OK, so this has been percolating in my head for a few days, ever since I flipped past a news channel showing protesters burning the walls of our embassy in Serbia.
Why are we still pursuing a pre-9/11, Clintonian policy regarding Kosovo?
Do we, in our wildest imaginations, think an Islamic state in Europe is a good idea?
Do we consider ethnic breakaway states to suddenly be a good idea?
I happen to think that pursuing an Islamist “democracy” in Kosovo (and encouraging the break from Serbia) is a bad idea, but clearly our State Department disagrees – and therein lies the real problem.
No matter who wins this fall’s elections, the State Department rolls along, career lefty diplomats pushing their own agenda regardless of who takes the White House reins. That’s the only real explanation for why we’d continue on the 1990s path of pushing Islamic breakaway states in Europe.
You’ll notice we backed way off of pushing for an independent Chechnya once the attacks of 9/11 and Beslan showed the Chechen rebels to just be more of the same Islamist thuggery as we’re currently fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So why do we persist with pushing that self-same agenda in Kosovo?
Spain, it seems to me, has the right perspective here. Long campaigns from Basque and Catalan separatists leave the Spanish knowing that an independent Kosovo provides a bad example for their own ability to remain united as a nation. So Spain was one of the countries fighting against Kosovar independence - good for them, bad for the rest of us.
Keep in mind – this was “Monica’s War” the first time around, the “Wag the Dog” scenario (same country, even!) used to change the subject from the Lewinsky/Willey sex scandals of Bill Clinton’s making. We’re still paying for those mistakes. (You will recall the other military strikes done with the same purpose – the slap on the wrist bombing of the Sudanese aspirin factory rather than actually getting Osama bin Laden. Seems Billy Boy went oh-for-2…) Odd timing, this Kosovo thing coming just as Barack Obama looks to put the finishing blows to Hillary's chances...
Other thought – the Kosovar Muslims have spent the better part of a decade trashing orthodox churches. (Yes, the Serbs have retaliated in kind, trashing mosques). In any case, why would we encourage or reward that kind of behavior? This smacks of weakness to me, that we would reward that behavior with a state will resonate in the Islamic mind as proof that the West can successfully be pushed around. That’s not a healthy example to set.
Also: did we do this just to get into the Russians’ grill and make a mess? I would think shooting down a satellite is enough nose-tweaking for one month. (which looked spectacularly like the Death Star scene from Star Wars…) Breakaway Islamic states (Kosovo along with Chechnya) are an area where we should be building bridges with the Russians, not bombing them (see Tim’s excellent notes on what’s been wrong with Russia lately – shouldn’t we be encouraging their youth to see us as reasonable rather than pig-headed?) If the Russians were pushing for New Mexico to become independent (or rejoin Old Mexico), I think we'd have some serious anger issues with them; why don't we see that in this case, I wonder?
So… BOO to the Bush Administration’s decision to encourage and recognize an independent Kosovo. And BOO to our State Department for pushing this along.
3 comments:
Great post, Josh, and spot-on, except for one minor detail. It was actually Juanita Broaddrick, who claimed (convincingly) that she was raped by Bill in 1978, who was being shushed that week. NBC's Dateline and other TV shows were reporting on this that very week, and articles were appearing in newspapers just days before. When suddenly, Wesley Clark made his first pro-Billary airstrikes (there have been others after...). In our haste to cover the Clinton flank, we bombed such high-opportunity targets as Serbian evangelical churches (we knew the pastor's wife. "Although NATO claimed that the air attacks were directed against Yugoslav military targets and the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, thousands of civilians of all ethnicities suffered and died as 'collateral damage'" (Serbian Orthodox Diocese of Raska and Prizren"). The current crisis is simply the logical terminus of a Most Illogical policy and procedure.
Excellent post. I believe you'll find that John McCain was not only 100% in favor of Clinton's Kosovo strategy but upped the ante by calling for ground troops!
The scary part is that in the US/NATO bombing of Belgrade we murdered 200 thousand+ Orthodox Christians. This is the shame of the United States and the Clinton administration. Milosovich was a communist thug/strongman but he was also on the frontlines of the war with Islamic fundamentalism and he was handling it in the only way he could. Google Kosovo church arson and look at the images. You will want to take up arms and take these punks out. Serbia was where the Nazis faced the highest resistance and Serbia was the firewall that stopped Islamic Fascism v1.2 from migrating into greater Europe. The Yugoslavian people have a right to hate the United States... I do wish some media type would ask the Hillary-beast if since she was the co-president in the 1990s is she also the co-butcher of Belgrade. This is a great shame on us.
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