Richard CohenToo timid to do justice?
Thursday, September 14, 2000
Bill Clinton is on a desperate dash for a legacy. He hoped for a Middle East peace, but it's not likely he'll get one. He's gone around the world, proclaiming this, signing that, but this is not a legacy, it's a scrapbook. Yet, there is still one thing he could do in the time he has left: Bring in Radovan Karadzic, dead or alive.
The former head of the former Bosnian Serb Republic (Republika Srpska) was indicted by an international war crimes tribunal way back in 1995. Since then he has been hiding out in the very country he once ruled, a dot on the map of Europe with lots of troops from NATO and the United States in the neighborhood. This is like Capone hiding out in Chicago. Surely someone has seen him.
And indeed they have. But repeatedly, the United States has shied from mounting a commando-type operation that would bring Karadzic to justice. The Pentagon fears casualties and that, apparently, has been justification enough for nothing much to happen. Clinton has been loath to overrule the military--maybe, some think, because he avoided the Vietnam War draft.
The fear of casualties is hardly to be taken lightly. But ever since 1993, when 18 American soldiers were killed in Somalia, that's become the dominant military doctrine. It meant, for instance, that the United States never settled the score with the Somali warlord Mohamed Farah Aideed. It meant, further, that any punk with a contingent of weed-smoking teenagers could intimidate what is often called the world's only remaining superpower. That power, super or otherwise, is now an issue in the presidential campaign. George Bush and Dick Cheney say it is much eroded.
That's largely nonsense because, among other things, there is no reason for America to maintain the forces it had during the Cold War. But Bush and Cheney, not to mention Al Gore and Joe Lieberman, never direct themselves to the issue of fighting spirit--the willingness to take some risks, maybe even some casualties.
Throughout Europe, the United States is perceived as a gutless superpower. There's some justification for that. During the Kosovo operation, U.S. bombers flew so high to avoid missile fire that they endangered the civilian population below. Sen. John McCain, once a fighter pilot himself, called this policy "immoral." These pilots, after all, are professionals who knew when they volunteered that the day might come when their lives were put on the line. Now, in the American military, that day never comes.
It's different in Britain. The Brits recently rescued six of their soldiers and one civilian who were being held hostage by a Sierra Leone rebel group called the West Side Boys. The famed Parachute Regiment lost one soldier, and others were wounded. But the hostages were freed, the West Side Boys routed and--most important--British credibility reaffirmed. The West Side Boys, not to mention other such outfits, are much less likely to mess with Britain again.
Karadzic cannot possibly have that sort of fear of the United States. He has led a sweet life since his little evil empire collapsed. Before that, he was head man of a rapacious regime, responsible for genocide in all its awful permutations--mass rape, murders, massacres, wholesale imprisonment, the shelling of civilian centers and the use of snipers to kill innocents in and around the capital of Sarajevo. For instance, on July 20, 1993, Elma Jakupovic was killed by a sniper at No. 17 Jukiceva Street. She was 2 years old.
I do not write this unmindful of what the word "casualty" means. But we take casualties all the time. Last year 42 law enforcement officers were killed in the line of duty. That's appalling and sad--but necessary. We honor them.
It ought to be the same for the military. Ours is an all-volunteer force, and elite units are composed of volunteers twice over. Often these people are willing to do what the brass forbids. This timidity is sometimes erroneously attributed to the Powell doctrine. But Colin Powell, who was ever cautious in the Balkans, never thought of himself as anything other than a warrior--and warriors, he knows, take risks. He did in Vietnam.
More ships for the Navy, planes for the Air Force and guns n' stuff for everyone all around is a sound solution to the last century's problems. Now, though, we need a president who has the gumption to tell the Pentagon he's the boss and to order it to sound a bugle or two. Clinton can start by demanding the capture of Radovan Karadzic. Now, that would be a legacy worth talking about.