The Written Word
for June 9, 1999

As this is written, the Serbians are playing games with the Nato negotiating team and the peace is off. I suspect that these games will continue just as they have in Iraq with Saddam Hussein. There will be agreements, then "misunderstandings" then more agreements, then more "misunderstandings".

There has been a basic failure throughout to understand basic human nature here. It was thought in the beginning that a few days of intensive bombing would bring Slobadan Milosevic and the Serbs to their knees. That isn't how it works in real life especially with people who, for more generations than one can count, have been involved with war, bloodshed and hardship. In fact the bombing, in the early stages at least, will stiffen the collective spines and rally support behind the most unpopular of leaders.

Clearly there comes a time when a people have had enough and negotiations will happen but what Nato seems to have forgotten is that though the hardship in Serbia is very great, for the most part peoples homes have remained intact as have essential services such as hospitals. Until you start to bomb hell out of the people themselves - God forbid that we do - there will be a strong sense of resistance.

The Nato people have also forgotten another fact of nature - if you back a pet rabbit into a corner it will fight viciously. Nato now has Milosevic in that corner and he is not about to become a loser and a war criminal facing trial and possible execution. He will bob and weave in the hopes that he can make some sort of better deal. This is what Saddam Hussein has become so good at. "Yes I will" followed by "that wasn't what the understanding was" and similar hairsplitting to buy time will become commonplace.

But there is another question that Nato is only beginning to address - who's going to clean up this mess?

We can't, in a prosperous society, gather up enough money to build a new Lions Gate Bridge or perhaps a tunnel, yet we will have to pay hundreds and hundreds times that amount to put Yugoslavia back together. The United States and Britain will have to pick up the lion's share but Canada will be in for a bundle as well. We have, in the curious logic of Viet Nam, been forced to destroy the country in order to save it. Again this raises the question of consultation of the people. Were you or even your MP consulted about all this before we got involved?

Of course not. While it requires all manner of political study and garnering of public support before we so much as build a highway, we have now reached the point where the public isn't consulted on major questions like a hugely important precedent setting Native land treaty or participation in the destruction, then reconstructing of an entire country

What supine citizens we've become. We listen to our masters and meekly obey. When the United States wants to burnish the tarnished image of a president disgraced, our government asks no questions and blunders along knowing full well that while the public may grumble and a few dyspeptic journalists may hurl word bricks, they'll get away with it.

Even the opposition whose duty it is to oppose, accepts with a minimum of fuss, whatever the government wishes to do.

Make no mistake about it. We Canadian taxpayers will have to help pick up the pieces and the money will be spent on fixing infrastructure we destroyed instead of fixing health, education and welfare messes at home.

This is what Jean Chretien and the Liberal government have, without even the suspicion of public support, got us into.