NYT Ed: (Neocon)Carlyle's Frank Carlucci: The War We Haven't Finished

[Pachamama]

Wondering what else is on the mind's of Neocon's these days? Here's the Carlyle Group's Frank Carlucci in an Op-ed piece in the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/opinion/22carlucci.html?th

The War We Haven't Finished
By FRANK C. CARLUCCI

Published: February 22, 2005

Washington

WASHINGTON isn't exactly short of foreign policy priorities these days, but before rushing into a list of new tasks for the president's second term, I would like to suggest sorting out an old one: Kosovo.

The world reacted in horror six years ago when the Serbian regime of Slobodan Milosevic embarked on an ethnic cleansing operation against Kosovo's Albanians, forcing 700,000 people, nearly half the population, to flee the province. Reports of massacres and images of mileslong lines of refugees fleeing into neighboring Albania and Macedonia compelled the world to act. The NATO air campaign against Serbia that followed convinced Belgrade to give up its brutal assault, and Kosovo was put under United Nations administration.

(edited)

Getting Security Council approval, or even unanimity within the Contact Group, for this approach could prove tough. Russia sees itself as a protector of Serbia, and could thwart the process. The United States should counter by bringing along as many countries in the European Union as are willing to join us in formally recognizing an independent Kosovo, and hope the Russians accede to the majority will.

It's understandable, considering the events of the last four years, that Kosovo has been left hanging. But the situation is simply too tense to wait around forever.

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Guess we need to add Kosovo to the list right after Iran and Syria....

Where will these people ever stop? :eyes:

[Colorado Blue]

1. The people of Kosovo and Bosnia were in dire straits before

US intervention.

Not everything we do is evil. Actually we generally mean well, indeed erring on the side I think of not doing enough - witness Africa. We should have intervened in Rwanda and we should be actively involved in Darfur. There is a real genocide going on there but getting people's attention in the US has been almost impossible.

In this case we were defending Muslims against a brutal Serbian dictator. The earlier assault on Sarejevo was catastrophic. Untold numbers of people would have perished if we hadn't intervened.

I will never understand why Europe and the US ignored this horror for so many years.

Even now the situation isn't really settled, as the article states. Neighboring countries have been strained attempting to deal with refugees. There were hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Here is a site with links to many interesting sites about this topic:

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CREES/links-balkan.html