Serbian Orthodox suffer since the United Nations took control of Kosovo

Evangelical Times ^ | 02/21/03 | Evangelical Times, UK

[Destro]

Serbian Orthodox suffer

At least 110 Serb Christian sites (churches, monasteries, graveyards etc.) have been damaged or destroyed in Kosovo since the United Nations took control in June 1999.

Most recently, a church building in the village of Ljubovo was completely destroyed by an explosion in the early hours of 17 November last.

A second explosion damaged another church in the town of Djurakovac. The bombings came on the eve of a visit to Kosovo by UN General Secretary Kofi Annan.

Church leaders and Orthodox worshippers also face violence and hostility from ethnic Albanians, especially where UN checkpoints in the vicinity of churches have been withdrawn in recent months.

Ethnic Albanian Muslim extremists regard churches as symbols of Serbian domination and see them as legitimate targets.

[homeagain balkansvet]

Will you support my Humanitarian Ride to raise money, balkansvet? You seem so very much concerned for the welfare of the people. Now, you can help the innocents who lost their parents at the hands of your Jihadian friends of Srebrenica.

While I was in Bosnia I raised $10,000 for Bosnia relief in the States. Half went to a Muslim orphanage. The other half went to a Serb women's group in Bratunac.

[homeagain balkansvet]

Doncha just HATE guys like me, Smokey?

PS. The story mentions only the orphanage, but another shipment of goodies just as large went to Serbs in Bratunac.

---

22 February 2002, The Wall Street Journal

PEGGY NOONAN

A Message for Rumsfeld
Our troops need straight talk on the meaning of service.

Friday, February 22, 2002 12:01 a.m. EST

On Wednesday Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met with the troops at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base to grip and grin, take questions and fill them in on the war so far. The troops were gathered photogenically in what CNN called the living and dining area of the base and what looked like a big cavernous hangar, which happened to have a jet parked in the background.

It was billed as a town-hall meeting with American airmen, and it reminded me of what Richard Brookhiser once said of presidential campaigns, that it's the outside story--the public statements and speeches, the things voters can see and are meant to see--that tends to be more interesting and important than the inside story of who said what at the meeting.




Mr. Rumsfeld's appearance gave rise to some thoughts, mostly about him.
He has of course, since Sept.11, emerged as a singular presence in the war. At first it was startling: all that interestingness wrapped up in such blandness. Mr. Rumsfeld looks like the competent mayor of a midsize metropolis, or the savvy CEO of a midlevel company. Gray hair, gray suit, silver-rimmed glasses. He looked the other day like a beige and silver guy in a tired red tie.

And yet these days he seems, as leaders go, a natural. Much has been written about his skills, and though the amount of interest being paid to him is inevitable--he's a WASP wartime consigliere, an interesting thing in itself--a lot of it misses the point.

As a communicator he's clear as clean water. He seems ingenuous. He talks with his hands. He's thought it through and knows a lot and tells you what he knows. At first you sense his candor and clarity and enjoy it without realizing it. Then you realize you must be enjoying it because you're still listening. Then you sense that his candor and clarity are in the service of intelligence and clean intentions. You find yourself following what he says, following the logic and the argument. Which makes you ultimately lean toward following him.

He's Bushian, but he seems more interesting than George W. Bush, and not only because he is more experienced, an accomplished veteran of past governments. (He was first elected to the House 40 years ago; the first time he was Defense Secretary was in 1975, when he was the youngest ever.) He has a certain merriness, which is a good thing in a war leader when it is not a sign of idiocy, and it is a knowing merriness. Mr. Bush in contrast has comic, joshing moments, and Dick Cheney has genuine wit.




Mr. Rumsfeld, like Mr. Bush, uses plain words to say big things. He can use plain words because he isn't using words to hide. He can afford to be frank, and in any case it appears to be his natural impulse. He can afford to be frank because we are at war, and part of winning is going to be remembering that we're fighting, and why, which is not easy when there's so much on sale at the mall. Part of Mr. Rumsfeld's job is to tell the American fighting man and woman, and the American people who pay for the defense establishment, what is going on in the war, and how, and where, and why, and what the future holds. It's his job, in effect, to be blunt, to increase consciousness, and to enhance our determination while damping down pointless anxiety. It's a delicate dance, and yet he doesn't seem to be dancing.



