“Nothing [Threats] like that happens in Kosovo.”

Why should they Michael, when U.S. and so called journalist like you are doing their [Albanian thugs] bidding.In other words Americans are serving useful purpose to them.

Accept Western/infidel help for as long as it furthers your territorial ambitions; then, once the great powers are no longer willing to carry you to the next stage, revert to “traditional” methods and take up arms against them. This has been the modus operandi of Islamic conquest for the past several decades. So either we’re looking at a striking confluence of methodology between Islam and “Albanianism” — which is strongly bound by nationalist and clan loyalties — or its’ no coincidence at all.

Those Albanian weapons, meanwhile, have been turned against the area’s Western benefactors for some time already. When shot at by Albanians in trying to protect Serbs, KFOR troops are directed to flee rather than return fire, which would draw attention to the region and beg the question, “Why are the people we went to war for shooting at us?”

In addition to the intermittent threats http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,4109749-103558,00.html to go to war against NATO (which is in addition to actually shooting at peacekeepers since 2001) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/world/europe/09kosovo.html?ex=1331096400&en=63e7bc2a9d9e8da1&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss , it turns out that both KLA and its mujahideen accomplices were fighting Americans at the same time that Americans were fighting the Serbs for them. As one American peacekeeper who was deployed to the area admitted last week in an article meant to defend http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/05/kosovo_albania_and_jihad.html Albanians, “One of our central missions was to protect ancient Christian churches that the Mujahideen were blowing up. Our area experienced the occasional IED and drive by shooting almost never aimed at US forces.”

This would help explain how an Albanian applicant to al Qaeda could claim, “I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces. I need no further training. I recommend (suicide) operations against (amusement) parks like Disney.” (Emphasis added.) http://www.usatoday.com/news/sept11/2001/11/26/cover.htm

Rather than rule of law, religious freedom, ethnic diversity, equal justice and civil rights, Kosovo is governed by lawless, tribalistic, blood-code-following, clan-oriented mob justice. While reports out of Serbia concern debates in public schools over Evolution versus Intelligent Design theory — similar to our own — a typical report out of Kosovo concerned a debate over whether to kill the KFOR (NATO) mascot because the dog was Serbian.

“We’re defending our way of life,” our leaders told us in 1999. Perversely enshrining those ‘common values,’ a crude replica of the Statue of Liberty overlooks our mono-ethnic handiwork from atop the Victory Hotel where the American flag hangs upside-down just a few yards below. Nearby are Bill Clinton Boulevard and Wesley Clark Avenue — tributes cited recently as examples of the area’s pro-Americanism. (There are also streets named for Eliot Engel, Bob Dole and Madeleine Albright.) Meanwhile, the former terrorists whom we installed as the “Kosovo Protection Force” and as the legitimate government of the province attend annual July 4th celebrations at the U.S. Consulate in Pristina. One proposed banner for the competition to design “Kosova’s” new flag mimics the American flag, with the two-headed black Albanian eagle in the corner where the 50 stars would be, plus red and white stripes.

Great. The narco-terrorist gangster state we created is pro-American. Are we so desperate for an endorsement that we must grasp it even if it comes from a terror-friendly horde, our support of whom is already coming home to roost?

Before you accept Albanian pro-Americanism, you must first ask what made Albanians anti-Serb. Then you must look at photos of what the KLA did to its enemies, so that when you’re exchanging niceties and recipes with your Albanian neighbors, keep in mind that, by and large, the KLA terrorists remain their national heroes.

The fact that there is no distinction between the religion and the rule of law easily lends itself to abuse, much in the same way early Christian churches abused their power and tried to forcibly convert unbelievers (in this case non-Christians).

So I think Totten’s reporting sounds accurate (I take his word for it as he is there and has a much better understanding than I) but the important thing to be mindful of is it could change easily if the wrong cult of personality gains power in the region. THAT is the thing that makes me nervous with ANY form of Islam.

Oh, and Avital Pilpel, since jihad is war, it can not be considered genocide to fight against, and yes kill, those who would kill you first. Grow up.

The question is *what kind* of Shari’a law. If it applies in theory, or only for religious matters, that would be one thing. If it’s the Wahhabi version, that would be something else.

To give you an example: did you know Sharia law is recognized in Israel? As is Jewish religious law? This doesn’t make Israel a theocracy.

Why? Because in both cases the laws apply (a) only to those who volunteer for them to apply to them, and then (b) only in purely religious or personal issues (e.g., the state recognizes religious marriages), and (c) it was simply a case of recognizing long-established customs in both the religious Jewish and Muslim populations.

If it’s *that* kind of Shari’a law, it can work out in practice quite well with a modern democracy. The problems begin when the Wahhabis butt in.

Same, incidentally, for Sharia’s demand for killing heretics (say). In theory, Jewish religious law demands the same punishment to anyone daring to work on the Shabbath (Saturday). .

Only, the sages of the Talmud made it clear that to deserve death you must (a) have lived during the time the Jewish Sanhedrin was operating (e.g., not for the last 2000 years); (b) been constantly warned both in advance and during your heresy by two male adult witnesses that what you’re doing is a crime punishable by death; (c) be condemned unanimously by a Sanhedrin panel made of, I think, 23 judges.

Needless to say, this is not a practical possiblity. If Sharia death penalties are of *this* nature, I won’t care.

A good idea, unless you like genocide and that sort of thing.

