The media would have US believe troop casualties are down since GW Bush left office but our troops are still dying with minimal media coverage the last 2 years. They got their guy in the white house with daily coverage of any & all middle east troop injuries but now even casualties are ignored by the big networks to have US believe things are better. Sad but true
http://www.icasualties.org/OEF/Fatalities.aspx
--- In Politics_CurrentEvents_Group@yahoogroups.com, Bruce Majors <majors.bruce@...> wrote:
>
> The Democrats' Model War
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> January 2007 --The 2006 U.S. elections, which put the Democrats in charge of
> the House and Senate, were widely described in media as a referendum on the
> Iraq war. Intense media scrutiny had resulted in critical reports on pre-war
> intelligence, the decision-making process that preceded the war, the postwar
> plan, and an unfolding civil war.
>
> Books with titles such as *Fiasco*,* Imperial Hubris*, and *Colossus*described
> an America in denial of imperial ambitions that were destined to fail. Their
> authors and others ascribed to the U.S. such motives as arrogance and a
> willful refusal to learn from history. They characterized American foreign
> policy as an effort to impose democracy at gunpoint upon cultures either
> lacking democracy’s fundamental precursors or just plain unwilling to abide
> by them. Prior to the election, Americans also heard multiple media reports
> of the worst unintended consequence of the war: the multiplying of the ranks
> of terrorists.
>
> By election day, national polls indicated 60 percent of voters believed that
> the war had not improved the long-term security of the U.S., and 55 percent
> thought that the U.S. should pull some or all of its troops from Iraq. The
> Democrats worked to further the discontent and clearly profited by it.
>
> However, if the election was a vote of no confidence in the administration’s
> conduct of the war in Iraq, it left unanswered the question of what the
> Democrats would view as an appropriate use of American military force in the
> world. It’s a question most Democrats have preferred to dodge, but they have
> given us some disquieting clues.
> What would Democrats view as an appropriate use of American military force?
>
> Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, the front-runner in national polls for the
> 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, has said openly what many Democrats
> think: Democrats go to war for the right reasons and prosecute war more
> successfully. Prior to the 2000 presidential election, Senator Clinton cited
> the American military campaigns in Bosnia and Kosovo as models of foreign
> engagements that she favored on moral and strategic grounds.
>
> “I am a strong proponent of a national defense that is smart,†she told CNN
> in August 2004. “What we need to be focused on is which president is more
> likely to make decisions that will achieve our objectives with putting the
> least amount of lives at risk,†she said, adding, “You know, we were
> successful in Kosovoâ€"and we didn’t lose a single American military person.â€
>
> That view has been echoed by many other Democrats and some Republicans, too.
> Praising the Kosovo operations, former president Bill Clinton has even
> suggested that, under a Democrat administration, more such operations may be
> on the way.
>
> So, what are these “objectives†that Senator Clinton alluded to? What would
> future war-fighting look like according to the Clinton doctrine? One has
> only to look at Kosovo to see the blueprint and organizing principle behind
> what could become the long-term future of U.S. foreign policy under the
> Democrats.
> A Disputed Land
>
> Approximately the size of Connecticut, Kosovo is a province within the
> Republic of Serbia, an Eastern European country that controls one of the
> major land routes from Western Europe to Turkey and the Near East. Like the
> rest of what used to be Yugoslavia, Kosovo had a rich mix of ethnic groups
> and different nationalities. Ethnic Albanians, who are predominantly Muslim,
> make up the majority of a population of around two million. The presence of
> many Albanian Muslims and the Ottoman Turks over the centuries has left a
> countryside dotted with mosques. Meanwhile, the predominantly Orthodox
> Christian Serbs form the largest minority group. For them, Kosovoâ€"home of
> the Patriarchate of Peć, the equivalent of the Vatican for Orthodox
> Christianityâ€"is the center of their religious and national identity, both
> their Jerusalem and their Alamo. Other minorities present include the
> Montenegrins, Turks, Croats, Ashkali, Roma (Gypsies), and Muslim Slavs.
>
> In previous centuries, the Serbs had been the most populous group in Kosovo,
> but over the years were driven out in large numbers. One reason was brutal
> treatment during World War II, when Nazi and Italian troops invaded
> Yugoslavia. Kosovo Albanians sided with the Axis Powers, helped raise an SS
> *Skanderbeg *division, and began a systematic slaughter and ethnic cleansing
> of Serbs, Jews, and other minorities. The fact that Albanians in the 1980s
> had the highest birth rate in Europe also contributed to the fateful
> demographic shift.
