Clinton's Failures Haunt us Again.

Clinton’s failures haunt us again.

When the Serbs started slaughtering members of other ethnicities from the former Yugoslavia, namely Bosnians and Albanians, the UN and the United States under Clinton, waited far too long to get involved.

Once we got involved, it was a lame effort initially, and many innocent people were killed under our noses. Under the guise of wanted to remain “neutral,” we refused to take strong action against the Serbs.

Eager to end the conflict, we settled for a ridiculous treaty which rewarded the Serbs for their aggression and allowed them to keep more land than they started with.

Regardless of how pathetic of a treaty it may have been, it was the agreement and the Serbs have stuck to their part of the agreement.

How do we reward them? By allowing a group of outsiders to claim control over a province that was, AS PER THE AGREEMENT WE HELP CONSTRUCT, part of the new Serbia.

It is classic Machiavelli; if you are going to do evil (i.e. punish someone) you do it ALL AT ONCE. Now, we are punishing the Serbs for their sins of 10 years ago by allowing the Albanians to waltz off with their province.

If someone commits a crime that deserves 50 years in prison, and you decide to sentence them to only 10, you cannot make up for that weak decision by deciding to add to their sentence after 9 years of good behavior.

And this isn’t any province to the Serbs, this is the holiest of lands for them. It has immense religious, cultural and historic value to them. It is where they made their last stand to the Ottoman Turks, and where there Slavic roots can be traced for centuries.

And now we sanctioned the theft of that province by the Albanians.

The Albanians are secular Muslims, who converted at the “urging” of the Turks and the Serbs suffered for refusing to abandon their Eastern Orthodox faith.

This is tantamount to the Mexicans in Texas claiming that they should be able to take the state as an independent Mexican nation.

Except imagine that the Mexicans have no historic claim to the area.

And imagine if the Alamo, the National Cathedral, the White House, and the Statue of Liberty were ALL IN TEXAS.

And imagine if the Mexicans were all Muslim, and Texans had been oppressed by a Islamic kingdom for centuries.

It is difficult to imagine, but that is the equivalent.

And we are endorsing this thievery.

Our guilt at our inaction under Clinton does not justify further punishment of the Serb people. We should have punished them more initially. We should have gotten involved sooner. We didn’t.

The decision to back the separatists is not going to reverse this, instead it will create more conflict, and ultimately I fear, more bloodshed.

Hopefully we will learn this time.