30. John Pomfret, “‘We Count for Nothing’; Srebrenica Refugees Unwelcome in Tuzla,” Washington Post, July 15, 1995, p. A1.
31. Woodward, The Choice, pp. 262–263.
32. Confidential Information Memorandum to Secretary of State Christopher from Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor John Shattuck; “Subject: Defense of the Safe Areas in Bosnia,” July 19, 1995.
33. Human Rights Watch, The Fall of Srebrenica, p. 39. The testimony included here does not correspond precisely to that of the first three Muslim survivors. Detailed transcripts of their testimony is unavailable, but their experiences approximated those quoted by HRW.
34. Ibid., p. 44.
35. Rohde, Endgame, p. 265.
36. Ibid., p. 287.
37. Ibid., p. 326. One Dutch hostage, quoted in the Croatian paper Slobodna Dalmacija (Independent Dalmatia) on July 25, 1995, reported seeing a truck filled with bodies when the Serbs transported him and other hostages to Bratunac. “We drove next to the truck. There were dead bodies to the left and to the right of it, and the truck itself was filled to the top with corpses,” the soldier, Ynse Schellens, said. But he quickly added that the bodies were probably Bosnian Muslim soldiers. Quoted in Human Rights Watch, The Fall of Srebrenica, p. 46.
38. Roy Gutman, “An Appeal for Zepa,” Newsday, July 25, 1995, p. A6.
39. Mazowiecki to Tan Sri Dato’ Musa Hitam, chairman of the UNCHR, July 27, 1995.
40. Secretary of State Warren Christopher to the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo, August 16, 1995. Holbrooke, meanwhile, had his own personal line of communication with Tuzla. His twenty-five-year-old son, Anthony, was also helping interview refugees as they crossed from Serb territory into Muslim hands, and he often yelled into the phone that his father should “get his ass in gear.” Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 70.
41. Ambassador Madeleine Albright to Security Council, August 10, 1995.
42. On August 11 a classified cable from the U.S. Mission in Geneva to the State Department updated the secretary on the progress of the Red Cross in locating the missing. The cable ominously reported that “all sites visited to date have either been empty, or occupied by residents from other towns.” Yet the cable softened the implications by passing along the ICRC view that some of the missing had been reintegrated into the Bosnian army or returned to their families without reporting to the Red Cross; classified cable from U.S. Mission in Geneva to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, August 11, 1995. The ICRC submitted a formal request to the United States for copies of satellite photographs to aid it with its search after it saw the images of mass graves on CNN.
43. Unclassified memorandum, “BOTTOM LINES: Following are Direct Answers to Possible Issues,” undated. See also Dobbs and Smith, “New Proof Offered.”
44. White House briefing, Federal News Service, July 14, 1995.
45. State Department briefing, Federal News Service, July 14, 1995.
46. Ibid.
47. Clinton chided the UN for its “crazy” rules of engagement and said, “I never would have put forces on the ground in such a situation,” using the conditional tense, which was inappropriate for a head of state who did not put troops on the ground. Woodward, The Choice, p. 255.
48. The Senate had in fact voted 58–42 eleven months before to suspend U.S. participation in enforcing the embargo, but implementation had been delayed after Senators George Mitchell (D.–Maine) and Sam Nunn (D.–Ga.) negotiated a compromise agreement.
49. Clinton pollster Dick Morris said his polling showed Americans opposed deploying ground troops to enforce a peace 38-55. Once Clinton began to make an effort to persuade them, however, the numbers jumped to 45-45. Morris also offered a general estimation of the American public’s views on U.S. foreign engagement. In one poll he gave those surveyed three options: “to intervene overseas to protect our interests and values and to act as a global police officer; to act as a peacemaker, doing what we can when we can to promote peace without overtaxing our resources; to focus primarily on our domestic needs without spending much time at all worrying about the problems of other nations.” The unsurprising result, given the loaded wording of the questions, was that 14 percent opted for global cop, 43 percent favored flexible peacemaker, and 37 percent rejected any role at all. Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (New York: Random House, 1997), pp. 247–256. Polling conducted by Steven Kull and Clay Ramsey shows that Americans are much more supportive of humanitarian interventions and much less casualty-averse than Morris and the foreign policy establishment presume.
50. Elaine Sciolino and Craig R. Whitney, “Costly Pullout in Bosnia Looms Unless U.N. Can Prove Effective,” New York Times, July 9, 1995, sec. 1, p. 1.