> Yugoslavia , Post-Tito
>
> In the aftermath of World War II, Yugoslavia became a socialist successor
> state to the monarchic Kingdom of Yugoslavia, formed after World War I.
> Under Marshal Tito, Yugoslavia’s many ethnic, national, and religious groups
> were held in check with an iron hand and cynical machinations, which
> included playing one ethnic group against another. So it’s not surprising
> that in the power vacuum created when Tito died on May 4, 1980, thousands of
> students poured into the streets of Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, demanding
> that Kosovo be made an independent republic. News outlets and analysts
> reported that some Albanians wanted republic status so that they could
> secede and become part of neighboring Albania, then the most orthodox
> Communist country in the region.
>
> As this movement spread, a ruthless crackdown from Belgrade followed. In
> 1981, Albanian riots broke out and were put down violently by Yugoslav
> forces. Kosovo came under virtual military rule, with curfews and other
> emergency measures provoking more resentment. The discontent was compounded
> by a country-wide financial crisis. Despite large-scale national investment
> in Kosovo, and the fact that the province received the lion’s share of all
> federal aid in the country, unemployment ran at 40 percent.
>
> A mass exodus of Serbs was underway by 1986, when Reuters quoted a Western
> diplomat saying that Kosovo was a “powder keg†and officials were
> “struggling to keep the lid on.†“For the Serbs who have remained,
> frustrated Albanian youth have kept up a steady harassment ranging from the
> painting of hostile slogans on Serb homes and vandalism of Serb graveyards
> to beatings and rapes,†the *Washington Post* reported. The following year,
> the *New York Times*concluded that:
>
> Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the
> autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, the judiciary, civil
> service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately
> feel the independenceâ€"and suspicionâ€"of the ethnic Albanian authorities.
>
> An official inquiry found that local security and justice bodies had let
> Albanian offenses against Serbs go unchecked, including rape, assault,
> arson, intimidation, and property offenses. The finding led to a purge of
> the Kosovo judiciary and police. But 1987 saw a return of the worst violence
> since the riots initially broke out.
> Enter Milošević and the KLA
>
> The rise of Slobodan Milošević, the Communist Party boss who became first
> President of Serbia (1989-1997) and then President of Yugoslavia
> (1997-2000), evolved in part from his promises to protect Serbs. He courted
> voters with the “policy of the hard hand.†Under Milosevic, Serbia cut back
> aid to Kosovo, revoked the province’s autonomy, continued meting out harsh
> sentences to protestors and struck down ethnic quotas for jobs in the
> province â€"all of which fueled enormous resentment.
>
> The 1990s saw the Balkans flare up in a series of civil wars over the rise
> of Milosevic, various forms of nationalism, and secessionist moves by
> Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Later in the decade,
> Kosovo would become the final battleground before the breakup of the former
> Yugoslavia, as Milošević (now Yugoslavia’s president) and the newly
> formed *Ushtria
> Çlirimtare e Kosovës* (Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA), an armed paramilitary
> group, battled ruthlessly for supremacy.
> The Albanian mafia reportedly backed secessionist groups in Kosovo.
>
> As early as February 1995, *Jane’s Intelligence Review *reported the rise of
> a “Balkan Medellinâ€â€"namely, the Albanian mafia, believed to control 70
> percent of the illegal heroin market in Germany and Switzerland. Closely
> allied with the Sicilian mafia, the Albanian mafia was dominated in the
> southern Balkans by Kosvar Albanians, and was reported to be involved in
> gun-running and the financing of the KLA along with other secessionist
> groups in Kosovo and neighboring Macedonia.
>
> The group viewed violence as the only effective path to secession and proper
> rights for the province’s Albanian majority. Despite an eclectic composition
> that included university students, Marxist-Leninists, and Maoists, in
> addition to tribal clansmen, the KLA embraced all the ideological hallmarks
> of a backwards tribalism: ethnic purification, racism, collective guilt, and
> mob justice.
