Posted on 02/17/2004 9:27:02 AM PST by Andy from Beaverton
Finally!!! Rush has finally focused on the problems with and in Kosovo. For some of us, we have been screeming about this since April of 1999. Before you decide to jump all over me for any Rush comments, he has almost never spoke about the aftermath in Kosovo. Sure at times he has spoken poorly about the Kosovo operation, but I can't ever recall him saying that we had choosen the wrong side. The question is going to be if he actually goes more in depth or if this is going to be it???
If you want to go to school over Kosovo, I'll happily take you there.
It's right here on FR, where you've been receiving a failing grade since signing on.
Apparently you missed the "Zoran is a traitor" lesson, so you get another time out.
Can you do anything except post them verbatim?
Do you do your own analysis?
Let's give this a try: Can you tell me how it is there are all these bad elements in Kosovo and Albania, yet our servicemen aren't being attacked on a daily basis like they are in Afghanistan or Iraq?
In your own words, please.
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk about something a little bit...well, I don't think it's "off the beaten path" at all. In fact, I think that this is actually the area of focus that everybody ought to be interested in as we descend further (and I mean that) descend further into the presidential campaign. As is the case when the out-of-power party is desperate, they'll do anything to get back into power. They will not, however, talk about the things that led to them being defeated and thus being out of power.
Now, the party out of power at this moment in time is the Democrats. They are not in power for specific reasons. There are specific reasons that a majority of Americans are voting against them, not just in national elections, but in the Senate races and in many House races which have become national elections in many districts rather than just local elections as House races used to be. Well, what is it that is relegating the Democrats to the status of second-rate? It's not Vietnam. In fact, the Democrats' effort to focus on a war 30 years ago is a profoundly illuminating thing if you take off all the blinders and if you forget the prism through which the mainstream press is looking at this.
Try this. Here we have a war in our nation's history which nobody thinks was, well...fought very well. I'm not talking about the troops. I'm talking about the government. The Democratic Party particularly thinks that war was immoral. The Democratic Party particularly thinks that there's nothing about that war to recommend it. There's nothing about that war that America should be proud of. And yet, they now turn around and lead forth a nominee who claims to have been a hero in that war and many others are making that claim as well — and now all the sudden that war has become something we should all be proud of.
This is another example of the Democratic Party switching on a dime trying to define themselves in ways that are untrue, trying to present a picture of themselves that is false. Now, their candidate is trying to keep the, and their whole campaign, is trying to keep the presidential race so far focused off of the things that have made them a minority party. The primary thing, I think the primary issue, the primary series of events that have made liberal Democrats a minority party is they cannot be trusted with the U.S. military; they cannot be trusted to defend a country; they cannot be trusted to be put in charge of American foreign policy.
Now this is something they, of course, need to change your mind about, and so they go back at an old war that they previously condemned as worthless, immoral - and now they trot it forward as an example of how they are capable of leading this country forward into the future because they can bring forth one guy from that war who they claim represents the heroes from that war. All right? Well, in that case, let's take a look at recent Democratic Party forays into the area of foreign policy and military combat. Let's not go back to Vietnam; let's just look at some things recently. We see on the news today that Haiti is blowing up.
The president that we installed in that country, Jean-Bertrand Aristide is as corrupt as any previous Haiti leader. It's a matter of degrees. He may not be as bad as the Duvalier crowd, but still he's corrupt. Everybody that leads that country is corrupt, and now there is revolution going on in Haiti again. This was said to be one of the foreign policy successes of the Clinton administration, but there's an even better example, ladies and gentlemen, and that is Kosovo. Now, Kosovo is something that doesn't come up much in conversation anymore. Kosovo is just assumed to have been dealt with, and it's there. And we've got Milosevic on trial at The Hague. Wesley Clark has gone over to testify against him, and as far as anybody is concerned, we fixed that problem.
Yet we still have troops there years and years and years beyond the day President Clinton told us they'd be back. There is not one bit of focus on what still goes on there. There is not one bit of interest. Nobody's talking about it. This Democratic bunch seeking the White House does not point to Kosovo as a grand success. Their president led it. They voted for it. But who ran it? Who ran it? The United Nations ran it. The United Nations is running it now. Kosovo and its aftermath are under the auspices of the United Nations. Now, this is interesting because John Kerry, the presumptive Democrat nominee, claims this is how all such international crises should be run.
Well, don't you think it's an important thing, then, to look at how the UN and others who have formed a quote, unquote, consensus - which, as you know, is the absence of leadership - are actually doing in Kosovo? To that end I have a piece today from an obscure German magazine. It's obscure to us. It's called Telepolis - T-e-l-e-p-o-l-i-s - and I have a column here by a man named John Horvath, or Horvath - H-o-r-v-a-t-h. It's entitled, "Remember Kosovo." [Reading:] "With our modern-day communication system of radio, television, and the Internet, we tend to forget many important things, even when it comes to crucial issues such as war and peace. Most have already started to forget about Afghanistan and would have done so if it weren't for the recent spate of attacks which saw one Canadian, one British, and seven American soldiers killed in one week, leading to talk of a spring offensive against a Taliban rebellion.
