If bilmore has proved anything on this board, it is that there can be multiple facially plausible rationales for the same foreign-policy intervention. This article in The Nation, by opponents of Clinton's intervention, disagrees with "the ideas and concerns Clinton invoked" in attempting to justifying the bombing of Serbia: "the notion of instability spreading from country to country (much like falling dominoes), the perception that world politics is a bipolar ideological confrontation between democracy and dictatorship, the obsession with reaffirming US leadership and resolve, the anxiety about the vitality of alliance commitments and the conviction that US security is tied to peace in an area of little inherent strategic importance"

And hey, that was only the second result on my first Google search.

Yes World War one was started in the Balkins. But I don't think anyone really believed that Bosnia or Kosovo was gong to lead to another world war. At the time I remember Clinton tried to say we had strategic interests but the Republicans kept arguing there was no strategic interest. In the end we went in for humanitarian reason, which I think are fine. But Clinton did argue we are not being the worlds policeman. Which we were. We stepped in and stopped a Genocide. I have no problem with that. We should have gone into Bosnia earlier and we should have gone into Rwanda. When you are the biggest guy on the block, and there is no police force, it is your obligation to intervene when you see someone getting rapped or killed. We spend all this money on the military and it is the biggest in the world so we might as well use it.

I don't want to argue about whether Clinton was motivated more by humanitarian reasons or strategic ones. I don't recall the period all that well, although I do recall a concern that Yugoslavia's descent threatened NATO, not in a military sense but in a political one. All I was saying was that Zimbabwe lacked the strategic implications that Kosovo had, regardless of the subjective interplay of those two factors with the actual policymakers.

Strictly interpreted, that's not an acknowledgement of Clinton making an affirmative statement that Kosovo was strategically important. Rather, that's whoever wrote that article pointing out that it wasn't.

To put it another way, just because Hank calls someone short doesn't mean that this someone first called themself tall.

More on Burger (Sandy That Is)
 

Perhaps this is the reason for the different treatment, but my feeling is that Berger's crime was worse than Martha's.

So Peggy Noonan agrees with me . . .
 

How bout defense of property. How bout defenece of others, which is particularly apt here.

And what I've said several times now is that when the very system of a country, such as ours, is threatened, extreme measures may be necessary. What good are our beliefs in individual rights if we are forced to live under a regime where such rights are not enforced? Perhaps you think I am defending torture at Abu Garib? I'm not. But let's put this in the context of a war where the future of this country was more imminently at risk. Given a choice between torturing German soldiers for legitimate purposes and living under a Nazi regime, I'd choose the former.

efg

You're very wrong about the not "strategic" issue -- there was a veritable cacaphony of clucking about both the strategic ramifications of civil wars in Europe, and the humanitarian issues involved in preventing the massacre of civlian populations in Europe.

Now, as it turn out, the KLA was just as radical as the Serbs on the other side, and committed their own share of war crimes - but after what happened in Croatia and Bosnia, the Serbs had kind of a "rep."

Another strategic issue involved our military intervention in Eastern Europe against Russia's Slavic brothers. This intervention was one of the relatively early thumbs in the eye of the creaky post-Soviet Russia, a precursor to everyone joining NATO and/or the EU. It helped change the ways a lot of folks on both sides viewed the world and the balance of power.

If you read Clarke's book, it also describes this intervention and the Bosian intervention as useful in that they allowed us to root al-Qaeda cells and networks out of those countries.

I'm sure the desire to avoid another Bosnia played a role in the decision to intervene.

Still, I think that's good, as I view the U.S. failure to act in earlier Bosnia when it could have prevented at least tens of thousands of innocent deaths at relatively little cost as one of the great shames of U.S. policy since the fall of South Vietnam [Rwanda is in there too (on a larger scale)). It was well-worth doing on both humanitarian and strategic grounds.

S_A_M

I won't address the humanitarian aspects in your post, as it only reinforces the point I've made (and I note that I agree that Bosnia was truly one of our most shameful failures).