>
> The group made its violent debut in February 1996 by bombing several camps
> housing Serbian refugees from the wars in Croatia and Bosnia. Soon, it
> claimed responsibility for deadly ambushes of policemen, kidnappings of
> Serbs, and murders of Albanians accused of being traitors. The KLA used hand
> grenades, bombs, and machine guns in its bloody attacks against police,
> private citizens, and universities, and human rights workers documented KLA
> rapes of civilian women. By May 1998, the group controlled about a quarter
> of Kosovo*.*
>
> Initially, the Clinton administration opposed the KLA. In 1998, U.S.
> Ambassador Robert Gelbard stated, “We condemn very strongly terrorist
> actions in Kosovo. The UÇK [KLA] is, without any questions, a terrorist
> group.†On March 4, 1998, State Department spokesman James Rubin said the
> U.S. had “called on the leaders of the Kosovar-Albanians to condemn
> terrorist action by the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army.â€
>
> United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1160 (March 31, 1998) and 1199
> (September 23, 1998) also denounced “acts of terrorism by the Kosovo
> Liberation Army,†as well as “external support†for terrorism, including
> “financing, arms, and training.†Even-handedly, they also condemned
> “excessive and indiscriminate use of force by Serbian security forces and
> the Yugoslav Army.â€
> The KLA sought to escalate the conflict in order to draw the West in.
>
> A ceasefire was negotiated between the Serbian government and the KLA in
> late 1998. But simultaneously, the KLA sought to escalate the conflict to
> the point where they believed the West would feel compelled to intervene
> against Milošević’s pro-Serb regime on behalf of ethnic Albanians. According
> to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, 80 percent of the ceasefire
> violations in the months preceding the NATO bombing campaign were by the
> KLA. Their battles with Milošević’s forces were characterized by grim
> atrocities on both sides; but increasingly cruel retaliation by Milošević’s
> thuggish forces soon received the lion’s share of international attention,
> as past Serbian victims became perpetrators of new atrocities against their
> former Albanian victimizers.
>
> Throughout the last half of 1998, Milošević led an especially brutal
> offensive against the KLA. Human Rights Watch representatives reported that
> the special forces of the Serbian police, the Yugoslav Army, and
> anti-terrorist forces were responsible for summary executions and
> indiscriminate attacks on civilians, including ax murders and the slitting
> of throats. Milošević’s forces also engaged in systematic destruction of
> civilian property, contaminating wells, burning crops and homes (sometimes
> with people inside), and shooting livestock. Widespread physical abuse of
> prisoners and arbitrary detentions were also cited. Father Sava Janjicâ€"a
> famous blogging “cybermonk†of Decani monastery, who offered refuge from
> marauding forces to Albanians and Serbs alikeâ€"denounced MiloÅ¡ević as the
> “cancer of Europe.â€
>
> The escalating ethnic bloodshed evoked outrage from the Clinton
> administration and other international leaders. Eastern European and NATO
> countries expressed concern over the mounting economic and public-order
> crises caused by tens of thousands of fleeing refugees, and some forecast a
> potential unfolding of World War III. Even many conservatives thought that
> the U.S. should take up the defense of the Albanian Muslims against the
> ruthless onslaught of Milošević’s Christian Serbs, though contrarians argued
> that intervention itself could touch off a wider war.
> From Terrorists to Freedom Fighters
>
> However understandable the worries about Milošević, what did *not *make
> sense was the Clinton administration’s sudden about-face concerning the KLA.
> Abruptly, his administration placed this official “terrorist†group on the
> fast track to public rehabilitation.
>
> In the person of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the administration
> offered incentives to the KLA intended to show that Washington was a “friend
> of Kosovo.†Reported the *New York Times*: “Officers in the Kosovo
> Liberation Army were sent to the United States for training in transforming
> themselves from a guerrilla group into a police force or a political entity,
> much like the African National Congress did in South Africa.â€
> "Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was... dishonest."
> -U.N. Force Commander Lt. General Satish Numbiar
>
> During the ongoing carnage, Milošević was portrayed exclusively as
> *the*villain,
> while a contrasting romantic view of the KLA was promoted. By April 1999,
> U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) would even claim that “the United
> States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human
> values and principles,†adding: “Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human
> rights and American values†(*Washington Post*, April 28, 1999). That same
> month, he and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) proposed legislation *to arm* the
> KLA, in direct contravention of the Helsinki Accords and previous UN
> Security Council Resolutions.
