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WHY IS THE WEST LOSING THE WAR ON TERROR?
Chronicles Extra ^ | 4/7/04 | Srdja Trifkovic

Posted on 04/09/2004 9:01:43 AM PDT by philosofy123

The best way to determine the course of a war is to look at the offensive potential of the warring parties. After Stalingrad it was obvious that Germany was doomed: having lost the strategic initiative a year earlier at the gates of Moscow, for the remaining two years of bloodshed the Reich was on a downward slide that ended in the ruins of Berlin. After the debacle at Vienna in 1683 the Ottoman Empire rapidly declined and, for the last century of its existence, depended on the good will of a cynical Great Britain for survival; for three subsequent centuries the West was safe from Islam. After Gettysburg the Confederacy bravely fought on for 20 months but it could no longer hope to take the war to the Union’s heartland.

No such luck with Islamic terrorists. Two and a half years after 9-11 their backbone is far from broken. That they are more numerous, more successful in attracting scores of fresh (and mostly very young) recruits, more widely spread, and generally more dangerous today than in the immediate aftermath of terrorist attacks, cannot be seriously denied. A brief survey of the events of the past four weeks alone reveals a very grim picture.

A GRIM CHRONOLOGY

March 11: Almost 200 commuters were killed and 1,400 others wounded on Madrid’s trains in a simultaneous attack on three separate targets now known to have been the work of Jihadists.

March 14: An unexpected Socialist victory in Spain’s general election provided the first instance of a Jihadist terror attack materially affecting political process in a major Western country.

March 15: The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone said “it would be a miracle” if London escaped terrorist attacks. Sir John Stevens, Metropolitan Police Commissioner and Britain’s most senior police officer, said that a major terrorist attack in the UK is “inevitable.”

March 16: A group calling itself “Servants of Allah, the Powerful and Wise One” threatened to attack targets in France unless its government repealed a law banning the Islamic headscarf in state schools. In a letter to Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin the group declared that it would “sow the seeds of terror in the hearts of the French.” Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy said the letter pledged to reverse the victory of Charles Martel over the Muslims at Poitiers in A.D. 732.

March 18: Simon Clegg, the chief executive of the British Olympic Association, raised the possibility of withdrawing the British team from the Olympic Games in Athens this summer because of terrorist threats.

March 19: Security sources in the U.S. express concern that the Olympic village, on the coast outside Athens, could be vulnerable to attack. There is widespread disquiet on both sides of the Atlantic about the readiness of the Greeks to deal with terrorist threat.

March 20: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf said that a “high value” target was believed trapped near the Afghan border, and senior Pakistani officials indicated it was Osama bin Laden’s first deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

March 24: An audio tape, calling for the overthrow of Musharraf and attributed to al-Zawahiri, is broadcast by Al-Jazeera TV.

March 25: The CIA concluded that the audiotape was probably authentic. The Pakistani army’s offensive is bogged down and suspected terrorists escape to Afghanistan.

March 26: FBI chief Robert Mueller says he is concerned about terrorist attacks this summer on one or even both of the forthcoming political conventions, the Democrats’ in Boston in late July and the Republicans’ in New York a month later. Alluding to the Madrid bombings three days before the Spanish elections, Mueller said terrorists may “wish to influence events.”

March 28-31: Forty-seven people are killed in a spate of suicide bombings and gun-battles between the police and Islamic militants in Uzbekistan. Foreign terrorist groups were said to be involved. In 2001 Uzbekistan became a key ally in Mr. Bush’s “war on terror,” giving U.S. forces the use of a major airbase for the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

March 30: British police arrested eight young men of Pakistani origin—all of them UK-born British citizens ranging in age from 17 to 32—and seized more than half a ton of fertilizer that is used to make explosives from a self-storage unit near Heathrow Airport. Iqbal Secranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Great Britain, said the arrests did not necessarily mean police had uncovered a genuine terrorist plot.

March 31: As preparations for the NATO summit in Istanbul on June 28-29 get under way, U.S. authorities reportedly asked Turkey to pass command of the city’s air, land, and sea traffic to the U.S. during the summit. (It is noteworthy that two weeks before NATO, Istanbul will host the top-level meeting of the Organization of the Islamic Conference).

April 1: Italian police arrested 161 people related to Islamic extremist groups in a nationwide raid in 12 of Italy’s 20 regions. Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said that the police received “accurate information” about possible attacks on Rome under the orders from al-Qaeda.

