They'll just print any old thing...

I had to write to the Herald today, much as I have written to the Times and P-I over the last week, because I am sick to death of idiots printing lies in an Opinion section as if they were truth. Here goes...

I going fricking crazy with these lying conservatives! Tamara Williams (LTE, Herald, Saturday July 30th) made so many misstatements (which she sources from right wing radio) that it’s hard to believe that any conservatives know what the hell they are talking about. I do not expect this to be printed, although I would LOVE it if you did, but at some point, once again, you have got to stop letting these idiots tell lies in your newspaper. It is people like Ms. Williams (and of course, the Bush crowd) that are forcing my family and many of our friends out of the country. My wife and I are both public school teachers with Master’s degrees. We are applying to teach in an international school, and intend to leave the US, perhaps permanently, because of the idiots that run it and the idiots that live in it. Please realize that you are contributing to this exodus.

Here is what happened (as briefly as possible) in the Balkans – and you can look any of this up, it’s all available:

1) Colin Powell (active General at the time) told NATO that the US would not contemplate military intervention in the Bosnian-Serbian conflict without UN approval, on April 27, 1993. At the same meeting NATO said that if intervention was to be used, there needed to be clear political objectives. The first American soldiers arrived in Macedonia on 10th June as part of a NATO-UN security force designed to protect safe areas for Bosnian Muslims, and to prevent conflict from spilling beyond currently embattled territories. The UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) was highly critical of NATO’s unwillingness to act directly and emphatically in the Bosnian conflict, when it was clear that there was a flagrant humanitarian crisis, including “ethnic cleansing” – genocide. Thus, there was strong international pressure for US and NATO intervention. When the Dayton peace accords were signed on December 14th, 1995, and by the end of 1996, a NATO stabilization force of approximately 30,000 troops remained, with some 5,000 Americans. Clinton took into consideration that keeping troops in the region may negatively affect his re-election campaign and yet chose to keep them there alongside the other NATO troops. These troops were not fighting insurgents or trying to gain territory. They were a peacekeeping force.
2) In June of 1998, when it was clear that Slobodan Milosevic was going to continue his ethnic cleansing mission against Albanians Muslims in Kosovo, NATO resolved to intervene against the Serbian government. This was transparent. The US (as a part of the NATO body) agreed to support this mission, and announced its intentions to do so in August. It should also be noted that there was considerable debate within NATO about intervention, and that intervention was strictly because of the humanitarian crisis being placed upon the Albanian population in Kosovo. NATO did not support the Kosovo rebels in their desire to separate from Serbia, and feared that their intervention would promote such a separation. It was because of such debate, and the desire for diplomacy to win over military strikes, that it took until March of 1999 for the US and NATO to be decisive about military action, and only because the Serbian government refused all international pressure to sign a peace treaty with the Kosovars, and has amassed 40,000 troops in Kosovo after the Kosovars had signed a peace treaty which included non-separation from the Serbian state. In all of this, President Clinton was transparent with the American people, and had the full support of the international community (with the exception of Serbian ally, Russia – and even Russia objected to Serbia’s actions, they just didn’t want to set precedent for breakaway regions) and the NATO alliance. If anything, the impeachment hearings allowed president Clinton less political maneuverability than he would otherwise have had, precisely because he knew his motives would be questioned – and yet military action was a joint NATO decision. Clinton then faced criticism for not acting swiftly enough to avert the humanitarian crisis. It was a no win situation for Clinton – in his words “I was left with a bunch of bad choices.”
3) THE POINT IS: Bill Clinton never lied about Kosovo. He lied about Monica Lewinsky. And that didn’t cause anyone’s death. The stark differences between Clinton’s war and Bush’s war are numerous. Clinton exhausted diplomacy; Bush didn’t. Clinton had full allied and international support; Bush didn’t. Clinton had effective intelligence, had precise objectives, met them, and left; Bush didn’t. Clinton was transparent from the start that his objective was humanitarian; Bush lied to get us into war based in conjured specters of WMD, then when they didn’t materialize he claimed that the mission was for “liberation.” Clinton had no need to deflect his impeachment hearings with a military conflict, he wasn’t up for re-election; Bush was. The Balkans have no OIL; Iraq does.

People like Tamara Williams clearly have NO IDEA what they are prattling on about, and to give them any space in a respected journal only serves to diminish the credibility of that journal. Once again, a lie by a conservative requires 2 full paragraphs from someone who actually knows what they are talking about to debunk.