By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources
October 2, 1998
Yesterday on Crossfire Bob Novak asked Rep. Elliott Engle, a supporter of Clinton's saber rattling over Kosovo, "Congressman Engle, exactly what is it you would like to do - send cruise missiles to find some pharmaceutical plant in Kosovo. Or, would you like to carpet bomb Belgrade, the Serbian capitol, or send troops into Kosovo, like we have sent to Bosnia? What would you like to do?" Engle responded by suggesting we do pretty much what we did about Iraq - declare a no-fly zone and, if Milosovic does not pull troops out of the province of Kosovo, which is an integral part of the nation of Yugoslavia, we would force him to do so.
But; Novak wanted to know, "Why is Kosovo in our national interest? Surely you don't believe that the Serbian military threatens Paris and Berlin?" Engle said it was in our national interest, "first from a humanitarian point of view" and also, he thought, because it might spark a wider conflict.
If we are going to have a widening and permanent American ground troops in the Balkans, surely we need to hear better arguments than that. Especially, as Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma pointed out, we have such an alarmingly reduced fighting force since Clinton became president.
The ethnic Albanians, following the lead of the Croatians, and the Bosnian Moslems, have opted to launch a civil war against the Belgrade government demanding that THEY now be allowed to bite off another chunk of Yugoslavia and become independent or part of Albania. There is a lot of similarity in the Kosovo situation to what could happen to California at some point in time, if some get their way.
The "ethnic Albanians" moved into the Kosovo province during the Ottoman Turk occupation of the Balkans. Serbs regard Kosovo as an integral part of their nation and history. The area is at the heart of national folklore, being the site of the 1389 defeat of medieval Serb heroes by Ottoman Turks, a key event in the national consciousness. Following the dramatic decimation in the Serb population of Yugoslavia following the slaughter of 1.5 million Serbs by the Croatian Nazis during World War II, the influx of Albanians into Kosovo accelerated.
The Albanians became a majority in part of the region - just as Hispanics could over time become a majority in portions of California or Texas. From the point of view of the Serbs, who were the original population of the area, those living in their country need to learn the language and become Yugoslavians. The Kosovo Albanians, like some Hispanics in California, wanted to retain their own culture and language. Kosovo was given autonomy when it was a Communist state under the dictator Josip Broz Tito. After Tito died, as nationalism began unraveling the nation, the new Yugoslavia President, Slobodan Milosevic, withdrew the ethnic Albania autonomy, changed the school curricula and declared the Albanian language unofficial.
Two years ago armed conflict erupted, with weapons furnished by the Albanians. Milosevic basically did exactly what was done by John F. Kennedy did when Governor George Wallace refused to submit to federal law in allowing black students to register at the University of Alabama. Kennedy called out the National Guard and Milosevic sent an enlarged police contingent to Kosovo.
It is patently absurd that a mass killing of 18 people in Kosovo is being used to justify the bombing of Serbia. Regrettable, yes. But, a massacre? Horrible things happen in wars. Often those horrible things are not directed by the national leadership - such as the order by the American Lt. William Calley which resulted in the death of over 500 Vietnamese in the My Lai massacre. Should the United Nations have recommended the bombing of the United States because of Calley's decision?
As in the My Lai incident, the reporting in Kosovo is one-sided. The massacres that took place in South East Asia that were ordered by Communist regimes never were reported with the same emotion as My Lai. CNN and other international news organizations rarely seem to send reporters to cover the Balkan story from the Serb perspective.
Perhaps we ought to remember that we are getting ourselves involved in an internal problem. Kosovo is a state in the nation of Yugoslavia. The fact that the Albanian population now like their new homes so much that they want to change national borders so they can avoid being required learn a different language is not an issue we should be spending billions of dollars or dropping bombs to resolve. Somehow I suspect that the President and the Congress might get upset if we were in Milosevic's shoes someday, facing bombing threats from Chinese or North Korean missiles unless we agree to move all federal offices and troops out of California so the Hispanics could create a Spanish speaking state that with ties to Mexico City rather than Washington, D.C.
Americans forget, or never learned, that it was the Serbs who played a key role in the defeat of Adolph Hitler in World War II - and they suffered horrendous losses as a result. The Croats made a secret pact with Hitler to place Yugoslavia under German control. It was the Serbs who were the resisters who not only never collaborated with the Nazis, but also tried to save their Jewish neighbors. As a result, over 1.5 million Serbs were massacred. Today, Americans hear only negatives about the Serbs - but it was the Serbs in the Balkans who never bought into the Nazi and Croat nationalism that required the slaughter of Jews and Gypsies.
In 1941 Bosnia was approximately three-fourths Serb - and the remaining were Croatian. Although the term "ethnic cleansing" was not in use in World War II, the slaughter of six million Jews by Hitler was, of course, just that. In Yugoslavia, the slaughter of the Serb population was on a similar scale. The Holocaust museum has statistics on all the groups that Hitler tried to annihilate, and they point out that the second largest group of the Holocaust, after the Jews, were the Serbs.
To use NATO as a "Wag the Dog" Ploy, because 18 rebellious Albanians were killed in Kosovo, after totally ignoring the massacre of nearly a million Tutsis in the former Zaire is both racist and despicable. But, you have to give Clinton credit for an amazing acting ability. He has a lot of support from blacks who seemed to think he's a great president even if he DOES believe 18 white people are worth more than a million black people.
To comment: mmostert@originalsources.com