Peace Kills

  Ex-child mayor of Cleveland Dennis Kucinich promised to establish “a cabinet-level Department of Peace.” The secretary of peace would do for international understanding what the postmaster general does for mail.

  Former one-term senator and erstwhile ambassador to New Zealand Carol Moseley Braun said, “I believe women have a contribution to make … we are clever enough to defeat terror without destroying our own liberty … we can provide for long-term security by making peace everybody’s business.” Elect me because women are clever busybodies. This is the “Lucy and Ethel Get an Idea” foreign policy.

  Massachusetts’s thinner, more sober senator, John Kerry, said that he voted for threatening to use force on Saddam Hussein, but that actually using force was wrong. This is what’s known, in the language of diplomacy, as bullshit.

  Previous almost-vice president Joe Lieberman indignantly demanded that Bush do somewhat more of what Bush already was doing: “Commit more U.S. troops,” create “an Iraqi interim authority,” and “work with the Iraqi people and the United Nations.” Perhaps Lieberman hadn’t gotten over coming this close to the office next to the oval one. Perhaps Lieberman was suffering from a delusion that he was part of the current presidential administration. But after 9/11 Americans wanted to kiss the Supreme Court. Imagine having a Democrat as commander in chief during the War Against Terrorism, with Oprah Winfrey as secretary of defense. Big hug for Mr. Taliban. Republicans are squares, but it’s the squares who know how to fly the bombers, launch the missiles, and fire the M-16s. Democrats would still be fumbling with the federally mandated trigger locks. And did Al Gore grow that beard for a while just in case the Taliban won?

  Onetime governor of insignificant Vermont Howard Dean wanted a cold war on terrorism. Dean said that we’d won the Cold War without firing a shot (a statement that doubtless surprised veterans of Korea and Vietnam). Dean said that the reason we’d won the Cold War without firing a shot was because we were able to show the communists “a better ideal.” But what is the “better ideal” that we can show the Islamic fundamentalists? Maybe we can tell them, “Our president is a born-again. You’re religious lunatics—we’re religious lunatics. America was founded by religious lunatics! How about those Salem witch trials? Come to America and you could be Osama bin Ashcroft. You could get your own state, like Utah, run by religious lunatics. You could have an Islamic Fundamentalist Winter Olympics—the Chador Schuss.”

  Since the gist of Howard Dean’s campaign platform was “It Worked in Vermont,” he really may have thought that the terrorists should take up snowboarding. On the other hand, the gist of General (very retired) Wesley Clark’s campaign platform was “It Worked in Kosovo.” Kosovo certainly taught the world a lesson. Wherever there’s suffering, injustice, and oppression, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.

  The winner of South Carolina’s JFK look-alike contest, John Edwards, and the winner of Florida’s Bob Gramm look-alike contest, Bob Gramm, said that America had won the war in Iraq but was losing the peace because Iraq was so unstable. When Iraq was stable it attacked Israel in 1967 and 1973. It attacked Iran. It attacked Kuwait. It gassed the Kurds. It butchered the Shiites. It fostered terrorism in the Middle East. Who wanted a stable Iraq?

  And perennial representative of the House of Representatives Dick Gephardt wouldn’t talk much about foreign policy. He was concentrating on economic issues, claiming that he’d make the American Dream come true for everyone. Gephardt may have been on to something there. Once people get rich they don’t go in much for war-making. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Someday Osama bin Laden will call a member of one of his “sleeper cells”—a person who was planted in the United States years before and told to live like a normal American—and …

  “Dad, some guy named Ozzy’s on the phone.”

  “Oh, uh, good to hear from you. Of course, of course … Rockefeller Center? … Next Wednesday? … I’d love to, but the kid’s got her ballet recital. You miss something like that, they never forget it … Thursday’s no good. I have to see my mom off on her cruise to Bermuda in the morning. It’s Fatima’s yoga day. And I’ve got courtside seats for the Nets … Friday we’re going to the Hamptons for the weekend …”

  But how, exactly, did Gephardt plan to make everyone on earth as materialistic, self-indulgent, and overscheduled as Americans? Would Gephardt give foreigners options on hot dot-com stocks? That might have worked during the Clinton years.

