SIT-REP 3-28; March 28, 1999

In this Issue: Massacres, NATO Credibility and A Downed F-117

"America does not need to go abroad in search of monsters to destroy...

- John Quincy Adams; Address, 4 July 1821

If anyone doubts the threat posed by Albanian nationalism to all its neighbors, kindly look at the map to be found at www.aacl.com; you will find it claims part of Greece, plus the capital cities of Montenegro and Macedonia, as well as Kosovo and southern Serbia. Ambitious, given the chaotic state of affairs inside Albania itself.

An Air Force pilot got rescued safely after being shot down in his F-117. Many people know that 800 American pilots were rescued by Serbs from the Nazis during World War II and that the surviving American airmen are among Yugoslavia's most vocal supporters in the current crisis. That is why American pilots will most likely continue to emerge safely if shot down behind "enemy" lines. That pilot appears to have come into risk because of bungling in leadership, operational planning and mission execution: he got strafed by an enemy jet --more below.

I spoke with an Albanian-American off-line in the FoxNews "green room" today. He was a very polished actor; very capable of presenting the victim in an "ad misericordiam" manner. On the way home I had a Turkish-Greek Macedonian driver who thanked me for sticking up for Yugoslavia-- his sister is in Belgrade. Where else but in Yugoslavia, the most tolerant country in Europe, could gypsies live among every one else and could a man be born to a Greek father and Turkish mother? Yet we are constantly reminded that Serbs are vicious, racist bullies.

Everybody in Yugoslavia dislikes Mr. Milosevic, but all remember an old saying "Only unity saves the Serbs (Samo Sloga Serbina Spesava). Every NATO bomb adds to Mr. Milosevic's support, not just among Serbs, but among all Yugoslavs other than the Albanians of Kosovo. We realists remember the unifying factor of strategic bombing from the London and Berlin Blitzes of 1941, but our Clintonian theorists never understood that dramatic TV footage does not equate to a policy victory; it only gives a bump in the over-night polls.

We are in the endgame of Nato's Kosovo misadventure and the rhetoric is very dangerous. At the same time, though reporters and Mme Albright bombard us with allegations of accelerating atrocities inside Kosovo, the numbers do not add up and verification is withheld. Further, the political objective remains unchanged; impose an occupation force to restore peace and an operating civil government in the province. A couple of days ago, NATO even confirmed that the operation "Allied Farce" --ooops, "Allied Force"-- was not designed to undermine Mr. Milosevic's regime.

Suffice it to say that every allegation of accelerating atrocities in Kosovo is coming from KLA-friendly refugees and reporters who are either very credulous or very disingenuous --I think they just don't care, hating Milosevic is so self-satisfying and Clinton is on crusade. But the operation is not working as expected by the academic-trained merit-ocrats of the Clinton team, and now everybody is looking for a rabbit to pull out of a hat. Political reputations are now on the line and politicians are never loathe to have soldiers die for their reputations: we are all in danger for the sake of ego. Today, on CNN, Reverend Jesse Jackson is explaining Clintonian geo-strategical imperatives.

Compromise is the way out, brokered by an honest neutral. Perhaps the Swiss should help the Russians. The alternative, to save face for NATO and Bill, is to put 500,000 NATO troops in an invasion posture, but to defeat Yugoslavia's 500,000 man force of 90,000 regulars plus reservists, it would take well more than a month to put those NATO troops in attack position. And we experts know that US forces in Europe are well below combat-ready status. The moment NATO officially threatens a ground invasion of Yugoslavia, there will be the immediate prospect of a massive cleansing of Albanians into Albania and Macedonia, even before troops can be dispatched to deal with the human flow. All options are in Belgrade's hands.

George Washington warned us about permanent alliances; NATO is such an obsolete alliance, now casting about for a mission to sustain and perpetuate its bureaucracy. John Quincy Adams warned us two generations later that America could easily get tricked into unworthy causes; NATO is meddling on the side of a guerilla army unarguably entwined with an international heroin cartel. The KLA and its friends are welcome to fight for their freedom, but I think the American people would not support a NATO invasion that winds up benefiting the people who sell heroin on its streets.

