http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=20C19E94-DF27-4305-9B54-5538BA0E48CDAmerican Patriots Must Speak Up on Kosovo
By Julia Gorin
FrontPageMagazine.com | Wednesday, December 12, 2007
“What’s your connection to…this…Serbian thing?”
I get that a lot. I usually answer: “Just being an American hyper-patriot.”
That was, after all, my original motivation for protesting a war for the first time in my life at the age of 25. When my country bombed a European nation on behalf of Muslims making the usual claim of oppression, my concerns were two-fold: America’s security, and America’s soul.
It’s hard to describe the dizzying disorientation I felt on March 24, 1999, the day I learned that the United States was going through with bombing an ally from two world wars. It was more surreal than September 11, 2001, for on the latter date I wasn’t alone in my disorientation. But the fog that engulfed me for several weeks starting March 24th, 1999 as I observed people complacently sipping cappuccinos in outdoor cafes as if nothing was happening was overwhelming; I knew America had turned a dark corner and would pay a price.
Three phenomena at the time confirmed my instinctive suspiciousness about this so-called war: 1. The treacherous and otherwise anti-war Left loved it. 2. Congressional Republicans voted against the war by more than nine to one. 3. Bill Clinton was president, and foreign policy had never been his priority.
We’ve heard much from the Left since the start of the Iraq War in the way of “True patriots criticize their country.” They’re not wrong. But if ever there was a war that begged for scrutiny and dissent, it was Kosovo. Yet the dissent wasn’t there. The voices of all the supposed conscientious objectors never kicked in during a war that ran directly counter to the national interest. Indeed, a war that threatened American security was their must-do war. This told me that what these people are, are not dissenting patriots but dissenting partisans.
This criticism of U.S. policy in Kosovo comes from America’s most reluctant critic. My cartoonish patriotism forms the backbone of my stand-up comedy act and was the premise of a column I had on FoxNews.com, titled by my editor “The Smugly American.” But the Kosovo War, and the unchanging policy that supports it even post-9/11, made me a less smug American.
Unlike most America critics, who blame the U.S. with glee, it is only with great pain that I write against American policy in Kosovo, which is a continuation of a war that never ended and in which we’re about to deal ourselves the death blow this year as we hand victory to our jihad-friendly allies and call the victory our own. “No American casualties,” goes the ubiquitous Kosovo-War boast. That’s because its American casualties first appeared only two years later, with the Balkans serving as logistical support for attacks including 9/11, Madrid, London and Netanya. This year we got a glimpse of the toll that this war of self-sabotage will yet take--when four Albanians were discovered plotting to kill U.S. soldiers at Ft. Dix.
By shining a light on our Kosovo mischief, I am merely doing my duty as an American. But there are Americans who have a greater responsibility than I to save the U.S. from this bipartisan treachery, Americans who should be most on the case at this eleventh hour: Serbian-Americans. For those are the Americans who know better than any others the nature of the beast that we’re dealing with in the Balkans and what our actions there will result in. Serbs are the ones who are most intimately and brutally acquainted with the Balkan players, and it is their responsibility to inform their fellow Americans and influence civilians, soldiers, policymakers and media away from our suicidal policies in their homelands.
I understand the reasons that Serbs shy away from this duty. They want finally to be liked, and more than anything else to fit in; indeed, the modern Serb rejects his Serbhood. As well, a Serb knows he will instantly be painted with the “Oh, but this is coming from a Serb; of course you’d say that” brush. Notice this is never a consideration or stumbling block for the Serbs’ enemies, as the Albanians, Croatians and Bosnians guide the U.S. toward self-defeating policies on their behalf.
When faced with the “Serb propaganda” slur, a Serb should counter with, “Why is Muslim propaganda preferable?” Especially since Serb “propaganda” has been repeatedly consistent with our own intelligence.
Look what we know today about “Serb propaganda.” In addition to the reality of the Islamic threat in the Balkans which the Yugoslavian government had been warning about since the 70s and which the world dismissed, the concept of a “Greater Albania” was likewise laughed off as an archaic and dead idea kept alive only by Serb propagandists. Yet today Greater Albania is being implemented before our very eyes as the Albanians of Serbia’s Presevo Valley now call for inclusion with an independent Kosovo, and Kosovo Albanians are destabilizing Macedonia and Montenegro—and Greece.
Like the Jews--specifically the Israelis--the Serbs in the 1990s were busy fending off the murderous enemies they live among, and assumed the world’s ability to see up from down, black from white, truth from lie, and didn’t realize they were supposed to be fighting a simultaneous image war. (The Albanians, Bosnians and Nazi-nostalgist Croatians had hired PR firms early on, to ensure the world would see the Balkan conflicts their way.) The Serbs only belatedly thought of buying clout in America’s halls of power where the Albanians, Croatians and Bosnians had been buying influence and otherwise doing their damage for decades. One thing the Jews did do, however, is promote the sympathetic side of their struggle so they would get their deserved slice of human sympathy. The Serbs haven’t done that, and so no one even attempts to hide that universal, unchecked, seething contempt for everything Serbian. Every aspersion and rumor against Serbs is assumed as fact without it ever being called discrimination.
The question that plagues Israelis and Serbs alike is How do you go from being right--to winning? But look at recent developments. The situation has gone from Kosovo independence being “inevitable”, to the process being at a standstill, with a unilateral declaration of independence by Albanians the only “option”—an illegitimate, dangerous precedent-setting one that half of Europe is against. The situation has also gone from Kosovo machinations happening in the dark to the whole world talking about Kosovo.
But it’s not enough, and saving Europe, and ultimately America--via Kosovo--requires everyday Serbs, particularly American Serbs, to take part in this battle. You must speak up in your capacities as citizens, contacting your representatives, writing letters and donating to the cause, which your enemies do all too well. Wherever you encounter articles about the “genocidal Serbs” or about Albanian or Bosnian purity as victims—particularly the abundant articles that pander to the sizeable Bosnian and Albanian communities within the U.S.--you must write letters to the editor. You must explain that the reality isn’t so black and white and that the newspaper isn’t doing its American readers any favors by protecting them from the truth about their “refugee” neighbors.
In recent years, Jewish Americans have become much more effectively mobilized in supporting Israel, through organization, fundraising, anti-defamation work, cooperative action with the Israeli state, effective PR and myth-debunking via HonestReporting.com. Why should the good be less entitled to propaganda than the bad? America herself learned this lesson only recently, and started a PR war of her own.
Like the Jews in the Middle East, Serbs are the only ones who have anything to be proud of in the Balkans. When deciding whether to bomb the Serbs in the 1990s, the Western world should have recognized itself in the Serbs, for Serbs are plagued by the same thing that plagues the enlightened Western world: self-loathing. It must end here.
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