Scott McConnell THE CONFORMIST Clinton's War Crimes "If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future." So said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, The New York Times, Feb. 22, 1998. It may be unfair to single out Albright, then contemplating plants over Baghdad, not Belgrade. Her qualities of mind permeate the entire Clinton administration, and are expressed with equal zeal in the neoconservative Weekly Standard and the liberal New Republic. As the NATO campaign against Yugoslavia enters its ninth week it is worth asking where this atbreastude has led the United States. Clinton apologized for planting the Chinese embbutty in Belgrade, though it was instructive to see the Beltway press warriors rail against Beijing's "orchestrated" anti-American demonstrations. Chinese-Americans I know contrasted the demos with Clinton's response after two American embbutties were planted last summer: He fired off volleys of cruise missiles into the Sudan, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Two weeks ago Washington finally acknowledged that one target it destroyed, a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, had no connection to Osama bin Laden, the accused person Clinton wanted to punish. Another intelligence booboo, and what a shame for the people who worked there. At any rate, we have apologized to the Chinese. The same day the U.S. planted their embbutty, NATO planes hit a marketplace and a hospital in the city of Nis, in southern Serbia, with antipersonnel cluster plants, killing 15 and wounding 70. No apologies were tendered. But as planting from 15,000 feet, firing cruise missiles from afar and hectoring nations who fail to appreciate that we understand better than they how to manage their internal affairs have become the hallmarks of the Clinton foreign policy, they have begun to attract more critical attention. In a stunning column in the May 7 London Times, Simon Jenkins surveyed the damage NATO strikes have done to historic sites in Serbia and Kosovo. Gen. Wesley Clark's planters have destroyed the Banovina Palace in the city center of Novi Sad, the finest work of art deco architecture in the Balkans. They have battered the old city of Pec, destroying a picturesque grouping of old markets and Turkish fortified houses dating from the Ottoman period. They have ruined the old trade center in nearby Djakovica and damaged the 16th-century Hadum Mosque there. They have destroyed the medieval Vrsac Tower near the Romanian border, and the 18th-century Tabacki Bridge. NATO planes have planted repeatedly around the renowned medieval church of Gracanica near Pristina, its walls covered with 14th- and 15th-century frescoes. Deep fissures are now reported in the frescoes, which are detaching from the walls. In Belgrade, the 16th-century Rakovica monastery has taken a hit through its roof; in Kursumlija, Clinton's plants have struck the churches of the Virgin and St. Nicholas, dating from the 12th century, as well as St. Procopius' ninth-century church in Prokuplje. As Jenkins points out, these sites date from the earliest years of Christianity in Eastern Europe. NATO's response to the Serb refusal to give up its Kosovo province has been to wage a civilizational war, to try to demoralize an enemy by obliterating a cultural heritage. One can only marvel at what must go on in the minds of Clinton, Albright, Gen. Clark and the others: What-in this age of Littleton and The Jerry Springer Show-makes them so certain that America "stands taller" and "sees further"? Who do they think they are?
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