[Peace-discuss] Return to Kosovo ,Bill Clinton’s Most Abominable Freedom Fighters Uncloaked

Thu Aug 7 22:46:14 EDT 2014

And the REAL reason for the U.S. Nato war in Yugoslaviz in 1999, which 
was the first neo-liberal military intervention, was to destroy a 
non-market Socialist economy, which after the cold war had become the 
threat of a good example.
See Diana Johnstone's " Seeing Yugoslavia through a dark glass " for a 
well documented history of this period

August 07, 2014
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Return to Kosovo

  Bill Clinton’s Most Abominable Freedom Fighters Uncloaked

by JAMES BOVARD

Former president Bill Clinton continues to pirouette around the world as 
a visionary humanitarian and senior statesman. But the sordid truth 
about some of his favorite “freedom fighters” is finally becoming 
undeniable.  A European Union task force last week confirmed  that the 
ruthless cabal he empowered by bombing Serbia in 1999 has committed 
atrocities including murdering individuals to extract and sell their 
kidneys, livers, and other body parts.

Clint Williamson, the chief prosecutor of a special European Union task 
force, declared that senior members of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) 
had engaged in “unlawful killings, abductions, enforced disappearances, 
illegal detentions in camps in Kosovo and Albania, sexual violence, 
forced displacements of individuals from their homes and communities, 
and desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites.”

A special war crimes tribunal is planned for next year.  But the New 
York Times reported that the trials may be stymied by coverups and 
stonewalling:  “Past investigations of reports of organ trafficking in 
Kosovo have been undermined by witnesses’ fears of testifying in a small 
country where clan ties run deep and former members of the KLA. are 
still feted as heroes. Former leaders of the KLA. occupy high posts in 
the government.”  American politicians have almost entirely ignored the 
growing scandal.  Vice President Joe Biden hailed former KLA leader and 
Kosovo Prime Minister Hashim Thaci in 2010 as “the George Washington of 
Kosovo.” A few months later, a Council of Europe investigative report 
tagged Thaci as an accomplice to the body trafficking operation.

The latest allegations might cause some Americans to rethink their 
approval of the 78-day bombing campaign against Serbia that killed up to 
1500 civilians. In early June 1999, the /Washington Post/ reported that  
“some presidential aides and friends are describing [bombing] Kosovo  
in  Churchillian  tones, as  Clinton’s ‘finest hour.’” Clinton 
administration officials justified killing civilians because the Serbs 
were allegedly committing genocide in Kosovo.  After the bombing ended, 
no evidence of genocide was found, but Clinton and Britain’s Tony Blair 
continued boasting as if their war stopped a new Hitler in his tracks.

Kosovo was wracked by a civil war in which both the Serbs and their 
opponents committed atrocities.  The KLA’s savage nature was well-known 
before the Clinton administration formally christened them “freedom 
fighters” in 1999. The prior year, the State Department condemned 
“terrorist  action by the so-called  Kosovo Liberation Army.”  The KLA 
was heavily involved in drug trafficking and had close to ties to Osama 
bin Laden. But arming the KLA helped Clinton portray himself as a 
crusader against injustice and shift public attention after his 
impeachment trial.    Clinton was aided by many congressmen anxious to 
portray U.S. bombing as an engine of righteousness. Sen. Joseph 
Lieberman whooped that the U.S. and the KLA “stand for the same values 
and principles. Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and 
American values.”

After the bombing ended, Clinton assured the Serbian people that the 
U.S. and NATO agreed to be peacekeepers only “with the understanding 
that they would protect Serbs as well as ethnic Albanians  and that they 
would leave when peace took hold.”  In the subsequent months and years, 
American and NATO forces stood by as the KLA resumed its ethnic 
cleansing, slaughtering Serb civilians, bombing Serbian churches, and 
oppressing any non-Muslims as well as ethnic Albanians who did not 
support the KLA. Almost a quarter million Serbs, Gypsies, Jews, and 
other minorities fled Kosovo after Clinton promised to protect them. By 
2003, almost 70 percent of the Serbs living in Kosovo in 1999 had fled, 
and Kosovo was 95 percent ethnic Albanian.

