In striking contrast to the pusillanimous Congress, Margaret Thatcher proved on April 20 that she is an Iron Lady for all seasons. Her remarks on Kosovo in an address marking the 20th anniversary of her first election as Britain's prime minister were tough, well reasoned, and eloquent. Some excerpts:
"Last September I went to Vukovar, a city destroyed and its inhabitants butchered by the soldiers of Slobodan Milosevic. The place still smells of death, the windows weep, and the ruins gape. Around Srebrenica, where neither I nor many other Westerners have gone, the bodies of thousands of slaughtered victims still lie in unmarked graves. In Kosovo, we can only imagine what depravities of human wickedness, what depths of human degradation, those endless columns of refugees have fled. Mass rape, mass graves, death camps, historic communities wiped out by ethnic cleansing -- these are the monuments to Milosevic's triumphs.
"They are also, let's remember and admit, the result of eight long years of Western weakness. When will they ever learn? . . .
"For eight years I have called for Serbia to be stopped. Even after the massacre of Srebrenica I was told that my calls for military action were mere 'emotional nonsense,' words which, I think, only a man could have uttered.
"But there were also good reasons for taking action early. The West could have stopped Milosevic in Slovenia or Croatia in 1991, or in Bosnia in 1992. But instead we deprived his opponents of the means to arm themselves, thus allowing his aggression to prosper.
"Even in 1995, when at last a combination of airstrikes and well-armed Croat and Muslim ground forces broke the power of the Bosnian-Serb aggressors, we intervened to halt their advance onto Banja Luka, and so avoid anything that might threaten Milosevic. Even then, Western political leaders believed that the butcher of Belgrade could be a force for stability. So here we are now, fighting a war eight years too late, on treacherous terrain, so far without much effective local support, with imperfect intelligence, and with war aims that some find unclear and unpersuasive.
"But with all that said -- and it must be said, so that the lessons are well and truly learned -- let there be no doubt: This is a war that must be won. . . .
"It would be both cruel and stupid to expect the Albanian Kosovans now to return to live under any form of Serbian rule. Kosovo must be given independence, initially under international protection. And there must be no partition, a plan that predictable siren voices are already advancing. Partition would only serve to reward violence and ethnic cleansing. It would be to concede defeat. And I am unmoved by Serb pleas to retain their grasp on most of Kosovo because it contains their holy places. Coming from those who systematically leveled Catholic churches and Muslim mosques wherever they went, such an argument is cynical almost to the point of blasphemy. . . .
"The goal of war is victory. And the only victory worth having now is one that prevents Serbia ever again having the means to attack its neighbors and terrorize its non-Serb inhabitants. That will require the destruction of Serbia's political will, the destruction of its war machine and all the infrastructure on which these depend. We must be prepared to cope with all the changing demands of war -- including, if that is what is required, the deployment of ground troops. And we must expect a long haul until the job is done."