Kucinich opposed the NATO bombing of Serbia

[Karmadillo]

As usual, as with the Patriot Act, the Iraq War Resolution, the $87 billion re-elect George W Bush subsidy, he was out front on the issue. Of course, opposing the bombing of civilians and civilian infrastructure makes him "unelectable".

http://www.progressive.org/kuc899.htm

What I Learned From the War
The Progressive, 1999

IN MY CONGRESSIONAL OFFICE, I read the latest reports concerning a recent Executive Order that hands the CIA a black bag in the Balkans for engineering a military coup in Serbia, for interrupting communications, for tampering with bank accounts, freezing assets abroad, and training the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) in terrorist tactics, such as how to blow up buildings.

How this is intended to help establish a democracy in Serbia or Kosovo hasn't yet been explained. Nor has the failure to substantially disarm and demilitarize the KLA been explained. Nor has the reverse ethnic cleansing taking place in Kosovo by the KLA while NATO rules the provinces been explained.

But the extracurricular activity is consistent with NATO's policy of the ends justifying the means, of might makes right, of collective guilt, of retribution upon a civilian population.

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I strongly objected to the attacks on the Kosovar Albanians. But I believed it was possible to be opposed to Milosevic and also opposed to the bombing. Yet all around me, I could feel the dense illogic of war beginning to grip Washington. It was becoming the Capital of Dichotomized Thinking, split consciousness. Republicans versus Democrats, left versus right thinking, which is the stuff of which wars are made. Of U.S. versus Them: Serbia; of NATO versus Yugoslavia, of NATO interests versus Russian interests. This type of thinking is what makes it possible to defend the human rights of some while depriving others of theirs.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

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http://www.diaspora-net.org/food4thought/kucinich.htm

Why Is Belgrade a Target?
By DENNIS J. KUCINICH
The Washington Post, April 9, 1999

The world's democracies have a responsibility to relieve the suffering of the people of Kosovo, to insure that the refugees can return to an autonomous nation and to help rebuild the province and prosecute war criminals.

That is why I voted my support for President Clinton's initiatives and for the use of American soldiers in keeping the peace in the region.

Yet NATO is now engaged in a bombing campaign in which the destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Yugoslavia has become part of the strategy to end the war on Kosovo. We say our quarrel is with President Slobodan Milosevic and his army, yet instead of doing all that we can to directly confront that military we are bringing down terror on the Serbian people. What has this bombing accomplished? It has not stopped the ethnic cleansing or the grim procession of hundreds of thousands of refugees.

So I must challenge NATO's justification for its military campaign against civilians -- before we destroy all the bridges in Belgrade and Novi Sad; before we obliterate the power plants, water systems, roads and telecommunications centers that serve civilian populations; before we begin hearing the the phrase "collateral damage" routinely. Otherwise, NATO's actions will destabilize the region for decades to come.

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