Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Part of the problem for allied planners is that they are under strict orders to avoid "collateral damage"--the famous euphemism that means killing civilians or blowing up things you aren't aiming at. Much of that restraint has political roots: public opinion in NATO countries, tepid at best, could turn if the evening news starts delivering pictures of dead and maimed innocents. A TIME/CNN poll last week indicated less than massive support in the U.S., with 44% of respondents approving the air strikes. Another 40% disapproved. Asked if the U.S. has a moral imperative to stop Serb actions...
...kind of Disneyland idea of customer service that rankles many war fighters at the Pentagon. Some planes are returning to their bases carrying bombs because crews are under orders not to drop them if they don't have a clear, confident shot. "We are taking every precaution," insists NATO spokesman Jamie Shea, "to ensure the highest possible degree of accuracy against exclusively military targets...
Precautions in a war? There was a kind of disjunction in this approach that was nervous making. With the meanest of faces--in the person of special envoy Richard Holbrooke--NATO was telling Milosevic that a failure to comply with alliance wishes meant it would hit him with everything. And there, in the next breath, were NATO commanders confessing to all the world on CNN that everything really meant almost everything. If the U.S. Senate and the American people felt uneasy about Kosovo, it wasn't simply unfamiliarity; the Administration's confusion of ends and means was worrisome as well...
Last week's NATO raids were more than just a slap at the Serbs. They also represented a fundamental and dramatic shift in the way the U.S. has mixed military policy with foreign affairs. For the better part of the past decade, ever since U.S. troops stumbled in Somalia, American thinking has conformed to the so-called Powell doctrine, named after former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell. His doctrine had two tenets: first, the "biggest s.o.b. on the block" rule, that America should enter fights with every bit of force available or not at all. Second...
...Administration has settled on a foreign policy driven largely by ultimatums, and the price of such absolutism is that you must deliver on your threats. The U.S. had said it would bomb; therefore, it had to bomb. There is still hope in some corners of the Administration that NATO will somehow bomb Milosevic back to the bargaining table. But there is also gnawing fear that it will never happen. History argues that even massive air attacks cannot force enemy infantry units to pull out of territory that they are determined to hold...