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| ON THE BRINK | |
 March 22, 1999 
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JIM LEHRER: Now, an outside Washington view of the Kosovo situation in this country, and to Media Correspondent Terence Smith.
Lee Cullum, let me ask you -- at the beginning you heard the excerpt of President Clinton from this afternoon. Has he made the case, in your opinion, for military action by NATO in Kosovo? |
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LEE CULLUM: Terry, to my mind he has made the case. I don't think that we can afford to have this situation in Kosovo suddenly explode instead of implode upon itself. We can't have it spreading to other Balkan nations, Greece, Turkey, Macedonia, Albania, even Bulgaria. It's untenable. It would unleash a flood of refugees in Europe. It would be highly destabilizing. It would disrupt trade routes. It can't be tolerated. I think he's right. I think he made the case. TERENCE SMITH: Cynthia Tucker, what's your view?
TERENCE SMITH: All right. Bob Kittle, who is of course with the San Diego Union Tribune, not the Harold Tribune - my error -- Bob, what is your view? Do you feel this case has been made? Do you feel that the American public has begun to comprehend it? ROBERT KITTLE: I don't think the president has made the case adequately, Terry. I mean, the reality is that most Americans could not find Kosovo on a map. They don't know Slobodan Milosevic from Richard Holbrooke. So you cannot with one press conference or one - you know -- brief remarks from the South Lawn make the case. The president needs to make a very sustained argument to the American people for why this is in our interest to be involved in the Balkans. And I think he's got a lot more work to do, frankly, because Americans, I think, are going to be caught by surprise when we send American forces into battle and potentially lose American lives in defense of our interest in the Balkans. TERENCE SMITH: Beth Barber, do you feel that the case has been made and that the public is hearing it?
TERENCE SMITH: Tom Bray, what's your view of it? TOM BRAY: Well, I don't think he's made the case. He talks about stopping the killing, and I think Americans are very sympathetic with that obviously, but there's killing going on in lots of parts of the world. We don't seem to be doing anything about that. He talks about self-government for Kosovo. Well, it has never had self-government. It's an autonomous region of Serbia, and it's not clear to me that the Kosovars are interested in anything we would be able to relate to as a democratic government. And then lastly, it all seems sort of out of kilter. I mean, we talk about Milosevic and the Serbs as if they're some sort of Nazi Germany, but to deal with it, we're going to conduct a little bombing and maybe commit 4,000 troops to the area. Something's wrong with that picture. TERENCE SMITH: Lee Cullum, what do you feel the U.S. policy should be here? Should it be, for example, the removal of Milosevic? How far should the U.S. go?
TERENCE SMITH: Cynthia Tucker, you talked about the consequences or potential consequences of this dispute in Southern Europe. What about the consequences to U.S. involvement, particularly if it precedes from a bombing to troop participation and a peacekeeping action? |
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CYNTHIA TUCKER: Well, Terry, I think that there are distinctions to
be made between bombing and committing American troops. I believe that
the president has made the case for a bombing campaign. We bomb Milosevic
to bring him to the table as we have done before. Quite frankly, I think
that there is a limit to what the United States will be able to accomplish
in Kosovo. I think that we may be able to stop Milosevic and his forces
from slaughtering civilians. That's about all that we are able to do
here. But before the United States commits any ground troops to a NATO
peacekeeping force, I have -- I think that we have to be sure there
is peace to keep. And there is no peace in Kosovo at the moment. So
I believe the president has made a case for bombing campaign but he
has not yet made the case for American ground troops in action in Kosovo. TERENCE SMITH: Beth Barber, what would the president have to say to bring you around to his point of view about the wisdom of U.S. involvement? BETH BARBER: I think he would have to tell us precisely what his purpose is there. I mean, is his purpose to make sure that there is autonomy in Kosovo, or suppose, as the ambassador was just saying, suppose that the Albanians want to go on for a state, if that happens and if what we're doing in the next few days helps that happen, what is the United States prepared to do to stop that if it is prepared to stop it at all? What is our interest there? Cynthia was just talking about no committing of ground troops until there is peace, well, I think the pilots who will be dropping the bombs feel pretty committed to the action that they'll be undertaking in the next couple days if things go as they look like they're going. The United States people want to know why they're there, why they're at risk, and it seems like such a calculated risk that so quickly could become a miscalculated risk. TERENCE SMITH: Tom Bray, I wonder if you feel that not only that these questions should be answered but whether or not the president should seek some sort of congressional endorsement of this action.
TERENCE SMITH: Bob Kittle, I wonder what you think of the issues that Tom Bray just raised, and specifically whether or not congressional endorsement would be good.