>
> In February and March 1999, the Clinton administration had sought a
> permanent peace agreement in negotiations at Rambouillet, France that
> included representatives of the KLA. But while Yugoslavia agreed to most of
> the demands, Milošević balked at allowing NATO troops access to Serbia.
> An Altruistic Crusade
>
> Just as President Clinton had previously exhorted NATO to fight for Muslims
> seeking to form an independent state in Bosnia, he would now call for NATO
> intervention to defend Albanians seeking to secede from Serbia. Between
> March and May 1999, NATO bombed Serbia to compel its forces to retreat from
> Kosovo, where they had been fighting the KLA. Hillary Clinton revealed to an
> interviewer later that summer that “I urged him [her husband] to bomb. You
> cannot let this go on at the end of a century that has seen the major
> holocaust of our time. What do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of
> life?†The use of the words “*our* way of life†to describe civil warfare
> between competing gangs in faraway Eastern Europe apparently went
> unchallenged.
>
> The NATO campaign was supposed to be about stopping “ethnic cleansing†of
> Albanians by Serbs. President Clinton cited, as his rationale, “deliberate,
> systematic efforts at . . . genocide.†He estimated publicly that 100,000
> ethnic Albanians had been killed. Before the bombing, NATO spokesman Jamie
> Shea also said that evidence of mass graves had been found. “God knows what
> we’re going to find when Kosovo is open again and the international war
> crimes tribunal is let in.†David Scheffer, then the U.S.
> ambassador-at-large for war crimes, declared that as many as “225,000 ethnic
> Albanian men aged between 14 and 59†may have been killed. The estimate
> later ballooned to 600,000.
> Fear and altruistic sentiments and are poor substitutes for facts.
>
> In seeking the public’s support for war, Clinton also invoked dramatic
> memories from World War II. “[We are acting] so that future generations of
> Americans do not have to cross the Atlantic to fight another terrible war…,â€
> he said. “Our stand in Kosovo is a strategic imperative.†On May 14, 1999,
> first lady Hillary Clinton visited refugee camps in neighboring Macedonia
> and told media that the stories she had heard “echoed images of the Nazi
> era, as depicted in films like *Schindler’s List* or *Sophie’s Choice*.†The
> war, she said, was about our commitment to “human rights.â€
>
> Most of the press uncritically absorbed these notions in stories and
> headlines that echoed the Third Reich theme, like “Flight from Genocide†and
> “Echoes of the Holocaust.†The specter of mass butchery and the evocation of
> painful memories of the Nazi death camps stirred feelings of compassion in
> the American people.
>
> But fear and altruistic sentiments and are poor substitutes for facts and
> rational self-interest, and constitute dangerous grounds for going to war.
> “Propaganda Warâ€
>
> There was no direct or obvious benefit to the U.S. in bombing Milošević’s
> forces in Kosovoâ€"simply because there was no *good *side to support in the
> conflict. By all informed accounts, the violence in the Balkans in the 1990s
> was a three-sided civil war, with brutality and atrocities committed
> mutually by the Croats, Bosniaks, and Serbs. Moreover, prescient analysts
> warned that while there was plenty of bloodshed in the unrest, there was no
> clear evidence of “genocide†in Kosovo, and that military intervention could
> have grave and unintended consequences for the region.
>
> In fact, within weeks of the bombing campaign, pre-war “genocide†claims of
> hundreds of thousands of victims were scaled downward dramatically. A
> subsequent five-month UN investigation found only 2,108 bodies. Similarly,
> James Bissett, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Albania, and
> Bulgaria, later testified: “In the case of Kosovo, it appears that about
> 2,000 people were killed prior to the NATO bombing. When one considers that
> a civil war had been going on in Kosovo since 1993, that is not a remarkable
> figure, certainly not when compared with a lot of other hot spots in the
> rest of the world.†Recent reports reviewed by this author indicate that in
> 1999, slightly more than 4,000 Albanians were killed and approximately 1,700
> non-Albanians were killed. Some 2,500 are still missing, according to data
> from the Commission for Abducted and Missing Persons.
>
> Terrible, of course, but a far cry from the slaughter of hundreds of
> thousands.
> "[W]e did not find oneâ€"not oneâ€"mass grave."