April 2: Spanish police found a 24-pound bomb under a high-speed rail line between Madrid and Seville. A railway maintenance worker spotted the device connected to a detonator by a 500-foot cable. Spain’s super-fast trains that travel at almost 200 miles per hour regularly use the line.

On the same day the United States announced that it would start fingerprinting travelers from a further 27 countries, including the European Union and Australia, who had been allowed to travel within the US without visas for up to 90 days. The new rule is understood to be due to the fact that many potential Islamic terrorists—such as the London Eight—are immigrants from the Muslim world or their European-born descendants who hold EU passports.

Also on April 2 the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security issued a warning to law enforcement agencies, local governments and the transportation industry that bombs hidden in luggage could be used in a plot to attack buses and railways in major American cities this summer: “Al Qaeda and other groups have demonstrated the intent and capability to attack public transportation with conventional explosives, vehicle-borne bombs and suicide bombers.”

April 3: Four suspected Islamic terrorists and a Spanish policeman die in a raid on an apartment in a Madrid suburb. On the same day British Home Secretary David Blunkett said that a booklet instructing people what to do in a terrorist attack would be sent by the UK government to every household in the country. The decision reflects the heightened risk of an attack on British soil.

April 4: 20 Iraqis and 4 Salvadorean soldiers died as Spanish-led troops in the Iraqi city of Najaf fought the “Mehdi Army,” an Islamic militia loyal to radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Sadr’s comment: “Terrorize your enemy, God will reward you well for what pleases him.”

WITH VICTORIES LIKE THESE…

A month from now a similar list will be compiled, with new names, new locations, and new victims. Some plots are uncovered and will continue to be foiled, others are anticipated, and a few will succeed. It is a safe bet that for every Jihadist in custody there are a few more at large, and that we’ll see more Madrids in the months and years to come.

On this form the Western world cannot afford to continue “winning” the war on terror for long. The global reach and operational capability of Islamist terror cells is growing. Jihad is alive and well, it is capable of simultaneous attacks in different countries, and it presents a growing threat to the United States. Al-Qaeda and its loosely linked offshoots are fielding a second generation of terrorists, many of them born to the Muslim diaspora in the Western world. The decentralized pattern of new threats makes counter-terrorist measures exceedingly difficult. There is no command and control system to disrupt: just self-motivated groups of young men (and women) deeply embedded in Western host-societies and ready to die so that the infidel may die.

And yet top Bush Administration officials and the President himself remain upbeat about winning the War on Terror. Administration officials may be right when they claim that most of al Qaeda’s senior operatives have been captured or killed, but the claim is essentially meaningless. Well over one-half Viet Cong’s activist core of 1965 were dead by the end of the war in Vietnam, but fresh recruits from an inexhaustible pool quickly replenished their ranks and ensured eventual victory.

The “War on Terror” is not going well because its fundamentals have not been properly considered. The ongoing proceedings before the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States—the “9-11 Commission”—demonstrate much that is wrong with its basic assumptions. The bipartisan ten-member commission has asked all kinds of supposedly hard and probing questions of top officials past and present: Colin Powell and his predecessor Madeleine Albright; Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz; Clinton’s defense secretary William Cohen and national security adviser Samuel Berger; and the former White House counter-terrorism expert Richard Clarke who—two days before his testimony—published a book taking Bush to task for his alleged failure to deal adequately with the terrorist threat. It will soon question Bush’s national security advisor Condoleeza Rice, which the White House had long tried to prevent.

In all those hundreds of hours of testimony the Commission never probed the basis of policy and history that could help explain the problem of terrorism and thus help prevent new tragedies in the future. Three primary and at least five secondary areas of major concern remained unexplored. The primary ones were this country’s immigration policy, the nature of Islam, and the strategy of global dominance. The secondary ones concerned the shortcomings and terrorism-related nuances of U.S. policies in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in the Balkans, vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, and on the issue of NATO enlargement.

THE FIFTH COLUMN GLOSSED OVER

Testifying before the Commission the widow of one of 9-11 victims criticized the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) for granting visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers who were “single, idle young adults with no specific destination in the United States,” the “classic overstay candidates” whose visa application forms were incomplete and incorrect. Other witnesses have criticized the lack of coordination between the INS and other agencies and suggested certain improvements in operational procedures. Their focus was invariably on the “failures” of the system’s functioning, not on the possible flaws of its ideological tenets.

