Posted on 07/17/2007 8:06:03 AM PDT by Bokababe
After my article “The ‘Successful War’ we Lost in Kosovo” came out in this month’s American Legion Magazine, I received a letter from an American soldier who deployed there last year. He was stunned that anyone was talking about Kosovo, even more that someone was aware of the growth of Islamic fundamentalism in Kosovo and of the jihadists passing through there freely. “With all the attention on Iraq,” he told me by phone, “everyone underestimates this region. No one understands that what happens here will play a key role in European security for the next 10 [or more] years.”
Following is the most recent of a series of letters from this soldier, revealing the devastating effects on our troops when the United States allies itself with Iran and al-Qaeda in a given area. In the coming days, he has promised to send additional letters that will demonstrate our troops’ confusion about their mission in Kosovo -- something that NATO troops have been grappling with since they first arrived in Kosovo in 1999.
Letter One: “If the Albanians Rise up to Fight Us”
I was about to write you, more lovely news...terrorists, "myth or reality"? There's some more [Albanian] terrorists in our AO [area of operations] now and apparently a VBIED [vehicle-borne improvised explosive device], those nasty things that drive around and then go ka-boom. My friends and I are asking ourselves "are we on the right side?" This isn't pretty. If I were to put a time frame on this, I'd say we've got a month before something really bad happens. And Bush will have another war on his hands…We shouldn't have meddled with someone else's problem.…
My friend was making a video for the end of the deployment and was asking me a bunch of questions, for a lot of them, I was at a loss for words, because I can't really say what I feel due to the fact that the people back home want us to believe in the mission here, as well as our command, and I couldn't bring myself to say anything, even if it was B.S. My friend, the sergeant, just laughed, he thought it was an appropriate response.
I look around me and I do see a lot of soldiers who still really don't have a clue about this place and what can happen, and I wonder how they'll react if something does happen and bullets start flying…I had this discussion with some of my friends who've been in combat. If something does happen, how will our command react and perform? I'm going to take a big risk here, but I'm going to tell you something because I think it's important. We're not in any kind of shape to deal with an insurgency, if a sufficiently sized one arises. There are (reported) 16,000 KFOR/NATO troops garrisoned here. How many of them do you think are combat arms (infantry, cavalry, scouts, snipers, special forces)? The average infantryman in the U.S. Army has about 60 people, roughly, who support him. That's just for the U.S. Now, that was something I remember from Basic Training that my drill sergeant told us. What about our allies? It is rumored that we have a QRF (quick reaction force) of a couple large units that can come to our aid, but how long do you think it will take them to get from Western Europe to us on short notice, realistically, due to the two fronts we have in Afghanistan and Iraq?
I talked to my roommate about this, [a] Gulf War veteran. He told me it wouldn't last long, but that's naive. He fought against a conventional military in a conventional conflict that lasted no more than 100 hours on the ground. Look at Vietnam, Rhodesia, other parts of Africa, and of course the war we are fighting now. We would fight guerillas who know the terrain, are professional fighters and have fought in the Balkans for a good portion of their lives, and have had years to watch, study, and case us and our allies. They know our rotations, our equipment, our capabilities, and our shortfalls. I'm not a strategist, but I know enough about military history and strategy to know that we'd be against superior odds, perhaps not numerically but definitely when it came to knowing the terrain and fighting skills/techniques. All it would take for these guys to put a hurt on us would be simple hit and run tactics and to implement the same fighting techniques of the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Chechnya. Scary thought, right? The Confederacy held the Union for almost six years with poor arms and equipment simply by motivation (their will to fight for their cause) and knowing the terrain. We took on the greatest army in the world in our fight for independence and won by the same two factors, knowledge of terrain and will to fight. These people are no different.
Here's an interesting question for you. If the Albanians rise up to fight us, do you think we'd find ourselves allying with Serbia to put down the insurgency? Do you think they'd offer their help? Something I'm curious about, a friend of mine asked me that. I'm glad that there is someone out there that is interested in hearing what we have to say and wants to hear our side of the story. I think it needs to be told. Especially if things happen, someone needs to know how this all began and how we were thrown into it. It's kind of funny that I say this as I remember the lines from a Spartan, "Go and tell them that here obedient to their laws we lie". Well, I better get to work. I'll be around for a little bit before the fun begins. Take care, and I hope all is well back home.
