Kosovo

Kosovo

What to do about Kosovo? What to say about it? I find myself in a quandry...thinking too much I suppose of the grander historical perspective by which Kosovo is clearly a huge part of Serbian history. The hinge point representing a battle that would end Serbian autonomy, thereafter being subject to Islamic rule which including Serb boys being torn from their mothers and dragged off to serve as janisarries, the imposition of the Jizya and dhimmitude. Truly if you want to understand the ethnic/religious strife we've seen in the Balkins you can trace it back directly to Ottoman imperialism.

Some LOVE to blame many of the world's current suffering on western colonialism and imperialism...and boy do we shower ourselves with guilt about it. But, I'm not sure there is any grand effort on the part of Turks today to try and make amends or even apologize for the suffering the Balkins have undergone in last couple of decades. Not saying they neccesarily should...I'm just comparing and contrasting the "rules of the game" and how they are applied. Anyway, I pray we are not on the verge of more misery.

News stories are just about worthless as I do not think I've ever seen an article that has truly addressed the issues. The love to discuss Serbia's ethnic cleansing that resulted in a NATO bombing campaign, but fail to mention the opposite ethnic cleansing that arose which resulted all too often in KFOR standing by and watching as KLA terrorists with "Alluha Akbar" on their lips wiped out lives and erased centuries old religious sites, relics, churches, monasteries, frescoes and icons. It Shifted the population dynamics even more to a degree to make independence plausible....maybe inevitable.

Admittedly I have sympathies for the Serbian people. Orthodox Christians have a rich history of dhimmitude under Islam...many have endured it for so long they no longer even recognize it and have even grown to support its mythologies in how such dhimmitude came to be. It is difficult to complain about a knife at your throat when you know nobody is going to take it away and it will slice if you speak.

Given the history, both recent and distant, Serbs living in an independent Kosovo have good reason to be worried...KFOR and the UN have not garnered much confidence from Serbs and it is quite reasonable to distrust notions that Kosovo is going to be a bastion of religious and ethnic equality. Revisionist historians have already perpetrated that half-truth rather successfully in regard to the spread of Islam.

But, contrary to much of current politically correct thought, we are not slaves to our past. We are not doomed to live up to the lowest expectations demanded of us by our past. We are free, even under tyranny, to act according to our highest calling and our highest principals. Violence is not the answer here...and were the Serbian people to hear my humble and worthless words I would plea for peaceful protest and diplomacy...nothing good can come of violence in this situation.

And to the Muslim Albanians who are so benefiting from my own country's weighty support: WE WILL BE WATCHING YOU.

I pray our lawmakers, worthless thought they may be, have heard the promises of this newly independent Kosovo...if they fail to live up to them, then I would hope we'd pull our support and do more than what we have done in the past which was too often to watch Orthodox Churches burn.

For now, let us pray for peace and REAL freedom.