The existence of a large Muslim diaspora in the United States and elsewhere in the Western world was treated as a given. One testimony specifically addressing this issue came from Dr. Abou El Fadl, a devout Muslim and UCLA professor described as “one of the leading authorities in Islamic law in the United States.” El Fadl asserted that, “as with all of the immigrant groups, many American Muslims bring with them dreams of liberty and justice” and he insisted that the war against terrorism demanded “actively resisting and guarding against the alienation of any part of our citizenry.” His assertions, that the “citizenry” was legitimately Muslim in part, and that it should be drafted into the common effort in defense of the United States against terrorism, were not challenged. The underlying multiculturalist assumptions of the immigration policy that had allowed the establishment and growth of this particular segment of “our citizenry” were not critically scrutinized.

In reality the existence of the multi-million-strong Muslim diaspora in the U.S. and elsewhere in the Western world—from Madrid to Montreal, from Buffalo to Berlin—provides the terrorists with the recruits, the infrastructure, and the relative invisibility without which they would not be able to operate. This is the only immigrant group that harbors a substantial segment of individuals who share the key objectives with the terrorists, even if they do not all approve of their methods. A sizeable minority of them wishes to transform the United States of America into a Caliphate and to replace the Constitution with the Sharia by whatever means. A coherent long-term counter-terrorist strategy, therefore, must entail denying Islam the foothold inside the West. But the notion of cultural and religious criteria in determining the eligibility of prospective immigrants is ideologically unacceptable to the ruling American establishment—to the Commission’s panelists and witnesses alike.

NOT KNOWING THY ENEMY

Closely related was the Commission’s failure to address the phenomenon of Islam, and in particular to examine Islam’s impact on its adherents as a political ideology and a program of action. The notion that terrorism is an aberration of Mohammedanism, and not a predictable consequence of the ideology of Jihad, reflected a firmly-rooted bipartisan consensus. The Commission’s behavior again appeared ideological in nature and dogmatic in application. Were it no so, former President Clinton would have been asked to explain his statement to the U.N. General Assembly, made almost exactly three years before 9-11, that “there is no inherent clash between Islam and America.” Were it not so, President George W. Bush would have been asked to explain his often repeated assertion that Islam is a “religion of peace,” that “we know [sic!] that Islam is fully compatible with liberty and tolerance and progress” and that “terrorists who claim Islam as their inspiration defile one of the world's great faiths.”

There are two possibilities here: either Presidents Clinton and Bush and others knew the truth about Islam but pretended otherwise for political reasons, and the Commission quietly understood their need for diplomatic prudence and made the pragmatic decision not to dwell on the issue; or they meant what they said, and the Commission regarded their statements as unremarkable and therefore unworthy of scrutiny.

The former could have been the case in another era, when Western decision-making elites shared an instinctive understanding of who they were and what they were defending. Had they striven to draw the distinction between the “moderate, mainstream” Communists and the “extreme” subversive fringe in the 1950s the Cold War would have been lost. But such robust sense of the self no longer applies in the bipartisan multiculturalist paradigm, and for that reason neither the present Administration nor its immediate predecessors could develop a coherent conceptual image of the adversary without which there could be no viable anti-terrorist strategy. Clinton’s hope to co-opt Islam into a consumerist post-national global village is indistinguishable from Bush’s hope to domesticate Islam under the aegis of a nondenominational deism. Both attempts will continue to fail, but this failure has not been admitted by the Commission.

The third key problem that remained unexamined concerned the link between terrorism and the commitment of the United States to the unrestrained projection of her power everywhere in the world. That commitment, asserted with Bill Clinton’s Kosovo war in 1999, was made official in the National Security Strategy unveiled in September 2002. In a forum supposedly devoted to asking hard questions and “grilling” the respondents it was at least worth asking Mr. Rumsfeld’s or Dr. Wolfowitz’s opinion whether the terrorist threat to America is in any way correlated to the policy of global hegemony implicit in that Strategy, which is largely their brainchild. But on this important issue the Commission was blinkered by the ideology of American exceptionalism—an eminently bipartisan delusion, both in its Clintonian form of “humanitarian interventionism” and in its neoconservative form of global hegemonism. Having internalized such assumptions the Commission was as likely to offer useful insights on the war against terror as Ptolemaic astronomy was able to explain the motions of planetary bodies.

THE INVISIBLE ELEPHANTS IN THE ROOM

When it came to the secondary issues of specific policies, the most important of all—Israel—was strangely absent from the Commission’s deliberations. Different aspects of the U.S. policy in the Middle East were mentioned in various testimonies, but nobody asked the one question that is the mother of all others: is America’s “special relationship” with Israel in any way connected to the terrorist threat? The bipartisan assumption was unstated but clear: the United States should continue to provide open-ended and near-unconditional support to Israel because our unsinkable aircraft carrier is at war with the same terrorists as us.