> -Investigator Emilio Perez Pujol
>
> Spanish forensic investigator Emilio Perez Pujol headed a large team of
> pathologists and police specialists. The search for mass graves, he
> explained to the *Sunday Times*, was “a semantic pirouette by the war
> propaganda machines, because we did not find oneâ€"not oneâ€"mass grave…†Pujol
> told the *El Pais* newspaper, “We had been working with two parallel
> problems. One was the propaganda war. This allowed them to lie, to fake
> photographs for the press, to publish pictures of mass graves, or whatever
> they had to influence world opinion in favor or against Milošević or in
> favor of the NATO bombings....â€
>
> “There never was a genocide in Kosovo,†he concluded. “It was dishonest and
> wrong for western leaders to adopt the term in the beginning to give moral
> authority to the operation.â€
>
> Shortly after the bombing began, Lt. General Satish Numbiar, a UN Force
> Commander, wrote:
>
> Portraying the Serbs as evil and everybody else as good was not only
> counter-productive but also dishonest. According to my experience all sides
> were guilty but only the Serbs would admit they were no angels while the
> others would insist that they were. With 28,000 forces under me and with
> constant contacts with UNHCR [the UN Refugee Agency] and the International
> Red Cross officials, we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and
> massacres on all sides that are typical of such conflict conditions. I
> believe none of my successors and their forces saw anything on the scale
> claimed by media.
>
> U.S.-Sponsored Ethnic Cleansing
>
> When the bombing campaign ended, there were no NATO Kosovo Force troops on
> the ground to preserve order. Infuriated Serbs launched reprisals against
> Albanians, in an apparent effort to push all the remaining Albanians out of
> Kosovo. Then came the inevitable backlash: a retaliatory campaign of ethnic
> cleansing against Serbs and other minorities, carried out by those on whose
> behalf the U.S. was fighting: the ethnic Albanians.
>
> In the name of “stopping the genocide,†NATO and the UN actually sparked and
> presided over one of the worst episodes of ethnic cleansing in modern
> history. Jiri Dienstbier, the UN special representative on human rights in
> the former Yugoslavia, put it this way: “[T]he spring ethnic cleansing of
> ethnic Albanians accompanied by murders, torture, looting and burning of
> houses has been replaced by the fall ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Romas,
> Bosniaks and other non-Albanians accompanied by the same atrocities.â€
> Dienstbier reported that the province was left “without a legal system,
> ruled by illegal structures of the Kosovo Liberation Army and very often by
> competing mafias.â€
>
> In August 1999, Human Rights Watch estimated that more than 164,000 Serbs,
> Roma (or Gypsies), Ashkali, Croats, Muslim Slavs, and other minorities had
> been driven out of Kosovo during the wave of violence. That number later
> grew to an estimated 220,000 who fled Kosovo in fear for their lives.
> According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE),
> UNMIK (United Nations Interim Mission in Kosovo), KFOR (NATO’s Kosovo
> Force), and various human rights groups, entire villages were burned down
> and cities emptied of minorities. Thousands of buildings owned or related to
> minorities, including homes, churches, seminaries, and cemeteries, were
> burned, blown up, or otherwise vandalized. Knifings, bombings, abductions,
> murder, threats, and intimidation have been used to cleanse the province of
> any remaining minorities.
>
> Reports by the OSCEâ€"self-described as the world’s largest regional security
> agencyâ€"documented how minority groups became the targets of
>
> executions, abductions, torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,
> arbitrary arrests…house burnings, blockades restricting freedom,
> discriminatory treatment in schools, hospitals, humanitarian aid
> distribution and other public services…and forced evictions from housing.
> [T]here are serious indications that the perpetrators of [these] human
> rights violations are either members of the former KLA, people passing
> themselves off as members of the former KLA or members of other armed
> Albanian groups.
>
> Eventually, KLA members were absorbed into the “Kosovo Protection Corpsâ€
> (KPC), put on the UN payroll, and tasked with providing emergency response
> and rebuilding. “We believe the Kosovo Protection Corps will make a useful
> contribution to the restoration of peace and security for all the
> communities of Kosovo and its progress toward democracy,†declared Secretary
> of State Madeleine Albright.
>
> However, the UN later reported that KPC members had acted as *de facto* police
> officers, torturing or killing local citizens, illegally detaining others,
> extorting “liberation taxes†from businesses, and threatening UN police who
> attempted to intervene.
