THE SHIELD OF ACHILLES

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by Bobbitt, Philip


  52. No Democratic candidate save Madison and Buchanan had won the presidency without New York.

  53. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 2, 361.

  54. Devlin, 686.

  55. Woodrow Wilson, “An Address to a Joint Session of Congress,” April 2, 1917, in Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 41, ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton University Press, 1966 – 1992), 526 – 527.

  56. Devlin, 679.

  57. New York Times, September 4, 1918; see also U.S. Cong. Rec., 2d sess., vol. LVI, part 10, p. 9875 (Sept. 3, 1918).

  58. The quoted passage above, see TAN 559, describing the organization of the campaign is taken from Selwyn and almost perfectly tracks House's memo to Wilson. Compare the following extracts, the first from Philip Dru, the second a campaign memo by House from June 1916.

  “He began by eliminating all the states he knew the opposition party would certainly carry, but he told the party leaders there to claim that a revolution was brewing, and that a landslide would follow at the election. This would keep his antagonists busy and make them less effective elsewhere.

  “He also ignored the states where his side was sure to win. In this way he was free to give his entire thoughts to the twelve states that were debatable, and upon whose votes the election would turn. He divided each of these states into units containing five thousand voters, and, at the national headquarters, he placed one man in charge of each unit. Of the five thousand, he roughly calculated there would be two thousand voters that no kind of persuasion could turn from his party and two thousand that could not be changed from the opposition. This would leave one thousand doubtful ones to win over. So he had a careful poll made in each unit, and eliminated the strictly unpersuadable partymen, and got down to a complete analysis of the debatable one thousand. Information was obtained as to their race, religion, occupation and former political predilection. It was easy then to know how to reach each individual by literature, by persuasion or perhaps by some more subtle argument. No mistake was made by sending the wrong letter or the wrong man to any of the desired one thousand.

  “In the states so divided, there was, at the local headquarters, one man for each unit just as at the national headquarters. So these two had only each other to consider, and their duty was to bring to Rockland a majority of the one thousand votes within their charge. The local men gave the conditions, the national men gave the proper literature and advice, and the local men then applied it. The money that it cost to maintain such an organization was more than saved from the waste that would have occurred under the old method.” E. M. House, Philip Dru: Administra-tor (Huebsch, 1912), 89–90.

  “House's Plan of Campaign, June 20, 1916. In preparing the organization I would suggest that the following States be classified in this way:

  “Class 1. Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia, Indiana, Missouri, Wyoming, Arizona, and New Mexico.

  “Class 2. Maine, Massachusetts, Ohio, Illinois, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Washington.

  “Class 3. Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa.

  “We should put forth our maximum effort in the States of Class 1, a strong effort in those of Class 2, and a lesser effort in those of Class 3.

  “There are seven states in Class 1 of prime importance, which we should and must carry. These States should be divided into units of not larger than 100,000 voters.

  “By having the State organizations cooperate closely with the national organization, it will not be over-difficult to have the certain Republican and certain Democratic voters of these units segregated. This can be done by writing to the precinct chairmen in those units and obtaining from them lists of the entire electorate, putting the absolutely certain Republicans and absolutely certain Democrats in one class and the fluctuating voters in another.

  “This independent vote should be classified as to race, religion, and former affiliations. Roughly speaking, we must assume that in a unit of 100,000 voters, eighty per cent of them will be unchangeable voters, which would leave twenty per cent that can be influenced by argument.

  “The size of these units must necessarily depend upon the size of our campaign fund. If it is small, a larger unit will have to be considered; if sufficient money is raised, a smaller unit can be made. The smaller the unit the more successful, of course, will be the result.

  “Literature, letters in sealed envelopes, and personal appeals should be made to each of these doubtful voters.

  “One member of the Campaign Committee should be placed in charge of the organization of these units, with nothing else to do. He, in turn, should place one man in charge of each unit. The duty of this man should be to keep in touch not only with the State Executive Committee of his particular unit, but also with each one of the doubtful voters in that unit.” The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 2, 361 – 362.