This may well be true, but an open-minded Commission should not assume a priori that it is true. It should look, without prejudice, into the possibility that a different, less passionate relationship would be beneficial to a long-term anti-terrorist strategy, by reducing the perception of a permanent American bias in Middle Eastern affairs that breeds rage that fuels terrorism. But just as it had failed to look into the option of denying Islamic fifth columnists a foothold at home, the Commission did not explore the ways to stop alienating over one billion Muslims abroad. The possibility that U.S. foreign policy should be reassessed in order to avoid creating conditions for specifically anti-American Islamic hostility was left untouched.

It is perhaps less significant but equally noteworthy that the entire Clinton team was allowed to go through hours of testimony without a single question being asked about the assumptions and objectives of the administration’s policy in the Balkans in 1993-2001. The policy of single-minded support for Bosnian and Albanian Muslims had turned the Balkans from a protectorate of the New World Order into an Islamic threat to Western interests; the evidence is overwhelming and familiar to the readers of Chronicles. Clinton’s intervention in the Balkans resulted in the strengthening of an already aggressive Islamic base in the heart of Europe that is by now all but permanent. He was still in the White House back in 2000 when a highly classified State Department report—released in the aftermath of 9-11—warned that the Muslim-controlled areas of Bosnia had become a safe haven for Islamic terrorists who threaten Europe and the U.S., and who were protected by the Muslim government in Sarajevo. Not a single major terrorist outrage of recent years, most recently in Madrid, was devoid of a Bosnian connection.

The culpability is not only Clinton’s: the problem of collusion between U.S. administrations and Islamic radicals harks back to the support Bin Laden and other fundamentalist Muslims received from Washington following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Admittedly, at the height of the Cold War, Carter’s and Reagan’s advisors could argue that the “blowback” was a risk at least arguably worth taking. A quarter of a century later, however, it is essential to spell out and to rectify more recent blunders of a similar nature. If the War Against Terror is to have any meaning at all, the 9-11 Commission should have investigated the fact that throughout the 1990’s, the U.S. government aided and abetted al-Qa’eda operations in the Balkans, long after it was recognized as a major security threat to the United States. That this did not happen is largely due to both parties having been guilty of providing effective support for Islamic ambitions in pursuit of short-term political or military objectives.

STOP APPEASING COVERT ROGUES

The moving spirit behind the spread of militant Islam throughout the Western world is in Muhammad’s homeland, Saudi Arabia, the home to the Muslim World League and the Organization of the Islamic Conference. Both organizations, and a myriad of ostensibly private charities devoted to Islamic proselytism, are richly endowed by petrodollars from Saudi Arabia’s narrow, ultra-rich ruling kleptocracy.

American politicians have lied about Saudi Arabia for too long. Even Mr. Rumsfeld, normally not a mealy-mouthed man, on a visit to Saudi Arabia in the aftermath of 9-11 appeared strangely evasive on the issue of Saudi funds for Islamic terror. And yet as far back as 1996 a CIA report found that a third of the 50 Saudi-backed charities it studied were tied to terrorist groups. Two years later, according to a feature in U.S. News & World Report (December 15, 2003), the National Security Council pointed at the Saudi government as “the epicenter” of terrorist financing, becoming “the single greatest force in spreading Islamic fundamentalism” and “funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to jihad groups and al Qaeda cells around the world.”

The practice of appeasement of the desert kingdom is inexplicably continuing. Last summer, while congressional committees were gathering evidence for a bipartisan report on terrorist attacks in September 2001, the Administration acted rapidly and decisively to classify a section of the report that covered the delicate subject of Saudi Arabia’s links to 9-11. It was reported at the time that secret parts of the congressional report looked into certain Saudi businessmen and members of the royal family who may have aided and abetted al-Qaida or the suicide hijackers. According to a leaked CIA memorandum, there was “incontrovertible evidence that there is support for these terrorists” at the highest places in Riyyadh. Addressing a joint House-Senate intelligence inquiry in a closed hearing in October 2002, FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged that he had learned from Congress about new evidence: “some facts came to light here and to me, frankly, that had not come to light before.”

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not only the most intolerant Islamic regime in the world; it is also the most powerful and explicit anti-Christian nation on the face of the earth. On both counts it must be brought to heel, now, or else its degenerate ruling clique will be swept away by the likes of Bin Laden.

