Where's The Affirmative Action War?
Commentary by Phil Valentine  /  April 13, 1999

As the violence escalates in Kosovo, more and more Republicans are jumping on the band-wagon. In the name of "winning," these politicians refuse to heed the lessons of history as they demand we send in ground troops in some macho display of NATO strength. The President makes a desperate attempt to retrieve his tattered and tarnished legacy from the scandal pages, using the U.S. military to try and attach a shine to his dull and dirty presidency, and the Republicans become his unwitting accomplices. Mr. Clinton once again tugs at our emotions to save the innocent people from slaughter by beating up the Balkan Bully, Milosevic. However, he fails to remind the American people that it's our own failed foreign policy that has put us in this particular pickle to start with. Had we used the resources of the CIA to arm the KLA or others fighting the Serbs we wouldn't have to be doing the heavy lifting now.

And what of the NATO bombing? To date, the effort has only served to exacerbate the very atrocities we were trying so desperately to stop. Villages are being burned to the ground. Countless ethnic Albanians are being slaughtered and hundreds of thousands are being ejected from their own country. And because we were ill prepared for such consequences we can do little more in Kosovo than stand idly by and wait for the Serbs to tire of the slaughter.

There are two rules of thumb for involving our war machine in a foreign conflict: A) There's a vital U.S. national interest at stake and/or B) One country has invaded another. If one looks back over the history of our military engagements either one or both of those rules have been in play. In the case of Kosovo, NEITHER of those two is in play.

Granted, the ethnic cleansing is awful but why here? Why now? Just a few short years ago the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda claimed the lives of over 800,000! Where was NATO? Where was the U.S.? Why didn't we bomb to stop the atrocities? The answer is not pretty. It's the answer every talking head has danced around and everyone is afraid to say. But the only reasonable conclusion as to why we've intervened in Kosovo and not in Rwanda is because the innocent people who were slaughtered in Rwanda were black. It's a reality which most have thought but no one will dare utter. However, a comparison of the two conflicts leaves no other answer. They are both internal, ethnic conflicts in countries with no particular importance to the United States yet we reacted totally differently. The truth is, many left-wingers talk a good game when it comes to affirmative action but where is the equality in our foreign policy?

Does this mean we should've bombed Rwanda? Absolutely not. The clandestine wars in third world countries historically run by the CIA, which the left-wingers have loathed and labeled as immoral and evil, are certainly preferable to open conflict involving the U.S. military. Ironically, the peaceniks like Clinton were given the opportunity to arm a people and let them fight their own fight and they chose war. What is the correct foreign policy when it comes to complicated areas like Kosovo? I guess, for the former flower children who now dictate our foreign policy, the answer is still blowing in the wind.