1) PREDICTION ONE: An Air War cannot be won and terror bombing will just harden Serbian resistance: Well, whatever one thinks about the morality of the NATO intervention, the empirical fact is that the basic goal of forcing Serbia to accept a NATO troop occupation of Kosovo was achieved through the pure application of air power, something most analysts (including a strong suspicious by myself I admit) thought was unlikely. Clinton and his NATO cohorts were on that point smarter than many of those "experienced military analysts" who were trotted out to denigrate his military planning and tactics. And the estimated 6000 Serbian deaths is far less than the Serbian population would likely have suffered with a ground war invasion. (Whether there would have been fewer Kosovar deaths with such a strategy is a more open question.)
2) PREDICTION TWO: NATO bombing would decimate Milosevic's opposition and harden support for his regime: Well, the recent mass demonstrations against Milosevic show that prediction to be false; in fact there is a reasonable basis to believe that the bombing was successful largely because it increased resistance to Milosevic and, fearing internal revolt, Milosevic had to end the war in order to stabilize his regime against growing discontent.
3) MORAL STATEMENT ONE: Intervention could only be justified based on International law: The point Charles and I were arguing when I left, the subsequent indictment of Milosevic by the International Human Rights Tribunal and the United Nations approval of KFOR occupation of Kosovo would seem to, at least retroactively, shine a nice international law gloss over the whole operation.
So for those who held one or more of these positions at the beginning of the NATO intervention, how do the empirical events refuting them change or modify your thinking either about the Kosovo intervention or evaluating military interventions in general?
--Nathan