Posted on 04/06/2004 4:54:40 PM PDT by DTA
We bombed the wrong side?
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.
A case in point was the latest crisis that exploded on March 15. The media reported that four Albanian boys had been chased into the river Ibar in Mitrovica by at least two Serbs and a dog (the dog's ethnic affiliation was not reported). Three of the boys drowned and one escaped to the other side. Immediately, thousands of Albanians mobilized and concentrated in the area of the divided city. Attacks on Serbs took place throughout the province resulting in an estimated 30 killed and 600 wounded. Thirty Serbian Christian Orthodox churches and monasteries were destroyed, more than 300 homes were burnt to the ground and six Serbian villages cleansed of their occupants. One hundred and fifty international peacekeepers were injured.
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."
In the same week a number of individuals posing as Serbs ambushed and killed a UN policeman and his local police partner. During the firefight one of them was wounded which caused an immediate switch from Serbian to Albanian as he screamed, "I've been hit"! The UN pursued the attackers and tracked them to an Albanian-run farm where they discovered weapons and the wounded Albanian who had died from his wounds. Four Albanians were arrested. Once again, the ambush had been reported in the United States but not the follow-up which clearly indicated yet another orchestrated provocation by the Albanian terrorists.
Kosovo is administered by the UN, the very organization many Canadians have indicated they would like to see take over from the United States in Iraq. The fact the UN cannot order its civilian employees to go or stay anywhere -- they have to volunteer -- combined with recent history that saw the UN abandon Iraq after a single brutal attack on their compound in Baghdad and the reality that Kosovo, under the organization's administration, is a basket case, disqualifies it from consideration for such a role.
Since the NATO/UN intervention in 1999, Kosovo has become the crime capital of Europe. The sex slave trade is flourishing. The province has become an invaluable transit point for drugs en route to Europe and North America. Ironically, the majority of the drugs come from another state "liberated" by the West, Afghanistan. Members of the demobilized, but not eliminated, KLA are intimately involved in organized crime and the government. The UN police arrest a small percentage of those involved in criminal activities and turn them over to a judiciary with a revolving door that responds to bribes and coercion. The objective of the Albanians is to purge all non-Albanians, including the international community's representatives, from Kosovo and ultimately link up with mother Albania thereby achieving the goal of "Greater Albania." The campaign started with their attacks on Serbian security forces in the early 1990s and they were successful in turning Milosevic's heavy-handed response into worldwide sympathy for their cause. There was no genocide as claimed by the West -- the 100,000 allegedly buried in mass graves turned out to be around 2,000, of all ethnic origins, including those killed in combat during the war itself.
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.
Funny how we just keep digging the hole deeper!
Maj-Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, now retired, commanded UN troops during the Bosnian civil war of 1992.
(c) 2004 National Post . All Rights Reserved.
| Rank | Location | Receipts | Donors/Avg | Freepers/Avg | Monthlies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 | Tennessee | 380.00 |
6 |
63.33 |
|
|
51.00 |
8 |
Thanks for donating to Free Republic!
Move your locale up the leaderboard!
Yes. But, we learned, and we're bombing the correct side now.
Canada militarilly supported terrorist seccesionist group only three years after Quebec referendum. And CBC still supports KLA terrorists affiliated with Al Qaeda by airing lies to the unsuspecting public, or being silent about Pogrom in Kosovo.
Methinks RCMP investigation into CBC is long due.
It's what I've thought all along. Thank you clinton, gore, albright, et al.
Oh, yes it was. The United States was under the threat of its executive branch becoming destabilized unless its commander-in-chief found some way to cover the tracks of his voracious, insatiable, perverse sexual appetite.
In the end, it was a waste of his time, for when all was said and done anyway, he managed to convince enough Americans that all he did was put it in one chick's mouth in the formerly most respected office in the nation.
Politicians knew
what was going on. No one
defended the Serbs.
My memory is
Republicans only said
Clinton was using
the military
to divert attention from
his domestic mess.
When Hollywood made
that "Behind Enemy Lines"
no one protested.
Is there some tin foil
conspiracy going on
that lets this just tick,
rather than blow up
into a major issue?
It is very strange.
Why didn't anyone demand investigations, resignations, etc over that intelligence failure?
On 17th March when the Albanians started attacking the Serbs, KFOR send its forces on the border with Serbia to prevent SERBIAN ARMY entering Kosovo and helping the Serbs.
Next day the British sent fresh reinforcements to Kosovo.
NOT a single WESTERN NATION has provided humanitarian help to the Serbs in Kosovo whose homes were burnt.
Only nation to provide humanitarian assistance was Russia. Of course the Russian trucks entering Kosovo were carefully search for possible military aid.
Of the expelled Serbs few have returned.
US had cut aid to Serbia on 31th of March. EU on 2 of April has allowed for 51 million euros for the Kosovo institutions.
For raising the plight of the Kosovo Serbs the US ambassador in Belgrade, Serbia has annoucing that the Serbian government is "not on the way to democracy" and how the politicians in Serbia are not western looking any more.
None of the main Albanian commanders in Kosovo have been arrested.
2 Albanian terrorist sentenced in Macedonia for killing 2 Polish NATO troops in Macedonia using a land mine have been in the US BASE BONDSTEEL in Kosovo for 4 months with assurances that they WILL NOT be handed over to Macedonian authorities.
Serbian Orthodox church says NATO troops beat up priest, son in raid:
NATO-led peacekeepers have "tied and savagely beat up grievly wounded priest Jeremija (Starovlah) and his son with rifle butts, boots and everything that they could," said a letter by Serbian Orthodox Patriarch Pavle to the peackeepers' US commander.
My grandfather was in the partizans in Macedonia in 1943-47.
Back then they fought the Germans and their allies the Albanian Balisti.
Most of the village killings were done by the local German allies while the Germans just held the main roads from Skopje to Salonika and did not bother to enter the country side.
Well 60 years after Albanians are attacking and killing and to the people look at the Albanian supporters now in the same way they looked at the Germans in WWII.
American is Albanian supporters now and whether right or wrong they are seen as Nazies by the local people.
The KLA units in Macedonia and their representative in the Macedonian parliament have Albanian families that were aligned to the Italian fascists in 1941. We know that and the West knows that.
Did you know that the head of the German intelligence in 1999 when Yugoslavia was bombed, his father was a pilot in Luftwaffe in 1941 in the bombing of Belgrade??
What do you expect the Serbs to think of the west after such coincidences??
Of course, it could just have been pure stupidity.
In other words, B.J. Clinton and his evil cabal, including Richard Clarke, fought a war on behalf of Osama bin Laden.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.