[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 14363-14365]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



   CRISIS IN KOSOVO (ITEM NO. 12) REMARKS BY CHRISTOPHER SIMPSON OF 
                          AMERICAN UNIVERSITY

                                 ______
                                 

                        HON. DENNIS J. KUCINICH

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, June 24, 1999

  Mr. KUCINICH. Mr. Speaker, on June 10, 1999, I joined with 
Representative Cynthia A. McKinney, Representative Barbara Lee, and 
Representative John Conyers in hosting the fifth in a series of 
Congressional Teach-In sessions on the Crisis in Kosovo. If a lasting 
peace is to be achieved in the region, it is essential that we 
cultivate a consciousness of peace and actively search for creative 
solutions. We must construct a foundation for peace through 
negotiation, mediation, and diplomacy.
  Part of the dynamic of peace is a willingness to engage in meaningful 
dialogue, to listen to one another openly and to share our views in a 
constructive manner. I hope that these Teach-In sessions will 
contribute to this process by providing a forum for Members of Congress 
and the public to explore options for a peaceful resolution. We will 
hear from a variety of speakers on different sides of the Kosovo 
situation. I will be introducing into the Congressional Record 
transcripts of their remarks and essays that shed light on the many 
dimensions of the crisis.
  The presentation is by Christopher Simpson, an associate professor 
specializing in national security, new media and the psychological 
warfare at American University School of Communication here in 
Washington. He is the author of four books on international human 
rights law, genocide and national security, including The Splendid 
Blond Beast (1993) and

[[Page 14364]]

the Science of Coercion (1994). His work has won many awards including 
the National Jewish Book Award, the Investigative Reporters and Editors 
Prize, the Cavior Prize for Literature and the 1997 Freedom Award.

