...I will recycle my replies to you. This is a discussion we were having on another thread.
NATO forces were cleared of accusations of War Crimes by the United Nations. And of course the war in Kosovo was Clinton/Gore's war, and NATO's. Clinton and Gore were our civilian commanders at the time. In fact NATO's rules of engagement required the civilian government of every NATO member to sign off on the list of targets in that war. The person who was brought to trial for War crimes involved with Kosovo was Milosevic, not Clark or any other NATO leader. Most Peace activists value international laws and tribunals and care about War crimes. Milosevic is the one who was put on trial as an international war criminal, not Clinton or Clark , and it wasn't a U.S. Court. Clark voluntarily submitted himself to questioning by that court.
Some might be interested in reading how General Clark was over ruled in his efforts to use military tactics that would have minimized civilian deaths in Kosovo, while exposing our own troops to greater risk. You can read this well researched piece:
"Boots on the Ground" not High Altitude Bombing in Kosovo was favored by Clark!"
http://www.rapidfire-silverbullets.com/2006/11/wes_clark_wanted_boots_on_the.html#moreAnd for those who want a little background on what ethnic cleansing inside Kosovo was really all about, here is another excellent article from the same web site, that is exhaustively researched and linked:
Kosovo was "about" Genocide, not oil or anything else "nefarious"
http://www.rapidfire-silverbullets.com/2006/12/kosovo_was_about_genocide_not.htmlClark always says that terrible things happen in war, even when the best intentions are present which is not always the case. War unleashes vast amounts of violence, which is at root why Clark, who has seen war, works so hard to prevent unnecessary war. But I, like Clark, am of the opinion that preventing genoicide is necessary. Innoncent lives will be lost when military force is brought against those who carry out genoicide. It is the nature of war, but more innocent lives are saved.
OK, this time I will post a complete entry from my blog about bombing civilians:
The Pain That Chicken Hawks Don't Feel
I have met a few progressives who, though they may acknowledge that Wes Clark has progressive views, still have trouble accepting his life time of service in the military. During the 2004 Primaries one supporter of Howard Dean put it to me this bluntly: Doctors heal people, soldiers kill them. Well it is also true some Doctors have killed people, but more important, soldiers have saved lives also, while fighting for things that most of us still believe in. The American Army liberated the Jews from Nazi death camps after all. And I still remember the honor I felt, in the early 1980’s, when I met and spoke with an American citizen who, in the 1930’s, had fought Franco’s fascism during the Spanish Civil War, by volunteering in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
What frightens me are the civilian leaders in our nation who cling to power by brandishing a rhetorical sword, who deploy our armed forces like toy soldiers in a sand lot, with little or no gut understanding of what an act of war really looks like, and what the human repercussions of that act will likely be. This country has chosen leaders like that before. We know them too well.
During the 2006 Congressional elections I was present one afternoon when General Wesley Clark spoke to a predominantly Veterans audience gathered at a VFW Post in New Jersey. He was talking about post traumatic stress, and the treatment many of our veterans who return from war need, but don’t receive. General Clark spoke of the mental stress he experienced himself for years in the aftermath of the combat wounds he suffered in Viet Nam, while acknowledging that his own case was a mild one. That struck home for me, but I found myself overwhelmingly moved when General Clark recalled an experience he had as N.A.T.O. Supreme Commander during the air war in Kosovo.
As I listened I remembered that I had heard this outline before, but this time, standing in front of a crowd of mostly Veterans, there was a little more detail, and a feeling of intimacy that had me riveted. General Clark started by saying this about when he commanded the air campaign against Serbia; “I believe every human life is precious, and I knew when I was doing the bombing in Serbia – I went to bed praying we wouldn’t kill innocent people.”
Clark recalled a specific accident of War, a mechanical malfunction that affected one bombing mission. He described it in detail, he has it all etched into his memory, exactly how the bomb didn’t operate as designed, how targeting failed, the means by which the bomb “broke”, all the where and whys, and exactly what happened as a result. A cluster bomb designed to explode at 200 feet above a military target instead exploded more than a thousand feet above a school yard, and innocent children died. Wes Clark told this crowd I sat in that somehow, by some means that he can’t explain to this day, a Serbian grandfather of one of the children killed managed to get a personal letter delivered to him. “I got a letter from a Serbian grandfather. He said ‘You killed my granddaughter and I will never forget you, and I will kill you for it.’ And I don’t know how I got that letter during a War, but I’ve thought about that a lot, and prayed for forgiveness a lot.”
A man who has had that experience of war will do all in his power to prevent another, if it is at all possible. A man who avoided serving in a war that he supported, may still be itching to fight one; using someone else’s children.
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