  As of early 2004 there was one foremost, pressing question in U.S. foreign policy, and America didn’t seem to have the answers for postwar Iraq. Then again, what were the questions?

  Was there a bad man? And his bad kids? Were they running a bad country? That did bad things? Did they have a lot of oil money to do bad things with? Were they going to do more bad things?

  If those were the questions, was the answer “UN-supervised national reconciliation” or “Rapid return to self-rule”?

  No. The answer was blow the place to bits.

  Critics say we didn’t do enough thinking about the problem of postwar Iraq. I say we blew the place to bits—what’s the problem?

  If there is something we didn’t do enough thinking about—something we haven’t done enough thinking about for sixty years—it’s fascism. The genius of fascism is to turn people into a mob. Baath Party fascism did a good job. Fascism doesn’t use only the stick; it uses the carrot as well, albeit in a brutal fashion. There’s a lot of being hit over the head with root vegetables involved in fascism. But Hitler would have ended up painting carnival sideshow posters in Bavaria if a mob of Germans hadn’t thought they were getting something out of fascism. And how do you plan for a mob? Do you buy The Martha Stewart Book of Gracious Rioting?

  Americans have been surprised by Iraqi fascism, although we are familiar enough with other evil ideologies. Communism still persists in Cuba, North Korea, and the minds of a million university-type intellectuals. Religious extremism waxes worldwide. But communists do bad things for a purpose. They have a vision of a utopia where everyone shares everything and you give your Lawn Boy to a family in Chad. And religious extremists do bad things for a purpose. They have a vision of a utopia where everyone goes to heaven together. So what if you have to die to get there? You have to die to get to heaven anyway. Fascism, however, is a pointless ideology—the grasp of power for power’s sake. The fight against fascism seems like Dad’s war, Granddad’s war. Fascism should be out of date in the purposeful, task-oriented world of today. Never mind Slobodan Milosevic, Vladimir Putin, the Palestinian Authority, Somali warlords, Charles Taylor, China’s politburo, the Saudi royal family, murderous Hutu rabble, and Newt Gingrich’s career arc.

  Fascists do bad things just to be bad. “I’m the baddest dude in Baghdad,” Saddam Hussein was saying,” the baddest cat in the Middle East. I’m way bad.” This was way stupid. But fascists are stupid. Consider Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. He didn’t have any. How stupid does that make Saddam? All he had to do was say to UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, “Look where you want. Look beneath the couch cushions. Look under my bed. Look in the special spider hole I’m keeping for emergencies.” And Saddam Hussein could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld is elected head of the World Council of Churches.

  Instead, we blew the place to bits. And a mess was left behind. But it’s a mess without a military to fight aggressive wars; a mess without the facilities to develop dangerous weapons; a mess that cannot systematically kill, torture, and oppress millions of its citizens. It’s a mess with a message—don’t mess with us.

  Saddam Hussein was reduced to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, a nutcase hiding in the sticks. The terrorism his cohorts practice is terrifying, hence its name. Killing innocent people by surprise is not called “A Thousand Points of Light.” But as frightening as terrorism is, it’s the weapon of losers. When someone detonates a suicide bomb, that person does not have career prospec
ts. And no matter how horrific the terrorist attack, it’s conducted by losers. Winners don’t need to hijack airplanes. Winners have an air force.

  2

  KOSOVO

  November 1999

  America is the winner in the new era of highly moral conflicts—just wars, good wars, wars to end … other wars. I covered a couple of these, in Kuwait in 1991 and Somalia in 1993. But I didn’t stick around for the aftermaths, and, it will be remembered (especially by Iraqi Shiites of the Basra region), neither did America. It wasn’t until the NATO occupation of Kosovo that I got a chance to see what happens when the ancient tradition of invasion is stood on its ear. Contrary to a million years of human instincts, conquest now entails giving rather than taking territory while exploiting the victor’s labor and resources to heap booty on the conquered.

