Posted on 04/16/2007 12:33:21 PM PDT by Bokababe
When the outcome of a tragedy is known in advance, it finds ways of occurring earlier than expected. In this case, the fate of 100,000 Serbian Christians who remain in Kosovo may pre-empt the debate over Europe's eventual absorption into the Muslim world.
A new book on the Islamification of Europe appears almost weekly, adding to the efforts of Ben Wattenberg, Oriana Fallaci, Bat Ye'or, George Weigel, Mark Steyn, Philip Jenkins and a host of others. Scholars debate whether the decline and fall of Europe will occur by mid-century, or might be postponed until 2100. The inconvenient Serbs may force the issue on Europe a great deal sooner.
If Serbia and Russia draw a line in the sand over the independence of Kosovo, we may observe the second occasion in history when a Muslim advance on Europe halted on Serbian soil.....
(Excerpt) Read more at atimes.com ...
American Balkan Ping!
I have been very disappointed at the Republicans, President Bush, congress, virtually every conservative talking head in the country, for not taking up this issue.
They have been avoiding it like the plague.
Clinton fought that damnable war on the wrong side, although one cannot blame it entirely on him, since Tony Blair, Gerhardt Schroeder, and all the Socialists and one-worlders in Europe supported the war too.
They are STILL constantly saying that it was a “good war.” No, it was NOT a good war. It was a war that we fought on the wrong side, it was completely against our national interests, it was against the interests of Europe, it was against a sovereign nation, it was NOT authorized by the UN, and it basically amounted to one big war crime after another.
I don’t blame our troops who did as they were told. But we deliberately bombed civilian targets, took out power stations and dams, left the population of Belgrade to starve and freeze in midwinter, bombed apartments, a TV station that was broadcasting embarrassing truths, a passenger train crossing a bridge, all the bridges that supplied the city, ambulances, refugee columns, and God knows what else.
Weasley Clark also tried to start a war against Russia by attacking their forces, not once but twice.
Incredible that no one wants to open their mouths and tell the truth about this fiasco.
I hate when the Russians are right and we’re wrong.
"While America's attention is riveted on Iraq, Russia is outraged at the American-backed plan for Kosovo's independence, proposed by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari. Kosovo comprised the historic Serbian heartland, Christian Serbs comprise less than a tenth of the present population...
"The Bill Clinton administration, in this writer's considered view, provoked NATO's 1999 bombing war against Serbia with malice of forethought, as a gesture to the Muslim world. The United States in effect was willing to bomb Christians in order to protect Muslims."
Wouldn't it be ironic if that were to happen, considering how nonchalantly the West seems to be about throwing the Serbs under the bus.
BS ALERT - We saw it for what it was - to get Monica off the headlines...
Is the “US-Muslim” partnership in the Balkans also part of the Bush administration foreign policy?
To put it another way, is GWB’s Balkan policy no difference than Clinton’s?
It seems so, if I read the article correctly.
“But there are limits to what the Orthodox Christian world will tolerate, and they may have been reached in Kosovo.”
Indeed there are!
BS ALERT - We saw it for what it was - to get Monica off the headlines...”
Probably true. But what is bothering is that it’s not clear to me that GWB has reversed any of the Monica-driven policy. What am I missing here?
I think the Clintons went along with the Brits, Huns, and the French (who did not want another million or so Albanians on their welfare rolls) in intervening against the Serbs because of the Juanita Broderick rape allegations all over the MSM, which was a year after the Monica incidents. Do I think the Clintons would be so corrupt that they would use the military in such a fashion? Yes indeed, they are that corrupt, and even more so. That is why I fear a second Clinton regime more than I fear the jihadists.
I want to tip my hat to all of those who stand up against this injustice. Cheers to all of you. Don’t let America get dragged into this and don’t let it just happen.
Europeans call Kosovo the “cowards war”. NATO personel knew from day one they had another case of dog wagging and could not possibly ask anybody to go into harms way for it, and so they tried bombing military targets from almost earth orbit for about a month and then, when they found out they could not hurt the Serbian military from 25000 feet, they embarked upon a two month long campaign of war crimes, mainly bombing civilians and civilian infrastructure in Serbia.
And Republicans like Bob Dole or Newt Gingrich were pressuring him too. Clinton was accused of being an Chamberlain like appeaser who is too cowardly to face the Second Hitler (or was is Third, Fourth ... ?)
National Review was braying for Serbian blood as well (I canceled my many years subscription to NR in response, I used to send them donations before).
Some texts from 1990s:
* To: hozo@math.lsa.umich.edu
* Subject: Call.White.House
* From: BOSNET@math.gmu.edu (Bosnian Electronic Network)
* Date: Thu, 29 Apr 93 17:50:44 -0700
* Organization: BOSNET (Bosnian Electronic Network)
Contribution by: Andras.R.
As the Clinton Administration continues to "consider its options" while keeping a wary eye on the opinion polls, a mighty chorus of media apologists has emerged from the woodwork to "explain" to the public why the U.S. couldn't and probably shouldn't do anything to save Bosnia.
