Editorial on Kosovo
by ron provine

    We are bombing some poor slobs in Kosovo back to
the stone age and everybody in the Pentagon is busy
jacking off and making missile noises.  I know
something big is happening, they even interrupted
daytime television to have Pentagon spokespersons lie
to me (and my fellow Americans).


     It isn't clear why we are bombing Kosovo.  I don't
think American companies make much money off of the
region--it must be to satisfy some sort of big trading
partner.  Or take our minds off of selling nuke secrets
to China.  (I know Wag the Dog scenarios are old by
now.  But we *do* always seem to bomb the shit out of
somebody during scandals and elections....)


     The official reason is that 'We cannot allow the
oppression, genocide and obliteration being perpetrated
by the Serbs.'  Sure.  I will believe we give enough of
a fuck about oppression to try and stop it by bombing
the day bombs rain down on Georgetown and Martha's
Vineyard and Kennebunkport and Trafalgar Square and all
the other places the American and English
industrialists live.


     So why do I care about the bombing anyway?  Well
first of all, people are going to die.  Americans are
going to die, and I don't like when Americans die for
no reason.  Call me a patriot.


    But I'm not an altruist entirely.  See, we have
said that the bombing will continue until 'the Serbs
give up or we have damaged them enough they can't
continue their campaign of terror'.  Well, everybody in
the world who *didn't* go to Harvard and *doesn't* work
as one of the policy geniuses at the pentagon knows
perfectly well that the Serbs will not give up and that
you can't do enough damage just by bombing to cripple a
campaign of terror.  It's been what, seven years now
and Iraq is still as evil as ever.  We bomb the shit
out of them sometimes, when we don't have anybody else
to bomb.


    Which means, a ground war.  Or, excuse me, 'ground
strikes'.  We won't call it a war...it's a
multinational peacekeeping extravaganza.  All we need
is a Phish coverband and a few kegs of Natty Lite in
fact and it could be a frat party.


     So why do I care?  The draft.  Most males over the
age of 18 are 'registered with the Selective Service'.
That means 'draft eligible'.  Oh, you say, but we don't
need any *troops*.  We have lots and lots and lots of
troops.  


    Sure we do.  But after we suffer our first wave of
heavy casualties, when the volunteering surge has died
down, do you think the generals are gonna look around
and say 'Oh sure we have enough boys here.  Who needs
more troops?'?  Yeah, I doubt it too.  They need more
troops.  And all the slick ad campaigns showing people
jogging and playing computer games in the world won't
lead to much volunteering when the pictures of
Americans shot up and exposed to mustard gas (yeah,
it's against the Geneva convention--and I hear
Milesovic has whole bunkers of it) first air on Nightly
News.


    So...what does it take to bring back the draft?  An
act of Congress.  Oh yeah and guess who is represented
well in Congress...well let's see.  People over 50 are
an important voting block.  And then there are people
in their late thirties to late forties they vote a lot
and contribute to campaigns...and all of these people
are too old for a draft.  Oh, and they think that going
off to war is just the thing to instill a little
discipline into kids today.


    Hold on, you are saying, these are the *hippies*. 
They were *all about* fighting against Vietnam.  Yeah,
sure.  And when your mommy was named Raindrop and
living off her parents and when your daddy was growing
shrooms and getting student deferments would they have
owned a Lexus?  Or lived in a suburb?  Or golfed? 
Idealism is alive, sure it is.  The hippies didn't sell
out their movement the day the war ended and Wall
Street came calling.


    Maybe you're a rich kid and you won't have to go
off to a war anyway.  Rich kids never do.  The solidly
middle class can probably avoid it too.  The rest of us
are expendable if the draft comes back.


    Let me say this for the record.  I am a pacifist. 
I abhor violence.  It is cruel, it is a violation of
the most basic laws of nature.  Using violence to bring
about peace is the stupidest thing I have ever heard
of.  But if the government puts a rifle in my hand and
teaches me to kill, to fight oppression over there in
Kosovo, I can't promise that if I return home, I won't
continue to fight against oppression with those same
skills they taught me in Martha's Vineyard and
Kennebunkport and Georgetown and Lake Forest and a few
other places.