In 2009, Clinton visited Kosovo’s capital, Pristina, for the unveiling 
of an 11-foot tall statue of himself.  The allegations of the KLA’s 
involvement in organ trafficking were already swirling but Clinton made 
no mention of the grisly record of his hosts.  Instead, he stood on Bill 
Clinton Boulevard and lapped up adulation from supporters of one of the 
most brutal regimes in Europe. A commentator in the U.K. Guardian noted 
that the statue showed Clinton “with a left hand raised, a typical 
gesture of a leader greeting the masses. In his right hand he is holding 
documents engraved with the date when NATO started the bombardment of 
Serbia, 24 March 1999.” Regardless of the persecution that followed the 
bombing, the authorizing documents for the aggressive war were presumed 
to be as holy as the stone tablet  with the Ten Commandments that Moses 
purportedly received.

Shortly after the end of the 1999 bombing campaign, Clinton enunciated 
what his aides labeled the Clinton doctrine -“whether within or beyond 
the borders of a country, if the world community has the power to stop 
it, we ought to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing.” In reality, the 
Clinton doctrine was that presidents are entitled to commence bombing 
regardless of whether their accusations against foreigners are true.  As 
long as the U.S. government promises great benefits from bombing abroad, 
presidents can usually attack who they please.

Clinton’s war on Serbia was a Pandora’s Box from which the world still 
suffers. Because politicians and most of the media portrayed the war 
against Serbia as a moral triumph, it was easier for the Bush 
administration to justify attacking Iraq and for the Obama 
administration to bomb Libya.  Both interventions sowed chaos from which 
continues to curse the purported beneficiaries.

The bombing of Serbia also revealed prior to 9/11 that the American 
media would uncritically parrot the U.S. government’s war propaganda.  
In the mainstream media, no one did more to oppose and denounce the war 
than the late Counterpunch co-founder Alexander Cockburn.  In his 
columns in the Los Angeles Times 
<http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/29/local/me-27493>and elsewhere, 
he debunked one justification after another for attacking a foreign 
nation that posed no threat to America. And, in pieces sometimes 
co-authored by Jeffrey St. Clair, he revealed how the war had utterly 
failed <http://www.counterpunch.org/1999/06/15/who-nato-killed/> to 
achieve Clinton’s lofty-sounding goals. Cockburn also pointed out 
<http://articles.latimes.com/1999/aug/19/local/me-1746> that “Hillary 
Rodham Clinton was an enthusiastic advocate for the cluster bombs that 
now litter the Serbia and Kosovo landscapes, set to kill or cripple for 
the next half century.”  (A roundup of articles by Cockburn and St. 
Clair on the Serbian war can be found in the 2004 book,  Imperial 
Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia 
<http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Crusades-Iraq-Afghanistan-Yugoslavia/dp/1844675068/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407343398&sr=1-1&keywords=9781844675067>.)

Unfortunately, Bill Clinton will never be held liable for killing 
innocent Serbs or for helping body-snatchers take over a nation the size 
of Connecticut. Clinton is reportedly being paid up to $500,000 for each 
speech he gives nowadays. Perhaps some of the well-heeled attendees 
could flourish artificial arms and legs in the air to showcase Clinton’s 
actual legacy. And at least the KLA’s defenders can still praise the 
terrorist group for not being cannibals.

/*James Bovard* is the author of author of Public Policy Hooligan 
<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AKZH97W/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B00AKZH97W&linkCode=as>,Attention 
Deficit Democracy 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/140397666X/counterpunchmaga>, 
The Bush Betrayal 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403968519/counterpunchmaga>, 
Terrorism and Tyranny 
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403963681/counterpunchmaga>, 
and other books.  More info at www.jimbovard.com; 
<http://www.jimbovard.com;> on Twitter @jimbovard/

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