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Clinton's Kosovo Failures
The Left
continues to try to paint Clinton's "war" in Kosovo as a
good thing. Our Balkans analyst, Stella Jatras, responds to
just
such an article
that appeared in the Washington Times:
In
response to your article "Kosovo a model for U.S. in Iraq"
(Page 1, Nov. 15), here are some facts that suggest a
different picture, one that considers the results of
President Clinton's flawed policies in both Bosnia and
Kosovo.
I have no
doubt that American soldiers are doing whatever they can, or
are allowed to do, to help make life better for the people
of Kosovo. However, the rosy picture the writer paints does
not reflect the fact that although Serbs once were the
majority in Kosovo, Serbian culture, society, language and
religion are being eradicated. Of the latest disturbance in
March of this year, which the writer briefly mentions, the
National Review Online of March 19 writes, "A pogrom started
in Europe on Wednesday. A U.N. official is quoted as saying
that Kristallnacht is under way in Kosovo. Serbs are being
murdered and their 800 year old churches are aflame. Much of
the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and
could be lost forever." In fact, more churches have been
destroyed since NATO's Kosovo Force entered Kosovo than
under 400 years of occupation by the Ottoman Turks.
Is this
what the author calls a success in Kosovo, a model for Iraq?
Deutsche Welle wrote on Nov. 15: "In Kosovo, human
trafficking paid for much of the fighting. For the first
time this year ... the world wide profits from human
trafficking will exceed those of the drug trade." The
Washington Times' own Jerry Seper reported as early as 1999,
"Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which has
financed its war efforts through the sale of heroin, were
trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive
Osama bin Laden."
In
November 2001, a Wall Street Journal Europe article said
that in the past 10 years, al Qaeda's most senior leaders
visited the Balkans. Osama bin Laden himself did three times
between 1994 and 1996. While the Clinton administration
underwrote the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija
Izetbegovic, his embassy in Vienna gave bin Laden a passport
in 1992.
Why did we
go to war against the Serbian people? As Cliff Kincaid of
Accuracy in Media wrote on Feb. 19, "Clinton went to war on
behalf of the Muslims, in Bosnia and then Kosovo. He wanted
to appease the powerful Arab/Muslim bloc of nations and the
Europeans who wanted to call the shots on U.S. foreign
policy."
The first
commander of U.N. troops in Bosnia, Canadian Gen. Lewis
MacKenzie, wrote on April 6 in the Canadian National Post,
"We bombed the wrong side?" He continued: "The
Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have
subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign
for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never
blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in
the early '90s, and we continue to portray them as the
designated victim today in spite of evidence to the
contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of
our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and
al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this
sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements
around the world."
Our
soldiers are to be commended for trying to bring comfort to
those suffering today because of the policies of the Clinton
administration. But make no mistake: Because of Mr.
Clinton's policies in the Balkans, Bosnia has become al
Qaeda's corridor into Europe, and we have handed Kosovo over
to the KLA terrorists.
Yet Mr.
Clinton, in his book "My Life," has the audacity to call
Kosovo a success.
Stella
Jatras - is the wife of a career military officer. She
has lived in Greece, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the Soviet
Union, where she worked in the political section of the U.S.
Embassy, and travelled to over 20 countries. Since the
advent of war in Bosnia, Mrs. Jatras has worked to overcome
Western media bias and present a more accurate view of the
tragic situation in the Balkans and the flaws in US Balkan
policy. Her opinions have been published in the Los Angeles
Times, Washington Times, Washington Post, Arizona Republic,
Stars and Stripes and many other major newspapers,
magazines, and websites. Mrs. Jatras can be reached by
email.
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