  59. Philip Dru, 44 – 45

  60. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (Little, Brown, 1980), 127, n. 18

  61. Steel, 166.

  62. Steel, 130.

  63. Steel, 125.

  64. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 3, 316, et seq.

  65. Eugene V. Rostow, Toward Managed Peace: The National Security Interests of the United States, 1759 to the Present (Yale University Press, 1993), 218.

  66. W. M. Knight Patterson, Germany from Defeat to Conquest (Allen & Unwin, 1945), 137.

  67. Woodrow Wilson, “President Wilson's Address to Congress Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances,” Joint Session, February 11, 1918,” in The Messages and Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 1 (Review of Reviews Corporation, 1924), 475.

  68. Paul M. Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 272.

  69. Arthur Bryant, Unfinished Victory, 32, noted in Roy Denman, Missed Chances (Cassell, 1993), Chapter 2, note 3.

  70. Roy Denman, Missed Chances, 31.

  71. Denman, 32.

  72. House Files, Yale University.

  73. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 4, 361.

  74. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 4, 362.

  75. Edith B. Wilson, My Memoir (Bobbs-Merrill, 1939), 245 – 246.

  76. See A. H. Robertson, Human Rights in the World: An Introduction to the Study of the International Protection of Human Rights (New York: St. Martin's, 1982), 118 – 125.

  77. H. Kissinger, “The New Face of Diplomacy: Wilson and the Treaty of Versailles, Diplomacy (Simon & Schuster, 1994), 218 – 245. My treatment is completely at odds with the charge of Colonel House's alleged agreement to sidetrack the league into a separate “annex” in order to conclude the conference, a charge that appeared conspicuously in Mrs. Wilson's Memoirs and in an article by her confidant, Wilson's physician, and that has now regrettably become an accepted part of the received history of this period. Not only does Mrs. Wilson's view lead to many historiographical anomalies, it wholly misreads House's tactics, which endeavored to save the Wilsonian program.

  78. “Seton-Watson,… an eloquent advocate of the Slav claims… [had] helped me draw up a boundary line between the two nationalities which was much nearer the truth… In this way [House and I] tossed about free cities and played ducks and drakes with not a few islands, and we certainly whittled down the territory which both countries claimed… I made a ‘graph' and a map showing what we had accomplished. There was the city of Fiume and the port of Susak and a little of the adjacent territory. All the rest was assigned. ‘But this area, Colonel,’ I explained, ‘we shall call Disputanta, and we shall place it under the administration of the League of Nations for the period of fifteen years. Then we shall end up with a free and fair election, a plebiscite…’ The Colonel was enchanted with what he called a magical solution of all our troubles.’” Stephen Bonsai, Suitors and Suppliants: The Little Nations at Versailles (Prentice-Hall, 1946).

  79. Quoted in Kissinger, Diplomacy, 235.

  80. Which we know was dictated each day and was not subsequently “corrected”; see Yale Pap
ers memorandum.

  81. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 4, 390.

  82. The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 4, 488 – 489.

  83. David H. Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, vol. 1 (Putnam, 1928), 49.

  84. Philip Bobbitt, “War Powers: An Essay on John Hart Ely's War and Responsibility: Constitutional Lessons of Vietnam and Its Aftermath,” Michigan Law Review 92 (May 1994): 1364.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE KITTY GENOVESE INCIDENT AND THE WAR IN BOSNIA

  1. This account is largely taken from A. M. Rosenthal's excellent study of the Kitty Genovese murder, Thirty-Eight Witnesses (McGraw-Hill, 1964). Rosenthal's account draws upon contemporaneous interviews made in the aftermath of the murder.

  2. “Calling for Help on the T,” Boston Globe, February 3, 2000, A20.

  3. Dave Lieber, “Biggest Mystery Is Why No One Called the Police,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, October 13, 2001, 1.

  4. International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights Annual Report 1996; see also U.S. Department of State, Bosnia & Herzegovina Country Report on Human Rights Practices for 1996, January 30, 1997; also Dan Smith, et al., The State of War and Peace Atlas (Penguin, 1997).