Self-Defense: The human catastrophe among the KLA's supporters is widening we are told, yet the flow of refugees remains a trickle. I was reminded that there are some 1 million or more Kosovo (the propaganda estimate is 2 million Albanians). Albanians and only about 40,000 Serb police and army in Kosovo. Massive catastrophe?

Then I recall from conversations and other information that in Kosovo, virtually every male, Serb and Albanian alike, owns at least one pretty good hunting rifle, shotgun or something --it is a cultural imperative to both peoples. Most, I am told, have both, and many have pistols as well. Then, I recall that there are reputed to be at least 5,000 KLA fighters and some 30,000 stolen Kalashnikov assault rifles (AK-47s) floating around in Albanian hands.

Then I heard continued allegations from pro-administration pundits on FoxNews and others that Serbia must be preparing to invade Macedonia. Hmmm; with only a couple of battalions of tanks on that border? We know the Yugoslavian army sent those troops to prevent a NATO invasion.

When an operation is not going well, the political rhetoric intensifies about the disastrous consequences of inaction. That is happening at the NATO briefings and from Mme Albright and others, but it seems that on the ground in Kosovo itself, such still is not the case, since tens of thousands of refugees are not crossing borders and since non-NATO sources on the ground there are not confirming an escalating tragedy. It is bad where the KLA raised expectations of the fruits of rebellion, but not so bad where sober minds prevail.

What I understand from today's spring blizzard of American punditry is that there is increasing pro-NATO talk about committing ground troops now that bombing clearly is not working. NATO's credibility, they continue to argue, is on the line. NATO put its credibility at hazard by trying to bluster and bully in the Press, to sustain the illusions that the KLA cause is reasonable and that the NATO policy is the only possibility.

Washington warned us: NATO is a permanent entangling alliance without a meaningful purpose and has just demonstrated that in amateurish hands, it is dangerous. Quincy Adams warned us both to stay out of propaganda-defined causes and to stay out of revolutions in the Balkans. Operation Desert Fox proved air power cannot compel obedience and Operation Allied Force proves that our western leaders do not know either their business or their philosophy.

"America is great because America is good;" Tocqueville wrote in 1835. "It will cease being great when it ceases being good." With Bill Clinton, America stopped valuing the virtue of being good; with Operation Allied Force, America and Europe stopped being great.

The Stealth Fighter: A cover-up is well underway and the pilot's anonymity is being preserved; I suppose we are to believe that somebody might try to assassinate him. But the real problem is that from tv footage, large caliber machine gun bullet holes are very evident in the wing assembly. A US Air Forced F-117 was shot down by a Yugoslav Air Force jet aircraft, or at least strafed with enough bullets to leave two holes in its wing, as TV film shows today.

This indicates a major foul-up in the air war planning. The US establishes air superiority with F-15C Eagles, guided to clear enemy aircraft out of the skies by the E-3C AWACS, while EA-6B Prowlers jam enemy Radars; then the Stealth Fighter can penetrate enemy skies fairly safely. Somehow, Yugoslav jets got in the air, where they may catch the Stealth fighter between their aircraft and the ground and in moonlight, or whatever --the moon is up and waxing. Maybe it was just dumb luck, and maybe a combination of improved radars and good fortune, but an F-117 was certainly "splashed" by a pilot whose aircraft should never have been in the air in the first place.

Why do I think the plane was lost in air-to-air combat? Because F-117s do not go close to ground-based 23mm anti-aircraft and because it does not carry air-to-air missiles to defend itself from enemy fighters, which are not supposed to be able to get close to it any way. Further, part of the technology is to rapidly cool the exhaust gasses of its jet engine to minimize the size of its hot signature, which would attract heat-seeking missiles.

But the AWACs must have missed that "bogie" Yugo jet, and certainly, there were no F-15s close enough to save the F-117.? Careers are going to be "adjusted" after this planning failure.

© Copyright 1999 by Benjamin Works - SIRIUS www.siri-us.com