A curious Lott

Under the imminent threat of NATO air strikes, Yugoslavian President/war criminal candidate Slobodan Milosevic ordered his army back to the barracks Monday, suspending for now his war on Kosovo and the systematic annihilation of its Albanian population.

Why not suspend? What’s the hurry? After all, the village-by-village massacres, the tortures, the mutilations, have done the job — they’ve driven hundreds of thousands of Kosovars from their homes up into the mountains, where the coming winter can finish them off.

To accomplish this feat, Milosevec banked on a couple of sure bets: NATO would bluster about intervention for months, as it did while he was slaughtering a quarter-million Bosnians a few years ago; and the United Nations Security Council would work itself into a frenzy of resolutions, warnings and other inactivity.

So imagine the Butcher of Bosnia’s delight Sunday morning when Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said on ABC’s “This Week” he finds it “curious” that the White House is talking about joining in an international military intervention just before the November election. Besides, Lott said, he’s wanted to get tough with Milosevec for months and, anyway, the American public will not stand for putting American troops in the region.

It’s curious how Sen. Lott could see the Clinton administration gaining political advantage from an action he, in the same breath, said would be intensely unpopular. It’s curious that Lott would be speaking up for the Albanians for months and not be heard. After all, everyone heard him when he let Big Tobacco off the hook and when he killed campaign finance reform.

But what’s really curious is that he would, albeit unwittingly, come to the aid of one of the age’s most prominent and effective genocidal maniacs. Milosevec rose to power a decade ago by whipping his Serb backers into a nationalist frenzy. He has held power by making scapegoats of the other ethnic groups in Yugoslavia — first the Bosnian Muslims, now the Albanians — and by destroying them as the irresolute world fidgets. International inertia is Milosevec’s greatest ally and Sen. Lott’s politicking has made action all the more unlikely.

An estimated 275,000 human beings are huddled high in the mountains of Kosovo. Food is running low, they have no medicine, no shelter. The Red Cross is trying to provide relief, but the caravans bringing aid face sniper fire, artillery attacks, land mines. That’s peril enough — they shouldn’t also have to contend with the careless words of a United States senator.