"Taliban? I mean, weren't they already defeated long ago, with the new Afghanistan rising from the ashes? Sadly, the same holds true much closer to home and our blindness is all the more unforgiving considering the wars within Europe, which cost over tens of thousands of lives. But for those intent on pursuing a program of perpetual war for perpetual peace, it would do no good to dwell on the past. Thus, Kosovo is to this day trumpeted as a victory for the concept of humanitarian warfare. Everyone is happy, the mission was accomplished, been there, done that, time to move on to the next target. But Kosovo is anything but the happy and prosperous place that it was supposed to be. Nor has peace been brought to the region. Crime, terror, ethic cleansing, and smuggling all still rampant in Kosovo. This time, however, under the aegis of the United Nations.
"Four years after it was liberated by NATO bombing, Kosovo has deteriorated into a hotbed of organized crime, anti-ethnic violence, and even Al-Qaeda sympathizers are on the ground there. Though nominally still under UN control this southern province of Serbia is today dominated by a triumvirate of Albanian paramilitaries, Mafia gangs, and terrorists. They control a host of smuggling operations, are implementing what many observers call their own brutal ethnic cleansing of minority groups, namely Serbs and Jews. This despite an 18,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force, and an international police force of more than 4,000.
"Typically the response by the international community is to look the other way for it's far easier to do this than explain why NATO should go against the ones they liberated just a few years ago. Furthermore, it would distract the West from other nation-building projects that are currently underway around the world." I'm not going to read the whole thing to you, but moving on to the last page, "Compounding the problem of Kosovo is that there is little consensus on what to do next. Many Serbs and moderate ethnic Albanian politicians first would like a decision from the international community on Kosovo's legal status, that is, would it remain a province of Serbia or become an independent entity."
And here's the last sentence of the story: "If the West can't handle Kosovo, then how are they going to bring peace and stability to places like Afghanistan or Iraq?" Now, Mr. Horvath, that last sentence is terribly misleading and does a disservice to the rest of your piece. I'm wondering if an editor got a hold of this after you submitted it, because the question here is, after all, "If the UN can't handle Kosovo..." if the internationalists cannot handle Kosovo, if the John Kerrys of the world cannot handle Kosovo, "then how are they going to bring peace and stability to places like Afghanistan and Iraq?" because the answer to the question is: it's called Bush.
The answer to the question is called the Bush administration. This is what the American people know. The American people, if they don't know, we're going to tell them, and we're going to make sure they find out. Kosovo is an absolute disaster, a Clinton-administration-given-to-the-UN-to-handle disaster. And again, the right question is, if the United Nations cannot handle Kosovo, and everybody says that it's going well there. People have forgotten about it. It's a cesspool. It has not worked.
The UN cannot administer peace; the UN cannot get peace; the UN cannot stop bad people; the UN is in bed with too many. So if the UN cannot handle this, how are they going to bring peace and stability to places like Afghanistan or Iraq? And that is a relevant question, given that the Democratic Party in this country which seeks to keep from voters its weaknesses, and is focusing on a 30-year-old war where they can bring one hero out of the jungle muck and try to recast now what the truth of that war was, and then say, "This man can lead us to the right policies in Iraq and Afghanistan." Well, his policies will take us to the UN, which mangles everything it touches.
And if Zoran's a traitor, what better way for you to keep an eye on him?
P.S. He's also got at least one other screen name on here, and said he's trying to get on your good side (yet again). (If you want to play "guess his screen name", I'll give you a clue. Of course then the moderators will likely remove it, so that's what you could win - him losing another screen name.)
So far I'd say that you are the one who is coming up short.
Just one FReeper's opinion.
ML/NJ
Later, he had to make a trip to Belgrade, Yugoslavia and stayed there a few days. He said the people were uniformly unfriendly towards Americans and very suspicious of his motives for being there. Then he found the reason for the people's low opinion towards America: there were several large buildings and other structures, including residential buildings, that were burnt-out wrecks that still have not been re-built from the American bombing raids sent by Clinton. The damage to the city is extensive and hundreds of civilian lives were lost. Clinton was not criticized by the UN or any other nation for this genocide. Where is the media outrage?
I once heard that area referred to as "the armpit of the world"
So when you and your friends log on and start waxing ineloquent about how tropical it is, which is analogous to you and your covey's attempts at depicting the situation in the Balkans, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see through your smokescreen.
I note that the houses the Danes were supposed to have destroyed never panned out - I find it curious that everybody here hates Milosevic, but when one of his party's stations (TV Most is one of the SPS's media outlets - but, you must know that already, having people on the ground and all, right?) puts something out, it becomes gospel and is added to the litany of woe, and to hell with verifying it or any other such pointless nonsense.
I can't believe you would make such a statement on this board.
Name me one Serb who has harmed or threatened to harm you or another American.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.