Abortion is absolutely morally unjust. This can be logically proven without reference to the Divine.
Premise One: Except to defend the life of another human, it is always morally wrong to take the life of an innocent human being.
This is accepted as fact by almost all people. Out of the few people who reject this, most are in prison.
There are times when it is just to take a human life. One may kill to defend themselves, another, or in war, their nation. The state may kill criminals (they are not innocent). But it is wrong to kill one unprovoked and it is wrong to kill an innocent man, even if it will do the community good (by deterring others from crime for example). Punishing one for the good of others leads to much injustice and was the rational for the killing of Christ (better that one man may die than the community suffer).
Premise Two: Babies are innocent human beings.
This too is uncontroversial. A few outliers may say babies are born with original sin and damned if they are not baptized. But this view is so disregarded it does not merit the cost of time to explain and debunk it.
Premise Three: Life begins at conception.
This is the most controversial premise, so I will treat it in depth in just a moment.
Conclusion: Human babies within the womb are innocent human beings. Abortion takes their life, therefore abortion is morally wrong.
Life begins at conception. This is either true or untrue or we don’t know if it is true. If it is true then abortion is immoral. If it is untrue we must ask the question: when does life begin?
Does life begin when a human reaches a certain size? If so, what is that size? When a baby is one pound? Ten? One-hundred? And does a certain size give babies value absolutely or does value increase with size? If it is the latter then it is true that tall people are more valuable than short and midgets least valuable of all. If it is the former how do we determine at what size babies have human value? This is an unworkable standard.
What about intelligence? Must babies reach some threshold of intelligence to be deemed human? If so, what threshold is that? When a person can talk? And until then we can kill them because they are not human? Are people who don’t reach that threshold sub-human? This too is an unworkable standard.
Say we say that it is development; a baby is not human until it is wholly developed. What does that mean? Are people with birth defects not human? And when does human development end? When a child can walk? Puberty? Around age twenty when one physically stops growing? Or never, for mental development can last to the end of some men’s lives. Children develop at different ages; are we willing to say that of two children of the same age one is human and the other not given their level of development? This standard fails as well.
The last and seemingly strongest standard is independence. We say life begins when a child emerges from the room and becomes independent of its mother. But really, how different is the situation of a new born baby from a child in the womb? While in the womb the child had its own heart beat. Yes it relied on its mother for food, but outside of the womb it will die in a matter of hours without its mother and her food. Either way it is completely dependent on its mother for some time.
Is a six month baby inside of the womb not human, but a six month baby outside of the womb human? Really, what is the difference between them? They are both small, in the process of physical and intellectual development, and dependent on their mother. This standard fails like the other standards. The fact is every biological book in the world up until a century ago recognized that life begins at conception—there is no other workable standard.
The question remains, what if we don’t know? What if we honestly cannot know when life begins? If that is the case, the argument goes, we have no right to call abortion immoral.
On the contrary, this is an even stronger case for the injustice of abortion. Say I am driving down the road and I see what looks like the outline of a man standing in the middle of the road. It is dark and foggy, so I have no way of knowing whether or not it is a man or just an empty cloak. Now I have plenty of time to stop, but I choose to continue, saying to myself: I cannot know whether or not this is a man so I have no moral duty to stop. If I did in fact kill this man, my excuse would not hold up in a court of law. In the very least I would be guilty of first degree reckless homicide. This is no different than the case with abortion. If our behavior creates risk of likely death to another human being we have a moral duty to stop it.
There is no workable standard but conception to judge the beginning of life. And even if we cannot know when life begins, abortion is still unjust.
Two great objections are: what about in the case of a rape and what about if abortion is needed to save a woman’s life?
In the first case: do two wrongs make a right? Will killing a baby undo the harm done? And doesn’t our disrespect for life invite more acts of violent crime? In the case with a dying mom, the mom’s life is in our God’s hands, the baby’s is in ours—I think it is best to leave the whole thing in God’s hands and not play God by proactively killing one of the parties. Still, both of these are such fringe cases that really have no real bearing on the debate.
So why is abortion legal? Pure and utter selfishness. Abortion isn’t defended because it is logical or just. As I have briefly shown, it logically unjust. People don’t like to be told they are doing wrong. The prophets spoke truth, Christ spoke truth—look what happened to them! The people killed them so they could continue their wrongdoing uninterrupted. Like our ancestors before us we sacrifice the lives of our young ones for our own selfish well being. They killed their newly born so they would have bountiful harvests—we kill our unborn because they may get in the way of our careers or our fun. Should some young girl give up her dreams for her child? YES! First off we wouldn’t have so many abortions without the false notion that unrestrained sexual activity is a right. Second, inherit in the institution of parenthood is a duty to sacrifice on behalf of one’s children. How corrupted is our nature that women have been socialized to discard their motherly instinct and murder the very child they are to protect?
Abortion is the gravest injustice of our age. Thirty million innocent individuals have been murdered in this country alone. And for what reason? A false notion of freedom? The idea that a woman’s body is her own? A being with a separate heart beat and cerebral functions is not part of a woman’s body. This is selfishness at its basest. We sacrifice the most innocent in our culture so that our lives may go on, inconvenienced.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Actuality and Potentiality
Actual: what is.
Potential: what may be.
When something actualizes it ceases to be potential and at once becomes what is. What is actual is not, is no longer, potential. If something is merely potential it is not actual.
Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction states that something cannot at once be and not be. X cannot be at once X and not X. Nothing can be both potential and actual.
God knows all that is actual. Everything that is is contained in the mind of God.
God also realizes the potentiality of all things. All that may be is known by God.
But what of what will be? Does God know what potentialities will become actualities?
If God knows what will be what will be is actual rather than potential. Similarly what will not be is also not potential, it is nothing. If all is actual and nothing is potential there is no choice. We are no freer than Hamlet was in the mind of Shakespeare. All is written and time passes like the pages in a book. The story is written. We play our parts till it ends.
But would we fault Hamlet for his actions? Would God fault us for merely playing the role assigned to us in this story? God is just and justice entails responsible action. One cannot be responsible for an action unless they freely choose it. Since God is just we know that man freely chooses his actions. If man freely chooses his actions he has the potential to choose good or bad—not all is actualized. If not all is actualized not all is known by God.
The lesser cannot create the greater. The unfree man in an unfree world cannot create freedom. But a perfectly free Being could create freedom. To do this the Being would have to limit its knowledge. For if all is known, all is actual (for one can only know the actual). If all is actual there is no potential. If there is no potential there is no freedom.
Why would God limit His knowledge? Certainly He could and He has. At one moment in history God limited his power and splendor and took on the form of a humble, finite man. He did this in order to bring salvation to all man kind. Who is to say He would not limit His knowledge of the future in some way so as to allow for potentiality and the freedom of man?
Potential: what may be.
When something actualizes it ceases to be potential and at once becomes what is. What is actual is not, is no longer, potential. If something is merely potential it is not actual.
Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction states that something cannot at once be and not be. X cannot be at once X and not X. Nothing can be both potential and actual.
God knows all that is actual. Everything that is is contained in the mind of God.
God also realizes the potentiality of all things. All that may be is known by God.
But what of what will be? Does God know what potentialities will become actualities?
If God knows what will be what will be is actual rather than potential. Similarly what will not be is also not potential, it is nothing. If all is actual and nothing is potential there is no choice. We are no freer than Hamlet was in the mind of Shakespeare. All is written and time passes like the pages in a book. The story is written. We play our parts till it ends.
But would we fault Hamlet for his actions? Would God fault us for merely playing the role assigned to us in this story? God is just and justice entails responsible action. One cannot be responsible for an action unless they freely choose it. Since God is just we know that man freely chooses his actions. If man freely chooses his actions he has the potential to choose good or bad—not all is actualized. If not all is actualized not all is known by God.
