Kosovo: War Of Lies Redux
By Thomas Lindaman (09/02/04)
On CNN’s “Late Edition” recently, Senator Hillary Clinton said that her husband’s attack on Kosovo proves that Democrats are better at waging wars than Republicans are. As proof, she said, “we didn’t lose a single American military person,” a line repeated by the Clintonites whenever the subject is discussed.
“I resent it when Republicans say that they’re better on national defense,” Hillary continued. “It was Democratic Presidents who prosecuted the wars that were successful in this past century.”
Well, Senator Clinton, I resent the fact that you openly lied on national television about how successful Kosovo was. And I’m here to set the record straight.
First, to the claim that we didn’t lose a single American military person, she’s right. We didn’t lose a single American military person. We lost two. A quick Google search shows that two American soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash in Albania during a training mission. And why were they in Albania? To prosecute the war in Kosovo. And whose husband was intent on waging that war? Why, it was Hillary Clinton’s husband! Oops! Must have slipped your mind, what with your new role as leader of the Democratic Party’s “Truth Squad” at the Republican National Convention and all…
Now, to the larger point, that being that Kosovo was a success. There are some problems with this conclusion, the big one being that you can’t really nail down what we were doing there. At first, our objective was to remove Slobodan Milosevic from power in Kosovo.
Didn’t happen. He stayed in power for a full year after we “won.” Now, he’s been elected to his country’s Parliament and his trial in the Hague may be dismissed completely.
Then it was to prevent the “ethnic cleansing” that was going on.
Didn’t happen. In fact, after we “won,” it got worse because the ethnic Albanians were committing the same types of atrocities for which we attacked the Serbs. Only this time, we were sanctioning it.
And while we’re on the subject, I have to point out that the main reason we got involved in Kosovo in the first place was because of mass graves. We were treated to pictures of said graves and told that we had to stop Milosevic and the Serbs from creating “another Holocaust.” Ah, but once again, the truth tells a different story. After we declared victory and pulled out a number of our troops, journalists came forward to admit that they moved bodies to give the impression of mass graves when, in fact, there weren’t that many bodies. Now, maybe I’m wrong on this, but aren’t mass graves supposed to have a few more bodies in them than just a handful?
But at least we saved a bunch of innocent people, right? Nope. Unless our targets were refugees leaving Kosovo or Chinese embassies, we were missing our targets badly. Not exactly a key to victory there, Hill.
Then, there’s the al-Qaeda connection. The Albanians we were helping are Muslims, and some of them had ties to our old buddy Osama Bin Laden. Underneath the surface, these poor souls were dealing and trafficking drugs and weapons. Add to this fact that the Albanians really didn’t want us there in the first place, and you have a huge red flag that even Stevie Wonder could see.
When viewed against the facts, Kosovo remains a military failure. So, Clinton lied, but it was with a purpose. With John Kerry falling in the polls, the Democrats need to convince people that Bush is not a good military leader. Enter one of the best liars on the planet, Hillary Clinton. With Kosovo being little more than a hazy memory in most people’s minds, it’s easy to rewrite history to suit a double political purpose: to make Kerry appear to be better suited to be a wartime President, and to make Kosovo appear to be a bigger victory than it was.
This leaves one last idea to challenge. Are Democrats better wartime Presidents than Republicans? Not necessarily. Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman may have been Democrats, but they don’t resemble the Democrats of today. Nor does John F. Kennedy, the President who got us involved in Vietnam.
Lyndon Johnson, on the other hand, does resemble a modern Democrat, and his mistakes in Vietnam are well-documented. From that point on, Democrats really don’t have much of a history on waging war. Jimmy Carter capitulated to the Soviet Union at every turn, and Bill Clinton’s main war in Kosovo was a failure because we failed to meet any of our stated objectives.
But there is one man who trumps Hillary’s argument: Ronald Reagan. In the biggest war to date, the Cold War, Reagan showed leadership and the strength of his convictions necessary to not just wage war, but to win it. And after decades of blunders, we did win without firing a single shot, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said. And we are still reaping the benefits of Reagan’s commitment to win.
That’s what I call a real victory, Senator Clinton.
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