Against U.S. Military Action
in
Yugoslavia

Submitted by Dr. Alan Keyes, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Social and Economic Council, Candidate for the Republican presidential nomination

War's Simple Equation

On Wednesday the Senate voted to shelve a proposal by Senator John McCain to authorize "all necessary force," including ground troops, to achieve American objectives in Yugoslavia. This is a good thing. To put it mildly, I do not believe that we need to multiply expressions of our confidence in Bill Clinton's leadership and judgment. We might try instead multiplying instances of clear and morally literate reasoning about the war in Yugoslavia. Here, Senator McCain is not helpful. "All necessary force" would literally include the use of nuclear weapons. So Senator McCain put a resolution on the table that would have authorized Bill Clinton - a man we know to be without judgment, conscience, decency, morality, integrity, or competence - to use nuclear weapons to deal with the conflict in Yugoslavia. The idea that the Senate would authorize such a man to use all means he judges necessary in a military effort as questionable as this one is insane. In this proposal, Senator McCain shows a lack of judgment bordering on lunacy. Is this too harsh a judgment? Let's review the facts. We have a president whose moral judgment, character, self-control, and maturity we know we can't trust. This president has led us into a war which has no proper justification in terms of American interest, and which has been conducted in a fashion that raises serious questions about the morality of the strategy and intentions involved. Senator McCain has now turned to the world and said "This individual, whom we have every reason to doubt, who lacks all credibility, who may be engaged in a deeply wicked and immoral strategy, should be given a blank check to do whatever he pleases in using our instruments of force to kill people." John McCain, what is the matter with your thinking? Bill Clinton is the least trustworthy president we have ever had. Given his behavior towards women, including the credible allegations that he has committed violent rape while holding high office, we should seriously entertain the possibility that he is psychotic. At the very least, we should note that being a brutal rapist does not suggest someone who is in control of himself. So given that he may very well have a deep problem with violence toward women, bordering on the psychotic, Senator McCain wants the people's representatives formally to express our trust of Bill Clinton and authorize him to use all the force that his good judgment deems necessary to accomplish his objectives. Anyone making such a suggestion, in my opinion, raises deep doubts about his own judgment. And I believe that such doubts will now have to haunt John McCain. Bad thinking abounds in discussions about this war, and we let it pass at our national peril. Senator McCain, Henry Kissinger and others are making the following argument about the war: First premise: There are serious questions about our involvement in the war in Yugoslavia. Second premise: We entered the war as the result of bad judgments. Third premise: It isn't clear what our objectives are. Conclusion: Since we have begun the war, we must continue until victory is achieved. When anyone makes this argument, we should stop him, look him right in the eye, and ask him the simple question: What is war? Sometimes we use words quite readily while forgetting what they really signify, but we ought not to do so. So we should ask, What is war? And when we receive blank looks, and are told it is a silly question to which everyone knows the answer, we should say that everybody may know it, but clearly not everybody is remembering it. Get them to think about it. Remind them of this simple equation: War = killing people You can put whatever kind of mask on it you like, but at the end of the day, war is about the business of killing human beings. We may be doing it this way or the other way, with more damage or less, but at its heart war is about killing people. Every sentence of discussion about Yugoslavia should be modified by replacing the word "war" with the phrase "killing people." And then we should just listen to what is being said. We don't know why we are killing people. It is not clear what our objectives are in killing people. We are not sure we should have started killing people in the first place; as a matter of fact it is pretty clear that we shouldn't have started killing people. But since we have started killing people, we have no choice; we have got to go on killing people until "victory" is achieved. When our planes go over Yugoslavia and drop bombs on things, they are killing people. As we watch this go on, we are asking, "Why is this happening?" And the answer comes back, "Well, we don't know why we are killing people. We don't have a clear objective in killing people. We probably shouldn't have started killing people; as a matter of fact, we know we shouldn't have started killing people." "So why are you doing it?" "We have to kill them, because we started doing it, and so we have to keep doing it." The Clinton policy toward Yugoslavia is insane. When we have an insane president, utterly without moral judgment - do we have to follow his leadership? Senator McCain thinks it is important that we leap to reassure him that we will. Is this our duty? No, it is not. Because the American people are sovereign, and are ultimately responsible before God and the world for what we permit our leaders - our instruments of self-rule - to do. The Constitution of the United States leaves it to us and to our representatives to check our president when necessary, so his madness does not drag this nation into war, and does not drag the nation's conscience into doing things that our conscience cannot countenance. At such moments, we must not simply follow - we must evaluate, discern, and judge our leaders. We are in this situation now, and it shouldn't take us long to reach our verdict. As conscience and right thinking engage the situation we face, people around the country are beginning to wake up and realize that we must stop this war. We must stop this war. We have begun killing people without good and sufficient reason, without even knowing clearly what our reasons are, without clear objectives, and without achieving any decent moral purpose. We have now, as a people, begun to realize that this is our situation. In such a case, the thing to do is simply to stop. Otherwise we risk falling prey to the very logic of war - fighting for the sake of fighting - which is at the root of the problems in the Balkans. It is the duty of the American people to demand the immediate cessation of the illegal and immoral war of aggression in Yugoslavia - the rest is detail. If we stop, we will provide the world with a shining example of the possibility of a free people coming to its moral senses and acting accordingly. Those who are so eloquent in their concern with the precedent of America "losing a war" might want to attend instead the benefit to the world of such an example of virtue by a great people.