Atlas Exclusive: Julia Gorin Takes on Conservative Bloggers who call the Kosovo Jihad by Another Name

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Road trip! Well sometimes the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Michael Totten in a sweet, unstudied fashion, has decided to weigh in on the Kosovo controversy by taking a road trip through Kosovo and Bosnia. Eating his way through chocolate chip cookies and bad twinkies he counts bullets in Kosovo (not a lot) and Bosnia (many more!) and goes on to anecdotally deduce and draw his own conclusions. It’s silly and cute but it don’t fly. Sorry. It’s dangerous because Totten has done excellent work on Iraq. Lending his credibility to a fallacious argument will drive what little thoughtful discourse there is on this complicated controversy further down the rabbit hole. Totten has clearly become what Gorin coins "another
Western propagandist for Albania and for the "continued, recycled
demonization of the ‘anti-American’ Serbs. The response by Serbs to America
feeding them to Muslims and Nazis is not a cemented, blood-embedded
“anti-Americanism” as these types portray".

Here is the first in a series of rebuttals that I am going to publish by Julia Gorin, a leading expert in the matter of Kosovo and Bosnia.

Julia Gorin exclusively at Atlas: 

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In some
conservatives’ goodly but naïve quest to find pro-American and truly moderate
Muslims, many are sticking their noses into Albanian-dominated Kosovo, a region
and situation to which they are imposters, as they have not been following
developments there for the nine years since our bombing of Belgrade on behalf of
Muslims claiming nothing less than genocide, later downgraded to “ethnic
cleansing” which later–when no one was looking–
was
further
downgraded by major newspapers (including
the Wall St. Journal’s Daniel
Pearl) to what it actually was: a counter-terrorist operation rooting
out
KLA insurgents in a turf war between ethnic
Albanians and their host society of Yugoslavia.

One
imposter is the otherwise reputable blogger Michael J. Totten who, like the rest
of the herd (in a case of the blogosphere being strangely indistinguishable from
the mainstream media it polices), started his foray into Kosovo with a blog post
on Commentary magazine’s website. I responded on JihadWatch.com, with an article
that I reproduce below.

Since my
response to Totten’s sudden interest in Kosovo (which coincided with Kosovo’s
very recent reemergence in the headlines) Totten has jumped into Kosovo with
both feet–literally and figuratively–perhaps spurred by the controversy that I
am vitally stirring. In a desperate search of the universe for signs of
pro-American life, Totten, like other simplistic patriots, believes he has found
it in Albanians. And he seems to have cemented his resolve to add his name to
the long list of Western dupes for Greater Albania and for the continued,
recycled demonization of the “anti-American” Serbs.

But what
Totten’s and others’ recent reintroduction to the region and therefore shallow
knowledge prevents them from understanding is that “anti-Americanism” is not in
the Serbian blood. The current climate is a response by Serbs to America feeding
them to Muslims in Kosovo and Bosnia (and earlier to Croatian Nazi revivalists).
Serbian anger at the U.S. is a recent and reluctant development, a direct
reaction to geopolitical intrigues we’ve been playing at their expense. These
intrigues are not something that can be learned in the few months since Kosovo
reentered the headlines. I have been studying the region for nine years and have
only scratched the surface myself. But I am happy to share what I know with
Atlas Shrugs readers.

I will
start with my responses to Totten’s increasingly regular hack jobs on Serbs and
Kosovo–an important undertaking, given that Totten is something of a demi-god
in the blogosphere. And yet here he is, post-9/11, taking the “moderate” Muslim
side–like the Clinton policy that has now been institutionalized–against
Christians in the Balkans. The Balkans is where a different set of rules applies
when it comes to recognizing and classifying jihad and the nationalist supremacy
that ushers it in–despite Serbia’s being the second country (after Israel)
targeted by resurgent Islam on a macro scale.

In the case
of Israel, a different set of rules likewise applies when it comes to
recognizing and classifying jihad. The problem is that the conservatives who do
apply rules fairly to Israel have singled out Serbia to which to apply double
standards. Herewith is the opening post:

Julia Gorin: This is a
Kosovar Muslim?

In
my fellow conservatives’ desperation to find a country that doesn’t hate
America, and in the universal struggle to find a truly moderate Muslim
population, articles and blog posts such as this one by Michael
Totten, shamefully in Commentary magazine online, become ubiquitous.