TERENCE SMITH: Cynthia Tucker, do you want to see some limits on this while you support the basic thrust? Do you want to see some limits? CYNTHIA TUCKER: I don't want to see congressionally imposed limits, but I certainly think that the president needs to have a much stronger idea of where we're headed if we are going to commit ground troops. And of course, that's the time when it would be much more important to him, not only to have a congressional consensus, but to have made the case to the American public. And so far it's absolutely right to say that the American public probably doesn't understand what we're doing there, what the issues are. Let me say, however, that I think it is important that we act before more civilians are massacred. I think it was Senator Nickles who said last week, upon coming out of this meeting with the president, that he didn't think the American public would be onboard until there was more footage of civilians being slaughtered in the streets as there was in Bosnia sometime back. Well, I certainly think it would be a disgrace if America waited until there were more civilians slaughtered before we made a move. TERENCE SMITH: Beth Barber, what about that point? What about the humanitarian issue? Is that justification?
TERENCE SMITH: All right. Thank you all. I'm afraid we're out of time. We thank you very much. |
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TERENCE
SMITH: For that perspective, we turn to three of our regional commentators:
Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Constitution, Robert Kittle of
the San Diego Herald Tribune, and Lee Cullum of the Dallas
Morning News. Joining them tonight are Tom Bray of the Detroit
News and Beth Barber of the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Welcome
to you all. 
CYNTHIA
TUCKER: Terry, I quite agree with Lee. I think that the president did
make the case for the limited military action that he's now proposing
-- NATO military strikes, a very forceful bombing campaign if that is
what is deemed necessary -- for all the reasons that Lee just mentioned.
We're talking about the stability of Europe here. We're talking about
a war that -- a conflict that could possibly overrun into as far away
as Turkey, and Turkey is the border between the Middle East and Europe.
And that's already a very fragile area. And we cannot allow the conflict
to run that far. And I think the Bosnia example showed us that we can't
wait. We know what Milosevic is capable of. And we have to act now to
save lives.
BETH
BARBER: No. We've been very, very skeptical of this. We don't understand
yet why now, why there? Why us? And we sure don't understand what next.
All these dire domino effects could possibly happen, but what is it
about this bombing campaign and the Serbian reaction that's going to
keep that from happening and might even trip it into happening?
LEE
CULLUM: Terry, if Milosevic could be removed, that would be an enormous
help. There is no question he has been the villain in the Balkans. Once
Yugoslavia was freed from the Soviet Pact regime, the Warsaw Pact regime
I intended to say, it began to fall apart because Milosevic himself
fomented hatred. Warren Zimmerman, our last ambassador to Yugoslavia,
the former Yugoslavia, said that it's as if the Ku Klux Klan had taken
control of the media in this country. He controlled the media. He fomented
hatred; he fomented fear in Slovenia, in Croatia, then in Bosnia and
now in Kosovo. If he could be removed, it would be great help. I don't
know if that's necessarily going to happen. He should be brought to
trial in the Hague. That would be a help. 
TOM
BRAY: Well, I definitely think that he's got to do a better sales job
with Congress. He met with a sizable contingent from Congress last week,
and from all I hear, it didn't go very well. I was talking earlier today
with a U.S. Representative who felt that the president simply didn't make
his case and now we see that Trent Lott really wants an accounting,
a better accounting of what it is we're up to there. I can't see any
reason for the president to act without some sort of congressional consensus
here. I think it would be a very potentially dangerous thing to do.
Congress has a role to play. Certainly a president is in charge of foreign
policy. If American troops or interests were directly in harm's way,
then he has a responsibility to act and act promptly. But we've been
stringing this situation along for quite a while now, in fact, probably
too long. I mean, what I worry about is that the Serbs are pouring forces
in there. It's going to be very dangerous for us now to try to get in
there ourselves and maybe we've waited really too long. But you can't
ignore that he has to have some sort of consensus, because I think we're
going to be in there for a long time if we take this step.
ROBERT
KITTLE: I think a congressional endorsement is not constitutionally
required, Terry, but certainly it is a good idea. Having a good debate
in Congress on this is one way to educate the American people about
what is at stake here, why we need to be involved, what the risks are,
as well as the risk of inaction. So I think it would be excellent for
Congress to engage a full debate on this and for the president to press
his case on the Hill so that we and the American people have an opportunity
to consider these issues and in the end under the ideal situation, the
Congress would give the president the support that he's asking for to
act in the Balkans. And right now we haven't had much of a debate. We
had a short debate in the House last week, and the president just --
support for the president was very narrow. The Senate, I think it's
-- no one is predicting how the outcome might be. So I think it's important
for the president to get out there and to make the case much more forcefully
in public for why this military action is warranted.
BETH
BARBER: It's hard to say that it isn't, but it's not sufficient justification.
I mean, seeing dead bodies on TV is a horrible sight, and it does galvanize
the American public, but it does matter where those bodies are and what
the U.S. interest is and a what the United States' purpose is in being
there. I'm not at all convinced that what the president has in mind,
at least what we know he has in mind would actually stop that for any
length of time and lead to what he thinks it will lead to.