With Pakistan the score is even more alarming. What was the greater threat to this country’s national security, one may legitimately ask: Iraq’s alleged intention to make plans for eventual development of certain illegal weapons, or a long-term pattern of widespread nuclear technology proliferation by Pakistan—a nuclear power in its own right—from which the main beneficiaries have been three nations (North Kore, Iran, and Libya) singled out by President Bush and his team as members of an “axis of evil” and active promoters of terrorism?

President Bush’s long-standing pretense that the government of General Musharraf is an essential ally in the “War on Terror” and a key non-NATO ally is a dangerous self-delusion. In the same spirit of denial, two years ago Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the United States was not concerned about the potential for misuse of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. In another context such claims could be acceptable as a political expedient vis-à-vis a major Muslim power, but in view of recent revelations concerning Dr. Khan’s proliferation network it would be dangerous for the U.S. Administration to continue believing its own propaganda.

Mr. Bush’s stated objective of seeing Pakistan develop into a “moderate” Islamic state cannot be advanced if Washington continues to turn a blind eye to the transgressions of the regime in Islamabad. Pakistan’s establishment is steeped in Islamic ideology. The army is commanded by officers whose loyalties are divided at best and inimical to Western interests, as was apparent in the fiasco the army suffered in the tribal areas along the Afghan border in recent weeks. Some cooperation with Pakistan in anti-terrorist campaign is perhaps inevitable, just as various Cold War alliances with nasty Third World regimes were sometimes necessary, but the relationship should not go beyond the pragmatic, give-and-take link based on limited objectives.

The facts surrounding Saudi and Pakistani transgressions continue to be clouded by American denials and the feigned optimism that have characterized Washington’s relations with the Muslim world for decades. As long as those two countries’ Islamic character is explicitly upheld, they cannot develop an efficient economy or build a civilized polity. They will remain to be an unstable burden, not an asset, to the United States.

The Bush administration strategy of using military means and dubious power alliances to fight the widespread hatred against the West has failed, including support for “friendly” Islamic regimes such as those in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Those regimes are unsustainable and their change should be either actively managed now, or observed with powerless chagrin later. Continuing appeasement of royal kleptocrats in Riyyadh and duplicitous Islamists in uniform in Islamabad does nothing to help the Muslim world come out of its state of deep denial about its responsibility for its own condition, the denial as irrational as the culture that breeds it.

LEARNING FROM PAST MISTAKES

The establishment of a national commission to investigate terrorist attacks upon the United States was a good idea. It could have been the forum for thinking the unthinkable and making America safer in the process. The decision to appoint to its panel ten political insiders who belong to different parties but share the same culture, values, and prejudices with the prospective witnesses reflected the determination of the Duopoly to prevent any such boldness. The Commission has avoided key issues, and failed America. Its report is yet to be issued, but its tone can be predicted. It will apportion blame for the details, there will be a lot of partisan haggling and horse-trading in the course of its drafting, the Democrats may even issue a minority report blaming Bush. As for the real questions and meaningful survival strategies, there will be none.

It is to be feared that in the aftermath of the worst terrorist outrage in history the duopoly in Washington has learnt nothing and forgot nothing. The war against terror needs to be rethought before it is effectively lost. As it is currently conceived it can never be won.


TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: 911commission; balkans; campaignfinance; longtermstrategy; thewest; trifkovic; wot
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To: MEG33
Yes, your right but now we had better hedge our bets with Pakistan - I would stake lots of money Pakistan will be one of worst enemy some day...
121 posted on 04/09/2004 1:38:52 PM PDT by quant5
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To: quant5
WW2Great Britain/USSR/United States were Allies...

