is one of the Globe & Mail's best journalists so enjoy him while he lasts. He strongly opposed the bombing from Day 1. He is in the same top class of honest journalists as Robert Fisk of the Independent (UK).

Below this are the articles of the Geneva Convention, under which this officer should be charged. It makes interesting reading the day after Madame Justic Louise Arbour's ringing condemnation of Milosevic.

Best wishes,
David Morgan

1. Marcus Gee: What this War is Really About

2. Part of the 26-page charges against NATO leaders by the Osgoode Hall Law professors, applicable to Lieutenant general Michael C. Short

1. Marcus Gee: What this War is Really About Globe & Mail
What this war is really about
Marcus Gee
Wednesday, May 26, 1999

Summary Belgrade Hats off to Lieutenant-General Michael C. Short of the United States Air Force. Thanks to Lt.-Gen. Short, NATO's claim that the air war in Yugoslavia is not directed at civilians has been stripped of its last shreds of credibility.

When he sat down for an interview with The Washington Post last weekend, the general made it plain that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is trying to do much more than just hurt the Yugoslav military when it bombs bridges, power plants and water-pumping stations. It is trying to break the will of the Serbian people and foment an uprising against President Slobodan Milosevic.

Here is what he said about how he hoped Serbs would react to the devastation of their country. "If you wake up in the morning and you have no power to your house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey, Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do we have to withstand?' And at some point, you make the transition from applauding Serb machismo against the world to thinking what your country is going to look like if this continues."

There you have it, straight from the man in charge of the air campaign. This is no longer a short-term air strike against the Yugoslav government, as it began, or even a long-term campaign against the Yugoslav military, as it became. It is a war of attrition against the whole Serbian nation. The aim is to make ordinary people so miserable, so afraid and so discouraged that they will rise up in anger against Mr. Milosevic and force him to pull out of Kosovo. If NATO's generals can't do the job, the Serbs will do it for them.

You have to be here to understand how absurd that is. People in Belgrade are simply amazed at the boneheadedness of the NATO strategy, and when I ask people what they think of it, they sputter with outrage, frustration and incomprehension.

A good part of the population already opposes Mr. Milosevic; so those people need no incentive to dislike him. The idea that they might be bombed into disliking him more is laughable. People here are so angry at the bombing, and so involved with the daily struggle to survive under a bombardment, that they have little time or inclination for politics.

Even the fiercest critics of the government find the bombing repugnant and ridiculous. After fighting Mr. Milosevic for years, they feel they are being punished for his crimes. While bombs fall all around them, he is safe in a bunker somewhere, more powerful than ever. "I am the mother of a son, " one bright-eyed young woman said yesterday as her three-year-old played on the floor. "We are suffering, Milosevic isn't. He has all the cards."

The bombing does seem to have strengthened Mr. Milosevic, not necessarily by making him more popular but by giving him a perfect excuse to crush dissent. These days in Yugoslavia, anyone who opposes his regime is called a traitor. The editor of a leading independent newspaper was murdered last month -- a reminder, everyone here assumes, that in wartime it is best not to criticize. The Belgrade headquarters of the opposition Democratic Party has been repeatedly stoned and defaced by a rent-a-mob. In such an atmosphere, a veteran opposition figure told me in a darkened café during a power outage, "to say the opposition should speak up now is a call to suicide."

Yet that is just what the allies appear to be saying. Newsweek magazine reported this week that U.S. President Bill Clinton had authorized a plan to use the Central Intelligence Agency to destabilize Mr. Milosevic. As if the systematic destruction of Yugoslavia's infrastructure were not enough, the plan reportedly includes a scheme to train Albanian rebels to carry out a campaign of sabotage in Serbia. Asked about the plan, Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman said, "I wouldn't be surprised if we were using it here as part of an effort to bring the war in Kosovo home to the people, the civilians in Belgrade, so that they pressure Milosevic to break and make an agreement with NATO."

Okay, so here is the plan. We rain bombs on their heads for a couple more months. Then we send Albanian terrorists to blow up what's left. Then we tell them to rise up en-masse against a man whose ruthlessness we have compared with Hitler's. Thank you, Senator Lieberman. Thank you, General Short. Now we know what this war is really about.///



2. Part of the 26-page charges against NATO leaders by the Osgoode Hall Law professors, applicable to Lieutenant general Michael C. Short



WHEREAS the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia since 1991 was established by the UN Security Council with "the power to prosecute persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian law committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991 in accordance with the provisions of" its Statute (Article 1);

AND WHEREAS by Article 2 of the said Statute, the Tribunal has the power "to prosecute persons committing or ordering to be committed grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, namely the following acts against persons or property protected under the provisions of the relevant Geneva Convention" including the
(a) wilful killing;
(c) wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health;
(d) extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.

AND WHEREAS by Article 3 of the said Statute, "the International Tribunal shall have the power to prosecute persons violating the laws or customs of war. Such violations shall include, but not be limited to:

(a) employment of poisonous weapons or other weapons to cause unnecessary suffering; (b) wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity; (c) attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings; (d) seizure of, destruction or wilful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion, charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic monuments and works of art and science. ////

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