From: sharon@unixland.natick.ma.us (Sharon Machlis Gartenberg)
Subject: Bush and non-intervention in Bosnia
Organization: Unixland Public Access Unix  (508) 655-3848
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 1992 20:57:24 GMT

Interesting column in the Washington Post recently by Michael Kinsley,
senior editor of the New Republic magazine and co-host of CNN's 
"Crossfire" program, of how U.S. President George Bush faces a dilemma
speaking out against intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina after the 
war in Kuwait.

A few excerpts:

"...Bush made his case for the gulf war not wisely but too well. The
alleged principle that aggression would not be allowed to stand was 
repeated often, in absolute terms.

"Appealing to American idealism, Bush downplayed the narrow strategic
concerns -- especially, oil -- that actually led him to conclude that
Kuwait was worth the fight.

"The human horrors of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait -- bad enough in 
reality -- were methodically exaggerated in American and Kuwaiti
government agitprop. With no TV cameras around to act as witness,
propagandists weaved tales like the famous one of babies by the dozens
being ripped from incubators.

"Now, in Bosnia, the TV cameras are there to record the evidence of
buses full of babies being shelled and their funerals being
shelled. The Bush administration is now stuck with a real story of human
suffering worse than the one they helped to embroider in Kuwait. And
they are put-put to explain that, well, the human suffering wasn't
really the point.

"Also exaggerated in the gulf war, it now seems, was the invincibility
of American high-tech warfare. One aspect of the Vietnam syndrome --
actually dating back to WW II -- was a belief in the military futility
of massive bombing.

"America's `smart bombs' in Iraq supposedly changed that. ... The
public is understandably puzzled to be told that bombs smart
enough to stop and ask for directions on the streets of Baghdad aren't
smart enough to take out Serbian artillery positions in the hills
around Sarajevo.

"In urging caution over Bosnia, the Bush administration is forced to
poor-mouth the skill and morality of its own triumph over Iraq. Oh, 
that. That was just the desert. That was easy. The wooded hills of
Yugoslavia -- now that's tough. And these Serbian guys are scrappy,
unlike those Arab pushovers. And the Balkans -- they've been a
snakepit for centuries (unlike the serene calm of the Middle
East). Anyway, there's no oil in Bosnia.

"All the cautionary notes may well be justified. But they put much
of the rhetoric of two years ago in an odd light.

"One Lesson of Vietnam is ... that if the US is going to intervene in
some distant corner of the world, it should do so massively and at 
once. No gradual escalation. All or nothing at all.

"What was not advertised at the time of the gulf war is that this
hearty doctrine would become a justification for a passive foreign
policy. Because we are unprepared to send half a million troops and
stage massive bombing, we are deemed powerless to do anything forceful
to stop `ethnic cleansing.'

". ... Maybe George Bush should have appreciated the Vietnam syndrome
more when we had it."

-- 
Sharon Machlis Gartenberg
Framingham, MA  USA
email: sharon@unixland.natick.ma.us   or   uunet!think.com!unixland!sharon