The lesser cannot create the greater. The unfree man in an unfree world cannot create freedom. But a perfectly free Being could create freedom. To do this the Being would have to limit its knowledge. For if all is known, all is actual (for one can only know the actual). If all is actual there is no potential. If there is no potential there is no freedom.
Why would God limit His knowledge? Certainly He could and He has. At one moment in history God limited his power and splendor and took on the form of a humble, finite man. He did this in order to bring salvation to all man kind. Who is to say He would not limit His knowledge of the future in some way so as to allow for potentiality and the freedom of man?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Trials and Change
Regarding trials: do situations change or do we change? I believe the latter. In my own life what was once unbearable I do not notice, what would have been a trial, had I not changed, is now enjoyable.
Most circumstances are outside of our power to change. We cannot change the family we are born into, our physical appearance, or our genetics. Some of us are born into privilege. Others are born into debilitating poverty. We have no control over most of life but we do have total control over our reactions.
Our reactions, our attitudes are the key to our happiness, the key to our success in life. We can choose to have hope that all will one day be made right. We can choose to be optimistic and see the good in every situation. We can choose to be joyful in the midst of pain. Or we can choose to live in fear; fear that the good we have will soon be gone and fear that the worst possible scenario will always come true. We can see the bad in everything and choose to become angry, depressed, and bitter when we face pain.
We are made in the image of God. Like God we have the power to create worlds. Every day we create the world in which we live. What type of world are we making?
We cannot control the pain and the hard times we face. They are a part of our world. In part they are consequences of our sin and in part they are acts of God’s mercy. For if we could live in perfect plenty and peace without his saving grace few would turn to Him. And indeed what good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul?
We cannot control pain, but we must remember it can and does serve a good purpose. In every situation we can embrace our suffering and consider it pure joy (as James wrote), knowing that if we let it, if we have a good heart towards it, pain helps our faith to mature and grow. We cannot prevent pain, but by having a bad reaction we can prevent it from doing us any good (indeed if we become bitter it can do us much harm). Through our reactions, through our attitudes we determine the influence pain and trials will have on our lives.
In this world there are many bitter and angry people. There are also many thankful and joyful people. The difference between them is not their circumstances. In fact I imagine depression and rage are more common among the upper classes than the lower classes—just look at the rates of mental prescription drugs! The difference between these people is their attitudes.
Personally I am much happier today than I was a few years ago. I am less angry and bitter and full of far more joy. Have situations changed? Yes, but there is always good and bad. I have merely found a way to make the most out of all, to find the good in all things and have hope that all will end in good, even when I cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel. In this way what was once unbearable I may now face with joy.
Most circumstances are outside of our power to change. We cannot change the family we are born into, our physical appearance, or our genetics. Some of us are born into privilege. Others are born into debilitating poverty. We have no control over most of life but we do have total control over our reactions.
Our reactions, our attitudes are the key to our happiness, the key to our success in life. We can choose to have hope that all will one day be made right. We can choose to be optimistic and see the good in every situation. We can choose to be joyful in the midst of pain. Or we can choose to live in fear; fear that the good we have will soon be gone and fear that the worst possible scenario will always come true. We can see the bad in everything and choose to become angry, depressed, and bitter when we face pain.
We are made in the image of God. Like God we have the power to create worlds. Every day we create the world in which we live. What type of world are we making?
We cannot control the pain and the hard times we face. They are a part of our world. In part they are consequences of our sin and in part they are acts of God’s mercy. For if we could live in perfect plenty and peace without his saving grace few would turn to Him. And indeed what good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet forfeit his soul?
We cannot control pain, but we must remember it can and does serve a good purpose. In every situation we can embrace our suffering and consider it pure joy (as James wrote), knowing that if we let it, if we have a good heart towards it, pain helps our faith to mature and grow. We cannot prevent pain, but by having a bad reaction we can prevent it from doing us any good (indeed if we become bitter it can do us much harm). Through our reactions, through our attitudes we determine the influence pain and trials will have on our lives.
In this world there are many bitter and angry people. There are also many thankful and joyful people. The difference between them is not their circumstances. In fact I imagine depression and rage are more common among the upper classes than the lower classes—just look at the rates of mental prescription drugs! The difference between these people is their attitudes.
Personally I am much happier today than I was a few years ago. I am less angry and bitter and full of far more joy. Have situations changed? Yes, but there is always good and bad. I have merely found a way to make the most out of all, to find the good in all things and have hope that all will end in good, even when I cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel. In this way what was once unbearable I may now face with joy.
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Being and Doing
What is worse than doing evil is being evil. It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than an honest man to lie. One sin is not like another. They do not all have the same weight. A falling away is of infinitely greater weight than a falling down.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
What is meant by this? It is surely a paradox, but what does it mean? I think at the core of this statement lies the differentiation between doing and being.
At the core of Christianity is being. We are the redeemed children of God. We are justified in Him. And we are continually being sanctified. Who we are, and not what we do, is the key to Christianity.
This notion has its roots in the Old Testament. The Law of Moses, the Torah, literally translated means ‘the way’. In a similar fashion the Decalogue should be translated the ten ‘words’ rather than the Ten Commandments. They were instructions on how a person should be rather than what a person should do. The Torah lays out the values and character that a person who follows God should have. It is not a simple list of does and don’ts—it is not a religion of legalism.
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ interpreted the Law. He instructed us not to get caught up in legalities. We should not focus on the formalities of a legal vow or on only performing the minimal obligations the state can require of us. Rather we should focus on who we are. It is not enough to simply not murder—we should be people who love our brothers in our hearts. It is not enough to simply refrain from adultery—we must be people that cultivate pure minds. The goal of the law is to reform the character, not one’s actions.
The prophets echo this claim throughout the Old Testament. Over and over they say: forget about your sacrifices, instead live justly. It is detestable to God when we do good deeds without being good. The spirit of the law is living in right relation with God and man. This is far more important than the letter of any specific command.
Are we free from the law? In one sense yes. It cannot save us, in fact it never could. We are forgiven every infringement of the law. There is only one unforgivable sin, only one sin that leads to death: rejecting God’s offer of salvation.
It is better for one to be in God and sin then outside of the grace of God and do right. Falling down and falling away are infinitely different.
We should seek to live justly, but all the while we must remember that, as God Himself says, all our works are but filthy rags in His sight. We are saved by who we are (in Christ), not by what we do. Our works do not lead to salvation, but they are a product of our salvation. Christ said by their fruit you will be known, not by your fruit you will be saved.
When one is in Christ his works will naturally conform to who he is. Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine yield figs? What we do naturally flows from who we are. We cannot be good without God. Out of the heart the mouth speaks. The only way we may be good is to enter into His goodness and become His child. In Him we are good and in Him we may do good works. Left to our own devices, we can do no good thing.
-Dietrich Bonhoeffer
What is meant by this? It is surely a paradox, but what does it mean? I think at the core of this statement lies the differentiation between doing and being.
At the core of Christianity is being. We are the redeemed children of God. We are justified in Him. And we are continually being sanctified. Who we are, and not what we do, is the key to Christianity.
This notion has its roots in the Old Testament. The Law of Moses, the Torah, literally translated means ‘the way’. In a similar fashion the Decalogue should be translated the ten ‘words’ rather than the Ten Commandments. They were instructions on how a person should be rather than what a person should do. The Torah lays out the values and character that a person who follows God should have. It is not a simple list of does and don’ts—it is not a religion of legalism.
