According to Bismarck’s best-known maxim on Europe’s most troublesome region, the Balkans are not worth the bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier. Americans could be forgiven for harboring similar sentiments after the murder of two U.S. airmen in Germany by a Kosovar Muslim.
Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did — and without any pesky U.N. resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them. Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried “Bombs away!” and got on with it. And the Left didn’t mind at all — because, for a modern Western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you’re waging. Unlike Iraq and all its supposed “blood for oil,” in Kosovo no one remembers why we went in, what the hell the point of it was, or which side were the good guys. (Answer: Neither.) The principal rationale advanced by Clinton and Blair was that there was no rationale. This was what they called “liberal interventionism,” which boils down to: The fact that we have no reason to get into it justifies our getting into it.
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A decade on, Kosovo is a sorta sovereign state, and in Frankfurt a young airport employee is so grateful for what America did for his people that he guns down U.S. servicemen while yelling “Allahu akbar!” The strange shrunken spectator who serves as president of the United States, offering what he called “a few words about the tragic event that took place,” announced that he was “saddened,” and expressed his “gratitude for the service of those who were lost” and would “spare no effort” to “work with the German authorities” but it was a “stark reminder” of the “extraordinary sacrifices that our men and women in uniform are making . . . ”
The passivity of these remarks is very telling. Men and women “in uniform” (which it’s not clear these airmen were even wearing) understand they may be called upon to make “extraordinary sacrifices” in battle. They do not expect to be “lost” on the shuttle bus at the hands of a civilian employee at a passenger air terminal in an allied nation. But then I don’t suppose their comrades expected to be “lost” at the hands of an army major at Fort Hood, to cite the last “tragic event” that “took place” — which seems to be the president’s preferred euphemism for a guy opening fire while screaming “Allahu akbar!” But relax, this fellow in Frankfurt was most likely a “lone wolf” (as Sen. Chuck Schumer described the Times Square bomber) or an “isolated extremist” (as the president described the Christmas Day Pantybomber). There are so many of these “lone wolves” and “isolated extremists” you may occasionally wonder whether they’ve all gotten together and joined Local 473 of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves and Isolated Extremists, but don’t worry about it: As any Homeland Security official can tell you, “Allahu akbar” is Arabic for “Nothing to see here.”
Bismarck’s second best known maxim on the region is that the Balkans start in the slums of Vienna. The Habsburg imperial capital was a protean “multicultural society” wherein festered the ancient grievances of many diverse peoples. Today, the Muslim world starts in the suburbs of Frankfurt. Those U.S. airmen were killed by Arid Uka, whose Muslim Albanian parents emigrated from Kosovo decades ago. Young Arid was born and bred in Germany. He is a German citizen who holds a German passport. He is, according to multicultural theory, as German as Fritz and Helmut and Hans. Except he’s not. Not when it counts.
Why isn’t he a fully functioning citizen of the nation he’s spent his entire life in? Well, that’s a tricky one.
As always, Mark manages to take a very serious issue and find a humorous spin, while stating the plain facts of the matter. So good to have you back Mark!
As the demographics of the declinging birth-rate cross the Atlantic, we will eventually to called upon to embrace "immgration reform/open borders" as the only solution to "fixiing" Social Security.
Personally, I'd considering taking a class in Conversational Spanish at a local community college so that, when I'm in the nursing home, I'll be able to ask for more Jello and a clean bedpan.
Is it too broad a brush to suggest that all the lone wolves and isolated extremists use the same phrase derived from a common experience in reading a certain "religious" text? The party of wishful thinking and the fifth columnists who support their world view are condemning my children and yours to a world of diminished freedom and opportunity. May they all rot in Jahannam.
The Third World, with the blessings of the UN, EU, and Leftists in Western Europe, have convinced the latter that it must commit suicide to repent for past sins, real or imaginary.
Unfortunately, trying to replace a dying population with an immigrant one is not a solution, but a problem within a problem. Never mind that the immigrant has no loyalty to his adopted country, but the immigrant's reproductive rate would not be able to replace the reproductive rate of the country's native population.