>
> Today, the property rights of minorities have disappeared as ethnic
> Albanians help themselves to what’s left of the former owners’ cars, homes,
> furnishings, and businesses. According to UNMIK’s Housing and Property
> Department, over 700,000 housing units in Kosovo have been illegally
> occupied, along with an unknown number of businesses.
>
> In many areas, only those incapable of fleeingâ€"the elderly, the poor, or
> the handicappedâ€"remain, living in ghettoes circled by barbed wire and manned
> by NATO KFOR checkpoints. Many eke out an existence on the edge of survival,
> like those who now live in shipping containers donated by Russia. Moderate
> Albanians have been targeted as well, including those who had been content
> with Serbia’s rule or who enjoy socializing with Serbs. Political rivals
> have been assassinated and, in at least one case, dismembered. Many Serbs
> cannot move about without armed escorts.
> Terrorists, Islamists, Gun-Runners
>
> Meanwhile, European media investigations and statements from law
> enforcement officials describe how Kosovo has become an open market for
> terrorists looking for weapons and explosives, a key global player in heroin
> trafficking, and the world’s most notorious center for sex-slave
> trafficking.
>
> Into this vacuum of lawlessness have come radical Wahhabi Muslim groups from
> Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These groups flooded into the
> area after the bombing and invasion, offering financial aid to Albanians,
> sometimes on strict conditions: “They had to wear the head scarf and bow to
> Mecca five times a day, or allow the Wahhabis to build a mosque,†former
> OSCE official Thomas Gambill recounts. The burly ex-Marine also showed this
> author security records logging complaints by Albanian school teachers who
> said they were being kicked out of their classrooms for hours at a time, so
> that Wahhabis could teach the Koran to their students.
>
> Gambill’s warnings about the KLA creating new, illegal paramilitary groups
> were frequently rebuffed. Supposedly disarmed, the KLA merely formed other
> groups with different names, such as the Albanian National Army. A 2003 NATO
> map viewed by this author marked the locations of some two dozen illegal
> paramilitary camps in Kosovo.
>
> In September 2005, a team of investigative reporters from Dutch television
> station VPRO produced a documentary showing a robust gun-running operation
> from a Brooklyn supporter of the KLA. They asked the gun-runner, Florin
> Krasniqi, about NATO’s claims of having disarmed the KLA. “It’s NATO
> propaganda,†Krasniqi replied. “NATO can collect a few arms. But most
> Albanians in Kosovo are very well armed. Just in case NATO pulls out, or we
> don’t get our independence peacefully, then we’ll use those weapons.â€
> "With money you can do amazing things...Senators and congressmen are looking
> for donations..."
>
> -Florin Krasniqi
>
> The KLA did not forget where its political support originated, either. In
> the documentary, Krasniqi is shown attending a John Kerry fundraiser in New
> York with other KLA members and writing checks to the Kerry campaign. The
> film also shows Krasniqi introducing his group to retired General Wesley
> Clark, who led the NATO campaign before becoming a Democratic presidential
> candidate. “Mr. Clark,†he says, “This is your group, your KLA.†Clark
> responds approvingly: “They fought against tremendous odds.â€
>
> “With money you can do amazing things in this country,†Krasniqi adds.
> “Senators and congressmen are looking for donations. If you fund them and
> raise the money they need for their campaign, they pay you back.â€
>
> Indeed. And it wasn’t just Democrats that raked in Albanian donations.
> Former Republican Senator Robert Dole, an early supporter, received $1.2
> million from Albanian lobbies for his 1988 presidential campaign. Albanians
> even showed their gratitude by naming streets in Kosovo after Dole and Bill
> Clinton.
> Sham Negotiations?
>
> Kosovo has been a protectorate of the United Nations ever since the war,
> pending a negotiated resolution of its “final status.†At the bargaining
> table, the province demands independence from Serbia, while Serbia offers a
> compromise: “more than autonomy and less than independence.â€
>
> Early on, the UN had repeatedly insisted that Kosovo meet certain standards
> before negotiations over its final status were settled. But after seven
> years of UN administration and billions of dollars in foreign aid, Kosovo
> and its international administrators have been unable to consistently meet
> even the most basic standards set forth in UN Security Council resolutions
> 1199, 1160, and 1244. Those resolutions demanded the demilitarization of
> paramilitary groups, an end to “acts of terrorism,†the protection of basic
> human rights, and safe return of all refugees.
