Stay Оut of Kosovo!

…When did Congress authorize Bill Clinton to go to war against
a Yugoslav army that has never attacked Americans?…

This week, NATO conducted air exercises over Albania as a warning to Belgrade that its crackdown in Kosovo must end now.

NATO’s demands? Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic must call off his offensive by June 16, allow monitors unimpeded access to the rebellious province, let the refugees return home, and resume talks with the Kosovan resistance. If Milosevic balks, NATO is preparing attacks on his forces and, says The New York Times, “possible air strikes against strategic military targets in Serbia.”

France contends that NATO needs a new U.N. Security Council resolution before it can attack, but the United States say earlier resolutions will do.

Am I missing something? Air strikes are an act of war. When did Congress authorize Bill Clinton to go to war against a Yugoslav army that has never attacked Americans and is operating entirely within Yugoslavia’s own borders?

“We know that in a clash with NATO … we don’t stand a chance,” said Belgrade’s deputy prime minister. But the minister insists his army has a duty is “to defend the territory against anybody who tries to enter by force.” Does he not have a point?

When Biafra broke from Nigeria, the United States sided with Lagos as it crushed the rebellion at the cost of a million lives. When Chechnya tried to break from Russia, we sided with Russia. How would Abraham Lincoln have reacted if warned by Britain and France that attacks on Union ships and ports would commence, unless he got firm control of Gen. Sherman and began negotiating with Jefferson Davis?

Kosovo is 90 percent ethnic Albanian, and Milosevic’s treatment of its majority has indeed been repressive and cruel. Yet Kosovo is also the cradle of the Serb nation. Serbs are no more willing to let it go than Israelis would be willing to let Jerusalem go. Serbs who were glad to be rid of Slovenians, Croatians and Bosnian Muslims will fight to hold onto their ancestral homeland.

But where is the vital U.S. interest in this ethnic quarrel that we should send American pilots and F-16s to kill Serbian soldiers, rather than let them recapture their rebellious province?

Where is the Republican Congress? Many in that body are today whining that Clinton moved unilaterally into Bosnia and they had no choice but to back him. Well, now, they do have a choice. Congress should vote this week to instruct the president that he has no authority to wage war against Yugoslavia unless Congress votes its approval. Before the United States gets embroiled in another nasty Balkan war, every member should have to vote on it — and be held accountable.

The United States bears a measure of responsibility for this unfolding tragedy. In 1992, President Bush warned Belgrade that a crackdown in Kosovo would risk confrontation with America. Bush had no authority to threaten military action, but that warning from the leader of a nation that had just smashed Iraq gave encouragement to Kosovan rebels that, if they arose for independence, the world’s last superpower would be at their side.

Now the Kosovo Liberation Army may control a large area of the countryside, but perhaps 85,000 people are refugees from homes and villages destroyed by Yugoslavian security forces.

Before Clinton launches air strikes or Congress approves any act of war, America should think through the end game. What outcome is it that we desire to this rebellion?

The Bosnian armistice was produced not by air strikes alone but by the intervention of a Croatian army of 100,000 that had the Bosnian Serbs on the run. The peace that exists in Bosnia exists because tens of thousands of NATO troops are patrolling the ethnic frontiers of that country, which has been de facto partitioned. Are we willing to send American ground troops into Kosovo?

The United States opposes independence in Kosovo, as it would prove a lure to Albania and perhaps lead to a breakup of Macedonia with its Albanian minority. And if Macedonia comes apart, a general Balkan war could ensue, with nations scrambling to pick up the loose pieces. Even Greece might come in. Then, the balloon would really go up.

The same NATO strikes that rain death on the Yugoslav Army could also convince the Kosovo Liberation Army to go all out for independence. Why not, with U.S. air power supporting them? Would we then launch strikes on the KLA for going too far?

America should stay out. Kosovo is not our quarrel; it is not our war. The United States has no vital interest in whose flag flies over its capital, Pristina. But Serbs and Albanians do see something worth dying for. If they wish to settle it with arms, they will do so one day. We have no right to kill Serbs or Albanians to postpone that day.

Author: Patrick J. Buchanan

Originally published on June 16, 1998

Source: http://buchanan.org/blog/pjb-stay-out-of-kosovo-314

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection & Pinterest.

Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!

Donate to Support Us

We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.

[wpedon id=”4696″ align=”left”]

READ MORE!

Democracy

Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave

Golan Heights, Kosovo and Crimea: A Case Study in Hypocrisy and Double Standards

The recent announcement by United States President Donald Trump that the US will recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights draws attention yet again to the double standards applied by NATO and its satraps including Australia to the issues of territorial integrity, the right to self-determination, and international law. Three cases illustrate the duplicity and double standards of the Western nations. They may be reviewed chronologically.A picture taken on July 4, 2018 from the Israeli-annexed Syrian Golan Heights shows displaced Syrians from the province of Daraa staging a protest (top L) calling for international protection, in the Syrian the ...

