Early last week, Belgium, France and Germany challenged Imperial plans for the invasion of Iraq by blocking the deployment of NATO military assets to Turkey. Ostensibly for ‘defense’ of Turkish territory, the deployments of missiles, radar planes and specialist personnel were plainly another step in His Elevated Majesty’s preparations to invade Iraq as soon as his minions found a suitable pretext.
Reichsmarshall Rumsfeld was infuriated, naturally. So was one of the most vulgar neocon charlatans, one Stephen Schwartz. He used the occasion to pen a particularly venomous screed titled "America defends Muslims." It was a panopticon of vile lies that bear not repeating and half-truths that were hardly better, and its thesis was that America was not an enemy, but a friend and defender of Muslims – for it defended them from ‘Serbian genocide’ in Bosnia and Kosovo.
Nonsense Squared
‘Schwartz’ does not reveal to his readers, however, that he is a Trotskyite (a.k.a. Comrade Sandalio) who converted to Islam (i.e. became Suleyman Ahmad) during a visit to Bosnia in the 1990s. Instead, he uses his Jewish name in a cheap bid for instant credibility: if a Jew defends Muslims, surely he must have a point…? But even if his identity was not so murky, his arguments would still be rubbish; his history is simply wrong, and his conclusions are vacuous nonsense.
All his braying about "a firm and noble ally that stood by us against Russian imperialism" unraveled just this week, when Turkey raised the price of serving as the Empire’s forward invasion base. ‘Defense’ and ‘nobility’ find mighty strange expressions sometimes…
But "America defends Muslims" does contain one inkling of truth, though not as its author intended. It finally lays bare the intended place of Serbs in the Imperial Order, as the whipping boy for proving that the U.S. is not an enemy of Islam and Muslims.
In Defense of Islam?
Schwartz/Sandalio/Ahmad is not the only kook peddling the Balkans interventions as an example of pro-Muslim generosity of the Empire. Others in his company include neocon paladin Charles Krauthammer, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, and Representative Brad Sherman, to name just a few. The main thrust of their argument is that the United States cannot possibly be an enemy of Muslims, not after what it did for Muslim populations of Bosnia and Kosovo.
Here is Congressman Sherman, of California, in the aftermath of September 11:
"Let us remember that America is not anti-Muslim and not anti-Islam. In fact, the last three military engagements of the United States were for the purpose of defending Muslim people. We restored the independence of Kuwait. We then went on to save the Bosnian Muslims from genocide. And then we bombed a Christian country, Serbia, because of what Serbia tried to do to its Albanian Muslim minority. And now American and NATO troops are engaged in Macedonia for the purpose of achieving a just result for the Albanian Muslims who are a minority in that country."
(US Congressional Record, 21 September 2001)
So, Muslims of the world ought to be grateful to the Empire for saving their Balkans brethren from ‘genocide’ at the hands of evil Serbs, who practice some antiquated (and thus ‘uncivilized’) form of – gasp! – Christianity.
Hogwash.
An Enemy of All
Yes, the United States did support the militant Bosnian Muslim leadership, even as it persecuted fellow Muslims who disagreed with its policies. And yes, the United States did support the terrorist KLA in Kosovo, but it used militant Islam merely as prop for greater Albanian chauvinism. Under the UN/NATO/KLA occupation, non-Albanian Muslims of Kosovo have faced the same persecution as Serbs: Roma and Ashkali, Gorani, ‘Bosniaks’ and even Turks have been killed, robbed or driven away. Not to mention the hundreds of fellow Albanians killed by the KLA as ‘traitors’ or ‘collaborators’ or simply because they were in the way. If the occupation of Bosnia and Kosovo was about defending Muslims, the U.S. has done a piss-poor job.
Many people around the world have been scratching their heads for years, trying to figure out which side the Empire was on. Fact is, it is not on anybody’s side. It is no one’s friend but its own. It is not against Serbs, or against Muslims, or against Jews, Indians, Russians, or Chinese… It is against everybody. Even its own citizens, as it steals their liberty, property and increasingly lives as well.