You say there was something about "strategic ramifications" for civil wars in Europe. I say 1.) all Ty has shown is someone who said there weren't, not someone like Bill who said there were; and 2) Not too many ramifications (at least within Europe itself) when one side of the civil war is a muslim minority.

You say sumthin about Al Queda... I say Clarke's book is amazingly prescient in 20/20 hindsight. I don't recall if I'd heard the term by '98, at least not in association with Kosovo.

Lastly, I'll grant you that there is at least an argument to be made that putting a thumb in Russia's eye was done intentionally. I don't recall that being the viewpoint of the U.S. media at the time, when they described Russia sending an armored column racing into Kosovo as a "crisis".

Don't get me wrong about this. In hindsight, we could all argue that just about any military action had strategic ramifications which *might* have been in play at the time the action took place.

But I don't recall anyone in the WH ever giving one up as justification at the time, and all I've seen now is Ty showing someone arguing that it wasn't strategically smart, and you giving an amazingly credit to an amazingly self-serving 20/20 hindsight justification for something 4 or 6 years after the fact.

Well said. Also our screw up in Vietnam led to the massacre in Cambodia. Nixon and Ford tried to keep up the military assistance to enforce the treaty but the Democrats in Congress wouldn't go along.

Everything is our problem
 

The united states, having its economy intertwined with every other economy in the world, has a strategic interest everywhere in the World. The more stable the world is the better for us. We have a strong interest in all countrys being Democratic and free market economies. The more stable and prosperous the rest of the world is the more prosperous we become.

Obviously our interest in Sub Suharan africa is less than other countrys because their economies are so small. Yet a properous and stable Africa would benefit the United States. And interventions are not that costly.

There is just no excuse for ethnic cleansing and genocide when the United States has twelve Carrier groups.

So Peggy Noonan agrees with me . . .
 

Defense from whom? My point is that it's not defense of anything from the person you're torturing, since that person is in custody and can be prevented from harming you. You rationalizing the harming of one person to protect something -- property, life, etc. -- from other people. You're treating that person as the member of a group, not as an individual.

Under this test, when in the history of this country has torture ever been justified? Because there's never been any prospect that we would be "forced to live under a regime where such rights are not enforced," unless you're referring to what the present administration has done to Jose Padilla.

So Peggy Noonan agrees with me . . .
 

If your child was kidnapped by two people, and the police caught one, who had information which could bring your child back alive, would torture not be justified?

Probably never. Hitler was not far enough along in his plans to take America. But again, I'm just arguing against an absolute prohibition.

So Peggy Noonan agrees with me . . .
 

My child? Sure. If it's my child, I say anything goes. (The failure to get this is just one reason Dukakis lost in '88.)

You've also rigged the hypo in another way. You never know before the torture that the person you're going to torture has useful information. You hope they do, but people who are being tortured often tell their captors what they want to hear.

In any event, we don't torture people in these circumstances.

Since you say that, I'm a little confused by your views. On the one hand, you subscribe to the notion that torture is OK if the benefits are great enough. On the other hand, you seem to think that the benefits haven't ever -- as an empirical matter -- been that great. How can this be, if the harm caused by torture is simply the pain experienced by the victim?

So Peggy Noonan agrees with me . . .
 

I said probably, because I'm assuming there aren't some unknown horrors that have been avoided by use of torture.

The harm is more than the pain to the victim - it is the harm to torturors and to humanity as a whole.

Unrest in Zimbabwe threatens to destabilize South Africa, and unless South Africa can thrive there is really no hope for Africa. (There is only a little if South Africa can thrive.)

And, yes, that's a little tongue-in-cheek. There was nothing strategic about Kosovo. 1914 was a long, long time ago, and the circumstances in 1914 involved alliances that were all threatening to go to war with each other.

If unrest in the Balkans could have threatened the stability of Europe, then Europe would already have been at war by the time of Kosovo -- or do you view the situation in Croatia, Bosnia, and Serbia throughout the prior years as somehow more restful than was the situation in Kosovo?

Kosovo was a true humanitarian intervention, and was the right thing to do.