A
HEADLINE TO DIE FOR
Of
course, since this is CNN – the Clinton News Network
– we are talking about, this needs to be translated from
Newspeak,
starting with the laughable guff about "Kosovar hard-liners."
Hard-line compared to whom – "soft-liners"? There's no
such thing in "liberated Kosovo, outside of Ibrahim
Rugova and his Democratic League, now
decimated and virtually powerless. The Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), once effusively praised by Madeleine Albright
and little Jimmy Rubin as "heroic freedom fighters," is in
full control on the ground, and they have not changed their
program of ethnic cleansing and one-party dictatorship one
iota. There was a
bloodcurdling story in the London Observer last
Sunday [(March 12], with a headline so good it made this editor
a little envious: "Revealed: UN-backed unit's reign of terror"!
Now there's a sight to warm the cockles of my right-wing
isolationist heart!
DOUBLE
DISASTER
It
is a headline that just about describes everything about the
world we are living in. The story relates in horrific detail
how the "Kosovo Protection Corps," a "disaster response service"
set up by the NATO-crats as a substitute for the "disbanded"
KLA, has unleashed a reign of terror on the Serbs and on their
own people. According to a secret United Nations report to
Kofi Annan, the "disaster response team" has itself been an
unmitigated disaster – and a bloody one, at that. Since
the inception of the Corps, says the report, these Kosovar
"protectors" have engaged in nonstop "criminal activities,
killings, ill-treatment/torture, illegal policing, abuse of
authority, intimidation, breaches of political neutrality
and hate-speech."
THE
BOB JONES FACTOR
Oh
no, not hate speech! Hey, these formerly cuddly
Kosovars, who first presented themselves as helpless refugees
and brave "freedom-fighters," had better watch it: the next
thing you know, somebody will discover that Hashim Thaci once
spoke at Bob Jones University, and then all the fancy public
relations companies in the world won't save the KLA's carefully
crafted public image.
THEY'RE
SHOCKED – SHOCKED!
Frankly
shocked, the Observer notes that the leaked "report's
grim message is that the UN is paying the salaries of many
of the gangsters." So the big gangsters, the international
equivalent of Mafia dons, are subsidizing the activities of
the smalltime hoods – this is a surprise? The US and
its allies armed and trained the uniformed criminals now rampaging
through Kosovo – at American taxpayer's expense –
and now they are surprised and shocked – yes, shocked!
– at what they have wrought. Ba-loney! To begin
with, just look at the man they put in charge of this
Kosovar Protection Racket . . .
CEKU
THE BUTCHER
Putting
General Agim Ceku, the Butcher of the Krajina, in charge of
a "civilian" police force for Kosovo was nothing but a death
sentence for hundreds of Serbs, and certainly the US and its
allies knew just what they were doing. For it was Ceku who
commanded the 1995 Croatian Army offensive that wiped the
Krajina region clean of Serbs, drove 200,000 into exile, and
left hundreds of Serb noncombatants dead. Dubbed "Operation
Storm" by the "retired" American generals who designed it,
Ceku's three-day blitzkrieg was the turning point in the Bosnian
civil war. According to the Croatian Helsinki Committee for
Human Rights, Ceku oversaw the wanton slaughter of 412 civilians,
who were summarily executed. Commander Ceku, an ethnic Albanian
albeit a Croatian citizen, easily made the switch in allegiance
to the KLA, where he was elevated to chief of staff. His many
crimes, ably
documented by Professor Michael Chossudowsky, would be
enough to fill up what remains of this column, and more. Suffice
to say that, in Ceku, the NATO-crats knew what they were getting.
No one was really all that surprised when rumors he was about
to be indicted by the International War Crimes Tribunal at
The Hague began to circulate. An internal ICTY report held
him responsible for war crimes in the Krajina, and elsewhere,
but naturally the indictment was suppressed, lest the role
of the Western powers in "Operation Storm" come to light.
MULTICULTURALISM,
NATO-STYLE
The
NATO-crats were hoping Ceku would do to Kosovo what he did
to the Serbs of the Krajina – drive them mercilessly
before his US-trained and funded ethnic cleansers, killing
them, raping them, and robbing them of their patrimony. Which
is precisely what has happened in virtually every corner
of Kosovo – but for a single neighborhood in the northern
city of Mitrovica, where the last proudly defiant Serbs are
refusing to budge or be pushed out. Here, of course, is where
the great "principle" of mandatory multi-ethnicity is carried
out in a most militant manner: reinforcements, mostly Americans,
are arriving by the hour to make sure that Albanians are escorted
back to claimed residences in the Serb quarter. Oddly, the
rest of Kosovo, now almost exclusively Albanian Kosovar,
seems curiously exempt from NATO's stringent multiculturalist
standards.
OH,
RICKY!
According
to a section of the secret UN report entitled "Activities
against minorities, including hate speech," Ceku is accused
of being the ringleader in a walkout staged by Kosovo Protection
Corps officers at an event where a speech was translated into
Serbo-Croat. People have been killed in the streets of Pristina
for the same act, but in lieu of that – for the time
being, at any rate – Ceku and his fellow Albanian Nazis
stalked out. The KLA has never made any secret of its program
or its goal: the dream of an ethnically pure "Greater Albania,"
extending from Kosovo to Macedonia and beyond. Its history,
ideology, and methods have long been an open book, but last
summer the the US government and its journalistic amen corner
were reading from an altogether different script, one that
read pretty much like one written by State Department spokesman
James Rubin's wife, CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour, whose
disgustingly adulatory CNN docudramas pushed the government
line that the KLA "were heroic freedom fighters" rising up
against the evil "racist" Serbs in a politically correct war
for "democracy," "diversity" and "civil rights." Who can forget
Madeleine Albright practically swooning in the arms of KLA
strongman Thraci – was there ever a nastier sight? In
those halcyon days, before the love affair between the KLA
and the US Department of State soured, little Jimmy Rubin
seemed like he was breathing pretty heavily too. Remember
how he used to enthuse to the warmongering press corps every
time he spoke to Commander Thraci "somewhere in occupied Kosovo"
via cellphone? He sounded like a teenage girl who has just
had a chat with Ricky Martin.
