BY MARK CURTIS
"From behind prison walls" is a regular column written by framed-up political and trade union activist Mark Curtis. To write to Curtis send letters to him at #805338, Iowa State Penitentiary, Box 316, Fort Madison, Iowa, 52627.
America officially has a new hero, Capt. Scott O'Grady, U.S. Air Force. O'Grady is the fighter pilot rescued from the Bosnian bushes by a marine helicopter June 6. Celebrating the rescue operation, President Bill Clinton and his aides lit up victory cigars on the White House balcony. The media followed suit, praising the military operation and reporting day after day all the details of O'Grady's life.
Before we join in the hoopla, however, we ought to ask what he was doing over there in the first place.
At the time he was shot down, O'Grady was enforcing a "no fly zone" Washington and other governments have imposed over Bosnia. There he was, thousands of miles from home, piloting an F-16 fighter jet, looking to use its rockets against any "unauthorized" plane.
You know, just minding his own business. Next thing he knows, he's hiding in a ditch, living on bugs, grass, and rainwater.
To get the unlucky captain out of his predicament, the U.S. government sent out 40 aircraft. One of them carried him back to the USS Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship floating in the Adriatic Sea.
O'Grady had parachuted into the middle of a war. The country that used to be Yugoslavia, a badly deformed workers state, has been broken up and rival pro-capitalist warlords are fighting to grab as much territory as they can. The governments of the United States, Britain, France, and other imperialist countries would like a piece of the action too. Problem is, the divided parts of the old Yugoslavia remain deformed workers states. None of the gangsters involved - who in large measure come from the bureaucratic castes that ruled the former Yugoslavia - look like they can be counted on to make the region stable enough for capitalist investment.
Until some such force emerges, the U.S. and European powers are haunted by crossing the "Mogadishu Line." By this they mean getting into a Somalia-type situation, pinned down by hostile troops, caught in the crossfire of warring factions, with no victory in sight. When O'Grady's jet was shot down, the White House must have had flashbacks of Somalia, where the people they claimed to be helping dragged a downed fighter pilot's body through the streets of Mogadishu.
The Somalia invasion quickly became unpopular in the United States, but still the Clinton administration is drawing closer and closer to the "Mogadishu Line" in Bosnia.
Working people have no interest in U.S. or United Nations "peacekeeping" in the ex-Yugoslavia. None of the rival gangs there that massacre, rape, and drive out whole cities of people should be helped out with "no fly zones" or map redrawing conferences. Our eyes have to be focused on our fellow workers there and trying to establish links with them, even under the difficult conditions they face. The best help we can give them is to demand an end to foreign meddling, especially by the U.S. military.
He might have had it rough for a few nights, but O'Grady is no hero. Neither are the politicians and generals now glorifying the incident. They only seek to draw the country behind their war mongering. For further reading, I recommend The Truth About Yugoslavia.