USSR v US (on the sly during hot wars) in the Cold War (and openly in Cuba and other countries that became their "customers" and client states)
122 posted on 04/09/2004 1:46:36 PM PDT by MEG33 (John Kerry's been AWOL for two decades on issues of National Security!)
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To: philosofy123
Damned good read! I am afraid so many people, including our leaders, have their head so far up their ass that if you showed 'em proof they still would not believe.
123 posted on 04/09/2004 3:03:01 PM PDT by Eighth Square (Trash is trash anyway you look at it!)
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To: Coop
He is right. We may be winning the battles, but we are not winning the war. To win the war, we must admit that we are fighting an ideology and not just a few "bad apples". I have yet to see evidence of any so called moderate Muslims. They have never condemned any terrorism against this country but they sure do get vocal when we defend ourselves. They all put allegiance to the religion (ideology) above any country or rational thought. For them, religion and government are inseperable. For this reason alone, they can not be trusted to reside in the US. The fifth column is a reality in the United States and we had better wake up to this fact soon.
124 posted on 04/09/2004 3:13:42 PM PDT by Wolfhound777 (It's not our job to forgive them. Only God can do that. Our job is to arrange the meeting--N.S)
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To: junta
Savage for Prez!
125 posted on 04/09/2004 3:16:33 PM PDT by petercooper (Who leaves a country packed with ponies to come to a non-pony country?)
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To: boris
Freepers will recall that, immediately post-9/11 I called for several measures that people thought 'draconian'. These included:

1. Withdrawing the visas of all citizens of terror-supporting states.
2. Deporting same.
3. Perform deep background checks on all 'naturalized citizens' from those nations.
4. Cessation of issuance of all visas to citizens of those nations.
5. Utilization of the National Guard and other means to secure the borders.
6. Creation of what I called a 'Super Mossad' to silently and swiftly assassinate terrorists all over the world.
7. Several other bellicose suggestions, including nuclear and psychological measures, meant to rock the Islamists (with whom we are in a state of undeclared war) and give us time to regroup and mobilize.


I agree that we should implement numbers 1,2,3,4, and 6 immediately.
126 posted on 04/09/2004 3:17:08 PM PDT by Wolfhound777 (It's not our job to forgive them. Only God can do that. Our job is to arrange the meeting--N.S)
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To: Coop
There have been two terrorist-sponsoring, tyrannical regimes removed from power, and other states have been cowed into submission/cooperation. Terrorists have been uprooted from their training areas. The author covers little or none of this.

We may have removed two regimes from the top, but the gargbage at the bottom is still in both countries and operating. As far as Libya is concerned. I wouldn't accept that they did a 180 degree change just yet.
127 posted on 04/09/2004 3:20:31 PM PDT by Wolfhound777 (It's not our job to forgive them. Only God can do that. Our job is to arrange the meeting--N.S)
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To: r9etb; MarMema; FormerLib
The author needs to by a few vowels

Really? Maybe adding a few vowels to words like "bridge" or "grudge" or "throw" wouldn't hurt either.

128 posted on 04/09/2004 4:37:30 PM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: MarMema; SquirrelKing; Joe Hadenuf; greenwolf; FormerLib; kosta50; Honorary Serb; ...
Serge speaks perfect English and I think has a phD

I met Srdja Trifkovich in Falls Church, Virginia, in June of 1991 when he was completing his PhD dissertation. He dose have a doctorate. At that time I disagreed wiht his pro-royalist position (he served on the Crown Council of the Serbian crown prince but later left for reasons unknown to me). The isse at hand in 1991 was the looming civil war in the former Yugoslavia and the discussion was centered around the representative of the Serbian Renewal Movement (SPO), a royalist party to this date, who was as off the wall as the party's leader, Vuk Drashkovich is to this day.

Srdja has become a respected political analyst since then, and his perceptions are beyond most intellect on this forum.

129 posted on 04/09/2004 4:52:55 PM PDT by kosta50 (Eastern Orthodoxy is pure Christianity)
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To: MarMema
Why are you so sympathetic with the Serbian Communists and their heirs? Milosevic is a long time party member. Per the Britannica Ready Reference, “Born in Serbia, Yugoslavia, he joined the local Communist Party at 18. He later became head of the state-owned gas company and president of a major Belgrade bank. Advised by his wife, a communist ideologue, he became head of the Communist Party in Belgrade (1984) and later in Serbia (1987). He replaced party leaders with his supporters, and in 1989 the Serbian assembly named him president of the republic. His opposition to a confederation with Croatia and Slovenia led to the breakup of Yugoslavia (1991).”