  * * *

  The air war against Yugoslavia had been declared a victory. Kosovo was being run by the UN, NATO, and other forces for good. Forces for good and plenty of them—here are some of the more than three hundred well-meaning organizations that were active in Kosovo at the end of 1999: Humanity First, Emergency Corps of the Order of Malta, Center for Mind Body Medicine, Associazione Amici Dei Bambini, Mother Teresa Society, Saudi Joint Relief Committee, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Iranian Relief Committee, Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation, and the World Society for Protection of Animals. So, could Serbs and Albanians now live together peacefully?

  A young Albanian and former Kosovo Liberation Army fighter said yes. Well, what he actually said was, “When you hate this much maybe you would kill them all, but we will try to live with them, which shows what kind of people we are.”

  Something else that showed what kind of people they are was the “NATO” brand bubble gum for sale locally, with bubblegum cards depicting victims of Serb atrocities, KLA martyrs, Albanian refugees, and a cruise missile direct hit on Serbian police headquarters in Pristina.

  But the KLA veteran did not look like someone who had been chewing over blood vengeance since his first Halloween. He looked like a slightly bored, faintly irritated member of a tenant committee. Which he was, except that the committee was petitioning the Norwegian Army instead of a landlord.

  “A sewer line is blocked,” said the tenant committee chairwoman. “Heating oil supply is low. We need more garbage containers.”

  “We will not have everything for everyone,” said a beleaguered Norwegian infantry captain.

  The captain was in Kosovo Polje, site of the Battle of Kosovo, where the Ottoman Turks threw the Serbs out of Kosovo in the first place, in 1389. Now Albanian Kosovars had done it again—this time by squatting rather than fighting, in a housing complex that used to be 80 percent Serb and had become 80 percent Albanian. The Norwegians were on hand to prevent murder, and also to provide more garbage containers.

  “The level of hatred will always exist,” said the KLA veteran. “But we are a peaceful nation and we will try to live with them—if the people who did bad things are punished.”

  “Thank you for controlling the youths who were throwing stones,” said the Norwegian captain.

  “We try,” said the chairwoman.

  Battle-hardened combatants beating their swords into complaints about water pressure and their spears into requests to fix the electrical wiring—it was a dream conflict for liberals, a peace-on-earth, goodwill-to-men, Kris Kringle of a military action. Kosovo was the war the war-haters loved. Bianca Jagger, Susan Sontag, Barney Frank, House Democratic Whip David Bonior, the late Minnesota senator Paul Wellstone, and various other usually reliable advocates of peace seemed to have been drinking at the VFW Hall and getting “Semper Fi” tattooed on their biceps. “I harbor no second thoughts on the morality of our course,” Senator Wellstone said. “My only regret is that our action has been less effective than I would have hoped.”

  Such a regret, of course, depends upon what was hoped for. If we hoped to increase wartime destruction, we were very effective. Normally the victor in a war does most of the damage, but in Kosovo everybody got to destroy things—losers, winners, and neutral nations alike.

  The locals explained how to tell the difference between the piles of rubble. When the destruction was general, it was Serbian. Serbs surrounded Albanian villages and shelled them. When the destruction was specific, it was Albanian. Albanians set fire to Serb homes and businesses. And when the destruction was pointless—involving a bridge to nowhere, an empty oil storage tank, an evacuated Serb police headquarters, and the like—it was NATO trying to fight a war without hurting anybody.

  However, if we hoped to protect ethnic Albanians, we were, as Senator Wellstone mentioned, less effective. In fact, we were less effective at protecting ethnic Albanians than Slobodan Milosevic had been. According to the U.S. State Department, an estimated ten thousand Albanians were killed and 1.5 million were expelled from their homes, most of them after the NATO air war began.

  On the road from Pec to Istok, in the hills of northwest Kosovo, every single building had been destroyed. Beside the highway, in a gravel patch leveled by a bulldozer, were the graves of nineteen members of the Imeraj family: men, women, and children. The tombs were covered by a type of floral arrangement particular to Kosovo. This is a thin, yardwide disk of foliage with brightly colored blossoms sprinkled on the green background and the whole wrapped tightly in cellophane. Muslim Albanians naturally have no Yuletide decorating tradition and wouldn’t understand the horrible free association caused in an American mind—And to all a good night!—by these mementos of the Santa War, these giant Christmas cookies of death.

