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A war that the Orthodox Serbs have been fighting for years
by Sandy Marquette
September 23, 2001
Imagine what it must be like now for Serbian-Americans and American Serbs. I can and have often in the past 10 years. Now, with the issue forced for real on American soil, the Serbian issue takes on even deeper meaning.
I love this country, America. I love it more now, and appreciate it more now, than ever before. I've grown less and less tolerant of Anti-Americanism over the years, despite my education and some of those around me teaching and preaching at me that America is flawed and that she does not deserve the blind faith and allegiance she has been afforded for so long by so many of her citizens. The last ten years have put American Serbdom in an especially difficult dilemma, for when America turned against her one loyal and true ally in the Balkans, loyalties and faith became tested and challenged.
Two years ago, American led NATO began bombing the Serbs, after years of sanctions and demonization and lies and punishments leveled against the Serbian people. Years after the undercutting and undermining of sincere Serbian efforts to do the right thing by their people and their country, and in many cases, by their faith and by God. Suddenly, being an American Serb or Serbian American posed a very real problem. It was as if suddenly you had to take sides, and no matter which side you took there was the guilt of being a betrayer. The NATO war against the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia was a war against people like me, too. And now there is the irony of America's war not against the Serbs, but those very same enemies the Serbs have been struggling against for years.
Two years ago, I sat at a desk in the office where I worked and listened to a co-worker, a young man who'd been in the American military, tell his friend on the phone that what America needed to do was "carpet bomb" them, the Serbs...to level Belgrade....to finish the job. And I listened to him remark about Madeleine Albright and how great she was, because she knew how to get the job done. I couldn't take it. I told him that I'd love to see him get sent over there, to Muslim territory in Yugoslavia and see how he'd like it...that these Muslims he was supporting would be more than happy to lay him out on the grill and have a picnic....
My boss at the time, a young man who didn't much care about Bosnia or Kosovo or Serbs or much of anything else over there, recognized that there was a problem in his office and called his lawyer. After the talk with the lawyer, he called a meeting of the entire staff of the office and informed us that this issue was not to be discussed in his office ever again, not on company time or on company property. My fellow employees, some of whom had suddenly come to see me as a "foreigner" who was impinging on their "American civil rights", listened as he dictated the new rules. One spoke up, and while looking directly at me, reminded my boss that this was America and couldn't people say what they wanted? My boss answered with: "This may be America, but this right here is my office and those rights don't apply."
I would not have to listen to fellow employees talk about what America should do to the Serbs to "finish the job" anymore after that. But it was in the air. And the next day, a few of the guys, to make their own statement in their own way, brought little American flag lapel pins and placed them on the desks of everyone in the office, except for me. I was no longer an "American" in their eyes.
That same Spring of 1999, the Spring of the bombing, a Serb who was looking to get citizenship in this country, America, by hook or by crook and using whatever means he could manipulate to get that privilege, challenged me when I protested his vitrol against the Americans. Here he was, a Serb who had manipulated his way into America and who had manipulated his way into staying here after coming within a hairsbreadth of being deported back to the homeland he had escaped from, now suddenly laying down the line about loyalty. He yelled, "Are you an American or a Serb!" It was then that it was brought home to me. To hear an American beating down the Serbs made me a Serb. To hear a Serb beating down the Americans made me an American.
Now, two years later, though I knew what the Serbian reaction would inevitably be upon the tragic events of September 11, 2001, when the heart of America learned firsthand about what was in the heart of the Muslim terrorists, I also knew that I would not accept any Serbian reaction that celebrated that day. I did not, nor will I ever want, to hear any Serb saying that America got what was coming to her and that she deserved it on account of what had been done to the Serbs. That would hurt too much and would make me too angry. Angry enough to forget all about that fact that it was completely understandable given what had been done to the Serbs all these years, and so unrighteously so. I guess then that this makes me an American.
What I am thinking now is that somehow I hope the Americans realize that the war they are now waging is the very same war the Serbs have been waging. The Serbs recognized who the bad guys were on their own soil and they tried to do something about it. Unfortunately, unlike the Americans, they did not have so much of the world on their side and all the resources and means at their disposal to get the job done. Instead, not only did the Serbs have to struggle against the enemy and fight them under the harshest of circumstances, those who should have been their allies in that struggle turned against them instead and punished them for their efforts.
I hope this will be the wake up call. I hope that America concedes that the Muslim terrorists they have been aiding and abetting in the former Yugoslavia are the same Muslim terrorists who have been aided and abetted by the Osama bin Ladens of the world, and for whom bin Laden is not the villain, but the hero. I hope the Americans realize just how badly they screwed up in taking sides against the Serbs. I hope they realize that the Serbs have been fighting the very same war against the very same enemy that America now finds itself facing down.
I can almost see it now. They are recognizing that Osama bin Laden got a whole lot of help from the Bosnian Muslims and the Albanians, and that they got a whole lot of help from him in their war against the Serbs. In light of all this, it isn't so farfetched to imagine that come one day soon, it will be determined that there "just isn't enough evidence" against Mr. Milosevic or any of the other Serbian fighters who now await trial for "crimes against humanity," and that these "Serbian war criminals" will be released. I don't know. Maybe it is farfetched, because then the Americans would have to face the world with the admission that they made a huge error in judgment. That they took the wrong side.
I am an American. I'm getting worse in my patriotism. I tolerate Anti-Americanism less and less. I can only hope that doesn't make me less of a Serb. And though it is wrong and ignorant of me, I am glad that now the world is taking a whole new look at who the "bad guy" is, and that it is the Muslims who are having to concern themselves with demonization and prejudice and the consequences of being a certain nationality or religious faith, and with being the target of world condemnation. I can only hope that this attitude does not make me less of an American or a Christian.
Right or wrong, good or bad, there is one thing I know to be true, whether as an American or as a Serb. The Serbs knew who the bad guy was.
Copyright Sandy Marquette 2001
Chicago, IL U.S.A.
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