Bubba Clinton’s Balkans abortion has come back to haunt us.
BELGRADE (Reuters) – Scores of protesters broke into the U.S. embassy in Belgrade on Thursday and set rooms on fire in protest at Kosovo’s independence, before riot police moved in and dispersed the crowd.
Police had earlier been nowhere to be seen at the building which had been closed and boarded up after rioters stoned it earlier in the week.
Black smoke billowed out of the embassy. Papers and chairs were thrown out of the windows, with doors wedged in the window frames and burning.
One protester climbed up to the first floor of the building, ripped the Stars and Stripes off its pole and briefly put up a Serbian flag in its place.
Some protesters jumped up and down on the embassy balcony, holding up a Serbian flag as the crowd below of about 1,000 people cheered them on, shouting “Serbia, Serbia.”
Some 200 riot police finally arrived about half an hour later, beating and arresting some of the rioters and driving the rest away. Some protesters sat on the ground, bleeding.
The storming of the building came during a state-backed rally to protest at Kosovo’s secession on Sunday attended by some 200,000 people, which was largely peaceful.
While the embassy was attacked, the main rally proceeded as planned with a march to the city’s biggest Orthodox cathedral for a prayer service, just several hundred meters (yards) away.
State television switched between scenes of the rioting and the choral singing of the church service. http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL2174715620080221
Kosovo’s announcement of independence has set off a firestorm of violence across Belgrade.
This popular uprising is being pushed by two things: generational hatred and the Serbian government. The Croatians, Serbians, and Bosniaks (Bosnian muslims) have been at each others’ throats for hundreds of years. Each of them has shed the blood of the other two throughout their turbulent history. Contention over ancestral territory, as well as religious differences, is at the crux of the anger.
For a good, comprehensive history of the Balkans, go here:
http://www.answers.com/topic/history-of-the-balkans
My previous blogs on this:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/kosovo-declares-independence/
and here:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/02/17/kosovo-declares-independence-update/
We went into Bosnia in 1995, (Operation Joint Endeavour, Link: http://www.answers.com/topic/operation-joint-endeavor) as part of a NATO contingency (IFOR) to stop the “ethnic cleansing” by the Serbs on the Bosniaks. I was there in 1999 as part of SFOR.
Since our entry into Bosnia (Kosovo, in particular) as part of Clinton’s wag-the-dog tactic, the reactions of three major groups have been sharply divided. The Bosniaks loved us, the Croatians were somewhat ambivalent but cautious, and the Serbians just outright hated our guts.
The U.S. and Britain encouraged Kosovo to move forward with independence, while Russia and Serbia have vehemently opposed it.
This could very well result in another civil war in Bosnia.
Newsflash James:
If you read the opening sentence you’d have known and maybe even understood the overall tone of my disagreement with Clinton’s Kosovo debacle, which incidently, was HIS ‘jackbooted’ tactic. It’s clear you’re sympathetic to the Serbs, who along with the Croats and Bosniacs, I couldn’t care less about. I know the history of the Balkans, and I’m no liberal, sweetpea. All of them have commited atrocities against each other. They just took turns.
The whole point of the reference to my deployment to Bosnia and my experience and observations there, reflects my opinion that we should do what every other country does; consider whether or not it is in our best interest to enter a conflict. On a side note, there are still those who question whether or not we should have assisted Britain in the fight against the Axis powers.
Speaking of contemporary comparisons, here’s an easy scenario:
In spite of ominous indicators and turmoil that was contained on someone else’s turf, we remained complacent.
An enemy sends planes to bomb and crash into U.S. territory. The attack kills roughly 3000 Americans.
War is declared and retaliation begins against the perpetrators and their allies.
Sound familiar?
It happened 7 December 1941.
There’s your comparison.
After 1989, seccession and breakaway republics happened all over the former Soviet Union. And you’re surprised about Bosnia? The history of tension in the Balkans was a pressure cooker. The lid finally blew.
That was quite a stretch trying to connect Bosnia with the current WOT. As for Bin Laden, looks like some of his minions were pissed off enough at you Limeys to attack London. When it comes to the tactics we Americans have used in the Middle East, we haven’t been ‘jackbooted’ enough. Oh yeah, read Resolution 1441 and sometime. It authorized the use of force to ensure Hussein’s compliance after 12 years of thumbing his nose at WMD inspectors.
Terrorists are bred, equipped, funded, and trained throughout the Middle East. Hussein, just like every other despot over there, did his part to help.
I’d have vaporized the majority of those swarthy little Islamofascist ragheads on 12 September 2001. But, I’m a former Soldier, not a politician.
Cheers,
SFC MAC
I’d just like to dispell a few general misconceptions about the whole Bosnia/Kosovo situation which your article and a liberal media with an agenda entirely divorced from fact and reality continue to propagate.
The area which only recently (within the least 1-200 years) became known as Kosovo, was prior to this, from around 900 a.d, a part of the Serbian and Ottoman empire, and the site of one of Serbia’s most culturally important buildings from this era, the monastery of the despot Stefan, first ruler of Serbia. This building has been desecrated and plundered by the Albanian backed Kosovans, something which we have sadly come to expect from any islamic nation and its followers.
Furthermore, the U.S led and NATO backed assault on Serbia was in direct contravention of UN ruling 1244, which guaranteed that the U.N and its members would remain dedicated to:
‘Reaffirming the commitment of all Member States to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the other States of the region, as set out in the Helsinki Final Act and annex 2’. Thus, the subsequent invasion of Serbia’s sovereign territory was an illegal and tyrannical act by a foreign power (remind you of anythng a bit more contemporary?), for which the U.S and NATO forces involved have still faced no prosecution.
You also erroneously refer to Kosovo’s ‘secession’. As this declaration of independence from the Federal Serbian Republic has not been ratified by the U.N, Kosovo has not seceeded, and is in fact still a province of Serbia.
Finally, as an English citizen, I saw the damage done to the American embassy while I was visiting Belgrade, and it gladdened my heart; not the damage itself, but rather the lack of damage to the British embassy. The world knows who the real problem nation is, and it isn’t Serbia, Russia, or Iran. It isn’t Osama Bin Laden we need to fear, it’s Uncle Sam and his jackbooted neo-fascist world police.