Keeping Up Appearances
Meanwhile, however, the Empire manages to hoodwink everybody by pretending to be all things to all people – a defender of Israel as well as Saudi Arabia, a protector of Muslims as well as a champion of Christianity, etc. And to demonstrate its friendship to the Muslims, it is making an example of the Serbs.
It’s been obvious for quite some time that the so-called trials before the Hague Inquisition were not about ‘individual guilt,’ as falsely advertised, by all about the so-called ‘joint criminal enterprise‘ of Milosevic & Associates. If one reads the ‘indictments’ even casually, it is hard not to notice that others may have committed an occasional atrocity, but the Serbs are accused of doing it deliberately and systematically. Genocide is not an individual crime; it’s something states do.
These charges partly serve as a retroactive justification for US/NATO interventions in the Balkans, but as evidenced by Schwartz/Ahmad/Sandalio and others, the ‘genocide’ charge is also used as a way to delude the world’s Muslims. Why?
Harnessing the Jihad
Islamic zealots are a potent weapon, and one the Empire seeks to wield. Zbigniew Brzezinski, an imperialist if ever there was one, boasts of his role in provoking a jihad in Afghanistan even before the Soviet invasion of 1979. Islamic militants were useful to the United States in Bosnia, and to a lesser degree in Kosovo. Leading American newspapers support the anti-Russian jihad in Chechnya.
Furthermore, the new National Security Strategy calls for quashing any potential challengers in the world. The Muslim world, dar-al-Islam, is in no shape to challenge the Empire’s global domination. It is, however, bordering such potentials as Europe, Russia, China and India, and can serve as a permanent problem along and inside their borders for decades.
Right now, however, that weapon is pointed at America, and Imperial power-mongers no doubt find it frustrating. The sooner they can eliminate the ‘stray elements’ and channel the jihad down its ‘proper’ path, the happier they will be. Of course, jihad is a true weapons of mass destruction and as such has a way of getting out of control. This is one more thing the Imperial bureaucrats don’t quite seem to understand.
The Balkans Blame Game
With the Empire using the fabricated accusations of ‘genocide’ as a political tool, no wonder its Balkans vassals are emulating the concept as well. Croatians, Bosnian Muslims, and Kosovo Albanians all have motives to peddle genocide propaganda, and do so incessantly.
First of all, by claiming the Serbs took part in ‘genocide,’ Zagreb, Pristina and Sarajevo can invoke the precedent of Germans expelled at gunpoint from Eastern Europe after World War Two, thus justifying their planned or already executed ethnic cleansings of Serbs. Croatia can claim that some half a million Serbs it ethnically cleansed by 1995 ‘had it coming.’ The KLA did precisely that, when it expelled thousands of Kosovo Roma (‘Gypsies’) as ‘Serb collaborators’. Even those protesting this ghastly persecution bought into the ‘collaborator’ lie.
Albanians also use the accusation of genocide as an argument for recognizing the occupied Kosovo as an independent state. Muslim nationalists routinely seek the abolition of the Bosnian Serb Republic, calling it a ‘result of genocide‘. Also, by claiming to defend the Muslims from genocide, Izetbegovic and his cronies are covering up for their nefarious deeds before, during and after the Bosnian War.
Reality Inversion
The inevitable irony, of course, is that those present-day claimants actually took part in the real genocide in service of the Nazis, while Serbs were their principal victims, and Jews ran a close second. Covering up this historical truth is certainly one reason these modern claims of ‘genocide’ have been so loud and constant.
It is unrealistic to hope that the U.S. leaders would remember World War Two and put a stop to this madness. The Empire has a strange sense of history, forgetting actual events depending on current interests, or reinterpreting them with explanations often made from whole cloth (such as that the war was fought to stop Hitler’s genocide, a notion mentioned previously).
Yet for all the seductive power of lies behind the demented ravings of Sandalio/Ahmad/Schwartz, and fabricated histories of the Empire and its Balkan vassals, they crumble before a few lines of simple, honest truth. Sooner or later, the hoodwinked, deceived, swindled, defrauded, duped and tricked will wake up and smell the stench around them. The sooner the better.
