To: Paul Bilecki who wrote (6481 ) 3/13/2001 6:02:43 PM From: Valuepro Respond to OT) Paul, please don't confuse the Balkans issue. The Serbs, despite Soviet connections, have always been friends of the West and always figured they would be. When the Bosnian affair got hot, the Croats and Muslims had spent millions on lobbyist in Washington, D.C. and turned the sentiment against the Serbs. Going against the Serbs had certain appeal for Washington because Serbia/Yugoslavia was among the last communist counties on the planet, and they weren't towing the line in international affairs as laid out to them by Washington. That attitude held into the Kosovo matter which was used by Clinton to deflect attention from his personal transgressions. The genocide attributed to the Serbs in Kosovo was a fraud and is being revealed to have been just that. Besides, NATO had no more business going in there than they do in sending troops into any other country's civil war. That's what is was, a small scale civil war, and a Yugoslavian internal matter. Now NATO, by their bumbling, has empowered criminal gangs and armed rebels in the territory and they are expanding their influences into Macedonia and other neighboring states. As these people are ethnic Albanians and Muslims, they are able to raise massive funds from abroad including the Gulf states. Therein is part of the difficulty. For NATO to express support of the Serbs is to cater to arguments it is racist and biased against Arabs/Muslims. I agree this situation is getting hot. Any day now, we will hear of NATO or U.S. troops being killed. Already NATO forces have been engaged in fire fights with these criminals. It's an uncontrollable situation and just a matter of time before it becomes something akin to Vietnam in the underbelly of Europe. Now NATO is trying recruit Serbian forces to patrol border regions. Should have left them alone to such police matters in the first place.