  We failed to protect Albanians from Serbs, but we were making up for it by protecting Serbs from Albanians, even though it was Serb persecution of Albanians that caused us to come to Kosovo, thereby giving Albanians an opportunity to persecute Serbs.

  In a background briefing a British colonel said, “Out of a prewar Serbian population of thirty thousand, there are eight hundred and seventy-five Serbs left in Pristina.”

  “Exactly eight hundred and seventy-five?” I asked.

  “Exactly.” And (more visions of Saint Nick as NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe) the colonel knew when the Serbs were sleeping. He knew when they were awake. He had 250 of his men living with the Serbs.

  “Living with them and doing what?” I asked.

  “Keeping them alive.”

  Sometimes. On November 29, 1999, three elderly Serbs were pulled from their car in central Pristina. The man was killed, the two women were severely beaten. On October 11, 1999, an Albanian passerby asked a Bulgarian UN worker, in Serbian, “What time is it?” The Bulgarian replied in Bulgarian, a language too similar to Serbian. He was shot to death.

  But the forces for good were agreed that Serbs should stay in Kosovo. And so were the forces for bad. Milosevic wanted Serbs in Kosovo so he could claim that Kosovo was still part of Serbia. NATO wanted Serbs in Kosovo because, when you’re fighting a war to save lives, you’ve got to save somebody’s. The UN definitely wanted Serbs in Kosovo. If you don’t like multiculturalism, why have a UN? And Senator Paul Wellstone wanted Serbs in Kosovo to show how wonderful multiculturalism can be—if you’ve got forty-two thousand troops to enforce it.

  Six of those troops were bivouacked in an apartment in downtown Pristina to safeguard twenty-four-year-old Maria, two floors up, the last remaining Serb in the building. This was not bad duty. Maria was beautiful. And her mother, visiting from exile in Serbia, was cute, too. It would be a hard test in bigotry for a normal man to hate this pair. Some of the local fellows managed to pass. “What time is it?” they asked Maria on the street.

  I asked Maria, “How do you see your future in Kosovo?”

  “I don’t see it at all,” she said. “I just sold my flat. I’m moving to Belgrade.”

  “Is there any future for Serbs in Kosovo?”

  “No.”

  In perfect agreement with Maria was the KLA commander of the Lap region of northeast Kosovo, Major
General Mustafa Remi. That is, Remi would have been a major general except that the KLA was demilitarized and had been disarmed.

  “There hasn’t been a disarmament,” said General (or whatever) Remi, who was wearing a pistol and being saluted by Albanians. “We have only stored our weapons.”

  I brought up the subject of UN Resolution 1244. This is the piece of paper that set NATO upon the Serbs. The resolution states, with an interesting choice of verb, that “Kosovo can enjoy substantial autonomy within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.”

  “Does the KLA,” I asked the general, “still aspire to an independent Kosovo?”

  “We don’t aspire,” said Remi, doing his best—which was very good—to look scary. “We see an independent Kosovo as a reality.”

  “What if the Western nations don’t support this?”

  Remi’s logic was sound: “I think we are having their support, considering the support that they are offering us.”

  At Camp Bondsteel, the U.S. headquarters in Kosovo, I interviewed a more affable officer. Camp Bondsteel was an eight-hundred-acre fortified compound in southern Kosovo housing thirty-five hundred U.S. soldiers atop a ridge that dominated a hundred square miles of rolling farmland. At night Bondsteel was lit the way the city on the hill of the Gospels would have been lit if they’d had diesel generators in Saint Matthew’s time. By day the earthen tracks and paths were being turned into gravel roads. The tents were being replaced with wooden barracks. The only sewage treatment plant in Kosovo had been built.

  “I think the conflict is not over yet,” General Remi had told me.

  The American officer said, “We learned a lesson in Bosnia. Tents only last three winters.”