The “World’s Policeman” Retires on Disability

Ever since the end of World War II, the United States, rightly or wrongly, but most of the time, wrongly, has fancied itself as the «world’s policeman». Even a disastrous and costly military intervention in Southeast Asia did not deter the United States from acting as the chief arbiter of what governments were «in» and which were «out» as evidenced by Central Intelligence Agency interloping in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Angola, Haiti, and Colombia. Two military interventions in Iraq and a U.S.-led military campaign directed against Yugoslavia were not enough to pry the United States from its self-appointed role as the ...

Before the U.S. Congress: HM King Peter II’s of Yugoslavia Speech at the Capitol in 1942

A highlight of Peter II’s 1942 official state visit to the U.S. was his speech before the U.S. Congress. That speech solidified and affirmed Yugoslavia as an ally of the U.S. during World War II.Following the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had issued a statement in support of Peter II and the Yugoslav government.FDR’s message of April 8, 1941 emphasized that the U.S. would provide aid and assistance to Yugoslavia:“The people of the United States have been profoundly shocked by the unprovoked and ruthless aggression upon the people of Yugoslavia. The Government and ...

U.S. Airstrikes are Wiping Out Entire Families in Yemen and Syria

The United States is killing entire families in Raqqa, Syria, and enabling Saudi Arabia to do the same in Yemen.In June of this year, the U.S. led a campaign to retake the city of Raqqa from ISIS fighters while the Russian and Syrian militaries were also attempting to do the same thing. In the first week of fighting, U.N. war crimes investigators warned that the U.S. had already killed 300 civilians from air strikes alone in that seven day period.Rather than heed that warning, the U.S. has continued the same strategy of pounding Raqqa into the ground despite the likelihood of civilian casualties. Pentagon ...

Remembering Muammar Qaddafi And The Great Libyan Jamahiriya

October 20th, 2017, marks the sixth anniversary of the martyrdom of Muammar Qaddafi, revolutionary Pan-Africanist and champion of the Global South. This day also marks the sixth anniversary of the historic battle of Sirte, where Qaddafi, along with an heroic army, including his son Mutassim Billal Qaddafi, and veteran freedom fighter, Abu-Bakr Yunis Jabr, fought until their convoy was bombed by French fighter planes. Wounded and demobilized, they were captured by Qatari scavengers and executed by Al-Qaeda operativesThecourageous men of the original Free Officers’ Union, who were guides and leaders of the then 42 year-old Al-Fatah Revolution, demonstrated extraordinary revolutionary ...

NATO’s War of Aggression Against Yugoslavia in 1999

Eighteen years ago in the early hours of March 24, 1999, NATO began the bombing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. “The operation was code-named “Allied Force ” – a cold, uninspired and perfectly descriptive moniker” according to Nebosja Malic. This article was first written in May 1999 at the height of the bombing of Yugoslavia. The causes and consequences of this war have been the object of a vast media disinformation campaign, which has sought to camouflage NATO and US war crimes. It is important to note that a large segment of the “Progressive Left” in Western Europe and North America were part of this disinformation campaign, presenting ...

A New Islamic Occupation of Iberian Peninsula?

"Evicted five centuries ago by crusading Christians, the Arabs are back in Spain, using their oil dollars to buy land that was seized from their ancestors by the sword". — James M. Markham, The New York Times, 1981. The Madrid daily ABC wrote that 800 mosques in Spain are out of control. The Spanish daily La Razon charged that Gulf donors, such as Qatar, were a source of Spain's Islamization. The Saudis also launched a new Spanish television channel, Córdoba TV, as did Iran. They dream of, and work to, regain the "lost Caliphate" of Spain. Some Islamists do ...

Washington’s Bizarre Kosovo Strategy could Destroy NATO

Not satisfied with having sponsored the artificial creation of Kosovo, the United States has now decided to ram the mafia state through NATO and the European Union. A new member with such characteristics is the last thing that Europe needs right now. However, it should work wonders for the consolidation of U.S. political and military agenda in the region, not to speak of the flourishing heroin trade from Afghanistan…both of which, as Engdahl points out in this sharp analysis, pose a threat to Russia and may backfire in the end.In one of the more bizarre foreign policy announcements of a ...

Corpus Delicti: How the Western Mainstream Propaganda Lies on Bosnian War (1992-1995)

Bosnian Muslim Kasim Blekic was allegedly murdered by Bosnian Serbs but was, in fact, alive outside of Sarajevo. One of the fundamental legal principles or concepts of jurisprudence is that before a person can be charged with a crime, evidence must be shown that a crime has occurred. This is known by the legal principle of “corpus delicti”, the body of a crime, meaning that there must be evidence that a crime has occurred before a defendant can be charged or prosecuted for the crime. The 6th edition of Black’s Law Dictionary (1990) gives the meaning of corpus delicti as “the ...

What About Apologizing to Ukraine, Mrs. Nuland?

Yesterday’s leak of the flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has already hit the international media headlines. In short, it turned out that the US officials were coordinating their actions on how to install a puppet government in Ukraine.In this flagrant telephone talk between the US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt agreed to nominate Bat’kyvshchina Party leader Arseniy Yatseniuk as Deputy Prime Minister, to bench Udar Party leader Vitaly Klitschko off the game for a ...

