In the March 20th edition of the Deseret News, it was reported that Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, blasted President Clinton for not trying to obtain Congressional approval before sending young men off to fight in a war in Kosovo. In the first place it isn't even a war, it's an internal rebellion. Bennett should be blasting the president for even thinking about sending Americans off to fight in a place where we have no national interest, other than a desire to stop senseless killing.
We can't stop those people from killing each other any more than we can stop poverty, bad breath or old age. One would almost think that those people enjoy killing each other, because they have been doing it since the Dark Ages. The statement of philosopher historian George Santayana summarizes the whole problem. He wrote "those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." For recent history, I can offer a political war I participated in called the Korean Police Action. Some police action, we only lost 50,000 American men.It seems that we didn't learn much from that war, so we had to go and waste another 50,000 men in a place we should have never been, called Vietnam. One of my in-laws has his name etched in a War Memorial in Washington, D.C. Not to be outdone, the Russians went off to get a lot of their young men killed in a place called Afghanistan, with no positive results for them.
So what does not-so-recent history tell us about Kosovo? It seems that it is a city in Serbia, which until recently was part of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia is one of a small impoverished group of nations in the southeast part of Europe known as the Balkans. The Balkans are referred to as The Powder Keg of Europe, for good reason. World War I was waiting for a fuse to be ignited, and the Balkans provided it. Austria's Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated in Yugoslavia, and that was all the excuse European rulers needed to trot out all their new toys for killing men and try them out on each other. I lost an uncle there along with another 10,000,000 young men plus an estimated 5,000,000 civilians due to other causes.
Due to an unreasonable peace agreement forced on Germany, Hitler was allowed to come to power and bring on World War II. I lost a cousin in that war. It is interesting to note that the Prussian statesman Bismarck who declared back in the 1800s that problems should be solved by blood and iron, also had the wisdom to observe that the Balkans were not worth the blood of one German soldier.
I realize our illustrious president took great pains not to get personally involved in Vietnam, and I don't know what personal knowledge Bennett has with war, but it isn't any fun. In summary, Kosovo isn't worth the life of one American, because we can't stop those people from killing each other. So let's let the reporters write about something that can be done to improve our lifestyle. If we are really concerned about the innocent casualties in Serbia, let's stop wasting money on U.N. activities and provide humanitarian relief to the victims on both sides of the conflict.
Rich Gilliat is a veteran who resides in St. George.