NO
DICE
My,
how times change: now this same gofer is dispatched to Kosovo
to lecture
the Kosovars on the true meaning of civil rights. However
glorious the victory of NATO might be, "this is not an excuse
[for the KLA] to take justice into their own hands," said
Rubin. "It's a legitimate point to want justice. But the wheel
of justice turns slowly. It's not going to happen overnight."
In other words, don't worry, guys, you'll get your ethnically
cleansed Kosovo, a giant step on the road to a "Greater Albania,"
but just hold your horses will you please, not just
yet: there's the little matter of the upcoming US election
to think about. But no dice. The Nando Times reports
that
"Despite
Washington's considerable leverage with the ethnic Albanians,
it was unclear whether the province's factious leadership
understood the message. Hashim Thaci, the political leader
of Kosovo's rebels during the war, called Rubin "a friend
of Kosovo" and said 'we accepted his statements as advice
from a friend.' There was, however, no unequivocal pledge
to stop the violence, much of which is believed carried out
by former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters who were Thaci's
allies in the war against the Serbs."
INSTEAD
OF BREAKIN' UP, WE SHOULD BE MAKIN' UP
Oh,
Thraci understood, alright: he understood only too well how
much he has this administration over a barrel. Poor little
Jimmy looked crestfallen as he sadly averred that "first there
has to be a recognition that there's a problem.." But perhaps
love will find a way. With those limpid eyes now practically
brimming over with tears, Rubin held out some hope that this
marriage could be saved. Speaking at the US Army base at Grijilane,
in eastern Kosovo, he opined that ''over time, as [ethnic
Albanians] examine their choices here, they'll realize that
their best friends are troubled." Oh boo hoo hoo. Breaking
up is hard to do. But will it come to that?
THE
NATO-CRATIC METHOD
As
an Albanian "splinter group" that looks, talks, and kills
just like the KLA masses on the Serbian border, provoking
Milosevic with daily incursions into Serbian territory and
carrying out a program of systematic terror, this administration
could very well panic – and anything is possible when
we are dealing with that man in the Oval Office. To divert
attention away from the unraveling situation inside Kosovo,
this administration is not incapable of launching its own
provocation in volatile Montenegro. The US commander in the
region, NATO-crat-in-chief General Wesley Clark, sought to
shift
the focus to the tiny republic that is still formally
is a member of the Yugoslav federation. The real root of the
problem is not Albanian expansionism, said Clark, speaking
in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital, but Slobodan Milosevic, who
for some odd reason insists that Yugoslavia has sovereignty
over its own territory. In the purest expression of the NATO-cratic
method, the Supreme Commander gave this supremely revealing
answer to a question about the possibility of NATO intervention:
"We're watching very closely what's happening in Montenegro
as Milosevic tightens the noose" around Montenegro, adding:
"NATO's actions are incalculable. In other words because there
has been no rhetoric about this...I would draw no conclusions
about this."
THE
MADNESS OF EMPIRE
Like
a madman stumbling across the globe, drunk with power and
emboldened by visions of glory and plunder, American centurions
could go on a rampage at a moment's notice, on the President's
command, anywhere at all: in that sense, their actions are
incalculable, and even deranged. But there is a method in
this madness: it is our policy of global intervention, the
idea of an American Empire on which the sun never sets. This
imperial vision is a mental illness that afflicts large sections
of the US ruling elite (it has always afflicted the ruling
circles of the old imperial powers of Europe), infecting and
largely taking over the leadership of both major parties –
with the general public, for the most part, still relatively
immune. This is our only hope – that, and the incalculable
ability of the KLA to force Clinton's hand in an effort to
save a rapidly deteriorating situation.
REPUBLICAN
IMPOTENCE
The
above quoted CNN report on linking the November elections
with the Kosovo crisis was right about the deep uneasiness
the looming Kosovo crisis causes in this administration: it
is unfortunately incorrect in its political assessment. In
spite of the Republican opposition to the Kosovo operation
in the House and Senate, Dubya fulsomely supported the Kosovo
war and refused to criticize Clinton except on McCainian
grounds: why, asked Bush, had the President ruled out
the introduction of ground troops?
PRICK
UP YOUR EARS
The
renewed outbreak of the interrupted conflict would benefit
one and only one would-be occupant of the White House: Pat
Buchanan, who has made opposition to our policy of global
interventionism the leitmotif of his campaign. With a war
in the Balkans, American soldiers caught in the crossfire,
and Buchanan rising in the polls and included in the debates,
the ruling elite in this country could be in for some very
big trouble. That is a scenario they would like to avoid at
all costs: the point is that they may have no choice, with
their options limited to making the best of the inevitable
– launching a renewed war in Kosovo on their own terms
and in their chosen theater of operations. I long ago warned
about the danger of the Montenegrin flashpoint, and it is
about time for that ticking time bomb to go off. As we get
closer to Election Day 2000, keep your ears perked for the
sound of an explosion.
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