It seems to me that the things inherent within Islam itself might have a thing or two to do with the perceived failure of Western mores and values in the Middle East, and then the ensuing failure of the governments who uphold those values. Things like corruption, misogyny, lack of education, and no rule of law when practiced daily and in-depth for decades and centuries have *got* to overcome a shallow thin veneer of civilization laid on by the Brits or the French in a few years.

I don’t think it’s fair to blame the plight of the Arabs on “retreat of the British”. You get the government you elect or choose and to me, the Arabs are fine with living in sewage and filth and being ripped off by their politicians or they’d change it.

Alternatively they probably have just accepted their lifestyle in an “inshallah” way, not realizing that there are other ways to live and behave. America kicking in their door, sending in the cream of the crop of our young people to act as role models, and giving them newspapers and television sets tuned to the outside world has got to make a difference in showing them that they do *not* have to necessarily live their wretched little lives squatting in a mud hut breathing in their own sewage.

Then, if they still choose to continue to live and follow the old ways, inshallah, and we’ll probably have to end up killing the whole kit and caboodle of them.

I’ll bet C-fudd sees himself as the next Eva Braun.

The resurgence of fundamental islamicism is from the retreat of European and Great Britain control over the region and the reduced influence of Western Europe.

However Kosova and Albania and Bosnia have managed to convert to western society and I am glad that they embrace Islam light. Seems to me they are really more Christian in outlook but never bothered to change over in name

I very much enjoyed the view into the area. It created a desire to travel over there and get a more in depth look.

Why don’t you listen to your “young black candidate” bumble through an unscripted response when being questioned about success in Iraq.

Any claim that this supremely Empty Suit™ has even an iota of vision should be submitted to the emperor’s tailors.

ceaderford: Which is a relief, frankly – compared to the Neocon vision of unending war in nation after nation by American “heroes” deep into the future – to keep Jihad down and “beloved Special Friend” Israel safe with it’s conquered territories and WMD monopoly.

Your anti-Semitic slip is showing. Israel’s “WMD monopoly” is probably the one thing that is keeping it and much of the MME (Muslim Middle East) alive. This will likely be borne out in horrific detail should Iran ever acquire nuclear weapons.

Islam is so Hell bent on genocide that it simply cannot restrain even its least sane members in Tehran from forcing Israel to invoke the Samson Option, which will slag much of the MME. That “WMD monopoly” you speak so derisively of is all that stands between an ongoing tenuous low-level conflict and total annihilation.

dla: Bush successfully removed the cancerous tumor from Iraq.

While I grudgingly admire GWB’s tenacity in taking the fight to our Muslim enemies, in no way has Iraq’s cancerous tumor been fully removed. To do that would require excising shari’a law and that clearly DID NOT happen. We all know what the partial removal of a tumor portends.

Totten accurately describes Kosovar Albanians as European, but this should not be viewed as something that magically happened. The Yugoslavian state imposed an artificial unity that suppressed ethnic and religious differences. After the collapse of communism, these differences reasserted themselves in different permutations throughout the former Yugoslavia. Totten views the “muslim lite” phenomenon in Kosovo as if it is permanent. Hey, ethnicity is hard to change (hence the Albanian vs. Serb dynamic here) but religious fervency can change rather quickly.

Look at Turkey, folks. They were officially secular a generation ago and now the nation is lapsing back into its pre-Attaturk identity. Can the same thing happen in Kosovo? It’s foolish to dismiss the possibility as Totten does. Islam does not have a history of peaceful coexistence (spare me the lectures because I took the full syllabus of Islam, Middle East, and Arabic courses at the University of Virginia in the 1980s before the “religion of peace” propaganda was required). Kosovars should reject Islam in its entirety before they start copying Turkey’s downward trend.

I reiterate several points with regard to the mistakes he’s making viz. Islam in the region: that his characterization of the meakness of the current brand of Islam is a horribly wrong diagnosis and ignores the historic periodicity of blatant genocidal Jihad which animates them, that Islamic Jihad has and will continue to infect Kosovar Muslims, and that the Kosovar Muslims are not somehow magically immune from the terrorist pandemic that is gripping the rest of the Islamic world.

Mr. Totten has bought hook line and sinker the narrative which depicts the local Muslims as meek victims of nasty Nazi-like genocidal Serbs. This cartoon is required in order to simplify the conflict into a morality play that expiates catastrophically wrong American and European actions in the conflict. The Muslims do everything in their power to perpetuate this hideous propaganda of their meekness and victimhood.

The extremity of Mr. Totten’s coolaid consumption was epitomized by his recent comparison of Kosovo as the “Israel of the Balkans” – a revolting conflations

Violent genocidal Islamic Jihad is the only reason Muslims reside in the region in the first place. Muslims have gradually ethnically cleansed or converted locals to Islam through terror and intimidation as the opportunity arose. Does Mr. Totten think these white Europeans “converted” to Islam of their free will? It represents a blinkered extremely short view, and a highly selective reading of the roiling history of this cauldron of Jihadi conquest. Islam is still working on dissolving the final sinews of this former Western bastion and claiming the region as a permanent part of the House of Islam. The groteque mistake of helping to create Kosovo is one more nail in the coffin of the West, and one more notch in the sword of Islam. Hopefully this will someday be recognized for the idiotic and monstrous blunder that it is. Fantastic narratives which whitewash the endless crimes of the Muslim invaders, sugar coat the role of Islam in the gradual but utter destruction of the region, and vilify the true victims of that murderous ongoing Islamic Jihad which has been and currently is being waged by those Muslims are reprehensible.