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I agree. My response to the post in question was more a rhetorical "slap on the back" or "right on" than anything else: I've NEVER sympathized with the Chechen's, though I must confess I haven't really paid the whole mess there that much attention until now. I do know that after 9/11 President Bush called Premier Putin to discuss the War On Terror and Putin basically said something to the effect that Russia was "already on the case" (not an actual quote, just something to that effect) in Chechnya.
As to the deal in the Balkans, I offer a different response: I have painstakingly avoided any commentary on the Serbian/Balkans/Clinton Kosovo policy for precisely two reasons:
1. I don't know enough about the entire issue to offer an honest, coherent, opinion.
2. I have seen enough flame-laden threads about the Balkans matter at FR that I'm not sure *I want* to know enough to come down on one side or the other concerning what, to me, is not a too terribly important region of the world vis-a-vi the WOT.
That said, I wholeheartedly endorse this observation: *being nice to aggressive Muslims is not the answer...*
I agree 100% with that statement.

I remember some of those flame-laden threads, and want to avoid those, too! The Balkans is a place where you sometimes wish all the sides could lose. The roots of that conflict are in the 400 year Ottoman occupation of the region, and there was and is no satisfactory solution, which is why I always felt we should just stay out of it, and take neither side.

I don't know if the Balkans are important in the WOT or not, to be honest. But the amount of money poured into Bosnia and Kosovo from the Middle East during that conflict by the same "relief organizations" that we have become familiar with in the post 9/11 era leaves no doubt as to the importance that many aggressive-minded Muslims themselves placed on their toe-hold in Europe.

My overall point is that the Clinton administration had no concept of the implications of Islamic militancy as a world-wide force, and didn't calculate this into their decisions. I don't think that the WOT can be separated from the larger phenomenon of Islamic expansionism (not that I think that's what you're saying). I don't know whether the current administration agrees with this, but even if they did, they wouldn't be able to state it publically.