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| The Prime Minister
was in good company. None of the political parties raised
objections. The leader of the New Democratic Party eagerly
supported the bombing. The then Foreign Minister, Lloyd Axworthy,
the Canadian champion of human security, studiously avoided any
suggestion that Security Council authority should first have
been obtained before the bombs were dropped. |
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| Now the
Prime Minister, Lloyd Axworthy and many of these same
political leaders are insisting that there should be no
military action taken against Iraq without Security
Council approval. Why the change of heart? Why the
double standard and lack of consistency? |
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| Few would argue
that Slobodan Milosevic was a benign and lovable leader but
compared to Saddam Hussein he was a pussycat. Unlike Iraq,
Yugoslavia did not possess or aspire to possess weapons of mass
destruction. Yugoslavia presented no threat to its neighbours
and had fully complied with all of the United Nations
resolutions related to Kosovo. |
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Yugoslavia
had readily agreed to allow 1300 military observers from the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe [OSCE]
into Kosovo to try and mediate a cease-fire between the
opposing sides. The Milosevic regime, while hardly a model
democracy, was far from being a savage totalitarian regime- as
Iraq surely is. |
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| In fact,
Yugoslavia was struggling to put down in its own territory an
armed rebellion by a terrorist organization, the Kosovo
Liberation Army [KLA]. It is true that the Yugoslav security
forces used ruthless methods to do so, but the nature of the
rebellion and the tactics of the enemy demanded, as they always
have in such circumstances, extreme measures. One could argue
that it was to Yugoslavia’s credit it did not pulverize KLA
villages by dropping tons of bombs on them from the safety of
15000 feet. |
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| All of our
political leaders, the mainstream media and most of Canada’s
intellectual elite, endorsed the bombing of Yugoslavia. They
chose to ignore that it was done without UN approval. There was
little or no concern that the bombing signalled the first major
rupture of the international security framework constructed by
the founders of the United Nations. Few worried that Kosovo
might set a precedent that would serve to make similar
interventions easier and acceptable provided the intervention
could be cloaked in humanitarian terms. |
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| Is there not inescapable irony
here? Our Prime Minister and many of our political leaders seem
to be telling us it is o.k. to bomb a country without UN
approval if it is done for humanitarian reasons. On the other
hand, they tell us it is not acceptable to bomb a country that
may- if unchecked- use weapons of mass destruction to slaughter
hundreds of thousands of innocent people and destroy the world
as we know it. |
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As Edward
R Murrow, the American broadcast journalist, remarked
about the Vietnam War, “ Anyone who isn’t confused
doesn’t really understand the situation.” |
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