Alan Keyes on War & Peace
Respond to facts, not Serb intentions
Q: You’ve said the scale of Serb atrocities in Kosovo was grossly overstated and that the US intervening was more dangerous than what happened inside the province itself. In light of new reports, do you still stand by your view?
A: If I understand
the report, it confirms an intention. [We should not] in foreign policy to intentions. We’ve got to react to facts. And the facts as they have been established on the ground do not support all the reports that came out in the course of that war.
Source: Phoenix Arizona GOP Debate
Dec 7, 1999
Kosovo sets precedent for more future intervention
Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have said that the NATO action in Yugoslavia is just the beginning. They view this war as a precedent for a new internationalism, and expect similar interventions to happen regularly. Our “victory” in Yugoslavia, should it
occur, will be worse than hollow -- it will be ripe with the seeds of greater evil to come, now that America has begun to teach the world that the end justifies the means.
Source: (Cross-ref from Defense) WorldNetDaily “Terrorism -- America
Jun 14, 1999
NATO strategy against civilians is terrorism
The NATO campaign has followed a strategy that we know to be wrong and deeply immoral. Moral norms of decent and civilized people condemn a strategy that aims to break and destroy the civilian people of a country in order to achieve political objectives.
The classic definition of terrorism is the use of force against civilians in order to get them to do your bidding as a result of the terror induced in their hearts. And we have been practicing a strategy based on just such a use of force.
Source: WorldNetDaily “Terrorism -- American style”
Jun 4, 1999
“Ends justify the means” is the path to evil
Aren’t we doing it for the sake of the Kosovars, and doesn’t that make it all right? The evil enemies we fought in this century did not consider themselves to be evil any more than we do now. The real evil in them was their acceptance of the principle
that the end justifies the means. They are pushed into evil by people who persuade them that evil is necessary to achieve some greater good, and that the good justifies the evil. And this is what has happened to us with the war in Kosovo.
Source: WorldNetDaily “Terrorism -- American style”
Jun 4, 1999
Kosovo not based on human rights policy nor precedent
A: [Defending Kosovo] isn’t about saving face because we have the kind of power and position in the world where we should be thinking about how we maturely and responsibly make use of that power, particularly where military force is concerned.Q: I
would rather see the issue be framed around other bad guys around the world watching this, and if we pull out and let a guy like Milosevic win, that is going to open the floodgates up to dozens of others.
A: I think that’s nonsense. I’m sorry. If you
were going to consider that, [what about] the brutal Communist dictators with whom Clinton refuses to stop doing business? He wants to kill off half the population of Yugoslavia in the name of human rights, but he won’t even stop buying Chinese-
made paper boxes? I don’t believe that this argument is made with sincerity. I think that a serious human rights policy requires that you build it and that you sustain it over the course of years in all the different aspects of your policy.
Source: Interview on “The O’Reilly Factor”
Apr 7, 1999
Support Israel on moral grounds, not economic nor strategic
As US Ambassador to the UN Economic & Social Council, I spent somewhere between 50% and 70% of my time dealing with our policy toward the Middle East in general and with the US-Israeli relationship in particular. It is not easy to defend our
special relationship with Israel at the practical, pragmatic, entirely material level: strategic interests; sheer economics; geopolitics; where the oil is. You can’t sustain the argument in favor of a strong partnership with Israel solely on the basis of
those considerations. The best case we can make is at the level of our moral identity. When we come face to face with the ultimate issues of war and peace, all of those geo-strategic things go by the boards. [We should] appeal to arguments that
stir the moral sentiments of this nation, and that call upon our willingness to moral commitments, to the things that we believe are right.
Source: Our Character, Our Future, p.112-3
May 2, 1996
Bosnian intervention MUST be approved by Congress
The circumstances in Bosnia did not justify intervention. The Constitution has that business about declaring war so that presidents were not to commit us to things like this, without *consulting* the Representatives of the people. And that consultation
was not meant to be a rubber stamp on decisions that can’t be justified. It was meant to FORCE that justification, and if the justification was not satisfactory, it was meant to give the people the chance to say NO.
Source: Speech to the National Jewish Coalition
Nov 28, 1995