When asked by an airman how long the war will last, Mr. Rumsfeld said that question is quite close to him because every morning when his wife wakes up she asks about Osama. "Don, where is he?" He tells the airmen, "There's no way to know how long. It's not days, weeks, months; it's years for sure."
Asked if the U.S. military will wind up occupying Afghanistan, he calls that "unlikely," but says the U.S. wants to help Afghanistan build and train its own army. He foresees "a military-to-military relationship."

It's clear when he speaks, and because it's clear you can follow it, and because you can follow it you consider following him.

This as we all know is not always the way with leaders. Usually people like secretaries of defense and secretaries of state and United Nations representatives say things like this: "We have to remember, Tim, that the infrastructure of the multinational coalition in conjunction with the multilateral leadership entities inevitably creates potential for a disjunction of views that requires cooperation, coordination and cohesion from member states."

Some of them talk like that because they're hopelessly stupid and are trying to hide it. Some of them are just boring. But a lot of leaders talk like this because they don't want to communicate clearly. They want instead to create a great cloud of words in which the listeners' attention and imagination will get lost.

They're not trying to break through with thought, they're trying to obfuscate. They are boring not by accident but by design. Because they don't want people to understand fully what they're doing. Because they know what they're doing won't work, or is wrongheaded, or confused, or cowardly, or cynical, or just another way to dither, or will more likely yield bad outcomes than good.

We should all try to keep this in mind when we watch "Meet the Press" and someone is being especially boring. Henry Kissinger once joked that the great thing about being famous is that when you're boring people think it's their fault. But it's almost never "their fault."

Anyway, instead of giving a dull, windy and dissembling answer when asked about the war coalition, Mr. Rumsfeld cut through to the heart of it. He said it exists to do a job, and the job, not the coalition, is what counts. "You have to let the mission determine the coalition, you don't let the coalition determine the mission."

So that's the key to Mr. Rumsfeld: candor and clarity plus specificity, and all of it within a context of a war that itself, so far, makes sense and is just.




Mr. Rumsfeld offered one answer that, while demonstrating a grasp of the question's many different layers, failed to capture something that probably needs capturing.
Asked by an airman what the armed forces are going to do to retain experienced personnel, Mr. Rumsfeld spoke of pay raises, spare parts, morale--"every one of you has to know that you're needed." He said we need a military command that has enough imagination to see who's good at what and make sure they're assigned to it.

All good as far as it went--pay and parts and a psychological sense that one is noticed and appreciated are key, always. But so is something else that one senses has gone by the boards the past decade or so, and it has to do with the whole mysterious tangle of motivations that leads a man (or woman) to join up to defend his country. The thing that make him take as his job protecting the strangers who are sometimes ungrateful countrymen; the thing that tells him to put himself in harm's way and live the loneliness of the job; that tells him to risk his life so that my son and yours can sleep peacefully through the night. The whole mysterious tangle that leads them to join is also, in part, what leads them to stay. And to my mind it comes down to sissy words like love.

"Only love will make you walk through fire," it was said of the firemen of New York on Sept. 11; only love will make you enter that cave in Afghanistan, too. We just don't call it love. We call it a solid job and a good pension system.

The other day I got a letter from a guy in the army in Bosnia, telling me about his duty there and including an essay about the Christmas party the troops at his base threw for the badly damaged children in an orphanage west of Tuzla. Friends and relatives of the American troops had sent wonderful gifts for each of the hundred or so children; the children in turn had dressed up in paper party hats and put on angel wings and sung songs and recited poetry. When it was over, the American soldier thought of something his history teacher back home in Michigan had taught him. You cannot escape history, the teacher had said, for history is not what happens in books, history is what will happen to you.

The American thought of how history had smashed the lives of the children in the orphanage. And then he thought of how history, in the form of "the treasure and sweat of America's finest" had also given those same children a new chance "to grow in peace." It was American troops acting through history who had done that.

It was clear from what the soldier wrote that his spirit and intelligence were engaged not only in the fight in Bosnia but in protecting Bosnian children, and therefore Bosnia's future. What that knowledge did to his pride and sense of mission was obvious. He didn't use the word love--he is a soldier--but that's what he was writing about.