The following piece by Senior Associate Editor H.D.S. Greenway appeared on the op-ed page of the BOSTON GLOBE today (29 Apr 93). On the facing page the LETTERS TO THE EDITOR column is topped by an item entitled "Serbs have been misunderstood by the world" --the second pro-Serbian letter to appear this week (no pro-intervention letters have been published so far).
THIS IS WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT WE LET THE WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS KNOW NOW THAT THERE ARE AMERICANS WHO CARE ABOUT BOSNIA AND ITS PEOPLE.
PLEASE take a moment and call (again) to tell them you've had enough of the hand-wringing and equivocation. CALL the White House comment line: 202-456-1111 today. Call your legislators. Write and call your local newspapers and TV stations. Do it even if you've done it many times before, before the moment slips away.
--------------------------------
(C) BOSTON GLOBE
29 APRIL 1993
BEFORE WE JOIN A WAR, SOME QUESTIONS
by H.D.S. Greenway
In the last few weeks, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica has become another Guernica in the eyes of the West, and the Clinton administration is being drawn inexorably toward military intervention in the Balkan civil war.
Secretary of State Warren Christopher has laid out what he calls the "severe tests" of an interventionist policy: It must be clearly stated, there should be a strong likelihood of success, there must be an "exit strategy," and it must win sustained public support in this country.
None of those conditions has been met.
But a public mood is rising. Television has zeroed in on Bosnia while other civil wars and ethnic cleansings go relatively unreported. Respected opinion makers from both left and right have been beating the intervention drum, taunting Clinton, calling his caution a weakness and making shallow, ill-considered comparisons with Hitler-appeasing Neville Chamberlain.
Before the United States commits itself to war, however, there are three questions that the administration needs to answer if intervention is to meet Christopher's "severe tests."
First, who will be our enemies? Second, what are our war aims? Third, what will we do if limited intervention fails to achieve our aims?
Bosnian Serbs are not allowed to link up their territories in what would become a "Greater Serbia," but the Croats in their part of Bosnia-Herzegovina fly the Croatian flag, use Croatian money and have linked up with Croatia.
If we will go to war against Serbian aggrandizement in Bosnia, will we also bomb Croats to prevent Greater Croatia?
Will our war aim be "stopping the genocide now," as Sen. Joseph Biden has said? If so, whose genocide? Only last week in Central Bosnia, Muslims and Croats were at each other's throats and, according to the United Nations, summary executions, massacres and ethnic cleansings were committed by both Muslim and Croat factions.
And while world attention was on Serbs shelling Srebrenica, the BBC reported on the mass graves the Serbs were finding just a few miles away in which lay the corpses of Serbs who had been decapitated, mutilated and tortured by Muslims during the Muslims' Christmas offensive.
Simplistic analysts have put all the blame for the Bosnian civil war on the Serbs and their leader, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Communist turned ultra-nationalist who has played the ethnic card to fan the flames of hatred. That Croatia's leader, Franjo Tudjman, has done much the same thing goes largely ignored. The real cause of the war, however, was as UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali described it in an interview last summer. "You have three ethnic groups, and they have not taken into account the point of view of one of the three, which was the Serbs."
Croats and Muslims were granted rights of self-determination that the large Serb minorities living outside the province of Serbia were denied. Serbs had historical reasons to fear Croatian and Muslim domination, and Milosevic was able to take advantage of those fears.
True, the Serbs are responsible for the most atrocities, but if we intervene to tip the military balance against Serbs, will we be pre- pared to make war on Muslims and Croats if they turn on Serb civilians to enlarge their own territories?
This is not a cut-and-dried matter of forcing an invader out of another country. This is an entangled, tripartite civil war with 500 years of hatred. If putting back together the Humpty Dumpty of Bosnian unity --never more than an illusion-- is our aim, we'd better think in terms of a 100-year "exit strategy."
Lastly, what if a limited intervention fails to end the fighting and accelerates it instead? Unfortunately for Clinton, he will have to live with the results of intervention while pundits promoting war today will be the first to denounce him should things go wrong tomorrow.
[...] THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION renounced a “military solution” to the Bosnia crisis and called for more diplomacy. The policy shift preceded Thursday’s NATO summit in Brussels, at which the allies announced that disagreements over Bosnia policy had been set aside. On Sunday, incoming Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich blasted Clinton's Bosnia policy and called for the withdrawal of UNPROFOR, the arming and training of Bosnian Government forces, and extensive airstrikes against the Bosnian Serbs [...]
(December 5, 1994, Balkan Watch - A Weekly Review of Current Events Volume 1.13)
Yes, that was the Wag the Dog episode.
I’m trying to recall....Didn’t Thatcher also support military action?
I don’t think I recall anyone taking up the Serb cause in U.S. or Europe, left or right. I think the debate was whether we were going to be strong, or weak.
That doesn’t mean that we now can’t see that the Serbs may now have our interest aligned with theirs and that our future doesn’t lie with Islam, no matter where.
it’s not clear to me that GWB has reversed any of the Monica-driven policy
I fear that our elected government is not in total control of foreign policy. Other shadowy non elected players and their stooges manage foreign affairs.
Weren't the Serbs the largest ethnic group in Bosnia at the start of WWI? Also, I don't believe the Muslims were EVER the majority of the population of Bosnia. Weren't they only 44% of the population 1993?
Other than this error, this is a very good article.
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.