Copyright 2000 Louis R. Coatney

Our Kosovo bombing war was a Clinton/Blair/NATO *war crime*. As Henry Kissinger stated in his May 31, 1999 NEWSWEEK article, the Rambouillet Treaty was an ultimatum, not a peace treaty.

FRONTLINE is the first mainline American media organization that I know of to report on Appendix B of Rambouillet. This demanded that NATO troops be allowed to occupy all of Yugoslavia including Serbia and was an unconditional surrender ultimatum Clinton nd Blair knew Milosevich couldn't accept. Nor could even those many, patriotic Serbs who detest Milosevich accept it. According to the FRONTLINE narrator, App. B was *intended* to be unacceptable. In other words, Rambouillet was a treaty made to be refused.

Judging from Bosnia-Herzogovina, without Appendix B the Serbs would have caved in to a fair partitioning of Kosovo after just the threat of nationwide bombing, or maybe a week of it at the most. Indeed, Milosevich's parliament was already on record as welcoming UN intervention.

Enraged by Appendix B and the bombing -- while being assured that we wouldn't intervene on the ground -- the Serbs were free to commit the expected atrocities Clinton, Blair, etc. could then use to justify the war after the fact.

And so 10,000 Albanian and Serb people died, 200,000 mostly innocent Serbian Kosovoans have been ethnically cleansed, and hundreds of thousands have suffered needlessly in Clinton's/NATO's unnecessary war and its aftermath. And by Nuremberg, starting and waging a wrongful war *is* a war crime.

What is more, Albanian Kosovoans are now turning on their NATO "rescuers" (quite like the IRA turned on the British Army after it intervened in Northern Ireland to protect Catholics). In light of Appendix B, Milosevich and his thugs qualify as merely our accomplices to the Kosovoan peoples' grief and tragedy.

The pattern of Clinton's criminality was apparent in the research by British journalist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in his book THE SECRET LIFE OF BILL CLINTON: THE UNREPORTED STORIES. Perhaps being allowed to get away with past crimes led Bill to think he would with Kosovo as well, and we must face the fact that a Senate impeachment conviction would have prevented the Kosovo holocaust -- Gore being neither as criminal or desperate. At a 29Apr99 news conference, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea openly ducked a direct question about Appendix B, which went unreported by our mainline media.

I believe Henry Kissinger re-earned his Nobel Peace Prize by blowing the whistle on Clinton's/NATO's Kosovo aggression. Apparently, Clinton, Berger, Albright, etc. were panicked enough by HK's "Rambouillet was an ultimatum" statement -- an implied threat of exposure -- that they dropped their Appendix B demand, and the Serbs immediately agreed to the peace agreement, even conceding all of Kosovo to NATO.

NATO's attack on Serbia was equivalent to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, both in precedent and diplomatic consequences. Indeed, it is a wonder Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn hasn't thown *his* Nobel medal into the Volga, after the way the West has betrayed the East. In good faith, Russia had demilitarized and attempted to democratize with the understanding we would not take advantage of her weakness. Clinton and Blair did, and now Putin is remilitarizing Russia back to her old Soviet borders in every sense of the word.

(We in the West have lost the right to be criticizing the Russians for defensively doing what we offensively started in Kosovo. We should confine our pontificating to *self*- criticism ... of the West ... until we clean our own houses of our own war criminals. We spied and lied about the CIA using the UN inspection teams in Iraq -- betraying the world's trust -- and now we are so distrusted that our NSA/electronic intelligence programs are being accused of economic espionage by the world community ... and Clinton has shown himself to be (un-)ethically capable of approving something like that.).

Two weeks before Kissinger's article, Appendix B was addressed on H-Diplo -- the discussion forum for diplomatic historians and, presumably, former international statesmen mindful of the judgment of history -- and I was the one who raised it. (See the H-Diplo discussion logs at http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl ) I and others easily demolished attempts by administration apologists to deny or rationalize Appendix B. (My submissions to H-Diplo and other H-Net lists about the implications of Kosovo are now being rejected/censored.)

Apparently, knowledge of Appendix B was not shared with lesser NATO states like Holland, Norway, Denmark, etc., and it was the French who let the entire text of the treaty slip out. This was then posted on the Univ. of Pittsburgh Kosovo webpage, among other places, where I was able to reference it for our H-Diplo discussion.

If Clinton, Blair, Albright, Berger, etc. are the Kosovo war criminals they seem to be, the UN War Crimes Tribunal should be investigating and indicting them -- if there *is* fair and equal justice under international law. While I am glad that our military and intelligence officers won't be served up as scapegoats to the Chinese and Russians for our political leaders' sins, Senator Jesse Helms is utterly and completely wrong in claiming the world community has no right to pursue and punish war criminals.

There now appears to be an effort in the administration and media, to make Albright (and maybe General Clark) the scapegoats for the tragedy now, but Clinton chose them knowing that they are morally weak careerists. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger is a Washington lawyer who well knows the importance of legal/treaty language, and it is inconceivable that Clinton didn't know about Appendix B. Saying Clinton isn't responsible for Kosovo is like saying Hitler wasn't responsible for the Nazi Holocaust.

Also culpable are those who must have known about Appendix B and either (like Senator McCain, the American Jewish Committee, and various other individuals and groups) supported Clinton or -- our mainline media -- wouldn't expose it. Indeed, I debated (and demolished the arguments of) Fred Smoler, the author of the Jul/Aug99 AMERICAN HERITAGE article attempting to use the Jewish Holocaust to justify the Kosovo war, on a strategy gaming discussion webpage (which was then erased by the moderator). Even the Pope was scurrying around the Balkans, apparently supporting Clinton's/NATO's war.

Of course, if criminal and historical justice finally does close in on Clinton, there is no telling what even greater international emergency he may use to attempt to escape it again ... such as a nuclear confrontation with his Chinese friends? Congress must NEVER give him war -- dictatorial -- powers, and if Clinton is indicted for his Kosovo war crime, it should compel his immediate resignation and/or impeachment and conviction.

Lou Coatney, ElCoat@Hotmail.com

626 Western Ave.
Macomb, IL 61455 USA
309-836-1447

http://members.tripod.com/~LCoat
(Free "1st Alamein" lunch-hour boardgame and cardstock model ship( plan)s --of USS MONITOR and BUTLER class SAMUEL B. ROBERTS Destroyer Escort--to print off and assemble.)