(1) A commentary from the American Hellenic Media Project (AHMP), as published in USA Today on May 21st;

Note: The commentary was also republished on May 26th in The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio; Sunday circ. 400,000). The editorial staff of the Baltimore Sun stated they were considering publication of a similar commentary submitted by AHMP, but there has been no publication to date.

(2) The original commentary as submitted by AHMP.

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(1)

USA TODAY

Friday, May 21, 1999

Letters / p. 14A

Foreign Policy Failure

In a media environment saturated with inaccurate and uncritical reporting of the Kosovo tragedy, short shrift has been given to four crucial reasons so many Europeans view our bombing of Yugoslavia as bald aggression rather than humanitarian intervention. The reasons are:

=>Demanding at the Rambouillet, France, peace talks the de facto partition of Yugoslavia;

=>Exercising a discrediting moral selectivity by ignoring large-scale ethnic cleansing campaigns by U.S. allies of Turkish Kurds, Greek Cypriots, East Timorese and other minorities;

=>Excluding the Serbs' long history of victimization from our moral calculus, including the recent ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Serbs in Croatia;

=>Bombing urban civilian areas, killing Serbian and Albanian noncombatants.

Our leadership is in the process of engineering three foreign policy disasters.

First, we have condemned Albanians and Serbs to years of bloody conflict and retribution, fanning the embers of instability in the region and coming closer to igniting the entire Balkan tinderbox than at any other time since World War I.

Second, the USA is squandering a historic opportunity as sole remaining superpower to earn the respect and credibility of friends and foes, and thus the key to genuine leadership. It has instead chosen to project an image of Americans as bullies and hypocrites in the service of shortsighted and unrefined foreign policy objectives.

And third, we have awakened the specter of a renewed Cold War, this time with a more insecure, unstable, nationalistic, and still-nuclear Russia.

Perhaps the most damning fact is that it was our unprovoked bombing of a sovereign nation that triggered the Albanian Kosovar tragedy. Clearly, there was no ethnic cleansing prior to our massive bombing campaign, only casualties arising from fierce fighting between Kosovo Liberation Army separatists and the Yugoslav army.

Shouldn't there be a limit to how much human suffering and how many foreign policy disasters our tax money should be allowed to subsidize?

P.D. Spyropoulos, executive director
American Hellenic Media Project
New York, N.Y.

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(2)

American Hellenic Media Project
P.O. Box 1150
New York, N.Y. 10028-0008
ahmp@hri.org
www.ahmp.org

May 17, 1999

RE: Kosovo: three foreign policy disasters in the making

Dear Sir or Madam:

In a media environment saturated with inaccurate and uncritical reporting regarding the Kosovo tragedy, four crucial reasons why so many Europeans view our bombing of Yugoslavia as bald aggression rather than humanitarian intervention have generally gotten short shrift.

By demanding of the Yugoslavs the de facto partition of their country at Rambouillet; by exercising a discrediting moral selectivity vis-a-vis Turkish Kurds, Greek Cypriots, East Timorese and other minorities that have been subjected to large-scale ethnic-cleansing campaigns by U.S. allies; by excluding the Serbs' long history of victimization from our moral calculus (including the recent ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Krajina's Serbs); and by bombing urban and civilian areas, killing both Serbian and Albanian non-combatants alike, our leadership is in the process of engineering three foreign policy disasters.

First, we have condemned Albanians and Serbs to years of bloody conflict and retribution, fanning the embers of instability in the region and coming closer to igniting the entire Balkan tinderbox than at any other time since WWI. Second, the US is squandering an historic opportunity as the sole remaining superpower to earn the respect and credibility of friends and foes alike, and thus the key to genuine leadership. It has instead chosen to project an image of Americans as bullies and hypocrites in the service of short-sighted and unrefined foreign policy objectives. And third, we have awakened the specter of a renewed Cold War, this time with a more insecure, unstable, nationalistic, and still-nuclear Russia.

Perhaps the most damning fact of all is that it was our unprovoked bombing of a sovereign nation that triggered the Albanian Kosovar tragedy: clearly, there was no ethnic cleansing prior to our massive bombing campaign, only casualties arising from fierce fighting between KLA separatists and the Yugoslav Army.

Shouldn't there be a limit to how much human suffering and how many foreign policy disasters our tax money should be allowed to subsidize? Very truly yours,

P. D. Spyropoulos, Esq.
Executive Director

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The American Hellenic Media Project is a non-profit organization created to address inaccuracy and bias in the media and encourage independent, ethical and responsible journalism.