Continued Javier Solana Story, Part IV

JAVIER SOLANA AND THE USA -- GETTING TO KNOW HIM AND WHAT IT MEANS

Part IV of a Continuing Series


Daily, I went home and logged on the then relatively slow internet dial up connections. Javier Solana’s influence was clearly not diminishing. It was reported that a Sarajevo, Yugoslavia television station had been “taken out” by Wesley Clark because Javier Solana had reported to him it was “interfering with democracy.” Its alleged crime was said by some that they attempted to remain neutral by alternating news coverage between the two sides to that Balkan conflict.[i]

Fast forward to 1999. This was the year that NATO would celebrate its 50th anniversary. Javier Solana was at its head. A BIG celebration was planned and held in Washington, D.C. It was scheduled for April 23-25, 1999. Washington, D.C. security was to be tight. It was to be the largest gathering in Washington, D.C. ever of foreign officials.[ii]

A few weeks prior to that, March 21, 1999, to be precise, it was Sunday morning. I awoke with one of my more painful from time to time migraine headaches. I normally would have dressed for church about this time, but it was clear I was going nowhere with that headache. I swallowed three Vanquish, my usual remedy and headed back to bed to nurse the headache and shield my head from painful light. As I did so, my husband switched on our bedroom television. CBS’ popular news program, Sunday Morning, was airing. For me, it was almost surrealistic. As I was laying there coping with the painful headache, I heard an unusual interruption of Sunday Morning. The host came in and said, “We interrupt this program to bring you a very important announcement. Javier Solana, the Secretary General of NATO has announced that the bombing of Yugoslavia might start within a very few hours.” Crowds milled about the streets of Yugoslavia protesting the planned NATO actions and waving flags with the NATO small swastika morphed into the larger former Nazi one.

As soon as the headache sufficiently lifted, I did not go to church. Besides the headache was to be an all day, off and on one. I went down to the basement computers and logged on, using the Alta Vista search engines. I found a speech where Javier Solana was accepting an award. As I recall, it may have been the Christian Herter award. In the text of the speech, he mocked George Washington’s advice to Americans to ‘avoid entangling foreign alliances.” “Why, those entangling foreign alliances are good for you,” chortled Solana. I noted to myself that it took a lot of cheek to come into a country and mock the national icons as Solana had done. Then, in that speech, Javier Solana told the listeners that he had been given exclusive authority to make the military decisions over Yugoslavia, including whether to bomb or not. He then said that he didn’t intend to use it without “checking in with the others, but, nevertheless, the power is mine and mine alone.”

I didn’t take Senor Solana’s word for it. I traveled online to Madeline Albright’s United States Department website. She had a statement published about it. On line she said that “Javier Solana has the power and has had it since January 30th. We are speaking with one voice through Javier Solana.”

That night, all day in pajamas, due to the off and on headache, I was home when many Christian Americans were in Sunday night services. President Clinton came on television to address the nation about the pending bombings. I watched carefully. He never said, “this is what I plan to do” or “this is what we plan to do” or even, “this is what the leaders of the world community think wise.” Instead he said, “I agree with Javier Solana’s decision to do this.”

Nobody publicly to my knowledge ever said, “Who’s Javier Solana?” It seemed to go over everybody’s head.

The bombings started and they seemed, at least to me, cruel and clearly hitting civilian targets. That was termed “collateral damage.” Driving to court one day, I heard news reports on our local radio station WWJ that Pope John Paul II had sent emissaries to Brussels with the concurrence of an Eastern Orthodox patriarch asking that they be allowed to intervene and mediate a settlement. They requested a truce between “the two Easters.”

On Good Friday, April 2, 1999, I was to read small headlines in Detroit’s DETROIT NEWS, “Pope rebuffed.” It was occurring to me that Javier Solana had little or no respect for anyone or anybody. A later picture of the Pope and Eastern Orthodox patriarchs sitting together appeared much like two thoroughly depressed and defeated old men.

I saw United States Senator Spencer Abraham, a former guest on my Detroit radio show at a banquet a week after Easter, on the same day as the Orthodox Church’s Easter. I asked him point blank, “why did we hand all that power to Javier Solana?” His answer astounded me. He told me that quite honestly he couldn’t make sense of the Yugoslavian policy himself. He then said that he believed it was “Bill Clinton hiding behind Javier Solana.” He said, “things happen like that in politics, you know.”

Yes, I know things happen like that in politics. But this time, I had the distinct impression that President Clinton was, like they say in the more crude vernacular, “sucking up.” Then Spencer Abraham, the junior senator from Michigan in his first and only term in a year of a Democratic administration volunteered something very startling to me. He said he had met Javier Solana “personally.”

“Oh,” I replied. Senator Abraham then told me that he and all the other United States senators had been flown to Brussels, Belgium to meet Javier Solana.”

That is when I confess I became more than a little scared. I worked in government long enough to know that when an agency is receiving heavy funds from us that we don’t fly our people there. They fly here and walk ever so humbly with their small entourage through the Senate office building, at least to the members of the funding and appropriation committees. We flew our entire Senate to Brussels to meet this former Marxist, long a member of our subversive list? Incredible.

To be continued. Next issue: The NATO 50th Anniversary Celebration and beyond.
[i] http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/9710/01/nato.serbia/index.html?eref=sitesearch
[ii] http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/nato121.shtml