Posted on 02/22/2008 8:31:36 AM PST by processing please hold
KOSOVSKA MITROVICA, Kosovo (AP) — Serbs protesting Kosovo's independence for a fifth straight day Friday attacked U.N. police guarding a key bridge in northern Kosovo with stones, glass bottles and firecrackers on Friday.
Serbia's prime minister appealed for calm as the European Union condemned rioting in the capital Belgrade overnight when demonstrators attacked the U.S. embassy and other Western mission. The United States and EU heavyweights Britain, France and Germany have formally recognized Kosovo.
Serbian President Boris Tadic called an emergency meeting of the national security council, saying the riots that engulfed the capital overnight must "never happen again."
In Serb-dominated northern Kosovo, demonstrators waved Serbian flags and chanted "Kosovo is ours!" Police tried to keep protesters off the Kosovska Mitrovica bridge over the Ibar River. The bridge, which divides Kosovo Serbs from ethnic Albanians, has long been a flashpoint of tensions in Kosovo's restive north
(Excerpt) Read more at ap.google.com ...
You assume we will always back Israel? You’re either naive or blind. We are showing how we regard Israel by pushing for the Palestinians state in the first place. There will come a time when it will be the U.S. and Israel against everyone else and we will cave in to everyone else. Hell we might even elect a man named Barack Hussein Obama in 2008 who was schooled in a madrassa. You have far to much faith in your government.
Wow! The un is armed with US soldiers. That's comforting. Not.
This is long but give it a read.
"Although much of the debate regarding the President's authority to commit U.S. troops to participate in United Nations peacekeeping, enforcement actions, and "peace enforcement" actions has centered primarily around Congressional war powers,5 PDD-25 raises a significant question of the relevance and constraining effect of another of the Constitution's provisions regarding war powers: the Commander-in-Chief clause.6 Despite the fact that the Commander- in-Chief clause has traditionally been viewed and invoked as the source of broad and expansive powers by the President, the rise in the number of peace operations under the auspices of the United Nations and the increasing control that the U.N. has exerted over these operations have spawned serious questions about whether and how much the Commander-in-Chief clause constrains the President's ability to lend United States armed forces to United Nations military operations.7 PDD-25 attempts to answer this question by distinguishing between "command" and "operational control" of United States armed forces; however, a substantial question that PDD-25 virtually invites to be asked is whether that distinction is relevant for constitutional purposes. In other words, is "operational control" divorceable from "command" over U.S. forces, and accordingly, it constitutional for the President to place United States military personnel under the "operational control" of the United Nations or a foreign commander? Careful examination of PDD-25's provisions, the history of the Commander-in-Chief clause, and of historical examples of command over U.S. military forces by foreign powers lead to two conclusions. First, it would not only be inconsistent with PDD-25 for the United States to enter into or abide by an Article 43 agreement with the United Nations putting a set number of U.S. troops on call for use by the U.N. Security Council, but would be unconstitutional as well.8 Second, participation by U.S. forces in U.N. operations where the U.S. does not retain full command and operational control over U.S. forces is at the very least constitutionally problematic.9"
Pay attention to what I put in bold.
Why not just hand over our sovereignty to the un now and avoid all the confusion. If I were in the military and they told me to wear the un blue, I'd be another Michael New.
You support Serbia's land being stolen from them and handed over to create an islamic country in Europe. How can you say you don't support the jihadist?
How can you say you don't support the un when you don't have a problem with then controlling parts of our military, our US military?
How can you say you don't support American soldiers taking orders from non US military leaders, when that's what they're doing?
No, I'll stick to my opinion of you.
I actually love my country without waiting to see if a gang of Serb arsonists give me permission to love it, like the lickspittles on this thread.
Let's see if you still hold to that should our country be Balkanized. After all, it's a brand new ball game. Some elites get together and decide they have the right to divvy up a country, whether that country likes it or not. I don't think you understand the ramifications of what happened to Serbia.
No recourse that I’m aware of.
Bush already has done something, and our troops already occupy Kosovo. They’re not giving it back. If Serbs try to take Kosovo from our troops, then our troops will kill them. It is the blowhard Putin who will do nothing. Just like what the Russians did to protect the Serbs back in the 90’s. Not a damn thing.
Their action was uncalled for. But that doesn't make it right that we unjustly interfered in the matters of their country, especially since we came down on the side that is friendly with our worst enemy
Some angry Serb rioters set fire to our embassy building? Bad.
But the KLA is allied with AQ, who has been known to do a lot worse things to American buildings.
Milosevic was a commie thug, but he posed absolutely no threat to the United States.
