Clear Thinking from Cleveland's Plain Dealer
Elizabeth Sullivan, the foreign affairs columnst for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, makes an excellent point: she asks the West to recall its 1999 air campaign against Serbia. And, as she points out, France, a nation so concerned about Israel’s use of excessive force, played a significant role in that air campaign. (Read the entire article).
France should know whereof it speaks when it brands Israel for"disproportionate" force in bombing bridges, airfields and civilian power plants. Seven years ago, French pilots went after similar targets during NATO's 72-day air war against Yugoslavia. In fact, Israeli military tactics closely parallel those developed during the 1999 NATO air war and, more recently, by the U.S. against al-Qaeda. In 1999, dozens of NATO bombs and missiles hit Yugoslav bridges, communications grids, power plants, and a television station, killing at least 498 civilians. French fighter pilots flew more than 1,100 of the war's air strikes, or about 11 percent of the alliance's missions, according to Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine.