  5. Janusz Bugajski, “Balkan Tragedy,” Orbis 40 (1996): 638; see also Laura Silber and Alan Little, Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation (TV Books: Distributed by Penguin USA, 1996).

  6. Ibid.

  7. Warren Zimmermann, Origins of a Catastrophe: Yugoslavia and Its Destroyers—America's Last Ambassador Tells What Happened and Why (Times Books, 1996), 157.

  8. Brigitte Hipfl, Klaus Hipfl, and Jan Jagodzinski, “Documentary Films and the Bosnia-Herzegovina Conflict: From Production to Reception,” Bosnia by Television, ed. James Gow, Richard Paterson, and Alison Preston (British Films Institute, 1996), 34, 35, 45.

  9. James Gow, Triumph of Lack of Will: International Diplomacy and the Yugoslav War (Hurst, 1997), 304.

  10. The Bosnian minister to the U.N. later stated that members of the incoming Clinton administration had suggested that it would be more helpful to Bosnia once in office than had been the Bush administration.

  11. Cf. Tyler Marshall, “Nato Issues Ultimatum to Serbs Ringing Enclave: Bosnia; Alliance Threatens Air Strikes Unless Rebels Withdraw 2 Miles from Gorazde's Center by 3 P.M. Today,” Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1994, A1.

  12. Gwen Ifill, “Clinton Defends Foreign Policy Record,” New York Times, May 4, 1994, A12.

  13. Patrick Glynn, “See No Evil: Clinton-Bush and the Truth about Bosnia,” The New Republic, October 25, 1993, 23.

  14. Ibid.

  15. There was preparation on the Western side for a response to such eventualities, so especially the 2/94–9/95 ones were played up.

  16. “The Sacking of Croatia,” New York Times, September 22, 1991, E16.

  17. “Erasing Bosnia's Memory,” Washington Post, October 16, 1992, A24.

  18. But see the Final Report of the Commission of Experts, published in May 1994.

  19. “Crisis in Yugoslavia” (House of Representatives, June 25, 1991), Congressional Record, 1991, H5043.

  20. “Spare Bosnia the Postmortems,” Washington Post, October 13, 1993, C6.

  21. Henry Kissinger, “Bosnia Has Never Been a Nation and Has No Specific Cultural Identity. Why Are We Intent on Preserving This Balkan No-Man's Land?” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1993, M2.

  22. Noel Malcolm argues that the U.S./E.C. position emboldened Milosevic to attempt to crush the Slovenia and Croatian secession movements with military force. Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: A Short History (New York University Press, 1994).

  23. European expectations seem to have been significantly different from American ones—much more pessimistic and more willing to assume that violence is the natural state of the Balkans.

  24. One report described the tarmac lot at Omarska as “a killing yard, the bodies loaded onto trucks by bulldozers. Omarska was a place where cruelty and mass murder had become a form of recreation. The guards were often drunk and singing while they tortured. A prisoner named Fikret Harambasic was castrated by one of his fellow inmates before being beaten to death. One inmate was made to bark like a dog and lap at a puddle of motor oil while a guard… jumped up and down on his back until he was dead. The guards would make, videos of this butchery for their home entertainment.” Dusan Tadic, the Bosnian Serb primarily responsible for this, was convicted of crimes against humanity by the war crimes tribunal in The Hague and sentenced to twenty years in concurrent sentences for the killing and torture of Muslim prisoners. Gillian Sharpe and Bob Edwards, “Bosnian Serb Sentenced. Gillian Sharpe reports from The Hague on the International War Crimes Tribunal's first sentencing of a Bosnian Serb war criminal. Dusan Tadic was sentenced to twenty years in concurrent sentences for the killing and torture of Muslims in prison camps,” NPR Morning Edition, July 14, 1997.

  25. Members of the American Jewish community repeatedly spoke out to call attention to the systematic violence against the Muslims in Bosnia. Notable among them for his tenacity and eloquence was Elie Wiesel.

