Nuanced Internationalism

Nuanced Internationalism - Some of us warned you; getting involved in Kosovo was the real quagmire. "This is not only an ethnic squabble that goes back a thousand years - it's an inter-ethnic rhubarb, the hardest thing in the world to deal with. Moreover, there was no compelling US interest in sending our military to Kosovo, beyond humanitarianism - and, equally, there was no reason the Europeans, whom we have been protecting and whose economies we've been allowing to grow unfettered by the need for proportional military spending for the past 50+years, shouldn't have handled the whole thing. "And getting involved via the UN is stupid, stupid, stupid."

"Oh, no", said supporters of Clinton's effort, which started as a nuanced rejection of international sovereignty, "You're just saying that because Iraq has been so difficult."

Er, no. We're saying this because the UN can't walk and chew gum at the same time:

A pogrom started in Europe this week, with one U.N. official being quoted as saying, "Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo." Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be lost forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo's Albanians have shown that their rhetoric about "democracy" and "multiethnicity" is false, and demonstrates also that the international community's acceptance of them has been naïve.

How did this week's events begin? Just as in the 1930s, a rumor became a fact and prearranged plans were put into action. Members of the victimized community (in this case, Serbian children) were accused of chasing four Albanian children into a river and causing the death of three of them. Hours later, the U.N. Mission — which is what passes for authority in Kosovo — issued a statement that the accusation against the Serbs was false, adding that the surviving Albanian child had told the U.N. that no Serbs had been involved in the drownings. Nevertheless, anti-Serb violence did not abate. And today Kosovo burns still...

...Monasteries and churches dating back to the 12th century are burning; 14 have been completely destroyed so far. Their cultural significance is irreplaceable. Photographs and memories are now all that remain. But instead of protecting them, the U.N. fled.

The wave of violence has been too coordinated to be a spontaneous, popular reaction to rumors. "It was planned in advance," said Derek Chappell, the U.N.'s Kosovo mission spokesman. All that was needed was a pretext. It is clear that some in the Kosovo Albanian leadership believe that by cleansing all remaining Serbs from the area (having already achieved the cleansing of two-thirds of Kosovo's Serbs after its "liberation" in 1999) and destroying Serbian cultural sites, they can present the international community with a fait accompli. But ethnic purity cannot be allowed to be the foundation for either democracy or independence."

As Jason Van Steenwyck notes to a reader of his blog who compares the current violence in Iraq to what's going on in Kosovo:

The attacks that the reader mentions in Iraq are all hit-and-run classic guerrilla operations and terrorist tactics--hallmarks of assymetrical warfare adopted by the weaker side.

The weaker side--in this case the Islamist insurgency--adopts these tactics precisely because they cannot successfully close with and destroy the American forces. They cannot hold their own in a firefight. Although they have demonstrated the ability to gather in platoon strength or better in Fallujah and Sammarah, they generally cannot follow up successes. They have no choice but to vanish into the population as quickly as possible or die.

And they sure as Hell can't do anything so bold as to destroy an entire village within small arms range of an American base. They know that American forces would protect the village from aggression. American forces have enough credibility that the insurgent does not even try.

The fact that a mob showed up to destroy a Serb village in the very face of a presence of UN Peacekeepers tells you two things: 1.) The UN Peacekeepers are as useless as a nipple on a napkin, and 2.) UN credibility with the locals is so pathetic that the mob knew the UN would not stop them going in.

Further, if United Nations troops have "more limited mandates" than do American troops in Iraq, and if that is such a problem, then again, that's nobody's fault but the UN's.

Nuance is the opposite of clarity. Fighting terror is all about clarity.

Bush is clear. Kerry is "Nuanced" - meaning, unable to reach a decision without dithering about with worthless international deliberative bodies. Call it Senatitis. Or call it "Worthless as a national leader, especially on national security". The result is the same.

Posted by Mitch at April 1, 2004 04:20 AM