Remember when we bombed the hell out of Serbia to shoehorn the liberation of Kosovo? So how well has that worked out? When Kosovo became independent agencies like the CIA described the place as pretty much a criminal enterprise that lived off smuggled cigarettes, gasoline and concrete. Sort of like a Mafia state.
Who knew? Now the European Union has released a report from a 2-year investigation that accuses the Kosovar P.M. of heading a human organs, drugs and arms ring. Well, at least he diversifies.
[Prime Minister] Hashim Thaçi is identified as " the boss" of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run-up to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country's government since.
The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted "violent control" over the heroin trade.
Figures from Thaçi's inner circle are accused of secretly taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a few Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market.
Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case – in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus – is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000.
Why do we even bother? This is the sort of thing that Harper & Ignatieff love - "muscular foreign policy" as Iggy puts it. Canada went to war to liberate Kuwait. We went to war to liberate Kosovo. We went to war to liberate Afghanistan. Kuwait funnels money to support the Islamists who kill us. Kosovo and Afghanistan promptly turn into drug-dealing, criminal enterprises.
Does Canada need another leader who will get us into more of this lunacy?
When will we ever learn. Consider this warning, given three years ago, from Paddy Ashdowne, the international community's High Representative to Bosnia-Herzegovina until 2006:
" The Iraq experience represents the triumph of hubris, nemesis and, above all, amnesia over common sense. We have abandoned experience in favour of a kind of 19th-century 'gunboat' diplomacy approach to peace making. And it isn't working. Getting intervention right is not rocket science and it's not new. Spend at least as much time and effort planning the peace as preparing for the war that precedes it. Base plans on a proper knowledge of the country. Leave ideologies and prejudices at home. Do not try to fashion someone else's country in your own image. Leave space for its people to reconstruct the country they want, not the one you want for them. Don't lose the 'golden hour' after the fighting is over. Dominate security from the start; then concentrate on the rule of law. Make economic regeneration a priority. Understand the importance to the international community effort of co-ordination, cohesion and speaking with one voice. And do not wait until everything is as it would be in our country. Leave when the peace is sustainable.
" At present, we intervene as though democracy was our big idea. It is not. We are not even particularly good at it ourselves. Good governance is our big idea; the rule of law is our big idea; open systems and the market-based economy - these are our big ideas. A stable democracy, fashioned to the conditions and the cultures of the country concerned, is what comes afterwards. It is the product of good governance, not its precursor.
"...we have chosen the wrong mindset to defeat al-Qaeda. We have chosen to fight an idea primarily with force. We seek to control territory; it seeks to capture minds. This is, at heart, a battle of ideas and values. Unless we realise that and can win on that agenda, no amount of force can deliver victory.
" We are not winning. In those regions of the world where this struggle is fiercest, civilisation is losing and medievalism is winning."
Gee, I wonder if Ashdowne would be interested in leading our Liberal Party?
Have you seen this video of Condoleezza Rice and Katie Couric on Iraq?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsWAPSRWCZg
Among other things, Rice says;
Saddam Hussein had taken the "World to War"...twice ...in really destructive wars. Iran and the Gulf war in '91 some blah blah about '98 then she holds out multiple Security Council resolution violations, and doesn't blink an eye on her hop skip jump mission of justifications and coulda woulda shoulda's.. and plausible denial.
Her measure of the worth of it all at the end of the video boggles the mind.
The reaction of the right? She gave Couric a smackdown, and they now have another Princess and a Rice Palin ticket is favored.
I watched the clip and was struck at the lengths Rice goes to in her contrivances. She knows that wars of aggression are illegal. She knows that a party may initiate an attack under two circumstances - with the approval of the Security Council or in the case of pre-emptive necessity. She knows pre-emptive war can only be justified by the existence of an immediate threat of attack by another state.
ReplyDeleteI think Condi knows the world is changing, she has many years left to live and she'll have to take care she isn't arrested in some foreign land in the future. I expect she's beginning to learn to think like a war criminal.
Most of her comments to Couric sounded like a preview of the defence she would run in court.
Wasn't it Condi Rice who said something to the effect that sometimes a nation must experience birth pangs before democracy can be born?
ReplyDeleteDrag them all to court for crimes against humanity.
word verification = lyinger
That wouldn't surprise me. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfie, Rice should absolutely be in the dock but I doubt any of them will be. Like all who realize themselves to be fugitives, they'll stay out of places where they might be nabbed and held to account.
ReplyDeleteWashington would never turn any of them over on an extradition warrant. Look how successful Henry Kissinger has been steering clear of places where he's wanted for questioning.
Maybe it's punishment enough that they all have to conduct themselves like unindicted war criminals.
This might be causing a little discomfort in the GOP too.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-12-01/nigeria-to-file-charges-against-former-u-s-vice-president-over-bribery.html
Yeah the Nigeria story has been out of a while. They were talking indictment by December 4th but I've heard nothing yet.
ReplyDelete