Cheers,
An anonymous U.S. soldier in Kosovo
marking
Doesn't this one predate the administration of G. W. Bush?
bttt
Yes, this just another extension of US meddling in Balkan affairs. Clinton was Islam’s best friend.
“Here’s an interesting question for you. If the Albanians rise up to fight us, do you think we’d find ourselves allying with Serbia to put down the insurgency? Do you think they’d offer their help?”
Why wouldn’t they? I mean all we did was illegally ignore every international law and treaty since the end of WWII, (when Serbia was our ally), and bomb Serbia into submission because they did not want to allow Muslim terrorists to murder Christian Serbs so as to take over the ancient Serbian Christian land of Kosovo.
Since then Serbs are being murdered and ethnically cleansed and Orthodox Christian churches are being burned in unprescedented numbers by the Muslim extreemist terrorists that We facilitated in Kosovo.
Our foriegn policy is quite insane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull_Tower
Actually, the Serbs would assist us in a heartbeat. They'd be overjoyed that we've finally come to our senses and started fighting our common enemy in the Balkans.
Believe it or not, something similar did happen during WWII with us & the Serbs.
During WWII , the Allies switched political and military support for Yugoslav General Draza Mihailovic to Yugoslav Communist, Marshall Tito, based on false intelligence provided by the British “Burgess & Philby” ring of Bolshevik spies, ultimately ushering in over 40 years of communism in Yugoslavia. Yet even after this withdrawal of Allied support, General Mihailovic & the Serbs rescued 500 downed American flyers from behind enemy lines in a operation known as the Halyard Mission. At great risk and loss of life to themselves, Serb soldiers & villagers, and American Serbs, helped transport our 500 downed American airmen to safety. Despite continual pleas from the rescued American airmen to the US Congress to save him, Marshall Tito eventually executed General Mihailovic. However in 1948, President Harry Truman posthumously awarded Serb General Mihailovic the Legion of Merit, the highest award that can be granted a foreign national. And, after much consideration, in 1948, American Legion Headquarters also granted us the right to be called American Legion Post 827,“ Draza Mihailovic” – the only American Legion Post in the world to be named after a foreign national -- and it is named for “a Serb”.
For many years, the Legion “Draza Mihailovic” Post was also the only “thank you” that the Serbs ever heard from the US for saving our soldiers, as General Mihailovic’s Legion of Merit award was classified by our government until the mid 1960’s (so as not to offend Tito) and the actual medal remained in a US vault far longer. At long last, on May 9, 2005 (fifty-seven years after it was granted, and six years after the NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia) the Legion of Merit was finally presented to General Mihailovic’s granddaughter Gordana in a ceremony in Belgrade, with Arthur Jibilian , the last living rescued American airman, present. Yet, not one single major news agency ran this untold WWII story of Serbian heroism in support of America!
So the question would be, would Serbs do the same for American soldiers again?
Hard to say. If they no longer think that America has any integrity, probably not. If they believe that the US was just "misguided" in the Balkans, then they would. And Serbs really want to believe that the latter is the case, but we keep proving to them that we are deliberately selling them down the river.
Not only that, no Hollywood insider will touch the subject considering all the hype surrounding "Saving Private Ryan" and the other scores of WWII themed films post SPR, one would think that such an illustrious mission would have made it to celluloid and could have been another patriotic rallying point in the memory of our WWII veterans.
The greatest rescue of Americans in history is taboo for the leftist liberal idiots in Hollywood to talk about.
Hollywood really does hate America, they prefer canned mindless stupidity like "Behind Enemy Lines".
| Fueling the Fires of Resistance Army Air Forces Special Operations in the Balkans during World War II |
... Meanwhile the British grew impatient with reports of fighting between the Cetniks and Partisans and with the lack of Cetnik action against the Germans. In May Prime Minister Winston Churchill decided to send a mission to the Partisans in order to gather reliable information about their effectiveness.
F.W.D. Deakin, leader of the mission to Tito, arrived in the midst of a major Nazi offensive, Operation SCHWARTZ. He shared the Partisans' hardships as they struggled to evade the powerful attack and came to admire their courage. Soon British communications intercepts (ULTRA) confirmed Deakin's impression that the Partisans were doing the bulk of the fighting in Yugoslavia. Operation SCHWARTZ, the Germans reported in coded Enigma messages, had left 5,697 Partisans killed but caused only 15 casualties among the Cetniks. This information prompted the British to begin airdrops to the Partisans on June 25, 1943.