It’s
titled “This is a Kosovar Muslim” and has a picture of an elderly Albanian man
wearing a “USA” sweatshirt with an American flag on it:

I’m
writing this from the capital of Kosovo, the least “scary” Muslim country on
Earth…Kosovo is surprising even to me. Islam in this country is so thoroughly
liberal (“moderate” doesn’t quite cover it) that, if it weren’t for the mosques,
there would be no visible evidence that Kosovo is a Muslim country at all…Bosnia
notoriously welcomed thousands of Salafist mujahideen fighters from the Arab
world during Yugoslavia’s violent demise. But the Kosovo Liberation Army
brusquely told them to stay the hell out of their country–even while they faced
an ethnic cleansing campaign directed from Belgrade. [They didn’t.]

American
flags are on sale at kiosks everywhere. They fly in front of government
buildings. The world’s second largest replica of the Statue of Liberty sits atop
the five star Hotel Victory. The largest street downtown was renamed Bill
Clinton Boulevard…Clinton is rightly hailed as a liberator, but one resident
told me “We are Republicans here in Kosovo.” They want a strong American
President who won’t back down from commitments. Just a few short blocks from
Bill Clinton Boulevard is the Israeli Odyssea Bakery. It is not just a Jewish
bakery, but an Israeli bakery owned and operated by an actual
Israeli.

As
with everyone else who has deigned to finally write about Kosovo now that it’s
back in the headlines, Totten sees only what’s on the surface, because he didn’t
bother following Kosovo from 1999 on (not to mention pre-1999). Yes, Albanians
are pro-American, thanks to our distinctly un-American operation on their behalf. The
last time someone expanded Albania for them, Albanians were so grateful that
they formed two Nazi divisions
to show their appreciation, rounding up Jews for Bergen-Belsen, and killing
Serbs. Before that, they converted to Islam to benefit from Ottoman patronage,
get higher status and get the upper hand over the Slavs. Albanians will be
whatever they have to be, and the love is always
conditional.

As
I wrote in an article titled “The Pro-American Terrorists” and in another
titled “Why Do They Love Us?”:
Whoever secures more land for Albanians–in the current case a second country
(while Jews still struggle for just one)–that’s whom they’ll love. So now
we’re their patrons. Ottomans. Nazis. USA (along with Saudi Arabia and
UAE). Which means that just as there is a Clinton mural in Kosovo, there is also
a Hitler diner and a “bin Laden Mosque” (dubbed
as such because of all the photos of bin Laden that adorned its walls until the
Americans complained).

Totten
further reveals his credentials as an imposter to this issue when he writes that
the “Kosovo Liberation Army brusquely told [mujahedeen] to stay the hell out of
their country–even while they faced an ethnic cleansing campaign directed from
Belgrade.”

The
ever-present use of State Department-issued language concerning “ethnic
cleansing directed from Belgrade” aside (and please note that when it comes to
any discussion of Kosovo, there is no variation from government to media to
art), the KLA did in fact have Islamist help. Bin Laden co-financed, co-trained and co-fought
with the KLA. Even the Brooklyn-based gun smuggler Florin Krasniqi listed al Qaeda as among those
helping his KLA in a PBS-aired documentary (2005), saying that he would have
worked “with the devil” too. Just as Totten’s article was being published the
other day, al Qaeda-linked Kuwaitis were admitting that they were also fighting in Kosovo,
in addition to every other kind of mujahed—one of whom told a journalist in 1999,
“This is my eighth jihad.” As one National Guard source recently told me, the
jihadists come and go as they
please.

But
I would certainly be interested in seeing some documentation for the notion that
Totten conjured up of KLA telling the mujahedeen to “stay the hell out of their
country.” I’d like to see even something quoting an Albanian leader, an “ex” KLA
fighter or international administrator making this up, but Totten naturally
offers zero documentation in his Commentary blog post, which reads like a
ventriloquist act to anyone who has heard it all before—from
Albanians.

To
understand how things work in Kosovo and surrounding
areas, Totten needs a heavy dose of Chris Deliso’s book The Coming Balkan
Caliphate
, from which he would glean that the Albanians have an
“arrangement” with the fundamentalists that goes like this: If your boys touch
the internationals here–who are giving us what we need–we will kill them. Tell
them to keep their heads low, and they can continue to operate in the
region.

