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They're right. Repeated "apologies" by NATO spokesmen are meaningless when followed in the next breath by the "excuse" that an air war cannot be fought without "collateral damage" (lovely euphemism) and the "assurance" that NATO's "resolve" remains "firm." Bang bang - oops, sorry, you're dead - didn't mean to do that - of course we'll do it again tomorrow, but we won't have meant it then either.
But few Americans, I think, are seeing these target buttons. Ted Koppel did mention them on Nightline, but I don't recall seeing them explained on the nightly news or in the daily paper. You can find them if you deliberately look up Yugoslav sources on the Internet (such as www.beograd.com or www.yutarget.com), but they are not being drawn to most Americans' attention. As always in war, the government propaganda machine and the mood of national groupthink work to silence the idea that there are real human beings on the other side, ordinary people whose lives do not consist of making government policy, or implementing it - just suffering for it when someone far away decides that their cities must be bombed in order to weaken their rulers' resolve.
Those of us who are already opposed to this war need to make our neighbors more aware of the realities of what our rulers are doing. Most of the people we meet in our daily rounds - at work, at school, shopping, socializing, passing on the street - will not see the target buttons unless we wear them.
I started wearing such a symbol the other day, tucked into the band of my black Quaker-style broadbrimmed hat. Unfortunately, as friends soon pointed out, it was likely to look like a new designer label to those who didn't already know what it meant. Out of its original context under the daily threat of air raids, it needed a few more words to make it understandable. So I have created two modified versions which you can download here - "WE ARE ALL TARGETS" and "WAR MAKES TARGETS OF US ALL":
| Original Yugoslav Version |
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|---|---|
| My Preferred Version |
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| Using Text Found at www.Beograd.com |
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| All Three Versions in a Zip File |
Print it, cut it out, and pin it to your shirt, blouse, jacket, or dress. Or display it anywhere else that people will see it. (But please don't post it in a vandalistic way on other people's property. This only makes people resent the message instead of thinking about it.)
Putting on a button is a small act, but it can bring an unthought-of idea to people's attention, and it can provide conversational openings. You can explain the Yugoslav connection and the daily life of people under the bombs (see for instance one young Belgrade woman's diary, provided online by a Colorado couple at www.wardiary.org). [Added 5/26/1999: I have just found another, more detailed, war diary by an older Belgrade woman, provided online by her daughter in San Francisco, at www.keepfaith.com, with many links to further sources.] You can explain how the growing risk of a wider war, and the provocation of anti-Western sentiment with its likely result of random terrorism, makes potential targets of those of us who live in the U.S. or other NATO countries. Once the conversation gets going, you can explain whatever is most on your own heart about the war.
And even if people don't ask you about the button, they may recognize it when it next flits by them in a news photo, unremarked by the reporter. "Oh, I saw that somewhere. What did it say? 'War makes targets of us all.' What, do some of those horrible Serbs think that too?" And maybe they will start to think.