You have been listening to Savage too long. The Serbs are notorious nationalists/fascists bent on destroying surrounding communities. Containing the Serbs is necessary no matter who does it. Serbs stole large parts of Hungary as well as attempting to subjugate non-Serbs in the Balkans. Russians were vigilant supporters of the Serbs for a century or more. Doesn’t that tell you and Michael Savage enough??? If you love liberty, private property, freedom of assembly, and self-determination you must oppose the Communists be they Serbian, Russian, French, or Chinese. Otherwise, your philosophy and outlook on life are inconsistent.
130 posted on 04/09/2004 7:23:09 PM PDT by sefarkas (why vote Democrate-lite???)
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To: sefarkas
Or Croat?
131 posted on 04/10/2004 8:42:14 AM PDT by junta
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To: philosofy123
The root cause of Islamic terrorism in the West are the policies of racist colonialism and genocide being waged by the elite against their own people, the cause that this sham of an investigation dare not mention. Islam doesn't have the power to confront the West, Western leftists do have the power. Islamic terrorism is just a symptom of that intermal civil war, of the fact that the elite have chosen race as a stick to seize and maintain power over the masses. This is the most destructive weapon they could have chosen. The present crop of Islamic terrorists in the West are really nothing, they are premature, the real terrorism and conflict will begin when Muslims make up 20, 30, 40%, of the populations of these countries. The war the West is losing isn't the "War on Terrorism" it's the "War on Territory".
132 posted on 04/10/2004 10:49:39 AM PDT by jordan8 (Multiculturalism: It Just Plain Sucks.)
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To: sefarkas; joan; DTA; vooch; Wraith; Doctor13; MadelineZapeezda; FormerLib; kosta50; greenwolf
You have been listening to Savage too long. The Serbs are notorious nationalists/fascists bent on destroying surrounding communities. Containing the Serbs is necessary no matter who does it.

I don't listen to Savage and the rest of your post is sadly ignorant,but I am pinging some people who might have the time to educate you.

133 posted on 04/10/2004 9:01:25 PM PDT by MarMema (Next Year in Constantinople!)
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To: jordan8
The war the West is losing isn't the "War on Terrorism" it's the "War on Territory".

Some good points in your post.

134 posted on 04/10/2004 9:02:51 PM PDT by MarMema (Next Year in Constantinople!)
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To: MarMema; sefarkas; joan; DTA; vooch; Wraith; Doctor13; MadelineZapeezda; FormerLib; kosta50
The Serbs are notorious nationalists/fascists bent on destroying surrounding communities. Containing the Serbs is necessary no matter who does it.

As far as I know, none of the various claims of evil conduct on the part of Serbs has ever withstood close examination. At the time of the buildup to Kosovo, a number of people from surrounding countries made statements supporting the Serbs on various forums including usenet. I remember one Hungarian from the Vojvodina province noting that Hungarians had NEVER had any major problems dealing with Serbs.

There were about 26 ethnic groups in the Yugoslav federation of which about three ever had any major problems dealing with Serbs and those were the three which were most serious about supporting Hitler in WW-II i.e. Albanians, Croats, and Bosnians.

Albanians are universally hated by everybody on Earth other than Albanians. Their basic program is to outbreed all other Balkan nations, averaging ten or twelve kids per family, ensconsing themselves into little corners of other peoples' countries and doing their breeding thing for 20 tears or so until they can claim to be a majority in the little corner, and then break the little corner off into "Greater Albania".

The genesis of the recent problems in Kosovo was Milosevic's rescinding the autonomy of the province in 89

Basically, he had to; every other ethnic group in the province were being brutalized by the Albanians. Read it:

Typical highlights:

Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.

Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned.

Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.

I mean, that's from a NY Times article in 1987 before there was any axe to grind over Kosovo, at least in America.

I mean, calling the AKs barbarians is almost an unjustifiable insult to the memory of guys like Attilla the Hun, Genseric the Vandal, Ragnar Lothbrook...

Another really good description of the events which led to Slick Clinton's temporarily handing the ancient heartland opf Serbia over to the Albanians

I am an ordinary American; I'm neither Serb, slavic, nor a member of the orthodox church. I have no pony in this race. I found the rationale for the actions in 94-95 questionable and when Kosovo began to heat up, made it my business to find out everything I could about the situation. What I found out was horrifying. Pretty much everything which the West has heard and read about the Balkans over the last dozen years is unadulterated BS, and we basically bombed a totally innocent Christian nation into the stoneage for the benefit of slammite narco terrorists, white trash and savages four years ago.

A typical if horrific example of the extent to which the Western public has been bullshitized is the story of the so-called Bosnian Serb 'death camp' at Trnopolja. Read it and weep.

135 posted on 04/10/2004 10:15:31 PM PDT by greenwolf
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To: philosofy123
One year into what is probably a 25 or 50 year war, and the author presumes to be able to call it? Spare us.
136 posted on 04/10/2004 10:20:10 PM PDT by Balding_Eagle
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To: Migraine
we are losing the war on terror because we are civilized and they are not

We think alike.

