Give Jackson and Peace a Chance

He has been called vain and arrogant, and he can be both. But Jesse Jackson also is arguably the most useful of America’s world citizens, proving with persistence over decades that he is the keeper of his mentor’s dreams.

“Free at last, free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last,” the American soldiers chanted, quoting the words immortalized by the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as they walked hand in hand with Jackson to freedom.

Jackson provided a vivid demonstration of the power of the peacemaker, and in that capacity, as he has proved for decades here and abroad, the man is blessed. Instead of demonizing the enemy, he confronts him unarmed in his lair, in the manner of Gandhi or more currently the pope, and revives the power of talk.

Jackson will go anywhere and talk to anyone if it will save human beings. Yet that’s precisely why his example is so threatening to those who regard war as a video game and the killing of innocent civilians as “collateral damage.” These modern would-be warriors, like obsessed kids in an arcade, become nastily annoyed when their mindless game is interrupted by rational thought. Jackson interrupted their game, ever so briefly, and they’re annoyed.

Instead of heeding Jackson’s call for a pause in airstrikes and a negotiated end to the no-win madness of the bombing campaign, the administration brushed him off. After six weeks of bombing, which has united the Serbs around President Slobodan Milosevic and reduced the Kosovar Albanians to refugees, Clinton and his advisors still act as if they know what they are doing, when they don’t.

Indeed, snickering was audible as the mouthpieces of the bombs-for-peace campaign dismissed Jackson’s plea that the administration respond positively to Milosevic’s letter, which Jackson carried. “It sounds very much like a PR stunt on Milosevic’s part,” said Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott even before the letter had been delivered.

“Today we affirm our resolve to persevere,” the president said as the reports came in of more “collateral damage” that left the limbs of innocent bus riders strewn over the Kosovo countryside. The 39 reported dead, Albanians and Serbs, did not persevere.

“Unfortunately, after weapon release, a bus crossed the bridge,” read the NATO explanation of its blowing up of civilians while ignoring Jackson’s call for a bombing moratorium. “After weapon release,” is an apt metaphor for war without end, and we’ve been there before. Once again, the B-52s drop their deadly payloads permanently scaring the people as well as the countryside below.

This administration is in deep denial as to the horrid consequences to both Albanians and Serbs of NATO’s bombing. The Democrats are now the war party, and it remained for Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott to endorse Jackson’s call for a negotiated solution:

“As Jesse Jackson would say, ‘Give peace a chance here,’ ” Lott told CNN, adding, “There seems to be some momentum. There seems to be an opportunity. We should seize this moment.” Remember those words of caution as events continue to spiral out of control.

Are the Europeans truly able, united and willing to keep Balkan fratricide at bay for the next decades, or do they once again expect the Americans to do the dirty work for them? And if they can’t, and we won’t police that region well into the next century, then isn’t peace between Serbs and Kosovo Albanians, uneasy and imperfect as it may be, the only alternative?

Jackson deserves credit for taking that first tentative step in crossing troubled waters. His is the way of honor and courage. Clinton, of all people, should respect Jackson as an effective man of the cloth, for it was in that capacity that he sought the reverend’s counsel in his own time of trouble. He should do so again.

Why not appoint Jackson, and others like him such as Colin Powell and Jimmy Carter, to negotiate a settlement that will permit the refugees to return home in safety?

Of those who dismiss as naive Jackson’s preacher talk of “keep hope alive,” and “give peace a chance,” we have the right to demand what, really, is their alternative.

Those who believe that the bombing of Yugoslavia, or worse yet a land invasion, will lay the foundations of a lasting peace in the region fall into the category of what the great sociologist C. Wright Mills once referred to as “crackpot realists.” They are worse than naive, the failing with which they charge Jackson; they are just nuts.