Sontag's piece on Kosovo repeats the same old inaccuracies regarding the Serbs, of course. Milosevic was a communist bastard, no doubt, but did not embark on a program of ethnic cleansing. While she's boo-hooing over the poor heroin-smuggling KLA (muslim terrorists), why doesn't she take a look at what happened in Croatia in 1991? Until that time, the Serb population ran about 12 percent. The Croatians embarked on their own little program to drive them out, and most fled to Serbia (where Clinton later bombed the bejeezus out of them in 1999).
In 1998, when Mr. M and I visited his cousins in Zagreb and the little Croatian villages from which Mr. M's Serbian grandparents emigrated, the Serb population in Croatia was down to 4 percent of the population. In 1993, Mr. M's cousins in Ogulin operated a little coffee bar on the first floor of their house, and the family of four lived in the tiny upstairs apartment. At about 3 a.m. they were awakened by an explosion. Earlier that evening, a couple of Croatian "patrons" of the coffee bar had planted two bombs there. Why? Because the owners were Serb, and it was a popular gathering place for their Serb neighbors, and Serbs had to be convinced to get out.
Fortunately, no one was injured, but the bar was destroyed and the building still bears the marks of the explosion. This was commonplace. One night, bombs were set off all over town, but only in the homes and businesses of Serbs. Dozens were killed. Maddy HalfBright made a tour of the area a while later and her hosts told her about that night, more or less - except that they told her it was the Serbs who had bombed Croatian families. Of course, being an idiot, she believed it.
I know I'm rambling and will wrap this up soon, but the Clintons and their liberal buttkissers also demonstrated the Chirac-like tendency to forget what had been done for them in the past. Just like France is spitting on the memory of the thousands of Americans who died trying to liberate their country from the Nazis, the Clinton Administration turned on the one group in the Balkans who had fought the Nazis. Serbs rescued hundreds of American pilots who were shot down in one famous incident, and the nationalist (bad word to Sontag) Serb Chetniks fought both the Nazis and the Communists, while assisting the U.S. in the war.
Don't even get me started on the liberal hypocrisy regarding Rwanda, where Clinton apparently found it just dandy that a bunch of Africans were slaughtering one another. But I've never doubted the real racists in this country are on the left.
Why Are We in Jolo?
IN THE PAST DECADE the United States has only twice sent ground troops into combat. The first instance, in Somalia, grew out of a humanitarian operation and ended abruptly with the first U.S. casualties. It also ended the career of the secretary of defense. The second, in Afghanistan, came in response to an attack on the United States, was approved by Congress and was thoroughly explained to the public by President Bush and his Cabinet.
Over the years the threshold for putting U.S. soldiers at risk has sometimes seemed too high: Think of the Rwandan genocide or the Balkan wars. Yet now the country appears to be drifting toward the opposite extreme.
On Thursday, via a series of background briefings by unnamed spokesmen, the Pentagon casually let the public know that it intends to dispatch 1,700 Special Forces and Marines for a combat mission against Muslim guerrillas in a remote and hostile corner of the Philippines.