In the Sermon on the Mount Christ interpreted the Law. He instructed us not to get caught up in legalities. We should not focus on the formalities of a legal vow or on only performing the minimal obligations the state can require of us. Rather we should focus on who we are. It is not enough to simply not murder—we should be people who love our brothers in our hearts. It is not enough to simply refrain from adultery—we must be people that cultivate pure minds. The goal of the law is to reform the character, not one’s actions.
The prophets echo this claim throughout the Old Testament. Over and over they say: forget about your sacrifices, instead live justly. It is detestable to God when we do good deeds without being good. The spirit of the law is living in right relation with God and man. This is far more important than the letter of any specific command.
Are we free from the law? In one sense yes. It cannot save us, in fact it never could. We are forgiven every infringement of the law. There is only one unforgivable sin, only one sin that leads to death: rejecting God’s offer of salvation.
It is better for one to be in God and sin then outside of the grace of God and do right. Falling down and falling away are infinitely different.
We should seek to live justly, but all the while we must remember that, as God Himself says, all our works are but filthy rags in His sight. We are saved by who we are (in Christ), not by what we do. Our works do not lead to salvation, but they are a product of our salvation. Christ said by their fruit you will be known, not by your fruit you will be saved.
When one is in Christ his works will naturally conform to who he is. Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine yield figs? What we do naturally flows from who we are. We cannot be good without God. Out of the heart the mouth speaks. The only way we may be good is to enter into His goodness and become His child. In Him we are good and in Him we may do good works. Left to our own devices, we can do no good thing.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
My Funeral
If I could speak at my own funeral, what would I say?
I was thinking about this not out of a feeling of morbidity, but rather out of thoughts of practicality. We all die, why not prepare for it? Why not use our death, like we should use all of our life, to declare the only Truth that matters?
If I were present at my own funeral (well I will in some sense be present, I mean here present in mind and not just in body) I would say the following.
I have always had (at least, ever since I can remember) a kind of longing for death. Not a longing originating in dissatisfaction with life or depression or a desire to end my life so as to be free from the pain in life. It was when I was happiest that I longed for death the most. Times when I experienced the most joy, times when I saw creation at its most beautiful. It was times like these, when I experienced life in its fullest glory that the beauty of life set me longing, always longing. It made me know that somewhere else there must be more of it. Fuller joy and beauty without end—it called to me to come, but I could not come. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home. But now I am going, going to a place that the greatest King of all has prepared for me. I am going to the source of beauty, of love, of joy—of all that is good. The sweetest thing in all my life has been this longing and now that longing will be forevermore satisfied and satisfied far beyond my expectations. I am returning to my home, to the place where I ought to have been born. Could this longing have meant nothing, this longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life my God has been longing for me, calling for me, and now I am going to Him.
I think we all desire something we have not yet experienced. Books, music, or sights which we think we saw beauty in—verily beauty did not lie in them, rather beauty was merely found through them. These things we call beautiful, with their glimpses into the eternal, awaken longings within us. They offer us but a taste or a glimpse to remind us there is something more for us. The greatest happiness we experience on earth is a part, but a shadow of the happiness that awaits us in the Eternal.
We fear to believe in the existence of these longings for they awaken hopes in us that are greater than anything we can imagine. We fear to dwell on these hopes because we have been let down too many times and we would never be able to recover from a let down of this proportion.
The world around us tries to silence our longings for these seemingly unattainable desires. Our philosophers tell us we need not look for God or dream of some Heaven for the good of man is to be found on earth. (Not now of course, but in the distant future. By then earth will be made into heaven and in that heaven man can have all his desires fulfilled). Our culture tries to drown out these longings with the constant hum of entertainment or with the concerns of wealth, reputation, power, and sex. But these are mere distractions and experience quickly shows that they are incapable of meeting our longings. But in giving ourselves over to the pursuit of these distractions we drown out our inner longings and make it difficult to determine the true nature of our most fundamental desires.
We have a desire no natural happiness will satisfy. Of course ‘hunger does not prove we have bread’ but is does prove that bread exists and that it is needed for man to survive. A longing for Heaven, for true beauty and eternal satisfaction is no proof we will attain them, but it is a good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.
God asks each and every one of us to believe. He calls out: believe in my love for you, it seems impossible—too good to be true, but believe. The story of God’s love for man is truly the greatest story ever told. God desires no less than to be with us for all time, starting right now. God wants to bless us with happiness beyond what we can imagine. God sacrificed much so that we may live life to the fullest, so that we may live out our created purpose of loving Him and being loved by Him—all that He asks us to do is to accept this gift.
It is funny, I used to get depressed because I thought that all the good, all the joy I experienced was only temporary. I could not enjoy anything knowing that any moment of pleasure I had would quickly be eclipsed by evil or pain. I lost hope in life because the good never seemed to endure, evil always overcame it. But now I realize how wrong I was. In actuality the situation is reversed. All evil is transitory. All pain and suffering, every sin and every failure, even death—all of these things will only endure for a moment and will soon come to a final end. All that is good is eternal. The defeat of good is only momentary. Everything that is good, all that brings me joy and happiness: virtue, justice, and beauty; all of these things will last forever. It is the good that is eternal; it is the good alone that will prevail. Its disruption is fleeting. This fact gives us hope and enables us to endure our present troubles. Our troubles will decease, but all that is good will soon increase and continue forevermore.
I am sure of God. I have complete faith that the relationship I have with Him now will continue after my death. In fact I have not died at all. Death entails an end; all I have done is transition. I am leaving this fallen world behind and I am about to enter God’s Heavenly Kingdom. I will do so confidently, knowing that I am righteous in His eyes—not due to anything I have done, but because of His sacrifice on the cross. It will be then when I, for the first time, will awake. Then I will behold the very likeness of God and I will be wholly and truly forever satisfied. This is what I long for all my life and this is what we all most desire. In death we close our eyes but for a moment and wake up to a life in which we are whole and complete; a life where we will live in joyous harmony with God and man—an infinitely fulfilling life that will not come to an end.
So if you loved me, do not be angry with God, there could be no greater folly. If the clay does not say to its potter ‘what are you doing?’ then who are we to question God? His ways our not our ways and His plans are not our plans. Do not run from pain and the questions it provokes, that is the way of the fool. Do not blame God for the pain that the loss of life entails, that is the way of the coward.
Pain presents the best opportunity to grow, embrace it and embrace God. The wise man asks for comfort and strength, not answers. The brave man runs to God and not away.
Death is our curse; it is our shame and no more. It provokes pain and pain provokes questions and all questions asked with the right heart lead to the Answer. Use this as an opportunity to run toward God and not walk away. When we find the Answer, we realize the folly of our questions. For as Job learned, confronted with the face of God, all questions melt away.
I was thinking about this not out of a feeling of morbidity, but rather out of thoughts of practicality. We all die, why not prepare for it? Why not use our death, like we should use all of our life, to declare the only Truth that matters?
If I were present at my own funeral (well I will in some sense be present, I mean here present in mind and not just in body) I would say the following.
I have always had (at least, ever since I can remember) a kind of longing for death. Not a longing originating in dissatisfaction with life or depression or a desire to end my life so as to be free from the pain in life. It was when I was happiest that I longed for death the most. Times when I experienced the most joy, times when I saw creation at its most beautiful. It was times like these, when I experienced life in its fullest glory that the beauty of life set me longing, always longing. It made me know that somewhere else there must be more of it. Fuller joy and beauty without end—it called to me to come, but I could not come. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home. But now I am going, going to a place that the greatest King of all has prepared for me. I am going to the source of beauty, of love, of joy—of all that is good. The sweetest thing in all my life has been this longing and now that longing will be forevermore satisfied and satisfied far beyond my expectations. I am returning to my home, to the place where I ought to have been born. Could this longing have meant nothing, this longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back. All my life my God has been longing for me, calling for me, and now I am going to Him.