51. George Stephanopoulos, All Too Human: A Political Education (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), p. 383.
52. By the end of the war, Dole’s Senate office had published some 150 press releases on the subject of the war in Bosnia.
53. Bob Dole, “Failed Approach in Bosnia,” Congressional Record, 104th Cong., 1st sess., 1995, 141, pt. 110: S9624.
54. Ibid.
55. Bob Dole, “Thousands of Bosnians Flee,” Congressional Record, 104th Cong., 1st sess., 1995, 141, pt. 111: S9693.
56. This Week with David Brinkley, ABC, July 17, 1995.
57. Bob Dole, “Bosnia,” Congressional Record, 104th Cong., 1st sess., 141, pt. 116: S10225.
58. Ibid., pt. 119: S10506.
59. Bob Dole, “Bosnian Arms Embargo,” Congressional Record, 104th Cong., 1st sess., 141, pt. 120: S10537.
60. Columnist William Safire urged, “Public opinion needs rallying with a prime-time TV speech. If [Clinton] cannot do it, the networks should offer national leadership time to Dole, with a grumpy Clinton rebuttal.” William Safire, “Clinton Abdicates as Leader,” New York Times, July 27, 1995, p. A23.
61. In a 1976 vice presidential debate, Dole had blundered badly by bemoaning the “Democrat wars” of the century that he said had killed and wounded 1.6 million Americans, “enough to fill the city of Detroit.” By the time of the 1996 election, Dole’s Democratic colleagues had come to respect him. Senator Paul Simon said on the floor, “I am supporting Bill Clinton. But I am not going to buy a one-way ticket to Canada if Bob Dole gets elected.” Paul Simon, “Senator Dole’s Announcement,” Congressional Record, 104th Cong., 2nd sess., 1996, 142, pt. 68:S5046.
62. Michael Duffy and Nancy Gibbs, “The Soul of Dole,” Time, August 19, 1996, p. 30.
63. Nightline, ABC, July 24, 1995.
64. Inside Politics, CNN, July 28, 1995.
65. Elaine Sciolino, “Senate Vote to End Embargo May Prove a Pyrrhic Victory,” New York Times, July 28, 1995, p. A1.
66. Ibid.
67. Charles Trueheart, “Journalists Take Aim at Policymakers; in Europe and U.S., Media Mirror Mood,” Washington Post, July 21, 1995, p. A27.
68. Ibid.
69. Leon Wieseltier, “Accomplices to Genocide,” The New Republic, August 7, 1995, p. 7.
70. This Week with David Brinkley, ABC, July 17, 1995.
71. State Department briefing, Federal News Service, July 12, 14, and 17, 1995; White House briefing, Federal News Service, July 14 and 18, 1995.
72. Walter Goodman, “Critic’s Notebook; Horror and Despair in the Balkans,” New York Times, July 25, 1995, p. C18.
73. State Department briefing, Federal News Service, July 12, 1995.
74. William Safire, “The Time Has Come,” New York Times, July 12, 1995, p. A23.
75. Charles Gati, “Tell It to Srebrenica,” Washington Post, July 13, 1995, p. A25. Gati, a senior vice president of a money management firm, served on the State Department’s policy planning staff from 1993 to 1994.
76. R. W. Apple Jr., “Clinton Is Scrambling to Find Ways to Help UN in Bosnia,” New York Times, July 14, 1995, p. A1.
77. George Soros, “This Is the Moment of Truth,” Washington Post, July 16, 1995,
p. C7.
78. Anthony Lewis, “Lessons of Disaster,” New York Times, July 17, 1995, p. A13.
79. George F. Will, “Worthy of Contempt,” Washington Post, August 3, 1995, p. A31.
80. “A Candid Look at Foreign Policy and Opinion on Bosnia,” Weekend Edition, NPR, July 15, 1995.
81. Holly Burkhalter, “What We Can Do to Stop This Genocide,” Washington Post, July 20, 1995, p. A27.
82. Dana Priest, “Coalition Calls for Action in Bosnia; Groups Want More Allied Military Force Used ‘to Stop Genocide,’” Washington Post, August 1, 1995, p. A14.
83. William Drozdiak, “Allies Set to Prod U.S. into Role in Bosnia,” Washington Post, July 19, 1995, p. A17.
84. Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking, 1919 (Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1984), p. 88.