        Presentation by Christopher Simpson, American University

       Thank you for inviting me to this briefing, and thanks 
     especially to Rep. Dennis Kucinich for his leadership in 
     these issues.
       I'm going to discuss three main ideas. First, I'll look 
     briefly at the most basic principles of international law 
     concerning war.
       Second, I'll bring forward new information on what is known 
     as ``infrastructure warfare,'' which is today central to the 
     way that the United States and NATO choose targets for aerial 
     attacks. Bombing and cruise missile attacks, as you know, 
     have been the primary U.S. strategy in Yugoslavia and in the 
     on-going, de facto war with Iraq. In Yugoslavia, 
     infrastructure warfare targets have thus far included the 
     electrical power generation and distribution grid for the 
     entire country; sewage treatment and water purification 
     plants in at least three cities (and the destruction of those 
     plants, by the way, affects not only those cities, but 
     everyone downstream from the city as well); natural gas 
     pipelines and pumping stations; the Yugoslav federal reserve; 
     and purely economic targets of no military consequence in 
     towns and villages that have no military barracks, storage 
     facilities or any other known military significance.
       This leads me to my third point. ``Infrastructure warfare'' 
     has become in part a means of making war on Yugoslavia's 
     civilian population. In many cases it has had a minor or 
     negligible military effect compared to the damage it has done 
     to civilians. As such, these tactics skate very close to 
     becoming a war crimes under international treaties and the 
     United States military's own definitions of such crimes.
       In fact, a recent U.S. presidential commission defined the 
     intentional destruction of urban infrastructures such as 
     electrical power grids, water treatment plants and banking 
     networks as a form of criminal ``terrorism''--that's their 
     word--if used against U.S. cities.\1\
     See footnotes at end of article.
       This is called ``terrorism'' at home and is presently being 
     used by the administration to create or expand repressive 
     federal laws authorizing political surveillance of people in 
     the United States, particularly those who use computer 
     networks.
       But interestingly enough, the Defense Department's 
     representative on that presidential commission has been 
     simultaneously engaged in designing U.S. Air Force offensive 
     tactics for destroying precisely the same type of targets 
     abroad.\2\ When one compares the U.S. government's various 
     definitions of infrastructure warfare side by side, we find 
     that criminal ``terrorists'' use car bombs to attack the 
     basic urban services necessary to sustain life and maintain 
     order, while the U.S. Air Force prefers to strike the 
     identical types of targets with cruise missiles and bombs 
     dropped from B-52's. Not surprisingly, the Air Force 
     generally does a more thorough and devastating job in 
     eliminating its target.
       The most basic principle of international law concerning 
     warfare is to separate non-combatant civilians from the 
     punishment of war to the greatest extent possible, taking 
     into account what are termed legitimate military objectives. 
     This is much easier said than done, of course. Nevertheless, 
     the United States, all the NATO states, Yugoslavia, Russia 
     and more than 100 other nations all agree, at least on paper, 
     that making war on civilians is in almost every circumstances 
     a prima facie war crime. This includes, by the way, aerial 
     attacks on civilian economic centers carried out with the aim 
     of undermining civilian morale or inducing a country to 
     overthrow an established government.\3\
       These elementary principles are codified with increasing 
     specificity in the Hague Convention of 1907, the United 
     Nations charter, the 1949 Geneva conventions, the  
     unanimously adopted UN resolution on Respect for Human 
     Rights in Armed Conflict of 1969 (Resolution 2444), 
     similar protocols adopted in 1977 and, not least, in the 
     on-paper rules of the U.S. Air Force itself.\4\
       Today, NATO representatives often speak of what they term 
     the relatively low degree of ``collateral damage'' to 
     civilians caused by modern bombing and cruise missile attacks 
     on Yugoslavia. Those claims should be disputed.
       But we should also recognize that NATO representatives use 
     the collateral damage argument to obscure the more telling 
     point, which are tactics and target selection practices that 
     are clearly on the record. Wanton destruction of non--
     combatant civilians or their ability to sustain life is a 
     prima facie war crime, and NATO knows it.
       Let me give you an example. Virtually all experts agree 
     that intentionally poisoning civilian water wells or food 
     processing centers is in most circumstances a war crime. 
     Poisoning a farmer's well may kill or incapacitate a dozen or 
     more people. Yet the infrastructure warfare tactic of 
     destroying sewage treatment plants in Baghdad or Belgrade 
     spreads disease to thousands or even tens of thousands of 
     people at a time, and is apparently intended to do so because 
     the results of destroying such plants are well known. Most of 
     the Western news media, the Pentagon and much of the U.S. 
     Congress refuse to come to grips with the reality that this 
     tactic poisons civilian water supplies, spreads cholera and 
     helps spread other epidemic diseases, and is particularly 
     dangerous to civilian children and the elderly, whose death 
     rate increases dramatically in the wake of such attacks. The 
     journal Foreign Affairs--which is certainly not a hotbed of 
     radicalism--reports in its current issue that the destruction 
     of water works in Baghdad combined with on-going sanctions 
     has--quoting now--``contributed to hundreds of thousands of 
     [civilian] deaths. By 1998 Iraqi infant mortality had 
     reportedly risen from the pre-Gulf War rate of 3.7 percent to 
     12 percent. Inadequate food and medical supplies, as well as 
     breakdowns in sewage and sanitation systems and in the 
     electrical power systems needed to run them, reportedly cause 
     an increase of 40,000 deaths annually of children under the 
     age of five and of 50,000 deaths annually of older Iraqis.'' 
     \5\ Nevertheless, this infrastructure warfare tactic remains 
     widely used today when NATO selects targets in Yugoslavian 
     cities.\6\
       Another example. Intentionally bombing a hospital is almost 
     certainly a war crime, and everyone knows it. Yet bringing 
     down the electrical grid of any city produces an identical 
     result at all of the hospitals in a city, without physically 
     hitting the hospital buildings. The hospital refrigerators 
     that hold medicine fail, destroying antibiotic drugs, 
     vaccines and other medicines; soon it becomes impossible to 
     sterilize surgical tools; bedridden patients die without 
     clean water to drink or, for that matter, without clean water 
     for the staff to use to wash the floors. That's because 
     hospitals can rapidly become vectors for spreading disease if 
     they are not kept clean. The city's hospitals have been 
     effectively damaged just as surely as if they had been 
     directly bombed. In fact, considering what has taken place in 
     Baghdad in the eight years since the Gulf War took place, it 
     may take considerably longer to return such hospitals to safe 
     operation.
       As with any issue in international law, things are often 
     more complicated than they seem at first. NATO's military 
     rationale for the destruction of Belgrade's or Novi Sad's 
     infrastructure is that the attacks degrade the Milosevic 
     government's ability to wage its own war against civilians in 
     Kosovo, and they are therefore legitimate military targets. 
     Preventing Yugoslav military and paramilitary atrocities in 
     Kosovo, in turn, provide NATO's legal justification for what 
     would otherwise be a transparently illegal attack on a 
     sovereign state. If past experience is a guide, it is 
     unlikely that NATO commanders responsible for these attacks 
     will ever be regarded as anything other than heroes in the 
     Western news media.
       Yet Congress should look very closely at such claims. 
     First, the mere fact that something might be a military 
     target does not provide legal grounds for destroying it. Even 
     the destruction of infrastructure in Belgrade, which is 
     ostensibly the seat of the Milosevic government, has produced 
     few military results compared to the damage it has wrecked on 
     purely civilian activities. That is because most of the 
     national security apparatus of the Milosevic government 
     dispersed from the capitol city well before the bombing 
     began. Such dispersal of key security assets is a well 
     established contingency for virtually every modern military 
     power, including the United States.
       I'd like to conclude with these remarks. I hope that some 
     of you will point out that it is all well and good to oppose 
     the NATO bombing campaign. But what about the other 
     atrocities, including massacres of Albanian men killed by 
     certain Yugoslav military units and paramilitary 
     organizations? What about the mass deportations of civilians 
     from Kosovo and the examples of gang rapes of Albanian 
     refugee women? How do you propose to stop those crimes?
       First of all, there is no sound-bite solution to the crisis 
     in the Balkans, no matter what Madeline Albright may say on 
     the Sunday morning talk shows. People who say they have a 
     simple solution are either ignorant or attempting to deceive 
     you. Second, the cease fire plan announced today should be 
     welcome news for all people of good will. But once the 
     euphoria has passed, we will see exactly how difficult it 
     will be to make a just peace work. Regardless of whether the 
     cease fire holds, the NATO bombing campaign has made 
     stabilization of the Balkan conflict significantly more 
     difficult for years to come. It is also transparently clear 
     that the primary victims of NATO's intervention have been 
     those whom NATO was purportedly attempting to assist. NATO 
     Supreme Commander Wesley Clark once told reporters that the 
     mass deportations from Kosovo and the violence that 
     accompanied them was ``entirely predictable'' once the NATO 
     air strikes began. He was right about that, but the NATO 
     publicity line soon changed and his public relations handlers 
     have told him to change his tune.
       So called ``ethnic cleansing'' and the crimes that have 
     accompanied it are the direct and predictable result of 
     attempting to redraw Balkan national boundaries along

