Kosovo: Lost to Serbia and to the West

Brussels Journal ^ | 10/27/08 | John Laughland

[Bokababe]

....If organised crime is a way of life in Kosovo, so is the systematic destruction of churches: more than 150 churches and monasteries have been blown up on the UN’s watch in the last nine years, as Albanians seek not only to expel all Serbs from the province but also to eradicate any physical record of their ever having been their in the first place. Kosovo, one should never forget, is the original heartland of medieval Serbia, the Serbs having migrated North to Belgrade and the Pannonian plane beyond as a result of the Turkish invasions. Images of an angry mob pulling down crosses and stamping on them, such as were filmed on 17 March 2004, have not been seen since the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia; just under a century later they are now, once again, part of Europe’s present....

[Bokababe]

"Gotta' be more, much more, to make them different ethnicities. My goodness, they even look alike!"

The Serbs and Croats are pretty much of the same bloodlines, as many converted based on where they wound up living. There are many Serbs, Croats and Muslims with the same last name. My maiden name is a very common Croat last name, even though my ancestors were Serbs.

But Serbs and Croats have very different historical references so their narratives are different.

Most Croats were protected from Islam by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, of which Croatia was a part. In the 18th century, the Austrian Empress Maria Therese even brought Serbs into Croatia to guard the border, with the promises of free land and that Serbs could keep their religion and way of life, as long as they kept the Turks out of the Austrian Empire (which is how so many Serbs originally came to live in Croatia)

On the other hand, Serbs struggled under the Turkish yoke and were pretty much on their own against aggressive Islam. And as a result, Serbs got shoved all over the map of Yugoslavia, and beyond.

My own family originated in Hercegovina, but when the Turks started killing off all the Christian nobility (anyone who could lead), they made a quick exit down to Montenegro where they have been for the last 400 years.

The vast majority of Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990's were not militant Muslims, but Alija Izetbegovic and his political leadership (including Haris Siladzic who is still in power) were. The importation of mujahadin from the Middle East to Bosnia during and after the war, radicalized some of the Bosnian Muslim populace.

But most of the Bosnian Muslims who come here to the US (with some exceptions) are not crazy. They just want a new life here -- something "normal" and to fit in. I buy some Euro foods from a store owned by a Bosnian Muslim couple here in Sacramento and they are the just sweetest people.

[Bokababe]

"My goodness, they even look alike!"

Just to let you know, we don't all "look alike". But it's more that we share groups of similar "types".

If no one had said that "Goran Visnjic (Luka Kovac on ER) is a Croat", I would have sworn that he was a Serb. But Goran Visnjic looks nothing like Karl Malden who is a Serb.

Many years ago, when the TV show "Magnum PI" first came on, I and every Serb I knew swore that Tom Selleck was a Serb. He had to be. He had that real specific look of one of the types and Selleck sounds like a name that could have been Americanized. But all the biographies on Tom Selleck described him as being of "Scottish and Irish descent" and we all looked at each other and said, "It can't be. I don't care if his daddy was the milkman, he's got to have Serb in him." Then, I never heard another word about it for the next twenty years. A couple of days ago, I ran across another bio on Tom Selleck -- yep, his father was Serbian!

[Honorary Serb]

There were also the power plays by Frankish popes and their allies (notably Charlemagne and William the Conquerer) that led to the formation of a separate “Roman Catholic Church” in the first place, the suppression of the Orthodox West, and the split with the East in 1054. 1204 was the final exclamation point to that split.

The Lutheran Reformation (Reformation Day is Oct. 31) was an attempt to overcome the abuses of the Frankish popes, and arguably to move back toward Orthodoxy. The second generation of Lutheran reformers did try to make contact with the Patriarch of Constantinople. However, in the absence of contact with Orthodox communities, and with the Turk and the “Holy Roman Empire” in the way, that did not and could not go far enough.

The suppression of the Orthodox West led to the conflicts between the West and the Orthodox East.

[Honorary Serb]

There are a lot of “war briefings” in the media now about the desperate situation that the next President faces in Afghanistan.

According to the briefings, the key to the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda is the opium trade.

However, none of these briefings notes that the other end of the financial pipeline for the Afghan opium trade is “independent Kosovo”. Stop sales of drugs from Kosovo, and you dry up the funding for killers of Americans in Afghanistan.

Of course, NONE of the pundits who produce these briefings wants to face the facts that the Kosovo incursion is the mistake that we keep on paying for in the blood of our brave young soldiers!!!!