Everyone's Outraged over some aspect of the war in Kosovo. Tell
us which of the following hits your hot button:
The United States government is outraged that three of its
soldiers were taken prisoner by Yugoslav government forces. The
Yugoslavs thought the capture was pretty reasonable, given the
fact that US planes are bombing their country, killing their
soldiers and civilians, and that the US soldiers were armed and
in a war zone. Perhaps the US government thought that Yugoslav
forces would greet the US soldiers with flowers, chocolates and bear hugs.
Some US soldiers are outraged that they are being exposed to
danger. As Ms. Coddled soldier says "Hey, I signed up for the
educational benefits. Plus, they paid me to go through basic
training, whereas it would have cost me money to join a health
club at home." Coddled and other troops are considering a class-action
lawsuit against the US government for endangering their lives in
Kosovo. As Coddled says, "no one said anything about injury or
death when I joined the armed services."
Of course, the great majority of the US soldiers participating in
the conflict are not exposed to danger. Some observers are
outraged about how generally clueless those who are actually
participating in the conflict seem to be. A Washington Post
reporter aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt picked up the
following tidbits in interviews with some of the ship's 5,000 crew:
- Lt. Carl Zeigler: "I'm sure there's a percentage of the crew
who don't know who Slobodan Milosevic is. What they're thinking
about is when their next watch starts or when they're going to get some chow".
- Shane Rodrick: "We're over here doing our job, fighting for the
cause. Whatever that cause is."
- Corpsman Paulina Dixon expressed surprise that the many
amenities of the ship - gyms, library, video arcades, television
studio, radio station - did not include a McDonalds. Why the crew
ever bothers going on shore leave is beyond us.
The coalition for semi-sane government spending was outraged that
US taxpayers are going to spend billions of dollars for a
conflict that has no direct relation to US security interests.
Sensible people around the world are outraged that the US doesn't
just kill Milosevic, for, we suppose, the same insane reasons
that prevented us from killing Saddam Hussein. A single man is
the driving force of evil in both Kosovo and Iraq, yet thousands
of innocents must die while the men in power satiate their lust for violence.
Explain to us again exactly why it is impossible to locate and
kill public figures like Milosevic and Hussein? Looking back,
wouldn't everyone have been vastly better off if Hitler and/or
Stalin had been assassinated?
Military experts are outraged that the Clinton administration
believes that it can defeat the small roving bands of Milosevic
hooligans by relying solely on air power.
Others are outraged that US involvement in Kosovo seems to be
following the same general pattern that led to the quagmire in Vietnam.
Taking the opposite tack, support for the NATO mission has come
from some surprising quarters. The current foreign minister of
Germany is the leader of the radical German environmentalist
Greens party, a former pacifist, and opponent of the Vietnam war.
But he supports the use of force in Kosovo: "If we accept
Milosevic as a winner, it wold be the end of the Europe I believe in".
Some are outraged that the NATO action appears to have done more
harm than good, perhaps accelerating the speed with which
Milosevic implemented his recent ethnic cleansing campaign.
Amid unconfirmed reports of atrocities by Yugoslav security
forces, many are outraged that the US and NATO have not acted more
forcefully to save the innocent. They ask "if we had earlier
knowledge of atrocities committed during the Holocaust, would we
have moved more decisively?"
Politicians are outraged that no one seems to be giving much
thought to the cost of the war, or even to defining what would
constitute success. House Armed Services Committee Chairman Floyd
Spence: "The absence of clearly defined objectives, including a
definition of what constitutes 'success', ...is deeply
troubling." Representative Heather Wilson, an Air Force Academy
graduate, says "The president owes us an explanation of what
exactly winning would mean and what the cost would be - in
dollars yes, but mostly in lives lost and dreams destroyed."
