JONATHAN DEAN
Author of “Ending Europe’s Wars: The Continuing Search for Peace and Security,” advisor on international security issues for the Union of Concerned Scientists and former U.S. representative to the NATO-Warsaw Pact armed force reduction negotiations, Dean said: “What’s needed is to bring Russia in as an intermediary with Milosevic, proposing that the peacemaking force be UN rather than NATO — this is an extremely important difference.”
MICHAEL BEER
Beer provided strategic nonviolence seminars to Kosovars in Pristina six months ago. Today, as civilian deaths from the NATO attacks increase, Beer (director of Nonviolence International) said: “NATO bombing of the civilian infrastructure in Yugoslavia is immoral and will surely lead to much suffering. In a vengeful response to Milosevic’s pogrom in Kosovo, bridges, fuel depots, factories and power plants are being targeted under a broad ‘mixed use’ interpretation. It stretches the imagination to believe that bridges north of Belgrade are essential to the Serbian war on Kosovo. Precision bombing which destroys the food delivery and electricity of modern city life provides no bloody pictures for TV because death is indirect through starvation, malnutrition and disease. The bombs may be tactically accurate, but they are strategically impotent… Defeating Milosevic requires a civil society; we helped kill that too.”
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BARBARA EHRENREICH
Author of “Blood Rites: Origins and History of the Passions of War,” Ehrenreich, who writes for The Progressive and Time magazines, said: “Not only has the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia failed to halt ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, it has (1) begun to exact a toll in civilian lives, and (2) rallied the Serbs in an extraordinary surge of nationalist unity. In their April 6 press briefing, NATO officials apologized for (1) and predicted that (2) would be short-lived. Fat chance. The only thing the bombing is clearly accomplishing is to consolidate Milosevic’s power and sow the seeds of future terrorism and war.”
BRIAN WILLSON
A former Air Force captain who served in Vietnam, Willson — who is co-chair of the Monterey (Calif.) chapter of Veterans for Peace — said: “Any healthy human being would respond with empathy and outrage about what is happening to the Albanians. But we’re being manipulated to focus on only one of a number of many places where human rights are severely being violated… We’re focusing on these refugees because of the NATO bombing — which changed a serious problem into a humanitarian catastrophe… Through NATO, our government has usurped the United Nations and international law. This bombing and the expansion of NATO is a boondoggle for the military contractors and a very dangerous omen to world peace.”
For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
