IV. Operation Allied Force: A Just War?

A. The Combat Zone

Bombing lasted eleven weeks, considerably longer than Clinton had expected and with considerably more carnage than anticipated. "The President himself would later admit that he had been "50 per cent" sure the bombardment would be over in a week."40 On day two, the Yugoslav army launched Operation Horseshoe. Serbian police, military, and paramilitary units systematically burned homes, rounded up women and children for deportation, and executed hundreds of men.

"On March 31, security forces drove an estimated 100,000 people out of Pristina, the province's capital. . . . The week culminated on April 1 in one of the most shocking images of the war: about 10,000 refugees forced at gunpoint to walk two by two for miles along the railway track to the Macedonian border." Within eight days an estimated 768,000 were displaced.41

Without NATO troops on the ground, the allies could only strike Serbian units from the air. Clouds often limited visibility. In one tragic illustration of the inadequate view from his 6 inch monitor, a U.S. F16 pilot hit a convoy and killed 75 Albanian refugees instead of enemy soldiers.

Air strikes from 15,000 feet elsewhere in Serbia hit munitions factories, a power grid, bridges, oil refineries, party headquarters, a TV station, and command centers in Belgrade. General Clark chafed at political restraints on target selection. Bombs fell on one Milosevic residence in the capital. Only one U.S. plane went down over Yugoslavia, and the pilot was rescued; A Serb claimed "We didn't know it was invisible" (the Air Force Stealth F117 Nighthawk fighter-bomber.)42

Ultimately more Chinese than Americans died in the war. The U.S. claimed an outdated map caused the attack on China's embassy that killed three. Several other "smart" bombs went astray hitting a medical dispensary and homes instead of an army barracks. The allies acknowledged hitting a passenger train while destroying a bridge, and Serbs claimed that buses were also struck. Cluster bombs did not discriminate between combatants and non-combatants. An estimated 500 civilians died as a result of collateral damage from NATO bombing.43 Two U.S. officers died in a training mission with Apache helicopters, a resource that was never used in combat. High tech weapons were expensive:

Several hundred thousand refugees destabilized neighboring Macedonia and Albania. Macedonian officials resisted the influx of additional Muslims, forcibly relocating some to Albania. The UN High Commission for Refugees and non-governmental relief agencies struggled to relieve the extraordinary burden. The U.S. accepted 10,000 refugees, and NATO began preparing for up to 1.5 million displaced Albanians.

By mid May, Clinton began to reconsider his objection to the use of ground forces. Air strikes alone might not enable the refugees to return home before the harsh Balkan winter. Intensified bombing and a reinforced oil embargo apparently had not weakened the Yugoslav army. Blair began to deploy U.K. forces in Macedonia ostensibly for post-war peacekeeping, but possibly as an invasion force if required. NATO commander Clark requested 175,000 troops for an invasion, Clinton was asked to provide 120,000, and Blair prepared call up notices for 30,000.45 The CIA estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 might be lost in a ground war.[46] Arming the KLA was also proposed.

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