>
> In October 2005, some six years after Kosovo became a UN protectorate,
> Norwegian Ambassador to NATO Kai Eide published a review of how Kosovo was
> meeting UN-set standards. “With regard to the foundation of a multi-ethnic
> society,†Eide wrote, “the situation is grim.†The report called the
> continued existence of minority “camps†inside Kosovo “a disgrace for the
> governing structures and for the international community.†The report also
> noted that the refugee return process had come to a halt.
>
> The report also cited “widespread illegal occupation of property.â€
> Prosecution of serious crimes was said to be hindered by hindered by “family
> or clan solidarity and by the intimidation of witnesses as well as of law
> enforcement and judicial officials.†Failure to prosecute crimes targeting
> minorities was said to result in a climate of “impunity.â€
>
> The failure of the UN to insist that Kosovo meet minimal civilized standards
> has convinced some critics that the negotiations are a sham, that Kosovo’s
> final status has already been decided by the “Contact Group,†which
> represents major Western powers.
>
> An email this author received on February 28 from a military official
> stationed in Kosovo claimed the Contact Group had planned the future
> stepping down of Kosovo Prime Minister Barjam Kosumi and his replacement by
> former KLA commander Agim Ceku. "Agim Ceku will take over prime minister
> role...Contact Group does not find Kosumi appropriate for status talks and
> as a leader ...Lufti Haziri will be his deputy, Lufti will mentor Ceku,
> because Lufti knows how to play politics. Truly amazing ...the butcher of
> the Serbs in Croatia." The last phrase was a reference to the fact Ceku was
> wanted by Serbia for alleged war crimes in Croatia. (Ceku vigorously denies
> the charges.) The day after the email was received, Kosumi resigned and was
> soon replaced by hardliner Ceku who rejects compromise and insists on
> independence.
>
> Sometime in late January, UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari will make a
> recommendation on the “final status†of Kosovoâ€"namely, whether it should
> remain part of Serbia or be granted independence. The Contact Group will
> make its recommendation on Kosovo’s future after reviewing the report. If
> Kosovo gains independence, some analysts and political leaders warn of
> potential destabilization in other troubled parts of the world, as various
> secessionist movements become emboldened to demand their own independence.
> This would only exacerbate the process of geopolitical disintegration that
> philosopher Ayn Rand <http://www.atlassociety.org/tni/ayn_rand>aptly
> labeled “global Balkanization.â€
> Fair Warning
>
> The disastrous political-cultural outcome of the NATO campaign in Serbia
> already affords us sobering lessons about the irrationality of conducting
> military actions on the basis of manipulated evidence, in the absence of
> contextual understanding of local history, andâ€"most importantlyâ€"for motives
> other than clear national self-interest. The Kosovo incursion was instead
> prosecuted as a “war of belief,†argues Gregory Copley, a respected
> geopolitical analyst and president of the International Strategic Studies
> Association. Rational criteria for deciding whether to make war were
> jettisoned as the Clinton administration opted instead for “an approach to
> war and strategic affairs which is based solely around unsubstantiated
> beliefs.â€
>
> The motivational root of those “unsubstantiated beliefs†is the philosophy
> that extols as “moral†and “idealistic†any*selfless* act or policyâ€"i.e.,
> any course of action in which the actor has nothing personal to gain.
>
> Observe that while most liberals (and many conservatives) recoil from any *
> self-interested* projection of American military might abroad, they fall all
> over themselves to demonstrate “pure, selfless motives†by launching
> military actions like those in Kosovo, where America had no vital interests
> at risk, but precious lives and treasure to sacrifice.
>
> For such people, the hideous real-world consequences of their altruistic
> crusades pale in the face of their “idealistic†motives*. *For them, in
> truth, “good intentions†are the *only* realityâ€"with “good†being defined as
> “selfless.†The logic of the selflessness ethos is inescapable: We should
> engage in warfare only when we have nothing to gain from it.
>
> The moral self-deception continues to this day. Even as the brutal ethnic
> cleansing of Kosovo’s minorities by racists and fascists goes on, the
> Clintonsâ€"former president and presidential aspirant alikeâ€"continue to tout
> the military adventure in the Balkans as a victory for “democratic valuesâ€
> of humanitarianism and multicultural tolerance. Their selfless war, they
> insist, stands as an idealistic model of how a future Democratic
> administration should and would employ American military power abroad.
>
> Consider that fair warning.
>
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