137 posted on 04/10/2004 10:34:19 PM PDT by Bernard Marx (In theory there's no difference between theory and practice. But in practice there is.)
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To: sefarkas; joan; DTA; vooch; Wraith; Doctor13; MadelineZapeezda; FormerLib; kosta50; greenwolf
>>>>>You have been listening to Savage too long.<<<<

Farkas, nem értem hate speech, can you translate this into English?

I am so sorry Hungary was American ENEMY in both World Wars and staunch supporter of Soviet Union during Cold WAR. And LOST ALL 3. Hungarians were also Serb ENEMIES in both World Wars and during Cold War. It was Hungarians who commited ATROCITIES against Serbs in both World Wars, not vice versa.

Serbs stole part of Hungary? What part if I may ask? Please take your historical revisionism elsewhere. Nazi sites are good choice.

Hungarians were FASCISTS, NAZIS AND STAUNCH COMMUNISTS during good part of XX century. Your accusation of Serbs of being Commies is a perfect example of PROJECTION.

Here is something to refresh your memory who the Hungarians are:

"The Family" is a monument to victims of The Raid, madeof bronze, 4m in height, on gentry made of brick. The monument is piece of Novi Sad sculptor Jovan Soldatovic. It was placed in 1971. on Kej Zrtava Racije (Raid Victims Quay) in the living memory of The Raid made by hungarian ocupational forces on 21, 22. and 23. of january in 1942., when more than 1,300 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies were killed and thrown uder the ice of the Danube River. In 1992. 4 plates in serbian and hebrew, which give basic information about the event, were placed on the monument along with 60 plates with the names of the killed.

I also understand you can not bear the fact that Serbs won the first allied victory in WWI:

BATTLE OF CER (1914) When the First World War started the Austro-Hungarian army under the command of General Pochorek pushed into Serbia across the Sava and the Drina. Sabac fell. The Serb Second Army under the command of General Stepa Stepanovic advanced towards Cer, the Sumadija Division towards Sabac and the Cavalry Division towards Macva. On the left flank the Third Army under the command of General Sturm entered the battle. During August 1914 a great battle was waged in the area of Cer, in which around 200,000 men with a great number of artillery pieces of ordnance took part on the Austro-Hungarian side, and around 180,000 men on the Serb side. The main battle at Cer lasted from August 16 to 19. On Transfiguration the Serb army won a great victory, pushed the enemy army back across the Drina and completely thwarted the Austro-Hungarian war plan. Around 25,000 Austro-Hungarian officers and soldiers were killed and wounded, and around 4500 were captured. The Serb army lost around 16,000. The aggressor withdrew from Sandzak as well. It was the first Allied victory in the First World War, because of which the reputation of Serbia improved considerably.

BATTLE OF THE KOLUBARA (1914)

After the battle of the Drina in September 1914, the Serb army was forced by the advancing Austro-Hungarian army to retreat towards the river Kolubara and Ljig. In the occupied areas the enemy army committed unprecedented atrocities against civilians, and in mid-November the Serb army had to retreat even further and stopped on the frontline 130 kilometres long: Mt. Varovnica-Kosmaj-Vagan-Takovo-Kablar-Ovcar-Mt. Jelica. There were around 160,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers and around 120,000 Serb soldiers. Completely unexpectedly for the enemy, the Serb forces mounted an attack on December 3. By exerting persistent pressure, the Serb First Army, under the command of General Zivojin Misic, broke the enemy front; the Second Army exerted the frontal pressure on the enemy, while the Belgrade defence troops withstood the attack and stabilised the situation by a counterattack on December 6. In the night between December 6 and 7, the Austro-Hungarian army retreated across the Kolubara and by December 15, it was forced to withdraw from Serbia completely. In the Battle of the Kolubara more than 43,000 Austro-Hungarian soldiers and officers, as well as large quantities of war material, were captured.

Cer and Drina are taught in many Military academies around the globe as an example how determined force can destroy superior invader.

138 posted on 04/10/2004 11:46:16 PM PDT by DTA (you ain't seen nothing yet)
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To: sefarkas
Farkas,

Don't waste your time on FR, this is better place for your historiographical and ethnological analysis

139 posted on 04/10/2004 11:57:12 PM PDT by DTA (you ain't seen nothing yet)
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To: sefarkas; Honorary Serb
And welcome to Free Republic, Mr. Schwartz.
140 posted on 04/11/2004 6:31:14 AM PDT by FormerLib (Feja e shqiptarit eshte terorizm.)
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