Why Were We Bombing Yugoslavia?

Abstract

Why were we bombing civilians, women and children, hospitals, bridges, roads, schools and factories in Yugoslavia? The popular conception repeated endlessly by American and British politicians, NATO representatives and by the western media is that it was a humanitarian measure to protect Albanian Kosovars from ethnic cleansing and civil rights abuses at the hands of Serbs in the Kosovo region of Yugoslavia. It may seem somewhat strange that bombing and killing innocent people can be considered a humane solution to the dispute between the minority ethnic Serbs and the majority ethnic Albanians in Kosovo in the first place, particularly when no serious attempt was made to negotiate a peaceful settlement to the dispute between the two parties before the bombs began to fall. But what makes it even more difficult to accept is that there was no program of ethnic cleansing or genocide in Kosovo until after NATO began its bombing of the whole of Yugoslavia.