Unlikely hawks
Dionne, E.J. Jr.
E.J. DI9MNE, Jr, UNLIKELY HAWKS The war on the left t "is not where I usually find myself," mused Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), who is far more comfortable opposing military action than...
...But there's a conscience that says you can't remain silent in the face of ethnic cleansing...
...They are in a quandary...
...In an open letter to President Bill Clinton earlier this month, Tom Hayden, the arch foe of the Vietnam War who is now a Democratic state senator in California, said the president's policies are "deepening this refugee crisis and creating the basis for intervention on the ground, just as happened in the escalating engagement in South Vietnam...
...The American Left is divided," says Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation and an opponent of the Clinton policy...
...House Democratic Whip David Bonior, of Michigan, was the bane of Ronald Reagan's Central American policy and draws inspiration from the Catholic left, much of which leans toward pacifism...
...There's a Left that compels us to condemn NATO unilateralism and military intervention that violates international law...
...The humanitarian interest here is so overwhelming and compelling that to ignore it would be to ignore the sacrifices made by our fathers and grandfathers and their fathers throughout the last century for the values we cherish and care about, for a free and democratic Europe...
...Watching the bombs fall with his support doesn't come easy...
...He cites his background as a Ukrainian-American and memories of Stalin's use of famine against the Ukrainian people...
...Wellstone, whom the American Left often looks to for a voice in the halls of Congress, may embody all of its qualms within himself...
...This, too, Wellstone knows, which is why he has those knots in his stomach...
...But the metaphor inspiring the wing of the Left that supports bombing is not Munich but the Holocaust...
...He concluded: "Don't allow the Balkans to become a Vietnam, Mr...
...But Bonior not only supports the air campaign, he also favors using ground troops if they're necessary...
...who is far more comfortable opposing military action than supporting it...
...This kind of stuff grabs me in a very visceral way," Bonior says...
...Vanden Heuvel comes down on the side that says the means of war are "wrong and immoral" and that the United States missed earlier opportunities to strengthen democratic institutions and a democratic opposition inside Serbia and Kosovo...
...1999, Washington Post Writers Group...
...Wellstone is one of a substantial number of progressives who have traditionally opposed American intervention overseas but now find themselves standing up for action against Slobodan Milosevic's ethnic cleansing of Kosovo...
...But with a war under way, the refugees displaced, and the United States committed to returning Kosovars home, turning back without securing this objective would be both a humanitarian and a policy disaster...
...The resolution offered recently by Senator John McCain (R-Ariz...
...It's not true, as has sometimes been said in recent weeks, that this war has bred no antiwar movement on the left...
...Unlike Kosovo hawks such as Bonior, he's wary of authorizing ground troops to win the war...
...Some long-standing antiwar voices—at the Nation and the Progressive magazines, for example—have denounced American action...
...Among progressives and those who want a humanitarian standard to be part of American foreign policy, there has been a greater and greater affection for the humanitarian use of military force," he says...
...Yet Wellstone sees the United States as having a moral obligation to restore the rights and safety of displaced Kosovars...
...Most people I know are really agonizing over this," he says...
...Wellstone says he was struck by remarks from some of Germany's leaders in support of this intervention: "They said they had asked their parents, 'Where were you?' and they don't want their children to ask the same question...
...But Borosage shares vanden Heuvel's worries about an expansive interventionist role for NATO and the pressures the war will create to increase the military budget...
...Every day," Wellstone says, "I find myself with a knot in my stomach...
...In a line that might well be repeated by Republican opponents of the war, Hayden asked pointedly: "If our policy is truly to threaten human rights violators with force, why is our government stressing diplomacy and trade with the Chinese government...
...The split, says Robert Borosage, a longtime liberal-left activist, originates in the support many on the left gave to America's intervention in Haiti, and their criticism of inaction in Rwanda and footdragging in preventing slaughter in Bosnia...
...President, in order to avoid a Munich...
...to "use all necessary force" is too "open-ended," Wellstone says...
Vol. 126 • May 1999 • No. 9
