INTERRACIAL VOICE

Essay

Another View:
You Have to Bring Ass to Get Ass
By Emory Curtis

If Clinton is concerned about whether race makes a difference, all he needs to do is to step back a moment and review his own actions as our leader five years ago when the Rwanda mess started and his actions today on the Yugoslavia mess.

In both situations major ethnic groups had a many generations deep belief and grievances against the other. They also had a many generations long history of coexistence marred by periods of bitter and deadly ethnic clashes.

Grievances between groups that span generations bury themselves deep within the psyche of the group and, like strongly held religious beliefs, can lead to group actions that seems illogical to outsiders but quite logical when passed through the filter of those grievances and beliefs orally passed from generation to generation.

Maybe if Clinton and his advisors had passed that Yugoslavia situation through the prism of their own generational beliefs they would have realized that our most powerful weapon -- our unmatched ability to deliver bombs of all types and sizes from air or water -- is unsuited to stop that ethnic-belief led drive to remove a generationally hated group from their area.

Those illogical generational held beliefs are problems all over this world, even in this country. That's why race makes such a difference right here.

And that's why the Clinton administration and most of white America was stirred by television pictures of atrocities in white Yugoslavia and were relatively unmoved by television pictures of an order of magnitude greater atrocity level in black Africa.

Knowing the depth of the black-white divide in this country that still exists even though effort to close that gap has been made, I'm sure very few of us thought for one moment that the Clinton administration would have viewed the Rwanda situation with the gravity they view the clashes between whites, whether in Ireland or in the Balkans.

We know that race makes a difference in this country. And we know that those long held illogical beliefs don't disappear simply because the president wishes that they disappear.

I'm sure the Clinton administration and its advisors know that too. And it also applies to the Balkan ethnic problems.

That's why it seems illogical to me that the administration would have expected Yugoslav President Milosevic to tuck in his tail and run simply because a U. S. backed group would rain a few bombs on the country. That's not in their history.

Hitler found out that those ethnic clans in Yugoslavia were no pushovers. Over twenty Nazi divisions couldn't subdue those people on their own territory. And those Nazis were not trying to spare civilians or anyone else.

With that kind of relatively recent history, why would anyone expect them to be awed by some bombs that everyone knew, including the bomber crews, were not going to wreak havoc on civilian areas?

Delivering bombs from the air won't stop one ethnic group with cleansing their area by the use of hand guns and knives for slitting throats. Those actions can stopped.

But, the price of stopping them is high. It takes better armed and determined troops on the ground to provide protection and immediate retribution on those who pull such acts.

That's basic. However, in those kind of cases, there is an old rule that applies whether on the street between individuals or in areas between groups -- "You have to bring ass to get ass."

And that is where the rub comes when it comes to stopping those deep rooted ethnic conflicts that are becoming more deadly because of the proliferation of deadly arms of all kinds all over this world. Without arms made in industrial countries and sold everywhere, those ethnic battles would still occur but without the deadly automatic weapons, the death toll wouldn't be as great.

Stopping or controlling those clashes then would be easier for the major countries if the small arms available was tilted heavily in favor of those trying to stop the conflict. In those kind of cases, it would "take less ass to get ass."

The Clinton administration's real problem in dealing with those low intensity battles within countries with warring ethnic groups is that they know we don't think stopping the carnage is worth spending the lives of our young people.

Think about it. Some of us were concerned that the administration didn't do more to stop the carnage in Rwanda. But, there were very few of us that would have supported putting some of our own young people in harm's way to stop that mess on the ground.

Even though there is a lot of pressure on the administration to stop that mess in Yugoslavia, there is almost no pressure on the administration to send some of our young people there to provide that ground action that is needed to stop the ethnic cleansing that goes on.

It is almost too late now to stop it -- they have almost finished their cleansing exercise. The problem now is what to do about the refugees.

Clinton wants them all to go back. That makes no sense unless the U. S and its allies will have troops on the ground to give them day-to-day protection. In street language, it is another case of President Clinton letting "his mouth overload his ass."

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