Calling General Clark a "war criminal" should be beyond the pale. But if Counterpunch is going to print baseless charges, we take a moment to refute them.

The far-left is obsessed with the idea that Clark is a war criminal because he successfully prosecuted the war in Kosovo. Far from being pacifists who support human rights, the far-left reveals itself to be vicious, hateful, and willing to take the word of a convicted genocidal maniac over the international community to suit their prejudices. Stirling Newberry at the Clark Sphere has more:

With so called "progressives" like these, who needs Rush Limbaugh?

Zoltan Grossman's article, loaded with factual errors and innuendo needs a clear response.

Here it is.

Hours after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24, 1999, the Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign began, expelling hundreds of thousands of Albanians, and creating an enormous refugee crisis.

The ethnic cleansing began before the bombing, and Milosevic was already under investigation for War Crimes by the UN, he would be indicted during the course of the Kosovo campaign. He had attempted to purge and conquer the Krajina region of Croatia, had backed the ethnic cleansing by "The Serb Republic" in Bosnia, and the siege of Sarajevo.

The The BBC timeline says

September 1998:

"Heavy fighting continues despite Serbian assurances that the offensive is over. At least 36 ethnic Albanian civilians are reported to have been massacred in three separate incidents."

And also in October of 1998:

"Following intensive diplomatic efforts by US envoy Richard Holbrooke, Yugoslavia agrees to allow a 2,000-strong monitoring force into Kosovo to ensure it complies with UN demands, averting the immediate prospect of NATO airstrikes."

Far from being "the stick", it was Milosevic who continued to order and direct atrocities, for which he is now on trial, in an effort to break the back of the Kosovar people. There was, unlike in Iraq, a clear breach of the peace.

As The UNHCR report makes clear, the Serbians were planning to destroy the identity of the Kosovar people, and the blame rests with them. Before the bombing there were 100,000 displaced Kosovars in Europe, and 266,000 displaced within the former Yugoslavia, as well as a million refugees of other ethnic groups from previous Serbian attempts to uproot whole peoples in pursuit of a "greater Serbia". The March 24th attacks did not "create" a humanitarian crisis - over 1.5 million refugees is a humanitarian crisis. Many of the people who Professor Grossman labels as being turned into refugees, already were, they were merely displaced and still inside areas under Serbian control, some in makeshift concentration camps.

The Serbian democratic opposition strongly condemned the bombing as undermining and delaying their efforts to oust President Milosevic, and as strengthening his police state.

Milosevic was driven from power in the wake of his defeat in Kosovo, a year later he was in hiding - despite having held on through months of protests previously, and survived numerous elections where he seemed like a sure loser before the attack. Unlike in Iraq, the civilian inhabitants retained power and sovereignty over Serbia. The bombings also began the process by which Montenegro was able to break away from Serbia.

Second, the NATO bombing alienated Serbian civilians who had led the opposition to Milosevic. Cities that had voted heavily against Milosevic were among those targeted with bombing. U.S. jets dropped cluster bombs on a crowded marketplace in Nis. Civilian infrastructure, such as trains, busses, bridges, TV stations, civilian factories, hospitals and power plants, were repeatedly hit by NATO bombs.

As for the litany of complaints about war itself, rather than getting into a detailed rebuttal based on the mechanics of target selection, and reminding readers that the target list was approved by every single NATO country, let me quote one of the harshest critics of the blunt instrument of military force, as reported by The Guardian:

The general who led NATO's forces in Kosovo believes the bombing campaign might not have been necessary if new electronic methods of waging war had been used to force President Slobodan Milosevic into submission.

General Wesley Clark, the outgoing supreme allied commander in Europe, stunned a recent session of the US senate armed forces committee by calling for a complete rethink of western strategy and questioning the need for the aerial assault on Serbia, which caused an estimated 1,500 civilian casualties and came close to losing the propaganda war.

His testimony last month was the highest level of endorsement so far given to the use of forms of "cyberwar" which, their supporters argue, could have stopped Serb ethnic cleansing faster and with far less bloodshed.

In otherwords, the military weapon was the tool, which he had, but, even then, he regarded it as dangerous and potentially obsolete. Reading Waging Modern War finds Clark similarly skeptical about treating new "smart" weapons as clean and surgical, rather, they are prone to error, limited in their use, and dangerous.

Obviously Professor Grossman has no problems standing around while people elsewhere are slaughtered. That's between him and his conscience, if he can sleep at night knowing that genocide is on the menu elsewhere, and feels no compunction about letting it happen, just so long as he is not involved, that is, of course, his karma. He also seems to have no problems simply recycling articles: there is nothing new in his ranting, and nothing other than ranting to connect it with current events. It seems, in fact, that he hates successful intervention even more than blundered expansionism.

However, one reason that many humanitarians strongly support Wesley Clark is detailed in Samantha Power's book A Problem from Hell - Clark was the only high ranking US official to push to prevent the genocide there - one that was not stopped, and which lead to 500,000 people being hacked to death, and touching off a war which has killed, according to the UN, perhaps as many as 3,000,000 people. Obviously Professor Grossman can sleep at night with that too, on his conscience.

What is amusing is, after excoriating the US for the ill effects of the bombing campaigns, he then screams that "America did not drop one bomb to stop Croatian ethnic cleansing". In otherwords, after screaming that we used force, he screams we didn't use it faster and more often. After accusing us of killing civilians for a good end, he accuses us of not killing enough of them fast enough.

According the UN there are Croatians wanted or on trial for crimes against humanity, including their former chief Army officer - clearly something was done, and done without dropping bombs. The US - with Wesley Clark as one of the "quiet heroes" of the process - forced a negotiated peace in Bosnia. Clark himself acted as military attaché to Richard Holbrooke during the process, and risked his life to try and save three diplomats in an overturned Armored Personnel Carrier - something that I doubt Professor Grossman has the courage to do.

The problem with this article is that it is driven by hate - it will dredge up vague accusations, and try a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" attack. Clark is evil for having bombed, he is evil for not having bombed. He's evil for having stopped ethnic cleansing, and evil for having used force. He's evil for bombing too much, and evil because he can't make everything perfect. In other words: Grossman is incoherent, irrational and dishonest, and merely wants to scream at the top of his lungs.

SOURCE: Clarkmyths.com which is no longer online.