Posted on 05/29/2004 12:24:36 PM PDT by Destro
Editorial
While the Bush Administration dances around their lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction used to justify the conquest of Iraq, let us recall the Clinton administration lied to justify their conquest of Kosovo in 1999. No mass graves were found, except in places where a few dozen Islamic terrorists, and civilians caught in the crossfire, were killed in firefights with Serbian police. There was no "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbian army, which includes thousands of Muslim soldiers. Reports that civilians were forced to vacate cities by evil Serbian police proved false; they fled because they were terrified as NATO aircraft unleashed hundreds of bombs over a three week period, killing 2000 civilians. This destroyed the Serbian economy and terrorized their government into submission, which resulted in a compromise in which Serbia retained sovereignty over its Kosovo province and agreed to allow NATO peacekeepers to occupy Kosovo on a temporary basis.
As with the conquest of Iraq, it is uncertain why this conflict arose. Some think it was created by the powerful NATO bureaucracy to justify their post Cold war existence. Defense contractors made handsome profits though supplemental funding while by contractors like Halliburton continue to pocket billions of dollars to support the occupation of Kosovo. Others claim it was a public relations gimmick by President Clinton, while a few think more sinister reasons were involved. Here is an excellent update on the present situation:
THE NATIONAL POST (Canada) | 2004-04-06 |
We bombed the wrong side?
Major General Lewis MacKenzie - Armed Forces of Canada (retired)
Five years ago our television screens were dominated by pictures of Kosovo-Albanian refugees escaping across Kosovo's borders to the sanctuaries of Macedonia and Albania. Shrill reports indicated that Slobodan Milosevic's security forces were conducting a campaign of genocide and that at least 100,000 Kosovo-Albanians had been exterminated and buried in mass graves throughout the Serbian province. NATO sprung into action and, in spite of the fact no member nation of the alliance was threatened, commenced bombing not only Kosovo, but the infrastructure and population of Serbia itself -- without the authorizing United Nations resolution so revered by Canadian leadership, past and present.
Those of us who warned that the West was being sucked in on the side of an extremist, militant, Kosovo-Albanian independence movement were dismissed as appeasers. The fact that the lead organization spearheading the fight for independence, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was universally designated a terrorist organization and known to be receiving support from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was conveniently ignored.
The recent dearth of news in the North American media regarding the increase in violence in Kosovo compared to the comprehensive coverage in the European press strongly suggests that we Canadians don't like to admit it when we are wrong. On the contrary, selected news clips on this side of the ocean continue to reinforce the popular spin that those dastardly Serbs are at it again.
A case in point was the latest crisis that exploded on March 15. The media reported that four Albanian boys had been chased into the river Ibar in Mitrovica by at least two Serbs and a dog (the dog's ethnic affiliation was not reported). Three of the boys drowned and one escaped to the other side. Immediately, thousands of Albanians mobilized and concentrated in the area of the divided city. Attacks on Serbs took place throughout the province resulting in an estimated 30 killed and 600 wounded. Thirty Serbian Christian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed, more than 300 homes were burnt to the ground and six Serbian villages cleansed of their occupants. One hundred and fifty international peacekeepers were injured.
Totally ignored in North America were the numerous statements from impartial sources that said there was no incident between the Serbs, the dog and the Albanian boys. NATO Police spokesman Derek Chappell stated on March 16 that it was "definitely not true" that the boys had been chased into the river by Serbs. Chappell went on to say that the surviving boy had told his parents that they had entered the river alone and that three of his friends had been swept away by the current. Admiral Gregory Johnson, the overall NATO commander, further stated that the ensuing clashes were "orchestrated and well-planned ethnic cleansing" by the Kosovo-Albanians. Those Serbs forced to leave joined the 200,000 who had been cleansed from the province since NATO's "humanitarian" bombing in 1999. The '"cleansees" have become very effective "cleansers."
In the same week a number of individuals posing as Serbs ambushed and killed a UN policeman and his local police partner. During the firefight one of them was wounded which caused an immediate switch from Serbian to Albanian as he screamed, "I've been hit"! The UN pursued the attackers and tracked them to an Albanian-run farm where they discovered weapons and the wounded Albanian who had died from his wounds. Four Albanians were arrested. Once again, the ambush had been reported in the United States but not the follow-up which clearly indicated yet another orchestrated provocation by the Albanian terrorists.
Kosovo is administered by the UN, the very organization many Canadians have indicated they would like to see take over from the United States in Iraq. The fact the UN cannot order its civilian employees to go or stay anywhere -- they have to volunteer -- combined with recent history that saw the UN abandon Iraq after a single brutal attack on their compound in Baghdad and the reality that Kosovo, under the organization's administration, is a basket case, disqualifies it from consideration for such a role.
Since the NATO/UN intervention in 1999, Kosovo has become the crime capital of Europe. The sex slave trade is flourishing. The province has become an invaluable transit point for drugs en route to Europe and North America. Ironically, the majority of the drugs come from another state "liberated" by the West, Afghanistan. Members of the demobilized, but not eliminated, KLA are intimately involved in organized crime and the government. The UN police arrest a small percentage of those involved in criminal activities and turn them over to a judiciary with a revolving door that responds to bribes and coercion. The objective of the Albanians is to purge all non-Albanians, including the international community's representatives, from Kosovo and ultimately link up with mother Albania thereby achieving the goal of "Greater Albania." The campaign started with their attacks on Serbian security forces in the early 1990s and they were successful in turning Milosevic's heavy-handed response into worldwide sympathy for their cause. There was no genocide as claimed by the West -- the 100,000 allegedly buried in mass graves turned out to be around 2,000, of all ethnic origins, including those killed in combat during the war itself.