I think we all desire something we have not yet experienced. Books, music, or sights which we think we saw beauty in—verily beauty did not lie in them, rather beauty was merely found through them. These things we call beautiful, with their glimpses into the eternal, awaken longings within us. They offer us but a taste or a glimpse to remind us there is something more for us. The greatest happiness we experience on earth is a part, but a shadow of the happiness that awaits us in the Eternal.
We fear to believe in the existence of these longings for they awaken hopes in us that are greater than anything we can imagine. We fear to dwell on these hopes because we have been let down too many times and we would never be able to recover from a let down of this proportion.
The world around us tries to silence our longings for these seemingly unattainable desires. Our philosophers tell us we need not look for God or dream of some Heaven for the good of man is to be found on earth. (Not now of course, but in the distant future. By then earth will be made into heaven and in that heaven man can have all his desires fulfilled). Our culture tries to drown out these longings with the constant hum of entertainment or with the concerns of wealth, reputation, power, and sex. But these are mere distractions and experience quickly shows that they are incapable of meeting our longings. But in giving ourselves over to the pursuit of these distractions we drown out our inner longings and make it difficult to determine the true nature of our most fundamental desires.
We have a desire no natural happiness will satisfy. Of course ‘hunger does not prove we have bread’ but is does prove that bread exists and that it is needed for man to survive. A longing for Heaven, for true beauty and eternal satisfaction is no proof we will attain them, but it is a good indication that such a thing exists and that some men will.
God asks each and every one of us to believe. He calls out: believe in my love for you, it seems impossible—too good to be true, but believe. The story of God’s love for man is truly the greatest story ever told. God desires no less than to be with us for all time, starting right now. God wants to bless us with happiness beyond what we can imagine. God sacrificed much so that we may live life to the fullest, so that we may live out our created purpose of loving Him and being loved by Him—all that He asks us to do is to accept this gift.
It is funny, I used to get depressed because I thought that all the good, all the joy I experienced was only temporary. I could not enjoy anything knowing that any moment of pleasure I had would quickly be eclipsed by evil or pain. I lost hope in life because the good never seemed to endure, evil always overcame it. But now I realize how wrong I was. In actuality the situation is reversed. All evil is transitory. All pain and suffering, every sin and every failure, even death—all of these things will only endure for a moment and will soon come to a final end. All that is good is eternal. The defeat of good is only momentary. Everything that is good, all that brings me joy and happiness: virtue, justice, and beauty; all of these things will last forever. It is the good that is eternal; it is the good alone that will prevail. Its disruption is fleeting. This fact gives us hope and enables us to endure our present troubles. Our troubles will decease, but all that is good will soon increase and continue forevermore.
I am sure of God. I have complete faith that the relationship I have with Him now will continue after my death. In fact I have not died at all. Death entails an end; all I have done is transition. I am leaving this fallen world behind and I am about to enter God’s Heavenly Kingdom. I will do so confidently, knowing that I am righteous in His eyes—not due to anything I have done, but because of His sacrifice on the cross. It will be then when I, for the first time, will awake. Then I will behold the very likeness of God and I will be wholly and truly forever satisfied. This is what I long for all my life and this is what we all most desire. In death we close our eyes but for a moment and wake up to a life in which we are whole and complete; a life where we will live in joyous harmony with God and man—an infinitely fulfilling life that will not come to an end.
So if you loved me, do not be angry with God, there could be no greater folly. If the clay does not say to its potter ‘what are you doing?’ then who are we to question God? His ways our not our ways and His plans are not our plans. Do not run from pain and the questions it provokes, that is the way of the fool. Do not blame God for the pain that the loss of life entails, that is the way of the coward.
Pain presents the best opportunity to grow, embrace it and embrace God. The wise man asks for comfort and strength, not answers. The brave man runs to God and not away.
Death is our curse; it is our shame and no more. It provokes pain and pain provokes questions and all questions asked with the right heart lead to the Answer. Use this as an opportunity to run toward God and not walk away. When we find the Answer, we realize the folly of our questions. For as Job learned, confronted with the face of God, all questions melt away.
Friday, April 18, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Nine), Conclusion
At the heart of the Kosovo question is the issue of sovereignty. What constitutes sovereignty? What legitimates a state? Do states have historical rights or does simple majoritarian democracy allow a splinter group to rule themselves? Should we support this tribalism, this breaking apart of various cultures on the basis of ethnicity or religion, or should we strengthen the nation-state and encourage it to force these different groups to lay down their differences and be committed to a greater good? How do our competing notions of sovereignty help or hinder the growth of liberty throughout the world?
It is my conclusion that majoritarian opinion does not create sovereignty. States have historical rights to rule and they must be allowed this right for this right alone fosters order, which in turn allows the growth of liberty. It is for this reason that the nation-state and commitment to it must increase at the expense of warring tribal allegiances.
Senator Sam Brownback wrote in 2004 that “We should not consider advancing the cause of independence of a people whose first act when liberated was to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens and destroy over a hundred of their holy sites.” Yet that is exactly what we have done. The West has rewarded terrorists with independence for their inhumane acts. Why have we done this? We have done it in the name of tolerance. We have done it because we refuse to judge between one culture and another.
The recognition of an independent Kosovo is an assertion that religion matters more than nationality. This is multiculturalism taken to its lunatic natural conclusion. It says in effect that nationality is not the glue that must bind people of different creeds together, but instead religion or ethnicity can be allowed to break the nation apart. Do we want to respect the freedom of belief and religion? Of course! But there must be a limit to toleration if this liberty is to continue to flourish. In order for there to be freedom of religion and expression we cannot tolerate the intolerant. In order for people to be able to freely draw cartoons we cannot allow others to threaten them with violence in order to censor them. Toleration of people who will resort to violence and terror to restrict speech cannot at once exist with the freedom of speech.
The Bosnian President has said “The Islamic movement must, and can, take over power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one.”
The problem is not religion, the problem is when religion becomes more powerful than the state. The state should have the power to limit religious infighting; religion should not have the power to break apart the state. To maintain its power the state must restrict certain religious practices. Yes we need to respect other beliefs to a great degree, but can Western values coexist alongside the subordination of women, honor killings, female genital manipulation, etc? The freedoms we enjoy necessitate a limit to tolerance if they are to survive.
Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political blames the rise of the Nazi’s on tolerance. He wrote that the Weimar Republic should have rid Germany of a party that was intent on taking power and undermining the standing state structure. The Germans should not have tolerated a group like the Nazis. Their tolerance of a group like the Nazis allowed for the destruction of all they valued.
A UN official said “What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background.”
A group of radical Albanian Muslims in Kosovo are intolerant towards the values of the West. They have engaged in brutal discrimination and ethnic cleansing. They have turned the region into a mafia state in order to fund their terrorist operations. But what can we do? They compose a democratic majority and gained power by democratic means. It is a given that the will of the people is the legitimator of the state. But majoritarian democracy should not form the basis of the state. Rather, historical rights should legitimate the state. In order to secure liberty (by means of protecting order) the right of the state to govern its territories must remain regardless of any demographic changes.
Benjamin Barber writes that “in the last several hundred years, democratic and egalitarian institutions have for the most part been closely associated with integral nation-states, and citizenship (democracy’s sine qua non) has been an attribute of membership in such states.” However, the great international organizations, like the EU and NATO undermine the nation state. They in turn provoke a tribalistic backlash. This movement towards globalization by international organizations is anti-democratic in that it seeks to absorb the keeper of democracy, the nation-state. In the same way its backlash, tribalism, is anti-democratic by the fact that it seeks to break apart the nation-state.
