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Human Events, Jun 30, 2000

Cato: Clinton's Kosovo

A 'Conspicuous Failure'

On the one-year anniversary of the end of NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, a new Cato Institute study says that the Clinton Administration's policy of bringing stability to the Balkans and building a multiethnic democracy in Kosovo has been a "conspicuous failure."

The administration's intervention not only sparked the initial round of ethnic cleansing against Kosovo's Albanian minority, the study charges, but it also laid the groundwork for the new round of ethnic cleansing now being waged against the Serbian majority.

"Not until NATO began its bombing did [Serbia's] objective in Kosovo change from counterinsurgency to a deliberate campaign to expel the province's ethnic Albanians," argue Christopher Layne, a Cato visiting fellow in foreign policy studies, and Benjamin Schwarz, a correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. The original intent of NATO's action was to prevent a humanitarian disaster, they say, but "NATO's air campaign triggered the very debacle it was said to be preventing."

Now that the bombing has ceased, the authors note, "the war's only beneficiary has been the Kosovo Liberation Army," which is currently engaged in a brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign against the Serbs and is fomenting insurgency in the province- Layne and Schwarz say the Clinton administration's "multi-billion-dollar nation-building adventure" has been premised on "inept diplomacy and strategic miscalculation," especially the notion that the hateful Balkan factions will settle into "a society shaped by the values of democracy, diversity and tolerance."

In retrospect, the Kosovo conflict illustrates the problems with the Clinton Administration's foreign policy doctrine of "virtuous power," the authors say. "The administration consoles itself that, as the President says, it 'did the right thing in the right way' when it intervened," write Layne and Schwarz. "Even granting that doubtful premise, this is not enough to exonerate policymakers from their responsibility for the situation the United States confronts today."

For more information, call Cato public relations at 202-842-0200. Cato publications are available on the Internet at www.cato.org.

Hypocrisy in High Places

On School Choice Issue

Few are surprised that hypocrisy abounds in the political circles of our Nation's Capital, but it is particularly blatant on the question of school choice, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article by Heritage Foundation policy analyst Nina Shokraii Rees and research assistant Jennifer Garrett.

"School-choice bills keep foundering in Congress," the authors write. "Yet many of the lawmakers denying poor children a chance to escape failing public schools send their own kids to private schools."

Many? Well, how many? According to a congressional survey the authors conducted earlier this year (86% of House members responded, as did 93% of senators), "among respondents with school-age children, 40% of House members and 49% of senators send or have sent at least one child to private school."

The numbers tilted even heavier toward private schooling when quantifying legislators `who serve on committees with jurisdiction over educational issues." The authors report that 43% of House Ways and Means Committee members and a whopping 61% of Senate Finance Committee members "chose private school for their children."

Meanwhile, "many of these same lawmakers oppose school choice bills." Fiftyseven of them helped defeat an amendment by Rep. Dick Armey (R.-TX) that "would have enabled children in dangerous schools" to exercise the same choice these 57 made.

Over in the Senate, Sen. Paul Coverdell (R.-GA) offered an amendment to "expand education savings accounts to cover K-12 educational expenses at a public, private or religious school." The amendment passed Match 2, but by 61 to 32, not a margin that is veto proof. "Had all the senators who practice school choice voted for that amendment," write the authors, "it would have passed with a veto-proof 71 votes."

A similar phenomenon occurs within minority caucuses of Capitol Hill. The Congressional Black Caucus strongly opposes school choice, which is favored by 60% of black Americans, but 28% of members of the Black Caucus have taken advantage of it. And while members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus oppose school choice "overwhelmingly," "14% of caucus members chose private schools for their own kids."

And then at the other of Pennsylvania Avenue there is the White House, where both President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore "argue that vouchers would undermine the public schools." And yet, "Both have sent their own children to elite Washington-area private schools."

"As members of Congress and the administration send their children off to private schools," conclude Rees and Garrett, "they should ask themselves why poor kids should be denied the same opportunity."

National Conservative

Student Conference

There's still time to register for the National Conservative Student Conference sponsored by Young America's Foundation and to be held July 16-22, 2000, at American University in Washington, D.C.