Last summer I went on a U.S. Army Web site, a recruiting site actually. I'd gone there because I wanted to write something about Medal of Honor citations, and I wanted to read them. I found to my surprise that when you go to a U.S. Army Web site what you mostly see is how much money they pay and how they'll put you through school. That's good and needed information, but there wasn't any of the deeper meaning of serving--no history of the U.S. Army, no Medal of Honor citations, no essays from Bosnia. It was all slogans and salaries. It was all about pay. Which recruitment specialists apparently think is the prime motivator for joining up. Surely it's part of it, but it couldn't be all, and if it is we're in trouble. An army runs on its stomach, Napoleon famously said. But it fights with its heart and its spirit and soul.

Mr. Rumsfeld (U.S. Navy, 1954-57) seems the kind of leader who would appreciate this, and give it some thought. Maybe there are things that can be done to remind the world--and the members of the armed forces--who they really are, and have been, and can be. It may be in part a whole mysterious tangle, the motivation of the men and women who fight for us, but Mr. Rumsfeld better than most could probably see that it's addressed with clarity and candor.

Ms. Noonan is a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal. Her new book, "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan," is just out from Viking Penguin. You can buy it here at the OpinionJournal bookstore. Her column appears Fridays.

[homeagain balkansvet]

Your 10,000 was 83. And they were firing on us throughout the operation. Nice try.

[homeagain balkansvet]

How can you tell the differance between a Serbian or a Muslim AK or calibur? They use the same weaponry. I wish you were there to see the event unfold and the mayhem that occurred between the Muslim soldiers who wanted to leave peacefully when given that chance by Mladic himself and the ones left behind and under orders from Sarajevo to create a PR Massacre story. Now, which is it? Were you there or were you away watching JAG on Tuesday nghts to learn your Lawyerese-speak? Obviously, you are not a very good attorney.

I certainly wouldn't make a very good Serb. I can't believe that up is down if it's convenient for me to do so.

[smokegenerator]

What is "83"?

Would you like to assist to raise funds for the kids? Though I may sound political here, I do a darn good job of remaining distant from ANY political group. I do not choose groups, I choose right over wrong.

How about it, you care to help raise some money? We might have differances of opinions, but at least I am strong enough to cast them aside for good causes. Heck, I even have been good friends with Middle Eastern Muslims who were very pro-Islam/Jihad. The Islamic girl I was seeing briefly, her brother Omar did not appreciate that I took her to Easter Serbian Orthodox Services. I do and can easily put aside my views/opinions, can you?

[Destro]

You know homeagain balkansvet, NYC Republican this thread is about the plight of Serb Christians under UN/NATO (UN fig leaf for NATO rule).

The war over Kosovo violiated international law, the spirit of the American constitution and the NATO charter but in saying so if NATO actually did bring order to Kosovo and peace between the peoples I would just be a talking about violation of words on paper.

But NATO's occupation has not been the new world order example of humanitarian peacekeeping the third wayists said it would be. Under NATO troops own eyes (and I am not kidding - some Serbs were killed while under protection of armed British escorts and the Albanian suspect was allowed to escape out of Camp Bondsteel's brig by Americans - on purpose) Christians were put to the sword and Churches that pre date Columbus destroyed. You could hear the explosions of these Churches at night at Camp Bondsteel.

It puts to the lie that NATO's force is a benevolent and blind force for justice.

It is an indictment of NATO and those like homeagain balkansvet, NYC Republican who cheer destructions of Churches and Christians by Muslims.

Tell us again, homeagain balkansvet how its a good thing that Churches and Christians under NATO "protection" are destroyed?

I don't think enough Freepers have an understanding of just what type of people were enacting Clinton's policy with glee in the Balkans.

PS: The only reason Bosnia has the peace it has is because of Karadzic's and Mladic's efforts to seperate themselves from Muslim rule or else the fate of the Serbs of Kosovo would have been the fate of Bosnia's Serbs.

[Bob J]

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[homeagain balkansvet]

Actually, Smoky, if you've been paying attention you would notice I was saying I Gave At The Office. $10,000 at the office. To both Serbs and Muslims. And Peggy Noonan noticed it.

I'm also currently helping to support a school in Tuzla with supplies.

