Thank you for your response. I'm afraid that I must say it would appear your anti-Serb blinders cloud your thinking. You need to realize that we are fighting the war on terror, not re-fighting the Balkan wars.
Please re-read the september 11 Commission Report. Pay particular attention to Chapter 2, specifically look at Note 37. Notes.
You will see that the Commission references Al-Qaeda's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network, the very book the author of the article references!
It would appear that you picked up on this line...
Therefore, it is safe to say that the birth of al-Qaeda as a force on the world stage can be traced directly back to 1992, when the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic issued a passport in the Vienna embassy to Osama bin Laden.
I guess that line was too nuanced for you. the author is not claiming Al Qaeda was born in Bosnia, but rather that the Bosnian War provided the platform to "...establish a European domestic terrorist infrastructure in order to plot their violent strikes against the United States". Perhaps you think that doesn't qualify as the "world stage"!
Yes, Bush was President in 1992 and should be rightly condemned for his dealing with Bosnia. However, without clinton's support the Croats and Serbs may have prevented the cesspool from surviving.
Exactly. And the nationalist wars of seccession in the former Yugoslavia were not part of that war. That's why during the war on terror the USA has reduced troops in the Balkans from over 30,000 to less than 2,000 (mostly in Kosovo) while deploying most of our Army & Marine corps to fight the actual enemy in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa; sending special ops trainers throughout North Africa & Central Asia, and fielding advisers in the Phillipines. We're taking the fight to where the enemy is, not where he ain't.