Both of these movements are at work in Kosovo. There is teh tribalism of the Kosovar Albanians in their desire to break Serbia apart along religious and ethnic lines. And first NATO and then the EU providing the support and legitimation for them to do that. These movements work together to undermine the nation-state and thereby undermine democracy, yet both movements do what they do in the name of democracy. How can this be?
They have a misunderstanding of democracy. True democracy is not simple majoritarian rule; it is the modern state, the keeper of liberty and protector of individual rights. When we talk about spreading democracy we do not mean simple majority dominion, but rather what are commonly known as democratic values. After all, the National Socialists were elected democratically. Yet we would not say they were a legitimate party or that they came to constitute a legitimate state. Majority rule is not enough.
Besides, the means by which the Albanians came to constitute a majority in the region of Kosovo were unjust. What good is a democratic majority when it is brought about by unjust means? It was only through unabated harassment, arson, rape, and other forms of violence and pressure against the Serbs that the Albanians were able to gain the majority.
That is why instead of looking to false democracy (majoritarian rule), we must look to the historical basis in order to legitimate a state. It is well known that the founders of America distrusted majoritarian rule for they knew that the majority is prone to oppress minority groups. That is why they established counter-majoritarian groups and measures (like the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights) to protect minority rights. Simple democracy, simple majority rule cannot legitimate a state. A state must be legitimated by means of historical basis.
But what is meant by historical basis? What is Spain today only became Spain in 1492. Germany unified in the nineteenth century, was split apart after World War Two, and reunified again at the end of the twentieth century. Most of the boarders in the Middle East were drawn by the great powers half a century ago. Many boarders are arbitrary, why should we respect them?
The county lines in my state are arbitrary, but that does not make them unimportant. We need a way to divide and organize people so as to create order. International boarders like county lines should be respected and maintained for they help us keep order. The lines rooted in a historical basis then are simply the lines that history has produced at this moment in time. To keep order we must respect these lines.
Many impute harsh treatment of the Albanians by the Serbs. They infer this treatment by the very fact that the Albanians wished to breakaway. If they were treated well, why would they want to break apart from Serbia, is how their argument goes.
But look at separatist movements in Canada and Belgium. Those groups are treated well and have equal rights and yet they continue to strive for independence. Obviously a desire for independence outside of mistreatment can exist. Albanians in Kosovo have always had the right to education, vote, their own language and culture, their own newspapers and radio programs—yet this was not enough, they were determined to secede.
Many of the Albanians wanting independence are radicals and radicals can never be appeased. According to Alban Deva, a Kosovar Albanian, independence from Serbia is not good enough. He said this after the final independence of Kosovo from Serbia. He said that there has been too much compromise up to this point and that mere independence is only a first step. Hitler was never satisfied with appeasement, he had to be confronted. Now this is not to say that the Albanians of Kosovo are analogous to Hitler, it is only to show that radicals can never be appeased, they must be confronted. There is a radical contingent of Albanians in Kosovo that are intent on ethnically cleansing the Serbs, destroying Orthodox holy sites, and waging a global jihad against the West. It is this group that we must recognize and confront. At this point in history we must have the foresight of Churchill and not the folly of Chamberlain.
By undermining the nation-state we have undermined the international order. As Will Durant said, “order is the parent, not the child, of liberty.” What good is wealth without freedom? How can one be happy as a slave? Liberty is the greatest value of man. But liberty cannot exist in a vacuum; it only grows where there is order. We must foster order so that we may have liberty. In Kosovo we have tried to give a people liberty while undermining order. Because we put the first things last they have neither. Since 1648 the nation state has provided itself to be the greatest keeper of order domestically and internationally, we undermine it at our peril.
Majority rule is an inadequate legitimator of the state, for the majority may not recognize the rights of the minority. Also, the majority is volatile and it works against order. We must hold to the status quo, to the historical rights of states to control the boundaries that they currently have. It is not to say that these boundaries are just, only that this system is the best way of fostering order and liberty. It is also not to say that change can never come or that a state has an uncontested absolute right to do whatever it wills within its boarders, only that change should occur slowly and we should think twice before intervening, for often intervention creates a new state that is worse than the former.
On the eve of Kosovo’s declaration of independence the BBC interviewed natives of the region. Filip Pejovic, a Serb, had this to say:
As Kosovo gets ready to declare independence, we can only wait with a sense of powerlessness and fear. I am so confused. It's like my worst nightmare. People from the West simply cannot possibly understand it. Imagine, hypothetically, how people from California would feel if one day in front of the state capital building the American flag was taken down and the Mexican flag raised, and the American people living in the state couldn't do anything about it. That's how we feel. Actually it's worse. I really don't know why the whole world is against Serbia. Did Serbia deserve all that shame and dishonour? After Croatia and Slovenia, the civil war spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbs lost control of a large portion of this republic also. And now the West still continues to support the taking of parts of Serbia. However, this time they are taking the soul of Serbia - Kosovo.
The Serbs have suffered a wound that will not quickly heal. The French loss of the Alsace-Lorraine region to Germany at the conclusion of the Franco Prussian war was a driving force behind World War One, just as the German loss of the Rhineland became a grievance that motivated Germany to seek revenge in World War Two. Neither country could rest until they could fight a war of revenge to retake their rightful regions that they had unjustly lost. Recently Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia declared, “Kosovo belongs to Serbia; Kosovo belongs to the Serb nation . . . No one will ever win a mandate from the Serbian people to accept such an ignoble trade-off. Never, and no one!” He added, “There is no force, no threat, no punishment severe and horrible enough to make any Serb, anywhere, ever say otherwise but Kosovo is Serbia!”
International intervention, especially intervention that causes a sovereign nation to lose territory, will have consequences. Western intrusion up till this point has already created overwhelming consequences. What more consequences will come we cannot yet know. Hopefully they will not be as devastating as the consequences wrought by the world wars. Only one thing is certain, this controversy is far from over.
It is my conclusion that majoritarian opinion does not create sovereignty. States have historical rights to rule and they must be allowed this right for this right alone fosters order, which in turn allows the growth of liberty. It is for this reason that the nation-state and commitment to it must increase at the expense of warring tribal allegiances.
Senator Sam Brownback wrote in 2004 that “We should not consider advancing the cause of independence of a people whose first act when liberated was to ethnically cleanse a quarter of a million of their fellow citizens and destroy over a hundred of their holy sites.” Yet that is exactly what we have done. The West has rewarded terrorists with independence for their inhumane acts. Why have we done this? We have done it in the name of tolerance. We have done it because we refuse to judge between one culture and another.
The recognition of an independent Kosovo is an assertion that religion matters more than nationality. This is multiculturalism taken to its lunatic natural conclusion. It says in effect that nationality is not the glue that must bind people of different creeds together, but instead religion or ethnicity can be allowed to break the nation apart. Do we want to respect the freedom of belief and religion? Of course! But there must be a limit to toleration if this liberty is to continue to flourish. In order for there to be freedom of religion and expression we cannot tolerate the intolerant. In order for people to be able to freely draw cartoons we cannot allow others to threaten them with violence in order to censor them. Toleration of people who will resort to violence and terror to restrict speech cannot at once exist with the freedom of speech.
The Bosnian President has said “The Islamic movement must, and can, take over power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one.”
The problem is not religion, the problem is when religion becomes more powerful than the state. The state should have the power to limit religious infighting; religion should not have the power to break apart the state. To maintain its power the state must restrict certain religious practices. Yes we need to respect other beliefs to a great degree, but can Western values coexist alongside the subordination of women, honor killings, female genital manipulation, etc? The freedoms we enjoy necessitate a limit to tolerance if they are to survive.