We had no business using military force in the Balkans.
The "injustice" of NATO's diplomacy is not a closed question.
especially since we came down on the side that is friendly with our worst enemy
Do you mean the Serbs, who are united in a security pact with the Islamofascist Iranian regime that is murdering US soldiers and marines in Iraq?
While the Albanians of Kosovo are not very nice customers, they aren't the ones making deals with Ahmadinejad.
But the KLA is allied with AQ
I am unaware of any formal organizational ties between the KLA and AQ. I am certain that individual KLA members and individual AQ members have close ties and have likely worked together in the Balkans, but the Albanian terrorists captured in the US did not have any clear link to AQ's command structure - while in Iraq, Albania has assisted the US and the Albanian government has supported our intervention.
If the KLA is simply a proxy of Albania in Kosovo, which most observers agree they are, then they are proxies of a government that is fighting AQ in Iraq alongside the US.
There is a formal and public agreement between Serbia and the paymasters of Hezbollah, but there is no such definitive link between the provisional government of Kosovo and AQ.
We are a member of NATO, and we therefore have a responsibility for collective security in Europe.
Allowing a chaotic series of civil wars to rage in the Balkans while NATO was trying to convince former Warsaw pact countries to align with NATO simply made no strategic sense.
But I thought the Russians were on the side of the Serbs this time. Why would Soviet agents want to hurt the Serbs?
Even pre-communist Russia supported the Serbian nationalists in WWI, I believe.
The short version, because my copy of the book is at home:
During the war, the Soviet moles at State had us backing, both financially and with materiel, the Communist partisans in Yugoslavia rather than the anti-Communist ones, who we cut off at the pockets. Both sets of partisans were Serbs.
Worst case scenario, this puts them in the category of Russia and China, who are strategic and military competitors and have aligned themselves with Iran. Are we attacking and occupying greater Russia and China? No, we are going after the Serbs because they are weak.
While the Albanians of Kosovo are not very nice customers, they aren't the ones making deals with Ahmadinejad.
By allying with the KLA, we have helped set up an Islamic Republic in the middle of the powder keg of Europe by carving out a region that has been a part of Serbia since the 1200s. Some stability.
You're free to discount the evidence of involvement of KLA members and Al-Qaeda, but KLA members have already been accused and sentenced for war crimes. Milosevic was evil, but its insane to allign yourself with drug-running Al-Qaeda sympathizers just to take down one regional communist strongman. Striking the Serbs in the Balkans served no purpose with respect to American interests.
NATO was designed to be a check against Warsaw Pact agression, not to be policeman for every little regional conflict that rears its head.
Allowing a chaotic series of civil wars to rage in the Balkans while NATO was trying to convince former Warsaw pact countries to align with NATO simply made no strategic sense.
The Balkans have always been a mess. No NATO operation is going change, nor is it NATO's job to do so.
I would not risk the life of one American soldier to try and stop the chaos in the Balkans, and if running around Europe interfering in regional disputes is what NATO's game is now, we should withdraw from it.
It served its purpose during the Cold War, but in its current state, it has become another "entangling alliance" that Washington warned us about.
So, in other words, Serbia is on the same level as Russia and China. If so, we do not owe the Serbs a damned thing.
No, we are going after the Serbs because they are weak.
This is another way of saying the America is a bully that is incapable of standing up to Russia or China.
A laughable notion.
America is motivated by a desire for stability in the Balkans and the avoidance of another bloody war.
The US is apparently the only party that does not want to see widescale shedding of Serbian blood or anyone else's.
By allying with the KLA, we have helped set up an Islamic Republic in the middle of the powder keg of Europe by carving out a region that has been a part of Serbia since the 1200s.
(1) Kosovo is not an "Islamic Republic", but a secular one, with no official state religion and no religious political parties.
(2) Serbs have claimed Kosovo since the 1000s.
However, due to the Ottoman Empire, the area has not been majority Serb for centuries now.
Between 1455 and 1878, the Ottoman period, the only time Kosovo became politically independent was in 1689 - under the leadership of an Albanian Catholic.
Most of the Serbs living in Kosovo were settled there by the Kingdom of Serbia after 1878 in an attempt to reclaim the land demographically for the Serbian people.
You're free to discount the evidence of involvement of KLA members and Al-Qaeda
I'm not discounting it at all. I'm pointing out that the KLA has never formally aligned itself with Islamic terrorist groups the way that Serbia has entered into a pact with the world's premier Islamofascist state and Hezbollah sponsor.
Milosevic was evil, but its insane to allign yourself with drug-running Al-Qaeda sympathizers just to take down one regional communist strongman.
