U.S. Must Respond To Serbian Violence

Yesterday, Serbian demonstrators broke into the embassy of the United States in Belgrade and set it on fire. Now this is not the same thing as attcking an American-owned business on Serbian property (although they did that too -- a McDonalds). The American embassy is the TERRITORIAL PROPERTY OF THE UNITED STATES. As such, it is a violation of international law for any Serbian to enter it without the express permission of U.S. authorities.

Where were the Serbian authorities? It took 45 minutes for Serbian police to arrive and start to control the crowd. That is inexcusable! They knew there was a huge crowd of 150,000 demonstrators (how could they not know). They also knew the crowd was upset with America (they were carrying signs that said so). Since they had to know those two things, how is it that they did not protect the embassy, and why did it take them 45 minutes to arrive after the embassy was attacked?

There is only one possible reason. The Serbian government is upset with the United States and they WANTED THE CROWD TO ATTACK THE EMBASSY! This condoning of and failure to prevent the demonstrators actions constitutes an attack on the United States by Serbia. It is the same as if they sent people to invade the American mainland.

President Bush must take action to defend the United States. If he doesn't, our embassies will become targets all over the world. I'm not suggesting military action, but he must at least take diplomatic action. I think he should:

-- Withdraw all American diplomats from Serbia, and warn other Americans there to leave immediately.

-- Demand that the Serbian government issue a public apology and pay for all damages to the embassy. They should also give us specific details on how they will prevent this from happening in the future.

-- If they refuse to do the above, he should demand that Serbian diplomats leave the United States.

-- Warn Serbia that the United States will act to defend the sovereignity of the Republic of Kosovo.

I know the Serbians are unhappy that Kosovo has become an independent nation, and I don't really care. They lost the moral authority to make that argument a few years ago, when they allowed and supported the massacres and deportation of Albanian descendants in Kosovo. Their own actions created the necessity of Kosovo becoming an independent nation. They now must reap what they have sown.

This may not sound like a "liberal" position to some of you. Think what you will, but the U.S. cannot allow another country to let its citizens attack us just because they are unhappy with us.

A New Country On The World Stage

Yesterday, the world witnessed the birth of a new nation. The Republic of Kosovo declared its independence from Serbia. Since 1999, Kosovo has been supervised by the United Nations. There have been negotiations for the last couple of years to try and figure out a workable status for Kosovo to remain a part of Serbia, but nothing could be decided that was acceptable to all parties.

In 2001, the United Nations administration helped Kosovo form a constitutional framework. This created a 120 member Kosovo Assembly elected by the people, which chooses a President and a Prime Minister. Yesterday, the Assembly passed a Declaration of Independence from Serbia, and Prime Minister Hashim Thaci read it to the international media. That marked the birth of the independent nation -- the Republic of Kosovo.

This probably needed to happen. Kosovo is largely composed of Albanian Muslims. After the "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbians in the late 90's, I don't know how anyone could expect Kosovo to trust that they would ever be treated fairly by the Serbians again. Too many people were killed or expelled from their homes.

It is expected that the United States, Great Britain, France and possibly a few other Western nations will recognize the new country. However, this will not help relations between the West and Russia. Russia backs the Serbs and opposes the creation of the Republic of Kosovo. They have told Serbia to oppose this move in every way short of violence.

While I support the new nation and hope the United States does recognize its existence, we need to understand the ramifications of this move. We must tread carefully and exercise our best diplomatic efforts, or we could be witnessing the birth of a new cold (or hot) war.