Carl Schmitt in The Concept of the Political blames the rise of the Nazi’s on tolerance. He wrote that the Weimar Republic should have rid Germany of a party that was intent on taking power and undermining the standing state structure. The Germans should not have tolerated a group like the Nazis. Their tolerance of a group like the Nazis allowed for the destruction of all they valued.
A UN official said “What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background.”
A group of radical Albanian Muslims in Kosovo are intolerant towards the values of the West. They have engaged in brutal discrimination and ethnic cleansing. They have turned the region into a mafia state in order to fund their terrorist operations. But what can we do? They compose a democratic majority and gained power by democratic means. It is a given that the will of the people is the legitimator of the state. But majoritarian democracy should not form the basis of the state. Rather, historical rights should legitimate the state. In order to secure liberty (by means of protecting order) the right of the state to govern its territories must remain regardless of any demographic changes.
Benjamin Barber writes that “in the last several hundred years, democratic and egalitarian institutions have for the most part been closely associated with integral nation-states, and citizenship (democracy’s sine qua non) has been an attribute of membership in such states.” However, the great international organizations, like the EU and NATO undermine the nation state. They in turn provoke a tribalistic backlash. This movement towards globalization by international organizations is anti-democratic in that it seeks to absorb the keeper of democracy, the nation-state. In the same way its backlash, tribalism, is anti-democratic by the fact that it seeks to break apart the nation-state.
Both of these movements are at work in Kosovo. There is teh tribalism of the Kosovar Albanians in their desire to break Serbia apart along religious and ethnic lines. And first NATO and then the EU providing the support and legitimation for them to do that. These movements work together to undermine the nation-state and thereby undermine democracy, yet both movements do what they do in the name of democracy. How can this be?
They have a misunderstanding of democracy. True democracy is not simple majoritarian rule; it is the modern state, the keeper of liberty and protector of individual rights. When we talk about spreading democracy we do not mean simple majority dominion, but rather what are commonly known as democratic values. After all, the National Socialists were elected democratically. Yet we would not say they were a legitimate party or that they came to constitute a legitimate state. Majority rule is not enough.
Besides, the means by which the Albanians came to constitute a majority in the region of Kosovo were unjust. What good is a democratic majority when it is brought about by unjust means? It was only through unabated harassment, arson, rape, and other forms of violence and pressure against the Serbs that the Albanians were able to gain the majority.
That is why instead of looking to false democracy (majoritarian rule), we must look to the historical basis in order to legitimate a state. It is well known that the founders of America distrusted majoritarian rule for they knew that the majority is prone to oppress minority groups. That is why they established counter-majoritarian groups and measures (like the Supreme Court and the Bill of Rights) to protect minority rights. Simple democracy, simple majority rule cannot legitimate a state. A state must be legitimated by means of historical basis.
But what is meant by historical basis? What is Spain today only became Spain in 1492. Germany unified in the nineteenth century, was split apart after World War Two, and reunified again at the end of the twentieth century. Most of the boarders in the Middle East were drawn by the great powers half a century ago. Many boarders are arbitrary, why should we respect them?
The county lines in my state are arbitrary, but that does not make them unimportant. We need a way to divide and organize people so as to create order. International boarders like county lines should be respected and maintained for they help us keep order. The lines rooted in a historical basis then are simply the lines that history has produced at this moment in time. To keep order we must respect these lines.
Many impute harsh treatment of the Albanians by the Serbs. They infer this treatment by the very fact that the Albanians wished to breakaway. If they were treated well, why would they want to break apart from Serbia, is how their argument goes.
But look at separatist movements in Canada and Belgium. Those groups are treated well and have equal rights and yet they continue to strive for independence. Obviously a desire for independence outside of mistreatment can exist. Albanians in Kosovo have always had the right to education, vote, their own language and culture, their own newspapers and radio programs—yet this was not enough, they were determined to secede.
Many of the Albanians wanting independence are radicals and radicals can never be appeased. According to Alban Deva, a Kosovar Albanian, independence from Serbia is not good enough. He said this after the final independence of Kosovo from Serbia. He said that there has been too much compromise up to this point and that mere independence is only a first step. Hitler was never satisfied with appeasement, he had to be confronted. Now this is not to say that the Albanians of Kosovo are analogous to Hitler, it is only to show that radicals can never be appeased, they must be confronted. There is a radical contingent of Albanians in Kosovo that are intent on ethnically cleansing the Serbs, destroying Orthodox holy sites, and waging a global jihad against the West. It is this group that we must recognize and confront. At this point in history we must have the foresight of Churchill and not the folly of Chamberlain.
By undermining the nation-state we have undermined the international order. As Will Durant said, “order is the parent, not the child, of liberty.” What good is wealth without freedom? How can one be happy as a slave? Liberty is the greatest value of man. But liberty cannot exist in a vacuum; it only grows where there is order. We must foster order so that we may have liberty. In Kosovo we have tried to give a people liberty while undermining order. Because we put the first things last they have neither. Since 1648 the nation state has provided itself to be the greatest keeper of order domestically and internationally, we undermine it at our peril.
Majority rule is an inadequate legitimator of the state, for the majority may not recognize the rights of the minority. Also, the majority is volatile and it works against order. We must hold to the status quo, to the historical rights of states to control the boundaries that they currently have. It is not to say that these boundaries are just, only that this system is the best way of fostering order and liberty. It is also not to say that change can never come or that a state has an uncontested absolute right to do whatever it wills within its boarders, only that change should occur slowly and we should think twice before intervening, for often intervention creates a new state that is worse than the former.
On the eve of Kosovo’s declaration of independence the BBC interviewed natives of the region. Filip Pejovic, a Serb, had this to say:
As Kosovo gets ready to declare independence, we can only wait with a sense of powerlessness and fear. I am so confused. It's like my worst nightmare. People from the West simply cannot possibly understand it. Imagine, hypothetically, how people from California would feel if one day in front of the state capital building the American flag was taken down and the Mexican flag raised, and the American people living in the state couldn't do anything about it. That's how we feel. Actually it's worse. I really don't know why the whole world is against Serbia. Did Serbia deserve all that shame and dishonour? After Croatia and Slovenia, the civil war spread to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The Serbs lost control of a large portion of this republic also. And now the West still continues to support the taking of parts of Serbia. However, this time they are taking the soul of Serbia - Kosovo.
The Serbs have suffered a wound that will not quickly heal. The French loss of the Alsace-Lorraine region to Germany at the conclusion of the Franco Prussian war was a driving force behind World War One, just as the German loss of the Rhineland became a grievance that motivated Germany to seek revenge in World War Two. Neither country could rest until they could fight a war of revenge to retake their rightful regions that they had unjustly lost. Recently Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica of Serbia declared, “Kosovo belongs to Serbia; Kosovo belongs to the Serb nation . . . No one will ever win a mandate from the Serbian people to accept such an ignoble trade-off. Never, and no one!” He added, “There is no force, no threat, no punishment severe and horrible enough to make any Serb, anywhere, ever say otherwise but Kosovo is Serbia!”
International intervention, especially intervention that causes a sovereign nation to lose territory, will have consequences. Western intrusion up till this point has already created overwhelming consequences. What more consequences will come we cannot yet know. Hopefully they will not be as devastating as the consequences wrought by the world wars. Only one thing is certain, this controversy is far from over.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Eight), The Effects on the United States
During the last decade the United States’ activity in the Balkans has “established a very novel and dangerous principle whereby long-established borders could be redrawn and long-established nations dismembered with U.S. support on the principle that a disaffected national minority in a single province refused to accept the overall rule of the state.”
