Myriad other geohistorical complexities aside, I seem to recall that our bombing of Serbia left Milosevic quite in control, not 'removed' at all. The Serbs themselves jettisoned Milosevic, defeat in Kosovo playing no small part in that decision; the likelihood of similar tactics producing similar results in Iraq is left as an exercise for the reader.
(Hint: answer here.)
My last point has to do with Milosevic. You said you can't compare the two dictators. You know, you're right; no two tyrants are alike. But the fact is Milosevic started wars that killed 200,000 in Bosnia, 10,000 in Kosovo and thousands in Croatia, and he was nabbed and he's out without an American dying for it. ...in one case we did it without Americans dying. In the other case, we did
it with Americans dying. .... We cannot forget. We cannot forget that.
Ummm, we can't forget stuff that you just now made up, e.g., "We" "nabbed" Milosevic ... well, OK. (Maybe I shouldn't harp on Senator Boxer. Greg Djerejian, in the Belgravia post referenced above, simply dismisses her as "sad". But - she's on the Foreign Relations Committee - shouldn't she be capable of better arguments than this?)
Oh, lordy, is the Senate really reduced to asking Ms. Rice questions based on such false analogies? (Well, yes, evidently...)
Mr. Milosevich was, in fact, removed by his own people, after they finally realized that all his militant nationalism was leading them down the path to destruction. (The main accomplishment of the NATO deployment.)
The electoral institutions of Serbia were still intact enough to do that. That he was able to manipulate those institutions for as long as he did does not reflect well on the Serbian electorate, but better late than never.
Such an option never existed for the Iraqis. One of our goals for being there is (or should be) putting those institutions in place. If we accomplish nothing else, that will be something.
Posted by: The Prop on January 22, 2005 07:29 PM