I, like many US citizens, through utter ignorance, initially supported our policy in the Balkans. I saw the conflict initially as a contest between good and evil. A contest between an evil oppessor and the oppressed. A secular conflict.
Like most US citizens I played a lot of historical, catchup ball as the conflict widened. The pattern that emerged was not secular but religious. The continuation of a religious conflict that stretched back to the middle ages.
Should we have opposed a totalitarian regiem, bent on genocide, in principal? Yes. Should we have developed the means for Islam to reach epidemic proportions? No.
My hindsight is 20/20.
There was never any genocide in Kosovo, as alleged by Clinton, McCain and the dominant media. Never. Until now. Serbs have been sytematically murdered and intimidated into leaving Kosovo since our horribly misguided NATO bombing campaign. Churches are burned, ancient monestaries and convents are looted and burned...the religious living there murdered and raped. That's happening to Christians in Kosovo today. Where's the outrage?
Careful with the religious angle. The Serb-Albanian conflict is based on ethnicity, not religion. Some of the top leaders of the KLA were Catholic. And the KLA membership took in all Albanians, regardless whether irreligious, Orthodox, Catholic, or Muslim. The Catholic churches in Kosovo were untouched by the Albanians; although the bishop of Kosovo did register complaints about Serbian harassment of his parishioners and Yugo Army take-overs of Catholic churches and property for their own use. The Albanian destruction of Orthodox churches can be explained (not excused) by the inextricable relationship between the Serbian Orthodox Church and Serbian nationalism.
Of note, the small Bosniak, Roma, and Gorani populations in Kosovo, also Muslim, have been treated just as badly by the Albanians as the remaining Serbs. The issue is not religion, despite the best propaganda efforts of the Serb nationalists to portray it as such in their efforts to paint their enemies as our enemies.