What effect will this precedent have on the United States itself? The United States too has a large national minority (Mexican-Americans). Like the Albanians in Kosovo, this minority is most concentrated in one region (the south-west). This minority is at times disaffected. Has the United States in fact created a precedent for the Mexican-Americans of the south-west to someday break away from the United States and create their own autonomous region or to connect with Mexico and create a greater Mexican state?
While it is impossible to predict the future and while it is a little premature for these predictions, the United States has set a dangerous precedent that could in fact come back to harm it.
Tony Dolz writes that for the past 160 years Mexican school children have been taught that United States stole the southwestern states from Mexico and that Mexico will take them back one day. Ten percent of Mexico’s population has recently moved to the United States. If they were to be radicalized and mobilized there could be a demographic takeover similar to that of Kosovo by Albanians.
Years ago Samuel Huntington wrote that immigrants from Mexico had the potential to divide the United States. He wrote that Mexican immigrants have come in far greater numbers than immigrant groups of the past and unlike immigrant groups of the past, the current Mexican immigrants are living in ethnic enclaves that allow them to remain unintegrated into society. Like the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo they have immigrated in large numbers and have a birth rate that far exceeds the local population. And like the Kosovars they refuse to assimilate. Could the south-west go the same way as Kosovo? Will there be reconquista of the south-west?
According to Huntington, many think so. For example, Professor Charles Truxillo of the University of New Mexico predicts that by 2080 the southwestern states of the United States and the northern states of Mexico will form La República del Norte (The Republic of the North). Other writers have referred to the southwestern United States plus northern Mexico as “MexAmerica” or “Amexica” or “Mexifornia.”
The failure of Mexicans to integrate into American culture is confirmed in the fact that many recent Mexican immigrants define themselves primarily as Mexican and not American. This is seen in both anecdotal and empirical evidence.
For example, in 1994, Mexican Americans vigorously demonstrated against California's Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits to children of illegal immigrants—by marching through the streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexican flags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998, at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Angeles, Mexican Americans booed the U.S. national anthem and assaulted U.S. players.
Empirical evidence as well confirms this trend. A 1992 study of children of immigrants in Southern California and South Florida posed the following question: “How do you identify, that is, what do you call yourself?” None of the children born in Mexico answered “American.”. The largest percentage of Mexican-born children (41.2 percent) identified themselves as “Hispanic,” and the second largest (36.2 percent) chose “Mexican.” Among Mexican-American children born in the United States, less than 4 percent responded “American.” Whether born in Mexico or in the United States, Mexican children overwhelmingly did not choose “American” as their primary identification.
The recent unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo and its recognition and defense by many members of the international community legitimated a radical notion of democracy. A group of people that constituted a majority in an isolated region declared themselves a sovereign nation. Their sovereignty rested on the simple fact that they were the majority group in the region. Many claim that this is democracy in action.
Going back at least to the time of Wilson the United States has sought to export its democratic values. But what type of democracy? Simple majority rule has the potential to bring chaos to the international order and can be used to oppress national minorities. These are not the values Americans have in mind when they seek to export their democracy. Yet unmitigated democracy leads to these conclusions. What if the example of Kosovo was repeated worldwide? There would mass chaos. To bring the point home, we will consider what it would be like if it happened here.
Imagine if the Mexicans in the southwest (who constitute a majority in the region) declared themselves an independent state. Could we imagine the United States without Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon, and Texas? Think of the effect that would have on our political structure? What would happen to our economic system, our education system, and our sports leagues? Now imagine further that our fellow Americans were subject to systematic rape, intimidation, assault, property damage, and murder? Consider how we would feel if we knew that grave yards, churches, and other sites of cultural importance were being systematically defiled and destroyed. Would we not act like Lincoln did to protect the integrity of our boarders?
Say we did act like Lincoln and fought to preserve our union. How would we feel if Russia and China bombed New York and Washington DC, relentlessly terrorizing our civilians until we finally surrendered? Then put in troops to protect the newly created state; troops that in fact allowed the Mexicans to continue to cleanse non-Mexicans from the region and destroy our historical heritage.
That scenario is maddening. We cannot imagine it, we would not concede to it. We would conclude that if legitimacy is based on majoritarian democracy and majoritarian democracy can produce those results, then majoritarian democracy cannot be a valid source of legitimacy for a nation-state, we must look elsewhere for legitimacy. Historic rights to a region appear to be a far better legitimator of rule.
What effect will this precedent have on the United States itself? The United States too has a large national minority (Mexican-Americans). Like the Albanians in Kosovo, this minority is most concentrated in one region (the south-west). This minority is at times disaffected. Has the United States in fact created a precedent for the Mexican-Americans of the south-west to someday break away from the United States and create their own autonomous region or to connect with Mexico and create a greater Mexican state?
While it is impossible to predict the future and while it is a little premature for these predictions, the United States has set a dangerous precedent that could in fact come back to harm it.
Tony Dolz writes that for the past 160 years Mexican school children have been taught that United States stole the southwestern states from Mexico and that Mexico will take them back one day. Ten percent of Mexico’s population has recently moved to the United States. If they were to be radicalized and mobilized there could be a demographic takeover similar to that of Kosovo by Albanians.
Years ago Samuel Huntington wrote that immigrants from Mexico had the potential to divide the United States. He wrote that Mexican immigrants have come in far greater numbers than immigrant groups of the past and unlike immigrant groups of the past, the current Mexican immigrants are living in ethnic enclaves that allow them to remain unintegrated into society. Like the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo they have immigrated in large numbers and have a birth rate that far exceeds the local population. And like the Kosovars they refuse to assimilate. Could the south-west go the same way as Kosovo? Will there be reconquista of the south-west?
According to Huntington, many think so. For example, Professor Charles Truxillo of the University of New Mexico predicts that by 2080 the southwestern states of the United States and the northern states of Mexico will form La República del Norte (The Republic of the North). Other writers have referred to the southwestern United States plus northern Mexico as “MexAmerica” or “Amexica” or “Mexifornia.”
The failure of Mexicans to integrate into American culture is confirmed in the fact that many recent Mexican immigrants define themselves primarily as Mexican and not American. This is seen in both anecdotal and empirical evidence.
For example, in 1994, Mexican Americans vigorously demonstrated against California's Proposition 187—which limited welfare benefits to children of illegal immigrants—by marching through the streets of Los Angeles waving scores of Mexican flags and carrying U.S. flags upside down. In 1998, at a Mexico-United States soccer match in Los Angeles, Mexican Americans booed the U.S. national anthem and assaulted U.S. players.
Empirical evidence as well confirms this trend. A 1992 study of children of immigrants in Southern California and South Florida posed the following question: “How do you identify, that is, what do you call yourself?” None of the children born in Mexico answered “American.”. The largest percentage of Mexican-born children (41.2 percent) identified themselves as “Hispanic,” and the second largest (36.2 percent) chose “Mexican.” Among Mexican-American children born in the United States, less than 4 percent responded “American.” Whether born in Mexico or in the United States, Mexican children overwhelmingly did not choose “American” as their primary identification.
The recent unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo and its recognition and defense by many members of the international community legitimated a radical notion of democracy. A group of people that constituted a majority in an isolated region declared themselves a sovereign nation. Their sovereignty rested on the simple fact that they were the majority group in the region. Many claim that this is democracy in action.
Going back at least to the time of Wilson the United States has sought to export its democratic values. But what type of democracy? Simple majority rule has the potential to bring chaos to the international order and can be used to oppress national minorities. These are not the values Americans have in mind when they seek to export their democracy. Yet unmitigated democracy leads to these conclusions. What if the example of Kosovo was repeated worldwide? There would mass chaos. To bring the point home, we will consider what it would be like if it happened here.