---------
The successful and sustained evacuation of Allied airmen from the Balkans, with the assistance of both Cetniks and Partisans, ranks as one of the outstanding achievements of AAF special operations. Between January 1, 1944, and October 15, 1944, according to statistics compiled by the Air Crew Rescue Unit, 1,152 American airmen were airlifted from Yugoslavia, 795 with Partisan assistance and 356 with the help of the Cetniks.
While we're duly grateful for the help of the Chetniks, their priority was ensuring Serbian hegemony over Yugoslavia after the Germans left, rather than fighting the Germans until they left.
But if you prefer the conspiracy theory view of events, knock yourself out. Just don't be surprised if you're never able to reconcile American actions with your take on events.
"An astonishing, never-before-told story of the Second World War, based on newly declassified documents and exclusive interviews.
In 1944 the OSS set out to recover more than 500 Allied airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time."
Gregory A. Freeman is an award-winning writer with over 25 years in journalism. He is the author of Sailors to the End: The Deadly Fire on the USS Forrestal and the Heroes Who Fought It.
I just hope to God that Tom Hanks buys the rights to it!
BB
Leave it to our lone resident Jihadist-supporter to choose the Communist partisans over the Serb Chetniks who actually saved the American flyers!
I guess you don’t want to hear about the Serb crewman who flew 4 B-24’s for the US Army Air Corps, either?
So try to be useful and make some more pancakes already.
Absolute bullsh*t, Tito executed several well planned retreats, you’re way out of your element.
All of which was later. proven to be propaganda. Various sources, including Michael Lees book, "The Rape of Serbia" (Lees was in WWII Yugoslavia during the war), "The Web of Disinformation" by David Martin, USAF Major Richard Felman -- and later even Milovan Djilas who was Tito's righthand man during the war, proved everything you said to be untrue.
A guy named Klugman, who was in charge of WWII British Intelligence for Yugoslavia, was also the Bolshevik double-agent who recruited both Guy Burgess and Kim Philby for the Russians at Cambridge. Klugman altered every success of Mihailovic's against the Germans to look like "a victory for Tito". Both Lees and Felman confirmed that they had seen a German installation blown up by Mihailovic and the Cetniks with their own eyes, and yet they heard on British radio that the installation was blown up by Tito -- and this kind of event happened repeatedly.
Milovan Djilas, Tito's closest wartime associate, years later would also confirm how it was done and admit that "the limes between the Partisans and Nazi Germany were open until the final days of the war" -- Tito was not worried about another German landing, but rather a British landing and Tito's Partisans were prepared to attack the British if it happened.
England was rife with communists before and after WWII, and it never occurred to the senior levels until much later that communist sympathies were more than just a "minor eccentricity".
Rumour has it George Clooney has already invested in a movie about the Halyard Mission.
Right.
The German armed forces were interested in making Tito look like their main opponent in Yugoslavia, and so sent fictitious reports back to Berlin regarding operations mounted against the Partisans with Chetnik help with an eye to undercutting Mihailovic.
It's all one big conspiracy.
That's garbage Hoplite.
If that were true, then why would Presiden Harry S. Truman give the Legion of Merit --highest award possible to be granted to a foreign national -- to Mihailovic and not to Tito?
And why were so many American airmen honoring Mihailovic and not Tito?
David Hackworth, another holder of the Legion of Merit, writes about the topic (in regards to our confrontation with Tito over Trieste) in his book "About Face".
A little actual history ("garbage" in your parlance) would do you good.
Not saying that Tito collaborated with the Germans from the beginning. Simply that Tito realized that there was not "one war" being fought, but rather "two wars" -- the war against The German Nazi invaders and a Yugoslav civil war. Both Tito and the Germans saw Mihailovic as the enemy & put a price on his head.
Eventually, as Germany's momentum across Europe started to wane, Tito was not above collaborating with Germany to destroy Mihailovic, and did. Tito was more worried that the Allies would figure out that they had been duped and start an invasion to take Yugoslavia away from him -- and as long as Mihailovic was alive, that was always a threat, so he decided not to lose any more men fighting the Germans and instead turned his forces on destroying Mihailovic and the Chetniks, with German help.
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