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Clark's problem was that he was a great general but
not always a perfect soldier--at least when it came
to saluting and saying, "Yes, sir." In fact,
when he got orders he didn't like, he said so and pushed
to change them.
Clark disapproved the gradualism of the initial bombing
campaign against Belgrade. He wanted to hit hard and
massively. But NATO governments and diplomats in Washington
felt Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would yield
after only a few bombs and cruise missiles, as he had
in Bosnia. They were wrong. Clark, who was part of the
delegation that negotiated the Dayton accords with Milosevic,
knew Kosovo was integral to Serb identity and to Milosevic's
rise to power. He would not give it up easily.
When it became clear the initial NATO bombing wasn't
working, Clark pushed for every airplane he could get,
much to the dismay of the U.S. Air Force. Indeed, one
of the unsung accomplishments of Kosovo is how quickly
Clark built up air power--far faster than was done in
Desert Storm. Clark prodded and cajoled the Europeans
and the White House into accepting expanded, and riskier,
target lists. He ordered 50 Apache attack helicopters
to take the battle to the Serb ground troops, only to
see the force reduced in size and then left to sit in
Albania while the White House and Pentagon fretted about
casualties. Clark also was right about readying troops
for an invasion. The preparations for a ground war helped
persuade Milosevic to surrender.
More presciently, Clark was right about the Russians.
When fewer than 200 lightly armed Russian peacekeepers
barnstormed from Bosnia to the Pristina airport in Kosovo
to upstage the arrival of NATO peacekeepers, Clark was
rightly outraged. Russians did not win the war, and
he did not want them to win the peace.
Clark asked NATO helicopters and ground troops to seize
the airport before the Russians could arrive. But a
British general, absurdly saying he feared World War
III (in truth the Russians had no cards to play), appealed
to London and Washington to delay the order.
The result was a humiliation for NATO, a tonic for
the Russian military and an important lesson for the
then-obscure head of the Russian national security council,
Vladimir Putin. As later Russian press reports showed,
Putin knew far more about the Pristina operation than
did the Russian defense or foreign ministers. It was
no coincidence that a few weeks afterward, Russian bombers
buzzed NATO member Iceland for the first time in a decade.
A few weeks after that, with Putin as prime minister,
Russian troops invaded Chechnya. Putin learned the value
of boldness in the face of Western hesitation. Clark
learned that he had no backup in Washington.
Recent events in Kosovo show that Clark's bosses in
the Pentagon and White House still don't get it. The
chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Henry Shelton, rebuked
Clark in February for using 350 American soldiers to
reinforce French troops who were unable to quell violence
between Albanians and Serbs. After the American reinforcements
were pelted with rocks and bottles, Shelton and the
White House, panicky about potential casualties, told
Clark not to volunteer U.S. troops again.
But Clark was right to act. He understood the value
of using force quickly and early to show who was in
control, and to demonstrate to the European allies that
the United States is willing to put lives at risk too.
Both Desert Storm and Kosovo were imperfect victories
because the despots who caused them were left in power.
But the military fought them well. The thousands of
Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps pilots and support
troops who quietly rejoined their squadrons when the
Kosovo war ended deserve more than a historical footnote.
And Clark deserves more than a pink slip.
The writer is a managing editor at National
Journal.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
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