Come to the White House tonight (Wednesday, March 24) at 5 p.m. to demonstrate against the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Serbia!! Please join the Washington Peace Center and the D.C. area peace and justice community to tell Clinton: No Bombing, No War!

The Peace Center has initiated a statement from peace groups in opposition to the bombing; please call the Peace Center, (202) 234-2000 if your group would like to sign on.

Statement in opposition to the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Serbia.
Modified as of March 23, 1999

We call on President Clinton to stop his plans for war, and promote
negotiations for peace and justice in the Yugoslav province of
Kosovo. We assert that, as NATO is a military organization, and the
recent talks took place under threat of either the deployment of an occupying army to the Yugoslav province of Kosovo or of a massive bombardment of Serbia, these talks did not constitute peace negotiations, but war talks. The deaths of hundreds, possibly thousands, of Serb soldiers and civilians in a U.S.-led NATO bombardment is not the answer to the plight of the Kosovo Albanians.

We recognize the legitimate right of the Kosovars to self-determination, but military action will not bring peace, rather a massive bombing campaign such as Clinton outlined Friday, March 19, would threaten to widen the war and destablilize the entire region.

Neither NATO nor the United States have a right to intervene militarily in the internal struggles of a sovereign nation. Therefore, we also oppose deployment of a NATO occupying force in Kosovo.

We recognize and deplore the the oppression and violence suffered by the Kosovo Albanians at the hands of the Serbian government forces. We condemn the human rights violations of the government of Slobodan Milosovec.

We call on the international community to take all necessary
nonviolent, diplomatic steps to promote the democratic resolution of
the conflict in Yugoslavia and stop the continued violence against the
people of Kosovo.

Below is a message received from the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center that includes background information on the conflict in Kosovo:
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Peninsula Peace and Justice Center urges you to phone the White House and State Department to express opposition to the proposed US/NATO bombing of Serbia.

A massive military assault is clearly not going to bring peace to the
region and there is nothing in international law to allow NATO to attack
a sovereign country. Some additional talking points and background are included at the end of this message.

White House (202) 456-1111 Fax: (202) 456-2461
State Dept. (202) 647-6575 Fax: (202) 627-7120

Two articles follow: excerpts from one written by Edward Herman and
another by Rachelle Marshall.

===== From an article by Edward Herman, contributor to Z Magazine===

...The Turkish armed forces have generously offered to take time off from
destroying Kurdish villages in and beyond Turkey's borders to
participate in NATO's humanitarian crusade against the Serbs for having
done roughly the same, but on a much smaller scale and only within
Serbia.

The selectivity of the West's humanitarian concern is blatant. And in
this case, Western policy has actually fanned the flames of conflict.
Whereas fair and friendly mediation is called for, the West's bias
toward one side, and contradictory signals have made it virtually
impossible for the Serbs and Albanians to work out a solution among
themselves.

The ethnic Albanians say they want to secede. The West rules that out,
as it would set a bad example for the Bosnian Serbs who want to secede
from Bosnia. Some Serbs suggest partitioning Kosovo between Serbia and
the Albanians. The West rules that out, as it would set a bad precedent
for Macedonia, where Albanians would then also want to secede.

However provoked, Serbian security forces are almost surely guilty as
charged of "using excessive force." In its righteous indignation, NATO
has assembled a mighty armada of warplanes, stealth boombers and cruise
missiles which threaten to wipe out Yugoslavia's entire national defense
capacity, including command and control centers. This is because NATO
abhors the use of "excessive force."

=====An article by Rachelle Marshall of WOmen's Int'l League for Peace
and Freedom==========

Like the soundtrack of an old newsreel, President Clinton*s announcement
at his March 19 press conference sounded hauntingly familiar. In
declaring that NATO intends to launch air strikes against Serbia if
Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic did not sign a peace agreement
with Kosovo Albanians, Clinton maintained that the current crisis over
the Serb province of Kosovo "threatens our national interest ... and
will undermine the credibility of NATO on which stability in Europe and
our own credibility depend." If the conflict continues, he said, "it
...could embrace Albania, Macedonia, Greece, even Turkey." By acting
now, the President concluded, "we can help to give our children and
grandchildren a Europe that is more united, more democratic, more
peaceful, {and} more prosperous..."

If these words sound familiar, it is because Presidents Eisenhower,
Johnson, and Nixon once used similar arguments to justify U.S. military
action in Vietnam. Eisenhower told us that if Ho Chi Minh*s forces took
over all of Vietnam, Communism would spread throughout southeast Asia,
including Japan, and close off U.S. access to vital raw materials.
Johnson said we were fighting for democracy and freedom and against
"aggressors." Nixon said that if we pulled out of Vietnam we would lose
credibility with our European allies. So what began as a limited
intervention against a guerrilla army lasted more than ten years, took
the lives of 50,000 Americans and at least 2 million Vietnamese, and
left much of Indochina in ruins.

So far no one in the Clinton administration has told us what the
possible consequences would be if NATO takes military action against
Serbia. Pentagon officials warn that unlike the almost daily bombing of
Iraq it would be anything but risk-free. Bomber crews would face
sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons, a mountainous terrain, and
difficult weather conditions. What if some of our pilots were shot down
and killed or captured? What if bombing alone failed to accomplish its
stated objective? Would NATO troops invade? So far administration
officials have not told us what they would do if Serbia refused to
withdraw its troops from Kosovo. Nor can we count on anyone now in
Washington remembering that during World War II Serb resistance forces
operating from mountain strongholds were able to hold off the far more
powerful German army.
According to Clinton, bombing is intended to spare the people of Kosovo
further suffering, and compel Milosevic to grant them virtual
independence and accept the presence of NATO troops in the province. But
in fact the opposite is likely to result.

Kosovo civilians have already begun paying a heavy price for possible
NATO action against Serbia. A few days after Clinton*s press conference,
and the subsequent withdrawal of international monitors from Kosovo,
Serb forces launched a renewed offensive against the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), causing thousands of villagers in their path to flee.
Almost simultaneously the KLA stepped up its attacks against Serb
police, killing three of them in a daring raid in Pristina.

There is speculation that the KLA may deliberately provoke Serb
retaliation in order to bring on NATO air strikes. Since guerrilla
warfare is carried out by an elusive fighting force, conventional
armies aim at destroying the villages in which the rebels are based,
which means civilians are invariably the chief victims. This was true of
American army tactics in Indochina, of the Russians in Chechnya, the
Israelis in Lebanon, and the Turks in the Kurdish sectors of Turkey. The
Serb army in Kosovo uses the same tactics. Consequently, if fighting
between the two sides continues there could be a bloodbath. Bombing is
no substitute for a continuing international effort to find a peaceful
solution.

At one point Milosevic said he was willing to grant autonomy to the
province and withdraw most of his troops. He refused only to allow NATO
troops into what the Serbs consider sovereign territory, and most Serbs
agree with him. There is no assurance that the Serb leader would abide
by such an arrangement, even if the KLA agreed to disarm, but it is
worth a cautious try. With bombing there is only the certainty of more
bloodshed, with no indication of when or how the fighting would end.

NATO air strikes could also give Milosevic an excuse to divert popular
anger away from the worsening Serb economy and his own disastrous
policies, and toward the United States and its allies. In an interview
with Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times in mid-March, one of
Milosevic*s fiercest opponents, Dragoslav Avramovic, complained, "We
want to get rid of Mr. Milosevic and you are not getting rid of him."
Avramovic, who once headed Yugoslavia*s central bank, accused NATO
members of strengthening Milosevic by taking former Serbian territory
and "inflicting on 200,000 or 300,000 Serbs in Kosovo a sense of being
expelled."

Clinton asserted that a chief purpose of NATO military action against
Serbia was to prevent the conflict in Kosovo from spreading to
neighboring countries. But Ronald Steel, a professor of international
relations at USC, takes the opposite point of view. "Rather than
smothering the flames of a wider Balkan war," he wrote in a recent New
York Times op-ed column, "our intervention may be fanning them." Steel
maintained that the same motives that have led KLA rebels seeking "an
ethnically pure state" to detach Kosovo from Serbia may lead them to do
the same in neighboring Macedonia, where there are also large numbers of
Albanians, and even attempt to absorb parts of Albania itself.

Steel also raises the question of why the United States is supporting
the Kosovars but not the Kurds, whose claim to an independent state is
even more valid, since they were promised such a state by the Allies
after World War I. But instead of backing their efforts to achieve
autonomy within Turkey, the United States has given lavish military aid
to the Turkish army that is attempting to crush them, even supplying the
helicopters that have been used to destroy Kurdish villages. Washington
also continues to discourage Palestinian demands for an independent
state, while annually providing Israel with billions of dollars in aid.

It is hard to find justification in international law for a NATO attack
on a sovereign country that is attempting to put down an internal
rebellion, but that fact does not negate Milosevic*s guilt as a
principal architect of the current conflict and overseer of its most
brutal atrocities. His decision to take away Kosovo*s autonomous status
in 1989 and clamp down on any expression of the majority population*s
Albanian identity, is the principal factor behind the rise of the KLA
rebels and their demand for complete independence. Because of
Milosevic*s intransigence the moderate Albanians in Kosovo, who tried
without success to restore Kosovo*s autonomy status peacefully, have all
but disappeared from the scene.

Within Serbia itself Milosevic has cloaked his own inability to govern
with demagogic appeals to nationalism and the deliberate creation of
external enemies. NATO bombing attacks would only strengthen his image
as a steadfast defender of Serb sovereignty against all challengers.
Once the bombs begin to fall, casualties will be inevitable, but it is
almost certain that Milosevic will not be among them. Indeed, he could
turn out to be the only benficiary.

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(650) 326-8837 <> http://www.peacecenter.com
"Peninsula Peace and Justice Center has been one of the most effective
of the activist organizations" - Noam Chomsky
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