[[Page 14365]]

     ethnic lines. Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl bears 
     much of the responsibility for setting off the present 
     debacle. Germany underwrote establishing independent 
     countries of Slovenia and Croatia back in the late 1980s as a 
     means of extending German economic and geopolitical interests 
     in the Balkans. But regardless of what Kohl may have intended 
     at the time, the crisis his maneuver precipitated has long 
     since spun out of his or anyone else's control.
       The plight of the hundreds of thousands Albanian refugees 
     is reported daily. Less understood in the West is that there 
     are some 400,000 Serbian refugees from the ethnic cleansing 
     that was set off by the redrawing of national borders. Their 
     number will almost certainly grow by tens or hundreds of 
     thousands of new Serbian refugees from Kosovo in the months 
     ahead.
       If you care about justice for ethnic Albanians and for 
     Serbians, the way forward is to: Stabilize national and 
     regional borders; prevent new fighting or persecution by any 
     of the parties involved, particularly the KLA; demand some 
     responsible reporting for a change from much of the major 
     news media of the United States; and de-politicize 
     accusations of war crimes and instead work to identify and 
     bring to justice the perpetrators of particular crimes.
       Here in the U.S. Congress, the time has come to re-examine 
     the administration's claims about ``infrastructure warfare,'' 
     ``information warfare,'' and the latest buzz word from the 
     RAND Corporation, ``Netwar.'' These deserve close scrutiny 
     because of their cost, their questionable legality under 
     international treaties and U.S. law, and their use as a 
     rationale for expansion of National Security State powers 
     aimed at the people of the United States itself. Congress 
     could begin by asking the administration how it has come to 
     pass that what a Presidential commission terms a terrorist 
     crime has now become an established part of U.S. military 
     doctrine and target selection practices in the Balkans and in 
     Iraq.
       There is much more to do, but I must close now. Thank you 
     for your time and your patience with my talk.


                               FOOTNOTES

       \1\ President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure 
     Protection, Report Summary, (March 1998 summation of PCCIP's 
     Critical Foundations study), http://www.pccip.gov/
summary.html. downloaded June 7, 1999.
       \2\ President's Commission on Critical Infrastructure 
     Protection, ``Commissioner Brenton C. Greene,'' (n.d.) http:/
     /www.pccip.gov/greene.html and Information Warfare Research 
     Center. ``Organization: Infrastructure Policy Directorate, 
     Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Policy)'' http://
www.terrorism.com/infowar/j6kdefense.html, both downloaded 
     June 7, 1999.
       \3\ Human Rights Watch, Needless Deaths in the Gulf War: 
     Civilian Casualties during the Air Campaign and Violations of 
     the Laws of War, New York: Middle East Watch, 1991, p.32-33, 
     ``Terror and Morale Attacks.''
       \4\ For a useful summary of this evolution and specific 
     provisions, see Ibid, pp. 26-64. ``The Legal Regime Governing 
     the Conduct of Air Warfare.''
       \5\ John Mueller and Karl Mueller, ``Sanctions of Mass 
     Destruction,'' Foreign Affairs, May-June 1999, p. 49.
       \6\ For example, see USAF Intelligence Targeting Study 
     Guide, (unclassified), Air Force pamphlet 14-210. 1 February 
     1998:

     

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