Tresy Kilbourne wrote:

[...]
>Fact of the matter was that the only power blocs of any kind that Clinton
>had to deal with at the time was Congress and the media, both of which were
>relentlessly hostile, and they weren't about to get on board with war fever,
>at least until he was out of office. He already HAD a 70% public approval
>ratings throughout the Lewinsky farce, so the idea that he "needed" the war
>is like saying he "needed" to be flogged in the town square. In fact, his
>approval ratings dropped after the Kosovo campaign began, while brickbats
>were thrown from nearly every quarter of the ruling elite.

Was this elite disapproval because of the way the war was carried out, or
because it was being carried out at all, or opportunistic political
reasons?

Also, the Kosovar war must have been an imperative for *some* reason.
Things like that always have a reason, even if the reason is a foolish one.
The simple answer is that the US public wanted action because they were
offended by what they saw on TV and it was more convenient for the US
government to carry out a bombing campaign than to take any other type of
action or do nothing. Quite why I don't understand. Perhaps, there being
little to gain strategically or economically, they thought that at least
they could test out a few new weapons? Perhaps they weren't willing to risk
a more messy type of armed confrontation in such a no-win situation?

Certainly the strategy was one of the more crude and unimaginative ones in
world history. The overwhelming military superiority of the US means that
it was relatively sucessful despite the fact that it prosecuted the war as
a crude terrorist campaign. Therein lies the problem for the US military
machine, bumbling imbeciles are able to achieve military success, whereas
most armed forces led by bumbling imbeciles are swiftly defeated. But US
military strategists are not subject to any such 'natural selection'.

So far.

>So much for the Wag the Dog scenario. Not that I expect these inconvenient
>facts from deterring the silly Marxist conspiracy theories of Meecham et al.

Truth is always the first casualty of war. The hate that is generated
against a country that uses such methods (bombing a small country's
population and infrastructure until they agree to yield) is also somewhat
predictable. I don't like to see some of the unintelligent and hateful
comments either, but this is one of the costs of using such methods. It
turns the stomachs of even the US's loyal allies in Europe. Not
surprisingly the Europeans are now trying to develop a joint independant
military capability so that they won't have to rely on the blundering US
dinosaur.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas