The Tragedy of Kosovo

James Jatras is a policy analyst in the US Senate.  A Greek-American, he is in the forefront of efforts to bring the real story about Kosovo to the attention of the American public. The tragedy of Kosovo and America's well-intentioned involvement there have created a beachhead for Islam on the doorstep of Europe. In this regard we have no one to blame but ourselves. Rehashing the story of American foreign policy failures in the Balkans is beyond the scope of this post. If you would like to learn more go here, here and here.  The question that all Americans must answer is how do we deal effectively with the threat of radical Islam. How do we craft policies that will  help Muslim moderates in the Middle East and shore up the front-line states confronting the Islamic threat. Thankfully, there are an increasing number of voices in the wilderness that are highlighting the policy inconsistencies of Republican and Democratic administrations.  Recently, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, made a statement that an imposed solution or the illegal breaking away of a part of the state territory of Serbia, is not the way to resolve the issue of Kosovo. Ambassador Bolton is saying what many in the Bush Administration are thinking, but are still not saying, because entrenched pro-Albanian positions in the State Department have become so institutionalized since the Clinton years. Bolton recently told the Voice of America that is it not within the competences of other countries or the United Nations to break up or divide Serbia without the agreement of its government, because the international community is dealing with a new and democratic Serbia, not the one from the era of Milosevic. Violence continues in Kosovo including attacks against civilians and the desecreation of Orthodox Churches.  Kosovo is quickly becoming a haven for organized crime and a bastion of Islamic radicalism. 

Mr. Jatras notes in his essay in Chronicles Magazine entitled "Insurgent Islam and American Collaboration," the underlying anti-Orthodox bias in Western societies and the collusion of a segment of American society in its own destruction:

"I have noted that Western anti-Orthodox bias rarely means antipathy for Orthodoxy as such. Most serious Protestants and Roman Catholics often have a fairly positive attitude toward Orthodox Christianity as a morally conservative and liturgically traditional bulwark within the spectrum of Christian opinion. Perhaps it has been so long since Western Christians have had to defend themselves physically as Christians (as opposed to Americans, Englishmen, Germans, etc.) that they just do not understand those for whom it is a current concern.

On the other hand, there are Westerners for whom antipathy is based on the traditional Orthodox character of the front-line states bordering on Islam. Indeed, from this viewpoint, the desire of these countries to avoid not only islamicization but Westernization as well is a major count against them. Though differing in the specifics, the overall attitude toward Orthodox nations today is strongly reminiscent of that of the West toward the East as the dying Byzantine, Bulgarian, and Serbian states faced Ottoman conquest in the 15th century. The West then was explicit: We will help you only if you renounce Orthodoxy and adopt Roman Catholicism. The Orthodox East is being told today that unless they unquestioningly submit to the West's tutelage in political, social, moral, and economic matters--the collective "religion" of the Enlightenment heritage-they again will be thrown to the wolves. In fact, the West will even help the wolves to devour them.

The immorality, not to mention the stupidity, of this should be obvious. Maybe Christians will never come to agreement on doctrinal matters; maybe the East will insist on retaining its distinctive religious and cultural heritage. Whatever happens, the survival of Orthodox Christian civilization in the East should be hardly less important to the West than to the Orthodox themselves, and indeed over the long term, the West's own fate may depend on it. The fact that the West cannot recognize this reality is evident in the forest of minarets going up mainly in Western Europe but also now in North America.

Some Christians see the Muslim influx primarily as an opportunity for evangelization, and indeed we should never neglect to share the Gospel, the only real liberation, with Muslims, who should not, as individuals, be held responsible for the violent system into which they were born and of which they are--perhaps more than anyone else--victims. At the same time, in light of the growing volume of Muslim immigration, Western Christians will soon find out--maybe sooner than they think, given Western birthrates--that confronting the Islamic advance has become, as it has always been for Eastern Christians, a simple matter of physical survival. But by that time, it may be too late for the West as well."

Read the whole thing here and don't miss this recent interview of Jatras by  CBN here.

Comments

[Stella L. Jatras]

Dear friends,

Jim Jatras is an Americn of Greek descent. I should know. I am his mother Stella.

His website: www.savekosovo.org. Please join Jim and the others who are working on behalf of saving Serbia's Jerusalem from falling into the hands of jihadist terrorists - i.e., such as Agim Ceku, Prime Minister of Kosovo who is the mastermind of two of the most brutal and grisliest attacks against Serbian civilians in the Yugoslav war - the Battle of the Medak pocket, where Croatian soldiers attacked Canadian soldiers who were trying to stop the further slaughter of women and children, and Operation Storm, where over 250,000 Serbs were ethnically cleansed from their ancestral homes in the region of Krajina and thousands killed.

FYI: If you go to www.google.com or www.yahoo.com and type in my name, Stella Jatras, you can read many of my commentaries, articles and letters that have been published regarding US intervention into the Balkans.

[Stavros]

Apologies to the entire Jatras family. It was a stupid mistake on my part. Thanks for the fine work all of you are doing. If I can assist in some way, please do not hesitate to send me an email.