Libya: Is this Kosovo all over Аgain?

Another NATO Intervention?Less than a dozen years after NATO bombed Yugoslavia into pieces, detaching the province of Kosovo from Serbia, there are signs that the military alliance is gearing up for another victorious little “humanitarian war”, this time against Libya. The differences are, of course, enormous. But let’s look at some of the disturbing similarities.A demonized leaderAs “the new Hitler”, the man you love to hate and need to destroy, Slobodan Milosevic was a neophyte in 1999 compared to Muammar Qaddafi today. The media had less than a decade to turn Milosevic into a monster, whereas with Qaddafi, they’ve been ...

The Balkan Caliphate: Saudi Power in Kosovo

Greater Albania has been debating deployment in Syria. A Muslim state, a Balkan Caliphate in the heart of Europe, was supported by Internationalists when they created independent Kosovo and Bosnia. Kosovo registered its first Islamist political party in 2013. UPDATE: An article on NYT on the inroads of Wahabism into Europe from the Saudi foothold in Kosovo is oozing criminal naiveté on the part of postmodern globalist thinkers. Bill Clinton’s nexus with the lobby for Greater Albania created a Islamic state in the heart of Europe. To those with basic knowledge of Islam and its 1400 year old history — not least ...

Kosovo and Metohija is an Integral Part of Serbia

The real question is not whether the status of Kosovo and Metohija should be negotiated; the actual questions to be asked are: On which basis? About what? Whom with?The sole legitimate basis is that Kosovo and Metohija is an integral part of Serbia currently placed under UN mandate, pending a Security Council decision ending it. In other words, this is mandate cannot be terminated either by the EU, or NATO, the USA, Germany, or France and, should this idea ever occurred to anyone, Serbia cannot end it, either.International law (the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act) and the Constitution of ...

Shame on You, USA

The United States has spent hundreds of billions on unnecessary wars, but only the UN relief agency for the Palestinians is improperly run September 02, 2018 “Information Clearing House” – Now it’s out in the open: America has declared war on the Palestinians. With his son-in-law Jared Kushner, an expert on humanitarian organizations and Palestinian refugees, the great bully Donald Trump decided to end aid to the UN agency that aids Palestinian refugees. The official explanation: The business model and fiscal practices of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency made it an “irredeemably flawed operation.” Trump and his son-in-law, the keepers of the seal of good government, ...

Renaming the 1948 War against Palestine: Partition, Dispossession, and Fragmentation

Controlling the DiscourseIsrael has been brilliant over the years in shaping and misdirecting the public discourse on the future of Palestine. Among its earliest achievement along these lines was the crucial propaganda victory by having the 1948 War known internationally as the ‘War of Independence.’ Such a designation erases the Palestinians from political consciousness, and distorts the deeper human and political consequences of the war. Language matters, especially in vital circumstances where there are winners and losers, a reality that applies above all to a war of displacement.It took decades for the Palestinians to elevate their experience of the 1948 ...

America’s Top Scientists Confirm: U.S. Goal Now is to Conquer Russia

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a study, on 1 March 2017, which opened as follows: “The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing — boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and ...

Export of Kosovostan Jihad in the Middle East: The Christian Genocide in Syria

Many of us go through life searching for our purpose, for something that we are passionate about. After years of searching finally I stumbled upon mine a few years ago. Having the world hear Syrians telling their side of the story while living through this imposed war is what ignited that fire in me. As a Syrian American that was born in Syria and lived in both countries my entire life, I feel a strong link to my heritage, my birth country, my culture, my language, my customs, my nationality, and my history. We have been bombarded with lies and propaganda ...

The Origins and Ultimate Purpose of ISIS

ISIS is Born in IraqThe origins of ISIS are buried beneath the rubble of the US occupation.It was out of this crucible of war and invasion that the original grievances were born, leading analysts to conclude that "the basic causes of the birth of ISIS" were the United States' "destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq."1The framework underlying this being the exacerbation of Sunni-Shia tensions in the aftermath of the invasion, which previously have been inflamed through various other foreign interferences. These were highlighted by the sectarian brutality of the post-invasion Iraqi government, which then continued ...

The Russian War Crimes in Syria in 2016-2019: Exclusive Photo Evidence from the Cabinet of Boris Johnson & Theresa May

Exclusive photos of the Russian war crimes in Syria and the Middle East by "Free Media Group" volunteers, 2016-2018 with a proper illustrations of the Russia's militant imperialism. The authenticity of photos and their descriptions are certified by the UK Cabinet of Boris Johnson & Theresa May: The My Lai Massacre by Russian soldiersThe Russian soldiers at the spot of My Lai Massacre with their victimsAleppo citizen with a daughter during the Russian destruction of the cityRussian Orthodox monk in Moscow in protest against the Russian invasion of SyriaSyrian children of war and the Russian occupant soldier Killed Russian student in ...