In what sense is Kosovo a “Muslim nation-state”? I have not heard that any part of the constitution is rooted in Shariah. Just because most of the citizens consider themselves Muslims does not mean that the nation is “Muslim.”
In fact, the US did create this situation — the US unleashed war on Serbia, no one else did! And the media acquiesced to Clinton’s “genocide” hype. . . just as it acquiesced meekly to Bush’s “WMD” hype. Which just goes to show that the MSM is neither conservative nor liberal, but simply corporate. All they care about is the bottom line, and if it suffers from attacks by either the left or the right, it caves.
I dislike the subtle sense in this article that Kosovo is just another part of the so-called “clash of civilizations,” in which we should line up with the Christians and against Muslims, as if we are all just parts of big tribes. I reject this thinking.
If the author cared about human rights as a universal thing, in which all people are equal, he would have mentioned the awful state of the Roma (gypsy) Kosovars, who have suffered as much or more than the Serbs. But Roma are not Christian, or not Christian enough, I suppose, so they do not fit into the writer’s tribe.
It was a mistake to attack Serbia, and it is a mistake to set up Kosovo as an independent state. And the reason is not a fear of Muslims (I do not fear them), but rather because I fear the collapse of secular national identity. In this action, the US is legitimizing the idea (seen in places like Israel and Iran and Pakistan and Sri Lanka) that one religion or ethnicity is a higher class of citizen than all others. In the US we see these ideas as well: coming from people who assert the US is a “Christian nation.” Should such a (bad) idea gain currency, suddenly anyone who is not Christian — such as myself — will become a second class citizen. This kind of thing is not good. Believe me, secular national identity, which is part of the liberalism that ended Europe’s religious wars, is going to be something we miss deeply if we throw it overboard.
The US should have encouraged political negotiations between the Albanian Kosovars and Belgrade, and our message should have been: ensure the equal rights of this minority population. This is the only way to peace. Sri Lanka is another such place, and the fighting there will never end until there is a political settlement. It never would have started had the government not discriminated against minority groups.
You are correct, but, you seem to have a lack of knowledge.
Let me explain. One of the primary reasons NATO found itself sucked into Kosovo was because there was a prevailing belief that if the Kosovo conflict was not stopped it would soon spill over into Macedonia. If that happened then that republic's neighbors would be pulled in. Albania would invoke its defense treaties with Turkey, Greece would then become involved and there might even be subsequent repercussions in Cyprus.
Furthe, and perhaps more importantly, is that 1999 NATO bombings were a knee-jerk reaction to Serbian actions from Dubrovnik to Vukovar, to Sarajevo, to Srebenica.
I hope this helps.
“In what sense is Kosovo a “Muslim nation-state”?”
“ratbert38”, because it’s a nation-state and it’s people are mostly Muslim.
I did NOT say, nor intend to imply, any more than that.
“Believe me, secular national identity, which is part of the liberalism that ended Europe’s religious wars, is going to be something we miss deeply if we throw it overboard.”
We (the U.S.) are incapable of throwing European/Balkan “secular national identity” (or lack thereof) “overboard”.
“The US should have encouraged political negotiations between the Albanian Kosovars and Belgrade, and our message should have been: ensure the equal rights of this minority population. This is the only way to peace.”
Sounds good in paper. I might even wish it were possible. But the belief that “secular national identity” will always triumph, if only the U.S. pushes it sufficiently, a) overestimates the power of the U.S. to push anything, and b) presupposes that the Serb and Kosovar activists think in terms of secular national identity.
For better or worse, 19th century-style secular “liberalism” has little bearing on Kosovo.