85. Stephen Engelberg, “How Events Drew U.S. into Balkans,” New York Times, August 19, 1995, p. A1; Woodward, The Choice, pp. 260, 280–281; Thomas W. Lippman and Ann Devroy, “Clinton’s Policy Evolution: June Decision Led to Diplomatic Gambles,” Washington Post, September 11, 1995, p. A1.
86. Woodward, The Choice, pp. 261–263.
87. Morris, Behind the Oval Office, pp. 252–254.
88. Engelberg, “How Events Drew U.S. into Balkans.”
89. Woodward, The Choice, pp. 261–262.
90. Lippman and Devroy, “Clinton’s Policy Evolution.”
91. Woodward, The Choice, pp. 265–267.
92. Ibid., p. 270.
93. David Maraniss, “Exploring How Dole Thinks; Clues Lie in His Kansas Roots, War Wound and Senate Service,” Washington Post, August 4, 1996, p. A1. Dole was never particularly expressive. He had worked with McCain for nearly a decade in the Senate before he told him that while McCain had been held prisoner in Vietnam, Dole had worn a remembrance bracelet, with McCain’s name on it.
94. Richard Sobel, The Impact of Public Opinion on U.S. Foreign Policy Since Vietnam: Constraining the Colossus (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 218–219.
95. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, Bob Dole, and Cyrus Vance, press conference at the Department of State, Washington, D.C., November 7, 1997, as released by the Office of the Spokesman, U.S. Department of State.
Chapter 12, Kosovo
1. Gary J. Bass, “A Look at . . . War Crimes and Punishment; It’s a Risky Business,” Washington Post, November 26, 2000, p. B3.
2. See Tim Judah, The Serbs: History, Myth, and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) and Tim Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). In fact, the Serbian kingdom had crumbled several decades before Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic’s demise in this fourteenth-century battle. Serbia did not finally fall to the Turks until 1459.
3. Cited in Laura Silber and Allan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (New York: Penguin, 1997), pp. 29–35.
4. Silber and Little, Yugoslavia, p. 37.
5. Tim Judah, “A History of the Kosovo Liberation Army,” in William Joseph Buckley, ed., Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 108–115.
6. “Hearing of the House International Relations Committee on Kosovo and Possible Deployment of U.S. Troops,” Federal News Service, March 10, 1999.
7. Stephen Engelberg, “Weighing Strikes in Bosnia, U.S. Warns of Wider War,” New York Times, April 25, 1993, p. A20.
8. R. Jeffrey Smith, “This Time, Walker Wasn’t Speechless; Memory of El Salvador Spurred Criticism of Serbs,” Washington Post, January 23, 1999, p. A15.
9. Anticipating Russian and Chinese opposition to the NATO bombing operation, the United States and its European allies did not seek authorization from the UN Security Council. This elicited widespread criticism. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan later acknowledged the undesirability of seeing the Security Council block action that may have saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Unauthorized actions, he said, would lead the world on a “dangerous path to anarchy.” But if the council failed to authorize a humanitarian intervention, it would “betray the very ideals that inspired the founding of the United Nations.” “The choice,” Annan said, “must not be between Council unity and inaction in the face of genocide—as in the case of Rwanda—on the one hand, or Council division and regional action, as in the case of Kosovo, on the other.” Kofi Annan, “The Effectiveness of the International Rule of Law in Maintaining International Peace and Security,” speech given at The Hague, May 18, 1999, SG/SM/6997.
10. “President Clinton Address to the Nation Regarding NATO Air Strikes Against Serbia,” Federal News Service, March 24, 1999.
11. In the 34,000 sorties conducted over seventy-eight days, the United States supplied between 65 and 80 percent of the aircraft and precision ordinance. Michael Ignatieff, Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2000), pp. 92, 206. Anthony Cordesman conducted a study for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Lessons and Non-Lessons: Executive Summary,” which found that the United States flew more than 60 percent of all sorties, 80 percent of strike sorties, 90 percent of the advanced intelligence and reconnaissance missions, and 90 percent of electronic warfare missions. The United States also fired more than 80 percent of the precision-guided weapons and more than 95 percent of the cruise missiles.
12. Congress later voted to check any decision to commit U.S. ground troops without its go-ahead. Alison Mitchell, “House Votes to Bar Clinton from Sending Ground Troops to Yugoslavia Without Congressional Approval,” New York Times, April 29, 1999, p. A1.
13. Christiane Amanpour, “Strike on Yugoslavia,” CNN, April 3, 1999.
14. Ignatieff, Virtual War, p. 105.
15. Ivo Daalder and Michael O’Hanlon, Winning Ugly: NATO’s War to Save Kosovo (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2000), p. 140.
