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But the president of the United States is proud; the forces of the loyal opposition are silent; and the media, now that the "Crisis in Kosovo!" theme music has been filed away, has moved on to more pressing matters like the latest minute-to-minute New Hampshire polls and the books George W. is or isn't having read to him.

The Albanian atrocities are not just going unacknowledged and unlamented -- they're going uninvestigated. The International War Crimes Tribunal is mandated to investigate only crimes committed "during the armed conflict in Kosovo." And since, according to the NATO powers, the province is now enjoying the fruits of peace, the murderers can go on murdering with impunity. They know that the only retribution they have to fear is from the toothless U.N. police force.

In his triumphant visit to Kosovo last month, the president waxed lyrical to the flag-waving throngs: "The time for fighting has passed ... The international community will stand by you." In fact, the fighting has grown only more bitter, and the international community hasn't even sent the U.N. mission in Kosovo the $25 million it needs to continue paying for public services and salaries. "That's the price of half a day's bombing," lamented a senior U.N. official.

Our political class is all too adept at refusing to address any crisis that does not score high in this week's polls -- especially when it has prematurely declared victory. The energy is expended instead on orchestrating Presidential Pyrrhic Victory Tours and releasing State Department reports that whitewash the bloody truth. And on the other side of the aisle, the Republican front-runner gives a highly touted foreign policy speech that does not even mention Kosovo. Sic transit gloria Milosevic.

So the legitimate question of when America should intervene and when its intervention does more harm than good is left unexamined or reduced to a caricature about isolationism. Kosovo, meanwhile, remains like one of the thousands of cluster bomblets NATO planes left behind -- deadly and ready to claim more innocent victims every day.
salon.com | Dec. 14, 1999

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