We are not discussing theology. We are discussing politics. For both of us our faith is the guiding force in our lives, but we have been discussing foreign policy.
The Serbs have gotten a bad deal for several reasons. Milosevic was an ignorant thug who had no concept of presenting his side in the media and how to elicit sympathy from the American people. The Serbs and EO in this country did a terrible job of seeing that the American people learn that the issue was more complex than some muslims being persecuted.
The American people are at heart a good decent people, so yes if the EOC and Serbs had done a better job of presenting their side of the story things may have gone differently. A good example would be the civil rights movement. When they were able to show how wrong things were the American people came to their side and change happened.
I do understand your frustration. I work with a lot of contractors from Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and Bosnia and we do discuss these issues.
“We are not discussing theology.”
I know, WF, I know! :)
The American people are as good as bread, but they are sadly misinformed. The Serbs had formidable enemies in American Administration since Nixon, and in media since the late 1980's. A lot of the disinformation fed to the public by American media came from British and other sources we generally trust.
The Albanian lobby has also paid considerable amounts of money to the late Congressman Tom Lantos (a Hungarian Jew and a Holocaust survivor who put himself in the service of Albanian Muslims while their religious counterparts in Palestine target the Jewish state!), and have created "close working relationships" with Sen. Biden, Sen. McCain, Sen. Dole, and other prominent Congressmen.
The Albanian lobby has been operating off of rampant drug trafficking and human prostitution business in Albania and Kosovo, with huge sums of money available for such endeavor.
Miloshevich's government has been subjected to unprecedented economic embargo in the 1990's. This ruined Serbia economically and forced Serbian authorities to accept "services" offered by organized and paramilitary crime groups and warlords which provided essential supplies (such as oil and medicines) despite the embargo, but for a heavy price.
Not only did this cost an arm and a leg, but it brought organized crime into the highest circles of Serbia's government. Bankrupt and unable to compete with Albanian mafia in terms of money and sympathy, and already made into a pariah state, Serbia's PR efforts were met with unwillingness of the western media and governments to consider a more balanced view.
The orchestrated propaganda coming from Bosnia led to NATO supported Croatian counter-offensive, and an Iranian-suported re-arming of Bosnian Muslims right under NATO's own watchful eyes. Similarly, the incidents that finally sparked the Kosovo war were a succession of well planned events that were designed to provide the "evidence" that "justified" Madeline Albright to give Serbia the (illegal) ultimatum, which was written in such a way that Serbia could not accept.
There were many individuals and organizations from America and Western Europe who were trying to show the other side of the coin, but they were ignored. It has nothing to do how good the American people are. It has everything to do what was told to the American people and who told them.
They were fed lies with the desired effects. Whether it was a lie launched by the then Bosnia's Muslim "Foreign Minister" Haris Silajdzic, that 200,000 Muslims were killed by Serbs between 1990 and 1993 (a figure repeated as "fact' by Bill Clinton and all American media, even years after it has been shown to be a lie)*, or whether it was Clinton's Foreign Secretary Bill Cohen's assertion that he "feared" 100,000** Albanians were killed in Kosovo by Miloshevich's troops (fear, which was taken as 'fact' and without verification repeated relentlessly in our media as such), makes no difference.
*Western documentation after the war and intelligence estimates during the war, which were not published at that time, reduced the figure to 25,000 to maximum 60,000 on all three sides, i.e. Muslims, Serbs and Muslims during the five, not three years of the civil war.
**Only about 3,000 victims have been found in Kosovo after the war, and that includes Serbs and Albanians. So it is clear that the highest American officials told untruth to the public, just as the case for Iraq war was a case of orchestrated untruths by the highest government officials for a desired effect.
Discovering that all these lies were lies after the damage has been done is irrelevant. It's like finding out an innocent man was framed, tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed only for the public to be told several years later it was, ooops a mistake! The victim is dead and buried and whoever wanted to see him dead succeeded and no amount of regret will brig the victim back to life.
When a country like ours takes on initiatives as the world's leading superpower, it is that much more responsible to make sure such actions are based on sound and balanced information and judgment, not based on created outrage, because the damage it can create by wanton use of its force is immeasurably greater than that of any other country, and such fundamental mistakes as being susceptible to lying and cheating emigré groups' disinformation (like the Albanians, Croatians, and Iraqi groups a la Chalabi's gang) makes us look naive, gullible and inept; and the damage we do to our image in particular, and to the democracy in general is equally immeasurable and damaging to us.
So, as usual, things are never black and white. It is very tempting to say the stupid Serbs just didn't use their PR. It's another thing to actually be educated, to read and research the media and documents involved, and to put the puzzle together.
When Kolokotronis says that the West is out to destroy Orthodox Christianity using Muslim jihadists, he is not talking of the good-hearted American people, but of some very anti-Orthodox and anti-Christian elements in our Government, media, and in Hollywood.
Most Americans don't have the time, the knowledge or the interest to research foreign policy issues that don't really affect their pocketbook and daily lives. Because we firmly believe in democracy, we also believe that a democratic system could not have lying and deceiving politicians (this is evident but I have no clue where this comes from, given that Americans generally do not trust politicians, yet allow themselves to be led and fed). I owuld say that part of the problem is in the law that no longer requires media to present both sides of the issue.
But corrupt politicians do not want educated voters just as corrupt businesses don't want educated customers. In our idealistic love for democracy and capitalism we often forget that there are manipulators and liars at work precisely because freedom provides for sin, and that free press is also free to lie.