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By Newsweek Editors
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President Slobodan Milosevic is a criminal. Those who still believe that there are nonviolent ways to stop his inhuman actions against Albanians are naive. They forget the nature of the century we live in.
Some of the images seem to belong to the not-so-recent past. Summary executions, collective punishment, forced expulsion of tens of thousands of families, frightened children separated from their parents, endless lines of desperate refugees: following Sarajevo and Srebrenica, Kosovo has entered the long and bloody list of tragedies that bring dishonor to the outgoing 20th century.
Some observers call it genocide. According to the original 1951 United Nations definition it is. Yet I have problems with its application to Kosovo. In my view, genocide is the intent and the desire to annihilate a people. This is not the case here. Massive violations of human rights and the murder of political opponents, as horrible as they may be, are elements of genocide-in-the-making, but they do not constitute genocide. Still, they are evil enough to inspire anger and the will to stop them.
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As early as 1992, media coverage of the war in Bosnia mistakenly compared Serbian "ethnic cleansing" to the Holocaust. The Holocaust was conceived to annihilate the last Jew on the planet. Does anyone believe that Milosevic and his accomplices seriously planned to exterminate all the Bosnians, all the Albanians, all the Muslims in the world? Some reports referred to "Auschwitz" in Bosnia. I saw the prison camps at Banja Luka; the conditions were deplorable and the prisoners terrified. But it was not Auschwitz. Auschwitz was an extermination camp, a black hole in history. Victims were taken there to be turned into ashes. Now we are witnessing a nightmare in Kosovo; it demands action, not comparison.
Was NATO's decision to intervene correct? Was Washington right to push for it? The answer to both questions is yes. Faced with Milosevic's stubborn policy of ethnic cleansing, no self-respecting government or nation could knowingly violate the Biblical injunction "Thou shall not stand idly by."
Surely, when human lives are involved, indifference is not an answer. Not to choose is also a choice, said the French philosopher Albert Camus. Neutrality helps the aggressor, not his victims. If NATO had been created only to protect the weak and defenseless, that would be enough to justify its existence.
Critics of the attacks on Milosevic say that sending our army to the former Yugoslavia is not in America's national interest. From the economic or geopolitical viewpoint, the critics may have a point. But a nation is great not because of its wealth or its military might; its greatness is measured by the way it uses or abuses its wealth and power. In other words: its greatness derives from its commitment to moral principle.
Milosevic has followed an intolerable path of violence and destruction that must provoke revulsion in every civilized person. His policies are evil. Even one of his associates, the novelist turned politician Vuk Draskovic, admitted the possibility that "atrocities" are being committed. Naturally, they occur away from public view. The Yugoslav military and police have ordered witnesses to leave the country: for weeks, Kosovo has been turning into a ghetto. Belgrade's objective is now clear: a demographic change of the entire region. Is it too horrible to imagine that at the end of the war, there will be no more Albanians to enjoy their liberation in Kosovo?
I know Milosevic. I met him during the war in Bosnia, first at an international conference on Bosnia in London and later in Belgrade. I have spoken with officials and journalists who knew him well. Their analyses confirmed my impression of the man: a coldblooded cynic who never kept a promise, except when it was in his own best interest. His extremist political philosophy remained cloaked in facile patriotism. It is no accident that he is nicknamed "the butcher." He is ruthless with those who stand in his way. A fanatic, like most dictators whose argument is terror, he believes that the end always justifies the means. That is why he rejected Richard Holbrooke's last-minute efforts to save peace and Yevgeny Primakov's attempts to stop the hostilities: he is determined to consistently defy the international community's quest for a peaceful solution. He is interested not in peace, but in absolute domination.
But what about the cost in lives, including those of his own people? They are of no concern to him; his personal power alone matters. Hence his willingness to sacrifice innocent civilians, burning their homes and destroying their villages. With utter contempt for humanity, he has embarked on a state-sponsored program aimed at the humiliation, persecution and uprooting of an entire ethnic community.
Like all nightmares, this too will come to an end. And then Milosevic's actions in Bosnia will also be remembered. And he will appear before an international tribunal, charged with the ultimate offense: crimes against humanity. That hope must be part of his victims' victory.
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