I appreciate your offer, but I also appreciate that when I say 'no thank you,' I run the serious risk of having you say OF COURSE YOU DON'T WANT TO HELP THE SERBS! I also run the obvious risk of being publicly identified if I DO take you up your offer, which as you know I don't wish to do. IOW, I recognize a lose-lose scenario when I see it. Besides, they got a good x% of my life span. I think I've done my part.

Upshot: Thank you for your kind offer, but I daresay I'm already doing what I can to undo Bosnia's war damage.

[homeagain balkansvet]

What is "83"?

The number killed in that incident in the First Gulf War. Not 10,000. They held a court hearing on the incident in Georgia in 1992.

[NYC Republican]

They were told to leave... Leave their homes and neighborhoods. Even if this WAS the case, which is a blatant lie, it doesn't justify killing them because they want to stay near their homes. The truth is that the Dutch left, the Serbs took their uniforms and armor, and fooled the people into thinking that it's safe to return from the woods, lied to them, then slaughtered them.

Intentional killing of soldiers who are surrendering is always wrong.

[homeagain balkansvet]

You know homeagain balkansvet, NYC Republican this thread is about the plight of Serb Christians under UN/NATO (UN fig leaf for NATO rule).

So you are conceding that Bosnia and Serbia are separate countries then? That Serbs have no claim on Srpska? That there is no relationship at all between those living in the borders of Bosnia and those poor folk suffering in Kosova? That the fate that befell the Serbs in Bosnia after they lost that war has absolutely no relationship whatsoever with the fate of the Serbs in Kosova?

Cool. You're the first Serb I've ever met to make that distinction. Thank you. We accept your surrender.

[NYC Republican]

It's despicable the way DESTRO insinuates that you and I are happy the churches were destroyed. It's disgusting that he's being opportunistic in taking advantage of the current anti-Isl views as a result of the terrorism that's occuring. It's like politicizing a death of a child... Disgusting in every way.

Seems like he's trying to mask the horrors that the Serbs have instilled upon the region that throughout the 80s and 90s.

[smokegenerator]

What do you know about the truth? Were you there, ehh? I believe I have more knowledge of that area than you wish to care. Mladic Garde had strict orders to give safe passage to ANYONE leaving. Just make sure all the people were disarmed, meaning no firearms were allowed.

Leaving their homes? The Muslims had those homes when they cleansed the Serbs from those same homes the Serbs were fighting to get back. You really do not have much knowledge of the topic, do you?

NYC Rep, how would you react if you saw your childs head placed on his school desk?

[joan]

Haha, you are talking to yourself and at the same time putting words in Destro's mouth. Plus, he is not a Serb - he's said before he is an American of Scottish ethnicity.

And what the heck does "Kosova" mean? It's just a hoosier-like corruption of a genuinely meaningful word.

[smokegenerator]

sidebar note- There were Marine Tank units involved with this from 2d Tank Bn, 2Mar Div. 1st Plt of Delta 1st Tracks and Charlie Company.

February 26, 1991 Its forces virtually surrounded by General Schwartzkopf's "Hail Mary" surprise maneuver, Iraq announces it is withdrawing from Kuwait. Washington says it will continue the war. Thousands of Iraqi soldiers are buried alive as the US First Mechanized Infantry Division, using plows mounted on tanks and combat earthmovers, seals over the men and equipment in 70 miles of trenches. Los Angeles Times, September 12, 1991. In the final hours of the "Hundred Hour War" American pilots bombed and strafed the lines of defeated Iraqis straggling toward Baghdad. They made comments for reporters such as: "a turkey shoot," "like shooting fish in a barrel" and "they were sitting ducks." These callous remarks made the rounds in the Middle East. American "doves" were horrified by the slaughter; the "hawks" were enraged that the troops had not been allowed to roll on to Bagdad and capture Saddam Hussein. Los Angeles Times, February 27, 1991. A1. ]

-----------------------------

My old high school friend sat across from me, nursing a Heineken. He didn't want to talk about the Gulf War, but I insisted.

He'd been a U.S. Army captain at the time, commanding U.S. troops that swept across the Iraqi front line trenches, quickly breaking the resistance of thousands of Saddam Hussein's conscript soldiers, who surrendered en masse - or tried to.

"They made it look like a video game on CNN," I began. "But I'm sure it wasn't."

