MSNBC: Support waning in Europe (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 27 Apr 1999 10:00:43 -0400
From: Stevan Vidich <SVidich@iisweb.com>
Reply-To: srpska_kultura@4Cbiz.net
To: SRPSKA KULTURA© <srpska_kultura@4Cbiz.net>
Subject: MSNBC: Support waning in Europe


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____ CP||CKA KY/\TYPA ____ No. 880  Poruka od:  Stevan Vidich <SVidich@iisweb.com>

 Support for NATO waning in Europe
 
 Europeans have doubts about war in Balkans
 
 A masked demonstrator stands next to anti-riot police during a protest
 against NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia outside the Bagnoli NATO base
 in suburban Naples Saturday.
 
 By Jonathan Miller MSNBC
 
 LONDON, April 24 -  The first step for a democracy in mounting any
 successful war is persuading voters that it is a good idea. The strike on
 Yugoslavia got off to a good start - as the pitiful flood of refugees
 emerged from Kosovo, public opinion solidified behind the air campaign.
 But one month later, the first cracks are starting to appear.
 
 BRITISH BARONESS Margaret Thatcher is hardly a shrinking violet. The
 former British Prime Minister became known as the Iron Lady for her
 uncompromising positions.
 
 After the Argentines invaded the Falkland Islands, she single-handedly
 galvanized British public opinion to support a military operation to seize
 them back. She even famously told former President George Bush not to
 "wobble" in facing down Saddam Hussein after the invasion of Kuwait.
 
 Yet last week, it was Europe's Iron lady who was wobbling, joining a small
 but growing chorus of skeptics who have begun questioning the timing,
 tactics and objectives of NATO's military operation against Serbia.
 
 Slobodan Milosevic, Thatcher warned, was "not some minor thug ... but a
 truly monstrous evil." Nevertheless, she declared, the war against him was
being
 waged "eight years too late ... and with war aims that some find unclear
 and unpersuasive."
 
 To be sure, the statement was a footnote of dissent in a country in which
 popular opinion remains solidly behind the NATO action. Britain's
 tabloids, reliable barometers of public sentiment, are continuing to
maintain a
 robust tone. The Sun, which launched the war with a massive headline
exhorting
 NATO to "Clobba Slobba," has maintained steady support for the campaign.
 
 But amongst the opinion formers, the doubts are growing, even if the
 doubters are split between those who advocate taking firmer action and
 those who believe that even the air strikes were a mistake.
 
 BRITISH DOUBTS ON THE RISE
 
 An article in London's Times on Wednesday offered a third view. In a
 forensic and highly critical deconstruction of NATO's war so far, it
 concluded that NATO was fighting a war it simply could not win.
 
 Authored by Simon Jenkins, a former editor of the paper and one of
 Britain's most respected journalists, the article systematically shredded
the logic
 behind the campaign against Serbia and starkly concluded that NATO's
 hubris has delivered the alliance to the brink of humiliation.
 
 "NATO pledged to draw the line against Mr. Milosevic in Kosovo and did not
 do so. It sent in monitors, then withdrew them. NATO sent reinforcements
 to Macedonia but left them setting up camps for victims of a war NATO half
 threatened but would not fight," argued Jenkins.
 
 The first evidence that these arguments are getting through to the public
 came with a poll in the center-left Guardian this week showing support for
 the NATO campaign has dropped from 65 percent to 57 percent, while support
 for sending in ground troops has gone from 58 percent to 50 percent.
 
 GERMANS HAVE SECOND THOUGHTS
 
 In Germany, where the war began with Luftwaffe pilots flying into action
 for the first time since 1945, popular newspapers took an initially robust
 line. It has not proved durable.
 
 "NATO now finds itself in a nightmare situation," said Hannoversche
 Allgemeine Zeitung this week. "On the one hand it is hitting Yugoslavia
 with increasingly severe attacks. On the other, the alliance's political aims
 are becoming increasingly remote. If you extend this into the future the only
 reaction can be one of horror."
 
 Although Germany has played a secondary military role in the campaign so
 far, with just 14 aircraft, a single frigate and 3,000 support troops in
 Macedonia, the war is threatening to destabilize Europe's biggest
 democracy.
 
 Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's SDP-Green coalition may not survive a May 13
 special conference of the Greens, which is likely to declare NATO's
 campaign incompatible with both international law and the governing
coalition's
 election manifesto.
 
 STRAINS IN ITALY
 
 In Italy, too, the war is introducing strains in a coalition government
 that has offered a platform for NATO air strikes against Serbia, despite deep
 ambivalence.
 
 Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema's center-left coalition includes anti-war
 communists and public opinion is increasingly hostile to the NATO
 campaign. There are also deep-seated fears that Italy will end up taking
in many
 Albanian refugees.
 
 La Repubblica, the country's leading daily newspaper, summed up the
 Italian attitude in an editorial declaring that public opinion must "face
reality"
 that "this probably won't be a war of weeks and will produce more
 suffering.

 If we are not prepared to accept the weight of this suffering then we
 might as well pull the white flag out of our rucksack immediately."
 
 FRENCH PRESS GROWS CRITICAL
 
 In Paris, most of the media has stood solidly behind the cohabitation
 government of rightist President Jacques Chirac and socialist Prime
 Minister Lionel Jospin. Polls show wide public support for NATO - 70
percent back
 airstrikes, while 64 percent say they would back ground intervention.
 
 But some are expressing doubts. Le Canard Enchaîné, a weekly that often
 differs with the mainstream media, said that the allied intervention has
 up to now "revealed only its weakness."
 
 In Le Monde this week, commentator Edgar Morin declared the war to be
 "Madness ! Folie ! Folie !" It was, he said, a folly not only of the
 nationalism of the Serbs and its ravages, but of NATO's "war of computers,
 of killing machines."
 
 Adding a further strain, the right-wing daily Le Figaro has started to
 question the Clinton-Blair axis at the center of the alliance.
 
 "If the bombing raids on Yugoslavia are not enough to put an end to Mr.
 Milosevic's excesses a ground war is probably necessary. But it is not
 right that Mr. Clinton and his pilot fish, Mr. Blair, should take this
decision.
 The involvement of European troops on the ground could be inevitable but
 it would be shocking for them to be commanded by an American general."
 
 GREEKS FIRMLY OPPOSE ATTACKS
 
 The most robust dissent from the NATO consensus has come from Greece where
 polls show between 92 to 97 percent oppose NATO bombings.
 
 Greek unions have been openly raising money to send relief supplies to
 Yugoslavia. The Greek Radio and Television employees' union has expressed
 "disgust" for what it called the "inhuman and cowardly attack of NATO
 forces" on the RTS radio and television building of Belgrade.
 
 Across Europe this weekend, many journalists agreed that the attack on RTS
 has set a terrible precedent, turning the media into legitimate targets of
 war.
 
 In Geneva, the European Broadcasting Union condemned the attack; in
 London, the Defense Correspondents Association, which represents many
journalists
 who are reporting on the conflict and who are vulnerable to reprisals,
 expressed "considerable disquiet."
 
 Jonathan Freedland, a columnist for the Guardian, is among a number of
 commentators who think that Clinton and Blair are rapidly swimming out of
 their depth.
 
 "These two master campaigners are fighting Slobodan Milosevic the way they
 beat George Bush and John Major: with heat-seeking spin and laser-guided
 polls. Those methods worked wonders then but they're playing havoc now."
 
 Jonathan Miller is a correspondent for MSNBC.
 http://www.msnbc.com/news/262426.asp

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