16. Samantha Power, “Misreading Milosevic,” The New Republic, April 26 and May 3, 1999, p. 24.
17. Richard Holbrooke, To End a War (New York: Random House, 1998), p. 231.
18. Arnaud de Borchgrave, “We Are Neither Angels Nor Devils: An Interview with Slobodan Milosevic,” United Press International, April 30, 1999.
19. David Halberstam, War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (New York: Scribner, 2001), p. 453.
20. “The Rationale for Air Strikes,” New York Times, March 24, 1999, p. A26.
21. Carol J. Williams, “Conference Highlights Flaws of NATO’s Kosovo Campaign,” Los Angeles Times, February 6, 2000.
22. Confirmation hearing of former senator William Cohen to be secretary of defense, Senate Armed Services Committee, January 22, 1997.
23. Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), p. 313.
24. Holly Burkhalter, Statement on Genocide in Kosovo, All Things Considered, NPR, April 9, 1999.
25. Henry Kissinger, “Doing Injury to History,” Newsweek, April 5, 1999, pp. 38–39.
26. Henry Kissinger, “New World Disorder,” Newsweek, May 31, 1999, p. 41.
27. John McCain, “Now That We’re in, We Have to Win,” Time, April 12, 1999, p. 56.
28. Dana Priest, “Bombing by Committee: France Balked at NATO Targets,” Washington Post, September 20, 1999, p. A1.
29. Ibid.
30. General Clark feuded constantly with his top air force officer, Lieutenant General Michael C. Short. Clark lobbied for NATO planes to hunt down tanks and artillery terrorizing civilians in Kosovo, whereas Short thought such “tank plinking” would be ineffective. He insisted that the quickest route to bringing Milosevic to heel would be to destroy “strategic” targets, such as Yugoslav ministries and power plants. In one exchange, reported by Dana Priest in the Washington Post, Short expressed satisfaction that NATO was at last preparing to strike Serbian special police headquarters. “This is the jewel in the crown,” Short said. “To me, the jewel in the crown is when those B-52s rumble across Kosovo,” replied Clark. “You and I have known for weeks
that we have different jewelers,” said Short. “My jeweler outranks yours,” said Clark. Dana Priest, “The Battle Inside Headquarters; Tension Grew with Divide over Strategy,” Washington Post, September 21, 1999, p. A1. See also Clark, Waging Modern War.
31. Dana Priest, “A Decisive Battle That Never Was,” Washington Post, September 19, 1999, p. A1.
32. Judah, Kosovo: War and Revenge, p. 274. Russia’s role in bringing about the settlement remains cloudy. Just prior to his diplomatic intervention, on May 26, 1999, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Yeltsin’s special envoy to the Balkans, had published a bitter op-ed in the Washington Post charging that “the United States lost its moral right to be regarded as a leader of the free democratic world when its bombs shattered the ideals of liberty and democracy in Yugoslavia.” He had demanded reparations be paid to Yugoslavia and had said he would urge President Boris Yeltsin to freeze U.S.-Russian relations until NATO stopped bombing.
33. “Shiptar” is a derogatory term used by Serbs to describe Albanians.
34. “President Clinton’s Remarks at Ferizaj (Urosevac) Area Sports Pavilion, Ferizaj (Urosevac), Kosovo,” Federal News Service, November 23, 1999.
35. Michael Walzer, “Kosovo,” in William Joseph Buckley, ed., Kosovo: Contending Voices on Balkan Interventions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), p. 334.
36. The Guardian, June 7, 1999.
37. William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II, 4.5.213.
38. “Human Rights Watch: NATO Killed Yugoslav Civilians,” Associated Press, February 6, 2000. See Human Rights Watch, Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign (New York: Human Rights Watch, 2000). See also Amnesty International, “Collateral Damage” or Unlawful Killings? Violations of War by NATO During Operation Allied Force (London: Amnesty International, 2000).
39. NATO press release, “Statement by the Secretary General of NATO, Lord Robertson, on the Human Rights Watch Report,” February 7, 2000.
40. Michael Ignatieff, “The Reluctant Imperialist,” New York Times Magazine, August 6, 2000, p. 46.
41. Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit Books, 1986), pp. 48–49.
42. Melissa Eddy, “Head of KFOR Troops Blasts NATO Governments Over Lack Of Reconstruction In Kosovo,” Associated Press, January 19, 2000.
A Problem From Hell Page 77