While
Albanians are slowly reawakening to Islam after a communist slumber, Kosovo is
filling with mosques and is the center of al Qaeda heroin-trafficking. In case
anyone ever seeks to question why U.S. leaders and the State Dept. sabotaged
Serbian-Albanian negotiations at every turn, using absolutist language
throughout (e.g. “Independence is the only option”), he or she will find that we
were responding to the perpetual threat of violence by the Albanian
leadership, our new “friend”. Of course, the Albanian leadership does not mean
all Albanians, but even those Albanians who don’t have blood on their hands are
all too happy to accept their independent Kosovo/Greater Albania however the KLA
managed and bludgeoned to win it. They take their goodies from whoever is
handing them out, and however they can get them.

Meanwhile,
the receptiveness that the jihadists have found among young Albanians (like
young Bosnians) to fundamentalism isn’t unlike the void that Islam is filling in
millions of young people everywhere. But the point is that our intervention
opened that floodgate, and we continue down the same road even post-9/11.
Instead of promoting multi-culturalism, we promoted the most radical elements,
ethnic supremacy and a victim mentality that ultimately seeks out the old faith.
And that faith is making inroads in Kosovo with
access it didn’t have before 1999. (Just look at how surprised the famous shill
for Balkan Muslims, Stephen Schwartz, was on this bus
trip
.)

Totten
goes on to assert not only Albanians’ pro-Americanism, but their
pro-Semitism:

Accomplished
businessman and practicing Muslim Luan Berisha told me that 90 percent of
Kosovars support Israel in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I don’t know if that’s
really true. But if so it means Kosovo is more pro-Israel than even the United
States…No one in any Arabic country would say such a thing. Kosovo sharply
contrasts also with nearby Serbia on this question, where General Wesley Clark
is seen as a sinister Jewish figure who plotted Belgrade’s destruction, and
where Saddam Hussein was considered an ally.

Forced
into dealing with countries that weren’t part of the Western-led sanctions,
boycotts and bombings against it, Serbia was isolated and had few options. Hence
the dealings with Saddam Hussein, who was our ally as well when we needed him.
While Wesley Clark is rightfully hated in Serbia, Israel is supported and, as Yohanan
Ramati, Chairman of Jerusalem Institute for Western Defense, wrote in the Jerusalem Post in 1995, “Israelis
are still liked and welcomed.” There was goodreason that Israel was
against the bombing of Serbia and was providing covert assistance to Belgrade
even while providing humanitarian aid to “Kosovars”.

For
years, Serbia continued to face Westward despite our crimes against it, even
offering troops for Afghanistan and Iraq. But having dug ourselves into a hole,
we continued to dig—and continued to kick Serbia’s teeth in. Whatever
geo-strategic advantages and goals we’ve managed to carve out of our disastrous
1990s errors (quietly admitted to here and there), at least as much could have
been accomplished working with our WWI and WWII ally, Serbia, which also has an
incredible intelligence apparatus and had good border security in Kosovo until
we dismantled it. (Recall it was Serbia that caught a key suspect in the Madrid bombings 16
months after the attack–as he transited untouched through Europe, most likely
on his way to Kosovo or Bosnia, writes Deliso.)

While
Totten is in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, he should look around and ask himself
why it’s so pristinely Albanian. And while showing us “This is a Kosovar
Muslim,” he should remember that so was one of the Fort Dix Six planning to
massacre American soldiers—and three others were Albanian Muslims from western
Macedonia, a.k.a. Greater Kosovo. Indeed, Totten’s timing on this post couldn’t
be better, as today is the one-year anniversary of the arrests that should have
been America’s red light on Kosovo independence.

Too
bad conservatives can’t distinguish themselves from the Democrats and other
appeasers on this front.

UPDATE: China Confidential reportsAlbaniannazi

Al Qaeda-associated Islamists and Nazis are thriving in Muslim Albania and Kosovo, as shown on the left by the recent photograph of the insignia on a Pristina wall of Bali i Kombetar, the Albanian Nazi party. It was a volunteer Kosovo Albanian Nazi organization formed in 1939. Himmler described it to Hitler as the most elite of Kosovo Albanian Nazis responsible for slaughtering thousands of Serbs and Jews in WWII. Today, the revived Albanian Nazi organization is freely flourishing under the protection of NATO troops.

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Trueteller
Trueteller
8 years ago

Hahaha,what uneducated BS financed by Serbian-Russian KGB communists. Pamela please get some book. You are more and more pathetic. You are making damage to real conservative Americans. Go to Israel,I don’t understand why two Israel tribes(Jewish and Palestinian tribe) fight each other. You are one nation,one ethnic group,one people,family…Leave us Europeans and European Americans alone!

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