West haunted by Balkans blunder (2001. article, but great explaining Balkan Blunder)

AS the war in Afghanistan goes on, the ghost of interventions past sits in a courtroom in The Hague.

America can drop tons of explosives and send in the Marines to fight Taliban terrorism. But when the Serbs confronted a similar menace, they were demonized and bombed for 78 days, and had a province wrested from them and presented to Osama bin Laden's Balkan brigade.

Slobodan Milosevic has been charged with complicity to commit genocide and crimes against humanity. Before the travesty is over, he will doubtless be convicted of running the rail line to Auschwitz.

The former Yugoslav president is a thug whose brutality played into the terrorists' hands. Even so, the trial of Milosevic before a U.N. tribunal is intended to justify our Balkans blunder and discourage serious consideration of its consequences.

If what happened to Kosovo Albanians and Bosnian Moslems was genocide, what of the treatment of Orthodox Serbs? After NATO's air war, 200,000 were driven from Kosovo. Most who remain cower behind barbed-wire barricades in Mitrovica.

Altogether, 2 million Serbs were expelled from Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo, and 240 of their churches were destroyed. When this happens to anyone else, it's called ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide.

"There is no denying that the Serbian government’s treatment of the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo was deplorable. In 1981 in particular the Kosovo Albanians (the only non-Slav and non-Christian group in former Yugoslavia) had protested violently against their status, which they regarded as discriminatory. The removal of that status in 1989 was a provocation. The Kosovar parliament was dissolved, the teaching of the Albanian language banned and over 150,000 Albanian-speakers were sacked from their jobs in the civil service and state-owned companies. Martial law was introduced, giving the Belgrade forces of repression a free hand. In the last ten years they have stepped up their persecution of the Albanians to persuade them to leave the country"

There are so many mistakes it's difficult to know where to start . The Kosovo Albanians could be educated in their own language , they could use their language in court . They weren't dismissed from their jobs , they were ordered to quit by the KLA They chose to have their kids educated outside the state system and then cried "Apartheid" .

Those Kosovo Albanians ( largely Catholic ) who stayed loyal to Belgrade sent their kids to school where they were educated in Albanian , their parents had state jobs , etc .

At Rambouillet the Serb side was represented by ethnic Turks , Ethnic Albanians ( four if I remember correctly ) Roma , Gorani , Ethnic Macedonian , etc .

Representing the Kosovo Albanians were........you guessed it ........only Kosovo Albanians .

Yet it was the Serbs who were labelled "racists"

I have a translation and will file a complaint. I can't say more than that here, but, it suffices to say that the article is out of whack and in many cases took my info out of context in a massive way. So, just another learning experience.

The numbers they are using, IMO are exaggerated and the quotes are interlaced with their own opinions, sources, etc.....to make it look like mine, to protect their own sources or insert sensationaism...plus they misstated my role in Kosovo by light years.

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