Argentina: Bombing stirs anti-US feelings 


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Washington Post/Front 6/13/99

Bombing Awakens Anti-U.S. Feeling
by Anthony Faiola in Buenos Aires

IT'S thousands of miles from Belgrade, and there's no Serb in sight. But
Gonzalo Etcheberry is passing a wall on a busy street here spray- painted
with the words, "Yankee, out of the Balkans." He didn't write the slogan,
but he couldn't agree more. "Your bombs in Yugoslavia are from the side of
America that I can't stand," said the 21-year-old medical student wearing a
black Pearl Jam T-shirt. "I hate it when the U.S. plays judge and God."

Such feelings are common in Argentina -- and in many other parts of the
world far from the conflict over Kosovo. As the NATO air offensive against
Serb-controlled Yugoslavia continues and such blunders as the bombing of the
Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and airstrikes on Kosovo refugees grab headlines
worldwide, NATO warplanes are inflicting collateral damage of another kind
-- damage to its international reputation. And Uncle Sam, NATO's dominant
power, is bearing the brunt of public anger.

In Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a poll this
month showed that 64 percent of the populace opposes the NATO air campaign.
More respondents had a negative opinion of NATO than of Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic.

In Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other regions with
little direct interest in the conflict, opposition to the bombing is
surfacing in statements by elected officials, in newspapers, opinion polls,
public protests, and street graffiti. In the view of analysts the anti-NATO
backlash shows that Washington's portrayal of the conflict as a humanitarian
mission is being superseded by lingering anti-Western feelings in countries
with bad memories of U.S. intervention and European colonialism. While the
plight of the Kosovo refugees has evoked widespread sympathy, with many
countries offering financial and logistical support to the relief effort,
there is also growing criticism outside NATO that the allies were too quick
to abandon diplomacy for war.

"Milosevic has been able to successfully evoke the powerful message that he
is defending his homeland and that he's the underdog facing Yankee might,"
said Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George
Washington University. "And that is striking a chord internationally."

Even in some countries that have shown support for the allies, doubts are
surfacing.

Taro Kono, a member of parliament from Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi's Liberal
Democratic Party in Japan, said: "The United States and NATO have
unilaterally decided that the Serbs are the bad guys. I'm not sure it's so
easy to tell who's right and who's wrong."

Opposition appears to be growing fastest in the developing world. Since the
end of the Cold War, many developing nations grudgingly have come to accept
the United States as an economic model and leader. At the same time, many
analysts say, the war has so graphically underlined U.S. status as the sole
superpower that it has sparked resentment. Such feelings have been
exacerbated by the impression that the United States and NATO have largely
ignored the United Nations and international opinion in launching the air
campaign.

In the Middle East few Arab voices defend NATO's efforts to protect the
largely Muslim Kosovo Albanians. An exception is Jordan's new King Abdullah,
who has urged the United States not to waver in the battle with Belgrade.
For many Arabs, though, the NATO bombings have evoked disturbing parallels
with the continuing U.S.-led air campaign against Iraq, whose
sanctions-bound population is the object of widespread sympathy in the Arab
world. Jordan Times columnist Rami Khouri wrote recently that the United
States and Britain have now made the "perpetual bombing of a weak and
defenseless target" something routine.

In Africa, media accounts of errant bombs and dead civilians have prompted
debate among intellectuals, notably on the way NATO has sidelined the UN and
its African secretary general, Kofi Annan. In the Philippines, one of
Washington's closest allies in Asia, protesters have been marching daily in
opposition to a plan for military exercises with the United States. Large
anti-American protests denouncing the war are also being staged in Pakistan
and India. Vietnam has condemned NATO attacks, calling for peaceful
resolution.

An editorial in Chile's La Tercera de la Hora, a major daily newspaper, said
of the Chinese Embassy bombing: "Not only did it leave . . . [three] dead
and 25 wounded, but it also weakened even more the position of the European
and U.S. powers in their effort to continue this military operation."

The war is striking a particularly bitter note in Latin America, where
Washington's support of repressive governments in decades past has left a
legacy of suspicion about its motives. Political opposition movements are
using the war to their advantage, linking "Yankee bullying" in the Balkans
to market-oriented economic reforms favored by Washington in Latin American
countries. In Bogota, Colombia, demonstrators gathered in front of a state
university to condemn both NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia and the
privatization of state-run companies.

 For now, at least, mounting opposition to the war does not appear to
translate into widespread anger at all things American. In Argentina, for
instance, recent polls by Gallup Argentina for the newspaper La Nacion
showed that while 64 percent of Argentines oppose the war in Yugoslavia and
30 percent have a negative view of NATO, 56 percent said they still have a
"favorable view" of the United States. "Most Argentines want to keep
excellent relations with the United States, receive its investment and
consume its music and fast food," said Martin Granovsky, managing editor of
Buenos Aires's left-leaning newspaper Pagina 12. "But at the same time,
there remains here a Latin American tradition that is critical of U.S.
military interventions of any kind."

(c) 1999 The Washington Post Co.
 
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