I've always wondered why Leftists, who relish the socialist state, would then fight tooth and nail for gay marriage, abortion, birth control, and other population controlling measures along with diversity and multiculturalism. Have they ever figured out the contradiction of their position?
One could, I think, argue that our relations with strategically-vital post-Soviet Russia seriously began to unravel when we took sides in that nasty civil war in former Yugoslavia, bombing Orthodox (if violent and unpleasant) Serbs on behalf of equally violent and unpleasant Islamic expansionists.
If we expected (or do expect) any sort of gratitude - or even tolerance - from expansionist Islam, we are indeed Fools in Fantasyland.
Mark actually made a mistake. The life expectancy may have been 45 but that number added together all the babies who died young and all the old people. Bismark did a study and found out that almost everyone died by age 65. Thus the age 65 retirement was established. The pension was only 10% of a worker's wages!
"[Arid Uka] is, according to multicultural theory, as German as Fritz and Helmut and Hans. Except he’s not. Not when it counts. Why isn’t he a fully functioning citizen of the nation he’s spent his entire life in?"
Well, to be fair, Fritz and Helmut and Hans are often not fully functioning citizens of the nation they've spent their lives in either. And when Fritz, Helmut and Hans are just welfare-dependent, hedonist nihilists, it's hard to expect much more from Arid.
I have to wait for someone to arrive from the local bodybuilding center to help me get down, from the dusty upper shelves of my library, I think it's Volume 85, weighing perhaps 100 lbs., from among the six hundred volume set of The Records of the Clinton Scandals. I believe that Mark has erred slightly in placing the Kosovo-Serbia bombings in closest proximity with the Lewinsky scandal. Those bombings, if my memory serves, came in the midst of the Chinese money (or perhaps Chinese espionage) scandal. I recall a delicious dose of irony where the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was accidentally hit.
You're right, Martin. Slick Willie's "Wag the Dog" use of the military to distract from the Lewinsky scandal was to attack Iraq's air defenses the night before the House began debating Articles of Impeachment.
So glad to have your pithy, funny, pointed, and alarmingly frank commentary back on NRO! Great article; I disseminated it far and wide among my conservative friends and family.
In the latest of his free-form and intellectually dishonest columns, Mark Steyn makes it appear that the U.S.-NATO war on Serbia over Kosovo in 1999 was supported only by the left:
Remember Kosovo? Me neither. But it was big at the time, launched by Bill Clinton in the wake of his Monica difficulties: Make war, not love, as the boomers advise. So Clinton did—and without any pesky U.N. resolutions, or even the pretense of seeking them.
Instead, he and Tony Blair and even Jacques Chirac just cried “Bombs away!” and got on with it. And the left didn’t mind at all—because, for a modern western nation, war is only legitimate if you have no conceivable national interest in whatever war you’re waging.
The reality, of course, is that the congressional Republican leadership, most Republicans, and all neoconservatives, also didn’t mind at all. Not only did they not mind Clinton’s war on Serbia, they actively supported it, far more than the left did. Among others, George W. Bush supported Clinton’s policy, and as president he followed through on it, making Kosovo into an independent Muslim nation in Europe. Steyn doesn’t mention that fact, even as he complains about the favors we have done for the Kosovar Muslims which they repay by killing our servicemen in Germany.
But you’ve got to hand it to Steyn; he knows his audience. His Orwellian whitewashing of conservative involvement in disastrous recent U.S. policies only adds to the conservative adoration of him.
A witty man who always shines light on truth...Unfortunately I am not speaking of Obama..but Mark Steyn. Our President in his weak pronouncements is the "King of meaningless words." I never feel like he believes even the reluctant tributes he gives to our heroes in the military. He always seems to use his gift for oratory to deceive us into thinking he is something that he is not. Thanks again, Mark for articulating the truth...
Harmony and order restored to a little corner of a brutish, sinful universe. Mark Steyn writing for NRO on Saturday!
Very good points by the way and your line about the Nigerian millions going somewhere, anywhere was great and true and something the Left just has not dealt with yet...
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