He snorted, and took a gulp. "It was just about that easy. The fighting part, I mean - after we'd bombed the daylights out of them for months, then shelled them for more than 24 hours. We barely had to show up for those guys to throw down their guns and beg us to take them captive." My friend shook his head and looked away. "I wish we could have."

He took a deep breath, and waved for another beer. "After so many thousands of prisoners, the order came down that it was endangering our men to capture any more. There were so many at once - it seemed like a trick. So we called in the bulldozers." No one knows how many of those soldiers were trying to surrender, since U.S. forces stopped offering them the opportunity, as the Pentagon has admitted.

My friend, the veteran, shoved his empty glass away. "I had to give the order, order men who drove the earth-movers to just cover up the trenches. To bury those poor bastards alive."

"Try telling that in confession," he continued. Before he enlisted, he'd himself been a seminarian. "I had to. I said to the priest 'I buried hundreds of men alive.' And I told him why - how if I'd disobeyed orders I should have been shot for insubordination on the battlefield.

He didn't know what to say." The priest asked if he was sorry, and my friend
said he sure was. He gave the soldier absolution.

The Bulldozer Assault

In one way, it's no different from the usual forms of warfare. But it reveals war's horror.

Between Feb. 24 and 25, 1991, thousands of draftee Iraqi soldiers may have been sealed in their trenches by U.S. Army vehicles to suffocate, according to an article in the Sept. 23, 1991 Time magazine: "Were thousands of Iraqis buried alive during the allied operation against their front line last February? U.S. Army officers say that as tanks equipped with plows and bulldozers punched holes in the 70-mile-long Iraqi defense strip, enemy soldiers who refused to surrender were trapped under avalanches of sand.

Col. Anthony Moreno, commander of a unit that followed the initial U.S. breakthrough, recalls seeing arms protruding from the sand. 'For all I know, we could have buried thousands,' he told New York Newsday."

This account was also covered in The San Francisco Chronicle, which reported that the decision to use bulldozers was later justified in a report to Congress by then Secretary of State Dick Cheney: "Because of these uncertainties and the need to minimize loss of U.S. lives, military necessity required that the assault ... be conducted with maximum speed and violence. … There is a gap in the law of war in defining precisely when surrender takes effect or how it may be accomplished. An attempt at surrender in the midst of a hard-fought battle is neither easily communicated nor received."

[smokegenerator]

Here you go, sport. Start reserving some rooms next to Slobo at Hotel Hague for your very own US Commanders who authorized this order.

[smokegenerator]

Your numbers from this war crime act.

[homeagain balkansvet]

Uh, Destro is the name of a GI Joe toy. Which is why I refer to him as 'toyboy.' He's about as Scottish as my Lionel train set.

Secondly, if a good Serb fanatic doesn't recognize a slap in the face like the name Kosova, he's going to have to turn in his Arkan Tiger Battalion Official Identification Card and Decoder Ring in penance.

[Destro]

You keep posting to yourself. Stop being so rattled and click the right target -First off I am not a Serb. I am not Serbian Orthodox and I know know one who is from the Former Yugoslavia. I am a graduate of several well known foreign/international business affairs and history programs from which my knowledge of the world arises from (plus I loved the topic as a kid). I work in the private sector so I am not a burden to the tax payer.

Secondly, your laughable don't put words in my mouth- I made no such concessions. Actually B&H is a nation in the UN as fake as it is and Kosovo is still part of Serbia as per the UN also. The claims of the Serbs are also valid (as is the claim of the Croats in their part of B&H as well). I am all for the partition of Yugoslavia but not how it was done or where the borders were allowed.

I think the Serbs had a right to fight to keep Yugoslavia whole and failing that to live in within zones under their control. I am all for autonomy and seperation if those you live with are former Nazis or current Muslims.

Now Church burner, I directed some points towards you @ #326 which you seem to avoid. I see that as intellectual cowardice.

NYC Republican (should I just call you Joe? I know who you are), it is vet who typed his mocking ""Whaaaaa!"" when he laughed off the Kosovo Church destructions and the suffering of Serbs under Albanians which is done not under war conditions but under the UN flag. That is whose company you keep, Joe.

[homeagain balkansvet]

It's despicable the way DESTRO insinuates that you and I are happy the churches were destroyed.

Well, I don't hold those suffering from extra-chromosomal abnormalities fully responsible for what they say. Let's be charitable.