TFF logoFEATURES
NEWPRESSINFOTFFFORUMSFEATURESPUBLICATIONSKALEJDOSKOPLINKS



The Frightening Target Shortage

  

 

San Francisco Chronicle

Friday, April 16, 1999

By ARTHUR HOPPE

 

OUR ALL-OUT humanitarian bombing campaign to bring peace to Yugoslaviais in desperate straits: We're running out of targets.

After all, Serbia is a poor country, and it has only so many bridges, ministries, military headquarters, barracks and police stations tobomb. And once we've blown a target to bits that's the end of it. Muchas the Kosovar refugees need our help, we certainly can't be expectedto waste our humanitarian bombs on heaps of smoking rubble.

Nor can we bomb churches, hospitals, schools and the like. We couldn't bear to kill innocent civilians. Of course, we did boast the other day that our four weeks of bombing was creating food shortages in Serbia.With luck, this could lead to mass starvation. But we don't want to kill innocent civilians with bombs - at least not intentionally.

Some dewy-eyed optimists will say that it's just as well that we'rerunning out of targets because we're also running out of Cruisemissiles, having showered them all over the globe in recent months. But they forget our ``smart'' bombs and the like, of which we have aninexhaustible supply.

The day will come soon when our frustrated pilots will be circling aimlessing over Serbia with nothing to blow up. We'll be left with no way to achieve peace, and we might as well pack up and go home.

The answer to this seemingly insoluble dilemma is simple: We must rebuild every target as soon as we demolish it.

There's no question that we'll rebuild them anyway. This is what wealways do as soon as a war is over. I'm sure the Serbs can count on their impoverished country becoming as strong and reliant after the war as Germany or Japan -- but only, of course, if they lose.

We give a hand to our vanquished enemies to show the world that we are warm-hearted souls who don't hold a grudge. And not since Vietnam has our international image sunk lower. More American flags have been burned in recent weeks than in all of 1998. The Russian hate us, theGreeks are stoning us, and in Paris, the French waiters are getting snippety.

So why wait till the end of the war for this charitable gesture? We should rebuild a bridge as soon as we pulverize it. Think of the benefits: We get a good press, un employed Serbs get much-needed jobs,and, best of all, we get a new target.

There's no reason we couldn't blow up the same bridge 20 or 30 times, thus ending the dread target shortage and contributing to the welfare of all concerned.

We need not worry about the money. The bombing campaign is already costing us $40 million a day, and the president has asked Congress for another $5 billion to keep it going. A lot of bridges can be built for $5 billion.

Some skeptics will say it doesn't make sense to destroy a bridge in order to rebuild it. But if that's what we'll do anyway, why wait till the war is over? In fact, come to think of it, why blow up another bridge at all? If we stopped bombing right now, we'd have even fewer targets to rebuild. Think of the money and lives we'd save.

Of course, there will be those who will say that stopping the bombingis no way to bring about peace.

 

© San Francisco Chronicle 1999


Home

New

PressInfo

TFF

Forums

Features

Publications

Kalejdoskop

Links



 

The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research
Vegagatan 25, S - 224 57 Lund, Sweden
Phone + 46 - 46 - 145909     Fax + 46 - 46 - 144512
http://www.transnational.org   E-mail: tff@transnational.org

Contact the Webmaster at: comments@transnational.org
Created by Maria Näslund      © 1997, 1998, 1999 TFF