The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world.
Funny how we just keep digging the hole deeper!
Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
(c) 2004 National Post . All Rights Reserved.
Serbia is a European democracy which maintains friendly relations with all nations. It delivered Milosevic to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague two years ago, although they are having trouble accumulating evidence that he used excessive force to suppress Islamic terrorists in Kosovo. Fighting had increased in the late 1990s as the CIA shipped arms to the KLA terror group and helped coordinate Iranian arm shipments to Albania funded in part by Al Qaeda. Deposing Milosevic and turning him over for "war crimes" was a key demand, yet NATO (e.g. the United States) has yet to announce when the temporary NATO peacekeepers will depart.
Kosovo has been part of Serbia for hundreds of years, and remains part of Serbia as recognized by every nation on Earth, including the United States. NATO and the UN have failed to keep the peace in Kosovo, and lack the resolve to pursue Islamic terrorists and criminal gangs based there. The United States hasn't the resources to provide security forever, and no European ally is anxious to add troops. The solution is obvious; allow Serbian peacekeepers to return to Serbia's Kosovo province. They are willing and experienced at this task, something they had done successfully for hundreds of years, until NATO pushed them aside.
Yes, there will be increased violence as Islamic terrorists and criminal gangs battle Serbian police, once again. The Serbians will win, once again. The terrorists will be pushed out and criminal activity reduced. Violence will also decrease in neighboring Macedonia which is often terrorized by rouge gangs from Kosovo. Serbians can return to their stolen properties and rebuild their Christian churches. During a 2000 presidential debate, George Bush said: "But one of the problems we have in the military is we're in a lot of places around the world. And I mentioned one, and that's the Balkans. I would very much like to get our troops out of there." Given the strain on the US Army, American troops should leave Kosovo by years' end. The last American officer to leave should tell his Serbian replacement: Sorry about all this, it was our mistake. Good luck and good bye.
Carlton Meyer editor@G2mil.com
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What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism, all else is publicity.
['The US and NATO should NEVER have bothered Milosevic and the Yugoslavian breakup....]
Right. Milosevic's "original sin" was that he was a socialist who resisted the West's push (led mainly by Germany and the US) for the breakup of Yugoslavia as far back as 1989. He didn't want to subject Yugoslavia to the painful economic reforms of privatization, strict IMF rules, etc. that were afflicting so many of the other former Eastern-Bloc countries under communist rule.
Because of his resistance to the West, the western media painted the conflicts in the Balkans as a war of good (The Muslims) against evil (The Serbs). As such, and with strong media support, it was easy for the Clinton administration to stigmatize Serbia as a rogue nation. Unfortunately, we're (Serbs) still paying the price for this negative stigmatization.
Why hasn't Wesley Clark been called on the carpet for this?
Perhaps he thought they would be grateful to him. If so it didn't work.
"Is Saran and mustard gas sold over the counter now?"
Must be in Canada.Judging from this guy's rant, These substances could well be his chosen recreational inhalants.
I quit reading the article after those words. The author of this article is an idiot.
I agree with you. Frankly, I think that President Milosevic and General Maladic were the good guys.
Bumping for a later read.
You are right, the real bad guys were Ahmed Ceku, Holbrook, Clark, Walker and mass media propagandists.
we took the wrong side.
Slobo should get an award.
We should turn him and his people loose on the islamists...
Some of the terrorists in Afganistan, were actually allies from the balkans conflict... killing us in Afghanistan.
We should turn on the Islamists
The US will have to go back to Kosovo? See that picture up there? Of Camp Bondsteel? That is the largest American military base in Europe outside of Germany - we are already in Kosovo.
That is proof of being leftist? You have no clue what being a leftists or rightist is do you?
No kidding.
Now of course, brace yourself for the (inevitable) flame-fest from our mutual acquaintance 'RonlyBonlyJones'....
The title should read BILL CLINTON bombed the wrong side.
Otherwise they will blame bush and michael more will make a new documentary linking the two
In a democracy the people are responsible....
Just another "Clinton foreign policy triumph" that went bad and killed thousands of people who were on the right side. Evil triumphed again.
While I agree we bombed the wrong side, I don't agree of course that Bush lied about Iraq. I am sick and tired of seeing the lie that he lied!!!
"Just my opinion; means nothing to anyone else."
I just post my opinion; didn't ask for psychoanalysis.
I DO know right from wrong.
...Good read. Thanks for the post.
True that.
And I always wonder how people are going to react when the time comes for the US to defend some southwest region from secession...simply because a minority population eventually attains majority status
I don't think that analogy applies. Kosovo had not been part of Serbia for close to five centuries when it was awarded to Serbia in 1913 by the Great Powers after the 1st Balkan War. By that time the Albanians had long been in a majority status and considered Kosovo an integral part of Albanian lands. In fact the Albanian modern nationalist movement, the League of Prizren, started in the 1870s in Kosovo. Most Albanians have never accepted what they consider to be an unjust Great Power diktat that amputated the Albanian populated lands of Kosovo away from the rest of the Albanians.
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