If you think the VRS was never involved in drug-running you're engaging in self-deception.
Every Balkan militia is guilty.
America's interest is in maintaining the reputation of NATO as a guarantor of regional security. If tehre is a war in Europe, it is NATO's business. And NATO's business is obviously America's business.
If this is the case, then its as misguided a policy as trying to broker Middle East peace by having Israel negotiate with Fatah and Hamas. There's good intentions and then there's reality.
(1) Kosovo is not an "Islamic Republic", but a secular one, with no official state religion and no religious political parties.
OK, not an official Islamic Republic i.e. Iran, but a Muslim nation run by Muslims for Muslims who will continue to ethnically cleanse non-Muslim peoples like they have for the past decade. One can hope that it will be more like Jordan and Turkey than Syria and Iran, but I would expect the latter knowing the leadership involved.
America's interest is in maintaining the reputation of NATO as a guarantor of regional security. If there is a war in Europe, it is NATO's business. And NATO's business is obviously America's business.
NATO is not a European police force. It was never meant to be the guarantor of "regional security" ouside of the threat of the Eastern bloc countries. To spell it out for you, the situation in the Balkans is NOT America's business.
Did the world not learn its lesson in 1918?
Entangling alliances + Balkan unrest = Trouble
Again, the mistaken analysis that Kosovo is a Christian versus Muslim conflict.
Most Serbs aren't practicing Christians and most Kosovar Albanians are not practicing Muslims.
Observant beleivers are a small minority in both these post-Communist, secularized populations.
The PDK is not Hamas.
This is a conflict between Albanians and Serbs.
a Muslim nation run by Muslims for Muslims who will continue to ethnically cleanse non-Muslim peoples
The population of ethnic Albanian Catholics in Kosovo is growing, while the population of ethnic Serbian Muslims (the Gorani Serbs) is declining.
Which again suggests that this is primarily an ethnic conflict.
One can hope that it will be more like Jordan and Turkey than Syria and Iran, but I would expect the latter knowing the leadership involved.
The brutal Thaci realizes that the only profitable path to the future is the kind of government that can earn EU approval.
There will be no one-party state in Kosovo as in Syria and there will be no sharia state in Kosovo like Iran.
It was never meant to be the guarantor of "regional security" ouside of the threat of the Eastern bloc countries.
NATO's entire value propsition to its constituent members was that it could guarantee collective security in Europe at a far lower cost than the collective security on offer from the Warsaw Pact.
Did the world not learn its lesson in 1918?
It is 2008, not 1914. And the Balkans are not magical.
The current situation is different - in many ways the diametric opposite - from the Balkan situation in 1914.
OK, I've trusted your previous assertions respectfully at face value, but for this I'm going to call BS on before I see some evidence.
Even if this IS the case, we know that Muslims are infiltrating even the most Westernized cultures in Europe, we know that their birthrates are skyrocketing while the rest of Europes are plumetting, and we know many Muslims, both secularized and fanatic are looking for a doorway into Europe and the West.
Is there any indication or logical conclusion that you could make that says that they won't be flocking in record numbers to the new independant European state that is the first to be run and ruled by Muslims? I don't see how you could say that Kosovo is not or (if your prior point about population growth is correct) will not house a growing Muslim population with a straight face.
The brutal Thaci realizes that the only profitable path to the future is the kind of government that can earn EU approval.
Even if you're right about him, and I'd be willing to gamble that you're not, in the long term the direction of the country will not be something decided by him alone.
Knowing the fanaticism of even some of the Muslim populations living in very Westernized locations like London and Paris, I would be willing to guess that cooler heads will not prevail. The US can probably live with a Muslim nation plopped right in the middle of the most volatile region of Europe, but there was no reason for us to help make it happen, other than feel good emotional diplomacy from the school of Madeline Halfbright.
NATO's entire value propsition to its constituent members was that it could guarantee collective security in Europe at a far lower cost than the collective security on offer from the Warsaw Pact.
Hence, my point is made. No Warsaw Pact = No need for NATO. Let the damn EU deal with it, don't waste American tax dollars on it, and don't get us involved.
The current situation is different - in many ways the diametric opposite - from the Balkan situation in 1914.
Maybe you should say that the more things change, the more they stay the same. A small regional battle in the Balkans gets blown out of proportion and involves the main superpowers both politically and militarily.
Is the fact that we're involved there again 100 years after the assassination in Sarajevo a coincidence? Or is it a matter of the superpowers once again playing military chess where they have no business?
The Balkans are a mess, and not one American soldier or one American weapon should be wasted to try and fix it.
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