War
against Yugoslavia U.S.
Leaders Wanted More Aggression WASHINGTON
(AP) -- The U.S.
military's top Kosovo commanders suggested
Thursday their hands were tied by NATO
politicians and that they would have been
far more aggressive in going after Serb
forces if permitted. "I'd have gone for the head of the
snake on the first night," said Lt. Gen.
Michael C. Short, the Air Force
general who ran the 78-day air war. He said he would have waged a massive
air campaign against Belgrade, the
Yugoslav capital. "I'd have
turned the lights out the first night.
I'd have dropped the bridges across the
Danube. I'd hit five or six political
and military headquarters in downtown
Belgrade," Short told the Senate Armed
Services Committee. The committee is reviewing the Kosovo
campaign and lessons learned from it. U.S. and NATO officials have
acknowledged they ordered the military to
take an incremental approach to striking
Yugoslavia, initially sparing downtown
Belgrade and Montenegro, in hopes that
President Slobodan Milosevic
quickly would capitulate. They also said the air campaign was
encumbered by arrangements allowing each
allied nation to review targets before
they were struck. That system was
streamlined after several weeks and the
military commanders were given somewhat
greater latitude in choosing targets. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, who also
was the supreme NATO commander in Europe,
told senators he felt "very strongly that
once the threshold is crossed and you're
going to use force, that force has to be
as decisive as possible in attaining your
military objectives." Clark has complained in the past about
NATO's micromanagement of the campaign,
including selecting of targets and putting
certain targets off limits. Still, Clark testified that despite
differences of opinion on tactics, all of
NATO's conditions were met: "We said there had to be a ceasefire;
there was. We said the Serbs (military)
had to come out; they did. We said NATO
had to go in; it has. We said the refugees
had to return; they have." The committee chairman, Sen. John
Warner, R-Va., has criticized the
administration's refusal to consider a
ground war option. "Time-tested military doctrine teaches
us that conflicts, no matter what the
size, should be fought with military
commanders making decisions on military
matters," said Warner, a former Navy
secretary. "Of particular interest to this senator
are the NATO decisions not to even allow
the planning ... of a ground
operation." He said the military commanders brought
"a unique perspective to the committee's
ongoing investigation of the Kosovo
operation." "We're not trying to find fault. It's a
review," he said. Adm. James O'Ellis, commander in
chief of U.S. naval forces in Southern
Europe, was less openly critical of NATO's
oversight. "We will never
know how much more costly alliance
inaction might have been," Ellis said.
"We know, though, that Kosovo today,
though far from perfect, is a much
better place than when we began our
efforts." Short told the committee that he did
not think NATO should have played such a
heavy role in target selection. "Admiral Ellis and I should have been
given target categories from which we
could choose at the tactical and
operational level, and been given the
ability to go after that target set as we
saw fit with the assets made available to
us to bring them down," Short said. "You've got to let us do our job," he
said. "The restrictions that were placed
upon us ... were extraordinary in my
judgment" and put U.S. pilots and crews
"at increased risk and made us
predictable." For instance, he said that after some
civilians were killed on bridges, NATO
forbid him from striking bridges except
after midnight and before dawn. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the
senior Democrat on the panel, said that
"the problem is, we're members of an
alliance which operate together under
certain rules. It's a democratic alliance,
and that by its very nature is going to
create some limitations on our unilateral
decisions."  | 
Perhaps
it is time for the US armed forces'
commanders to be given some education on
this kind of holocaust as well as on the
one waged by the Nazis against the Jews
which seems to dominate most public
thought and debate recently.
write
to David Irving