  26. Ed Vulliamy, “Middle Managers of Genocide,” The Nation, June 10, 1996, 11.

  27. See Final Report of the Commission of Experts.

  28. “A Mission of Mercy for Tavnik,” New York Times, December 6, 1992, E18.

  29. Final periodic report on the situation of human rights in the territory of the former Yugoslavia submitted by Mr. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, special rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights, pursuant to paragraph 42 of the Commission Resolution 1995/89.

  30. “A Defeat for Civilization,” Wall Street Journal, July 17, 1995, A10.

  31. Dimitri Simes, “There's No Oil in Bosnia,” New York Times, March 10, 1993, A1.

  32. See U.N. Report S/26765.

  33. Tigalrth-Pileser III (745 B.C.-727 B.C.) was the first Assyrian ruler to make forced resettlement a policy; under his reign half the population of a conquered land would be carried off, to be replaced by settlers from other areas.

  34. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, “A Brief History of Ethnic Cleansing,” Foreign Affairs 72 (1993): 110.

  35. Cf. William Safire, “On Language,” Houston Chronicle, March 14, 1993 (syndicated column).

  36. Christopher Hitchens reports that Jose-Maria Mendiluce, the UNHCR envoy, believes he first coined the term. Christopher Hitchens, “Appointment in Sarajevo,” The Nation, 1992, 236.

  37. Norman Cigar, Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing (Texas A&M University Press, 1995), 18 – 19.

  38. Cited in Rabia Ali and Lawrence Lifschultz, “Why Bosnia?,” Monthly Review 45 (March 1994): 1; also in V. P. Gagnon, “Ethnic Nationalism and International Conflict: The Case of Serbia,” International Security 19 (1994): 130; and in Wohlstetter, see n. 41 below.

  39. See Ali and Lifschultz.

  40. Classified State Department report, cited in Ali and Lifschultz; “A Last Chance,” New Yorker, July 27, 1993, 4 (saying U.S. had one “last chance” not to become implicated in an E.C.-U.N. scheme of apartheid).

  41. Albert Wohlstetter, “Creating a Greater Serbia,” The New Republic, August 1, 1994, 22.

  42. A similar account describes the first stage of operations, before systematic shelling:

  A 62-year-old Bosnian Muslim witnessed the willful killing by ethnic Serb paramilitary forces of at least 53 men, women, and children in the village of Prhovo, Bosnia. At about 3 pm on May 30, 1992, a large force of ethnic Serb paramilitary soldiers and three armored personnel carriers entered Prhovo, a village located about 7 kilometers northeast of Kjuc. The village, which contained 45 houses grouped along a main road and several small streets, had more than 150 inhabitants. The soldiers, who wore stocking masks over their faces, went from house to house searching for weapons. After finding some weapons, the soldiers proceeded to ransack the homes, break windows and doors, and pull the residents out into the streets. These men, women, and children were ofdered to fold their hands behind their heads and were herded through the village to a point on the road w
here they were stopped and lined up. Meanwhile, the soldiers attempted to coax back into the village those residents who had run into the woods when the soldiers arrived. The soldiers announced through megaphones that the residents would not be harmed if they returned. When these people returned, the soldiers beat them severely; about 10 were beaten into unconsciousness. The assembled villagers were then told that they were free, that they need not worry anymore, and that they must place white flags on their homes to indicate the village had surrendered. During the nights of May 30 – 31, some people fled to the woods, while others slept in their cellars. At about 6 pm on June 1, the soldiers returned and again used megaphones to call people in from the forest. They also went from house to house, pulling people out into the streets. The male residents were beaten severely. At about 7 pm, the soldiers began murdering the residents with automatic weapons. They fired single shots, then long bursts of automatic gunfire. After the shooting stopped and the soldiers had departed, the witness, who had fled to the woods when the shooting started, returned to the village. The murdered men, women, and children lay in the streets. Houses were burning, and their roofs were collapsing. Some women and children who had hidden in basements began coming into the street crying and looking for their loved ones.

 

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