General Lewis MacKenzie over the Kosovo war: We bombed the wrong side?

http://www.balkanpeace.org/index.php?index=article&articleid=7427 ^ | April 08, 2004 | Lewis MacKenzie

[lupo-de-mare]

National Post, April 08, 2004 We bombed the wrong side?

by Lewis MacKenzie

Five years ago our television screens were dominated by pictures of Kosovo-Albanian refugees escaping across Kosovo's borders to the sanctuaries of Macedonia and Albania. Shrill reports indicated that Slobodan Milosevic's security forces were conducting a campaign of genocide and that at least 100,000 Kosovo-Albanians had been exterminated and buried in mass graves throughout the Serbian province. NATO sprung into action and, in spite of the fact no member nation of the alliance was threatened, commenced bombing not only Kosovo, but the infrastructure and population of Serbia itself -- without the authorizing United Nations resolution so revered by Canadian leadership, past and present.

Those of us who warned that the West was being sucked in on the side of an extremist, militant, Kosovo-Albanian independence movement were dismissed as appeasers. The fact that the lead organization spearheading the fight for independence, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was universally designated a terrorist organization and known to be receiving support from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was conveniently ignored.

The recent dearth of news in the North American media regarding the increase in violence in Kosovo compared to the comprehensive coverage in the European press strongly suggests that we Canadians don't like to admit it when we are wrong. On the contrary, selected news clips on this side of the ocean continue to reinforce the popular spin that those dastardly Serbs are at it again.

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

MG Lewis MacKenzie understood we were on the wrong side as many of the rest of us knew. Our political crooks, as usual, were on the wrong side for reasons we will never be told.

[yarddog]

Our attack on Serbia was one of the worst things this nation has ever done period.

[Just A Nobody]

the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), was universally designated a terrorist organization and known to be receiving support from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda was conveniently ignored.

Osama and al-Qaeda were not the only one's suppling the KLA.

John McCain armed Kosovo Islamic terrorists

Americans of Albanian heritage collected a million dollars in one evening for the presidential campaign of Republican Senator John McCain, said the Albanian American Civic League yesterday, the lobby group headed by former Congressman Joe DioGuardi. A reception for McCain was held January 22 at the Saint Regis Hotel in Manhatten, and the senator, who is now leading in the runoff for the Republican party candidacy in the November elections, cut his campaign in Florida by one day to attend this gathering.

"Even in 1998 when we had problems with Milosevic, McCain did everything that we asked of him to the benefit of the Albanian people, including arming the KLA", announced DioGuardi. "We are American Albanians and we need a leader who will strengthen this country... We must support John McCain because he did everything we asked of him for Kosovo, from supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army to supporting the independence of Kosovo. Two years ago he spoke in Brussels and said that independence is the only solution", concluded this former congressman who has been fighting for the independence of Kosovo and Metohija for more than twenty years.

He explained that the first thing McCain said to him when he entered the hotel in Manhatten on January 22: "Joe, I saw your people in Michigan, and in South Carolina and in New Hampshire", from which this lobbyist deduced that all Americans of Albanian background will be voting for the senator from Arizona.

[Publius6961]

MG Lewis MacKenzie understood we were on the wrong side as many of the rest of us knew. Our political crooks, as usual, were on the wrong side for reasons we will never be told.

Of course, many of us recall that this occured during the "Lewinski affair", and the attempt to redirect the scandal at the cost of American lives and wealth, did not go totally unnoticed by adult Americans.
The documentation explaining this monumental blunder is too large to ignore.

I defy anyone, no matter how "progressively impaired" to deny the evidence in Unholy Terror, Bosnia, alQa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad, John R. Schindler, Zenith Press, 2007 ISBN 0-7603-3003-4.
One would have to be both lobotomized and under the influence of the best illicit drugs to continue believing killing Serbs and promoting Bosnians was a good thing.

The fabrication and lies continue today. From the referenced story:

"Totally ignored in North America were the numerous statements from impartial sources that said there was no incident between the Serbs, the dog and the Albanian boys. NATO Police spokesman Derek Chappell stated on March 16 that it was "definitely not true" that the boys had been chased into the river by Serbs. Chappell went on to say that the surviving boy had told his parents that they had entered the river alone and that three of his friends had been swept away by the current. Admiral Gregory Johnson, the overall NATO commander, further stated that the ensuing clashes were "orchestrated and well-planned ethnic cleansing" by the Kosovo-Albanians. Those Serbs forced to leave joined the 200,000 who had been cleansed from the province since NATO's "humanitarian" bombing in 1999. The '"cleansees" have become very effective "cleansers."

More Serbians killed and property destroyed by the "religion of peace", as a result of flimsy fabrications.

[Diocletian]

The Mujahideen would never have been allowed into Bosnia had it not been for the CIA.

[Publius6961]

The Mujahideen would never have been allowed into Bosnia had it not been for the CIA.

The CIA runs the USA now?

[Dick Bachert]

KOSOVO: THE WAR TO MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR ISLAM!!

[Hoplite]

Have you actually read Schindler's book?

It's one thing to be wrong about something, as is Schindler in his assertions of fundamentalism in Bosnia, it's another entirely to be wrong and write a book as if the preceding decade's worth of evidence to the contrary hadn't already disproven one's thesis.

Schindler unfortunately committed literary seppuku and threw himself under the Balkan bus with that book, joining other such notable authors as Michael Parenti and Diana Johnstone.

Evan Kohlmann's Al Qaida's Jihad in Europe remains the best book on the subject at this time, as it actually focuses on Al Qaida and the real world results they achieved for their efforts in Bosnia.

[infowarrior]

MG Lewis MacKenzie understood we were on the wrong side as many of the rest of us knew. Our political crooks, as usual, were on the wrong side for reasons we will never be told.

Both you, and the general are wrong, for the tragedy isn't that we backed the "wrong" side, but that we backed any side at all. In the breakup of Yugoslavia, there were *no* clean hands by any party whatsoever. All sides made liberal use of "ethnic cleansing" as a matter of policy, and since such was indubitably the case, we should have remained out of this fray.

The only reason I have any affinity at all for the Serbs, lies in the fact that they weren't trying to involve us, as all the rest of the warring parties were.

Originally, the US had the right idea, in not getting involved at all, but for the stupid reason of "making NATO relevant", we picked a side. The tragedy of that is that there were no sides really worthy of our support. There is nothing more for a "Greater Albania" (or "Greater Bosnia", or "Greater Croatia", for that matter) to commend itself, than there was for the great bogeyman of "Greater Serbia"...

the infowarrior