c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

UNDATED _ The NATO victory in Kosovo is one of the decisive events of the 20th century even if the media and the Republican Congress have tried to turn it into a defeat.

Suppose in 1938, when Hitler annexed part of Czechoslovakia, the nations of Europe had banded together to throw him out and indicted him as a war criminal. There never would have been a World War II. Unfortunately there was no European institution like NATO to attempt such a response. Now, for the first time, Europe has the will and the means to stop mass murder within its borders.

Not since the time of Charlemagne in the 9th century has Europe had the will and the power to stop mass murders. For Europe and the whole world that is very good news, indeed. Equally good news is that Europe took primary responsibility for the defeat of Slobodan Milosevic and for the occupation and reconstruction of Kosovo.

Moreover, Europe now realizes it cannot depend indefinitely on American military power and is beginning the process of building its own military strength.

Europe is now ready to prevent the abuse of human rights anywhere within its boundaries. This change is as important as the emergence of the European Union and of a democratic and civil Germany. Anyone who knows any history must understand that.

The American media _ reporters and commentators, though in this case not editorial writers _ were hoping against hope for the defeat of NATO, the United States and Bill Clinton, partly because it would have been a great story, partly because they hate Clinton. Hence they are reluctant to admit that the end of the war and liberation of Kosovo is a victory and quite probably an epoch-making victory.

So great was their falsification of the war that they had almost succeeded in turning the American people against it before it ended in victory.

Teams of experts _ former generals, former admirals, military experts and historians, former diplomats and a wide variety of talking heads were trotted out to explain to the public that the air war wouldn’t work and it would be necessary to commit ground troops. They were wrong but few of them have admitted it. One general even said it shouldn’t have worked.

It was also argued that even if the air war did work it was immoral because so many civilians had been killed in Serbia and because NATO had hit the Chinese Embassy. The impression was created that the NATO planners were careless and incompetent bunglers. Every civilian casualty is a tragedy, but if one enters a war to prevent genocide mistakes will be made. Indeed, it is remarkable there were so few civilian casualties.

It was also said the war was immoral because the president, for political reasons, would not risk American casualties by sending in ground troops. That it would have taken three months to assemble a strong enough ground force seems to have escaped those who made the argument.

Undaunted they tried to persuade the public that if NATO had not begun the bombing the Serbs would not have attempted ethnic cleansing _ though they knew the Serbian plan had been made long before the bombing and their troops were already beginning to carry it out.

Why did so many of the experts want ground troops? Why was the use of ground forces supposed to be morally superior to bombing? Surely casualties on both sides would have been horrific. I can only conclude they wanted to see American body bags unloaded at Andrews Air Force base.

The New York Times reported the war was the result of two miscalculations: Clinton’s, that Milosevic would back down in a couple of days; and Milosevic’s, that NATO would quickly lose its cohesiveness. In fact there was only one wrong evaluation _ Milosevic’s assumption that in the Europe at the end of this century one could once more get away with ethnic cleansing.

None of the experts seemed to have noticed it was a war to protect innocent people from genocide, a war in the name of basic human rights, a war that has turned the tide of European history. It was a war as just as any war could be. We might not have been able to protect the Kosovars from expulsion, but we sure won their country back for them.

That isn’t a great victory?

END GREELEY