Yugoslav Dictator Wins Again
The United States and its NATO allies have agreed to deal with Yugoslav dictator Slobodan Milosevic. Why deal with him rather than bomb him? Well, for one thing, Russia, France and the new government in Germany, in effect, vetoed any bombing.
Milosevic and his Russian-trained Serb army have killed hundreds of men, women and children in the province of Kosovo. Hundreds of thousands of others have been turned into homeless refugees.
It is another of Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing operations." The same kind he and his Serbs carried out so effectively in neighboring Bosnia, before they moved on to Kosovo.
The Serbs history is rooted in the Russian Orthodox Christian Church. Centuries ago, Serbs were savaged by Muslims, the distant relatives of some of the people now in Bosnia and Kosovo. Now, it is the Serbs savaging the Muslims.
Before the end of the Cold War, Yugoslavia was larger, containing mostly Roman Catholic Croatia and other smaller one-time states, such as Bosnia and Kosovo.
With the fall of Soviet communism, the individual former states began breaking away. The Serbs, with their capital in Belgrade, continued, and still continue, trying to rule.
Kosovo, 90 percent Albanian and mostly Muslim, has yet to establish its independence. Which is why the Serbs have been cracking down.
Milosevic, a former communist, who now is practicing something closer to fascism to keep himself in power, is by any objective measurement a killer. First in Bosnia, now in Kosovo.
He now has again escaped punishment. He has once again gone eyeball-to-eyeball with the United States. And once again come out a winner.
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