Imagine if the Mexicans in the southwest (who constitute a majority in the region) declared themselves an independent state. Could we imagine the United States without Los Angeles, the Grand Canyon, and Texas? Think of the effect that would have on our political structure? What would happen to our economic system, our education system, and our sports leagues? Now imagine further that our fellow Americans were subject to systematic rape, intimidation, assault, property damage, and murder? Consider how we would feel if we knew that grave yards, churches, and other sites of cultural importance were being systematically defiled and destroyed. Would we not act like Lincoln did to protect the integrity of our boarders?
Say we did act like Lincoln and fought to preserve our union. How would we feel if Russia and China bombed New York and Washington DC, relentlessly terrorizing our civilians until we finally surrendered? Then put in troops to protect the newly created state; troops that in fact allowed the Mexicans to continue to cleanse non-Mexicans from the region and destroy our historical heritage.
That scenario is maddening. We cannot imagine it, we would not concede to it. We would conclude that if legitimacy is based on majoritarian democracy and majoritarian democracy can produce those results, then majoritarian democracy cannot be a valid source of legitimacy for a nation-state, we must look elsewhere for legitimacy. Historic rights to a region appear to be a far better legitimator of rule.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Seven), The Effects on the International Order
By recognizing an independent Kosovo the Western powers have validated separatist movements, legitimized the use of terror as a means of achieving independence, legitimized ethnic cleansing, and subverted true democracy in the name of radical, majoritarian democracy. These things, taken together, have done much to undermine domestic and international order. Liberty cannot stand without order and it may be lost if disorder continues to grow unchecked.
The recent decision by the Western powers to recognize Kosovo will serve to delegitimize the international order and create more internal conflicts of this sort. In fact regions with aspirations of independence of their own are already using the Kosovo declaration as a potential precedent for them.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commenting on the dissolution of Serbia said, “We are talking here of the disruption of all the basic fundamentals of international law in Europe.” According to Lavrov “this disruption will undermine the basics of security in Europe and will inevitably result in a chain reaction in many parts of the world, including Europe and elsewhere.” That chain reaction is already apparent.
South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoyty has said: "Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have more political and legal grounds for their independence than Kosovo... we can clearly see a policy of double standards."
Mehmet Ali Talat too, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, said “I salute the independence of Kosovo. No people can be forced to live under the rule of another.”
A spokesman for the Basque regional government said Kosovo serves a good lesson and Yevgeny Shevchuk, the chairman of the breakaway Transdniester region of Moldova declared that “a new era started and a new system of international relations was formed the moment part of a country decided to live independently” and successfully gained recognition. Many worry that the Palestinians will follow the Kosovo example and promptly declare an independent Palestinian state.
Shlomo Avineri contradicts this theory. Writing from Jerusalem, she states many of these analogies go too far. She writes that every movement is unique and doesn’t think many separatists, including the Palestinians, can successfully use the Kosovo precedent. She does, however, find one group that is in the exact same situation, the Kurds. She says they are an ethnic minority with a distinct culture that has suffered under brutal Arab regimes. So close are the situations between the two groups that she concludes that it is “difficult, on moral and political grounds, to support the independence of Kosovo while opposing the same rights for Iraqi Kurdistan.”
The Russian foreign minister correctly predicted what effect Kosovo’s independence would have on worldwide separatist movements: it encourages them and serves as model for them. But the legitimation of separatist movements undermines global order.
It is a basic tenant of law that law must be predictable so that actors may know to what code of norms they must conform their behavior. If violent separatist movements are not recognized there is no reason why others would imitate their behavior. If however, a group like the Albanian Kosovars are recognized, every separatist movement has reason to try to violently rebel in the hope that the great powers will decide they are in the right and legitimize (and protect) their independence. Delegitimating the nation-state by preventing it from maintaining its sovereign boarders legitimizes rebellion and encourages disorder. Liberty cannot flourish in disorder. By recognizing the Kosovo bid for independence the world has not only imperiled its safety by encouraging violent rebellion, but in undermining order it has undermined liberty.
It is true, as Shevchuk said, we have entered a new era. But this is not a good thing. By entering this new era we have undermined an international order that has brought unprecedented prosperity to the world since 1945. The binding principles of this system are the sovereign equality of states, the respect for their territorial integrity, and the inviolability of internationally recognized borders. We are exchanging a tried and true model for prosperity for a chaotic, untested model.
Recognizing the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia legitimizes the doctrine of imposing solutions to ethnic conflicts. It legitimizes the act of unilateral secession by a provincial or other non-state actor. It transforms the right to self-determination into an avowed right to independence. It legitimizes the forced partition of internationally recognized, sovereign states. This taken together violates the commitment to the peaceful and consensual resolution of disputes in Europe and it supplies any ethnic or religious group that has a grievance against its capital with a playbook on how to achieve its ends. Instead of consensus building, the EU is imposing solutions that leave many dissatisfied. This does nothing to legitimize the international system and an illegitimate system is an unstable system.
In an area where ethnic, religious, and tribal identities are strong and violent, is it such a good idea to legitimate these feelings and create a new nation based on those lines? What if Albanians from neighboring nations demand the right to succeed and join their kinsmen in Kosovo? On what grounds do we oppose them? The inviolability of boarders? What if enclaves of the Serbian majority in Kosovo secede and call on Serbia to protect them? Would the West go to war against Serbia to maintain the territorial integrity of Kosovo after they destroyed the territorial integrity of Serbia? Already the autonomous Serb Republic of Srpska in the Bosnia is talking secession and unification with Serbia. On what grounds would we deny them? This region, to say nothing of other global separatist movements, is rife with confusion and disorder. We have created a precedent of which others may imitate. Their imitation will create further confusion and disorder.
Groups in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, southern Thailand, and northern Sri Lanka, like the Albanians of Kosovo, use terrorism in their demands for independence. Terrorism cannot be rewarded with an independent state. For in rewarding terrorists we legitimate their methods. Legitimating violence only encourages the use of further violence in order to attain one’s demands. The effects of increased terrorism are obvious enough.
Further, every action has an equal counter reaction. Increased terrorism and its recognition is what brought Vladimir Putin to power in Russia. The involvement of NATO in the Serbian civil war legitimated the notion that brute force alone decides secession struggles. This led the Russians to desire a forceful leader. Neither terrorism nor its response is conducive to liberty and order.
The solution to the Kosovo crisis further undermines order by giving victory to the forces of ethnic cleansing. It is true that the Serbs were not perfect, but the Kosovars started the killing in their revolt against a sovereign country and drove out between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs. In the past eight years 1,248 non-Albanians have been killed, with many more kidnapped, now presumed dead. 151 spiritual and cultural monuments in Kosovo have been destroyed by Albanians and 213 mosques built with money from Saudi Arabia. Eighty per cent of graveyards have been destroyed or desecrated, with no response from the international community. The Albanians have turned Christian graveyards into car parks, playgrounds and rubbish dumps. Anything relating to Serbia or Christianity libraries, public records, books, names of places and even towns have been wiped out. This behavior is unacceptable and we legitimate it at our own peril.
The West’s involvement in Kosovo undermined order by making people less trustful of outside actors. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post sees Kosovo as a stark warning for Israel. She criticizes the 2004 road map for empowering the US, EU, Russia, and the UN to serve as the judges of Israel. In the event of a conflict, what is to stop these powers from intervening, as they did in Serbia, and prevent Israel from exercising sovereignty over its territory? For NATO did not seek to prevent violence, but rather simply enable Kosovo to gain independence. What is to stop something similar from happening in Israel? That is why Israel should not trust these powers. The international order has been deeply delegitimated.
Having an ethnic majority in a region is not sufficient to disintegrate a country by force. This principle, which seems to be a main principle behind the West’s recognition of Kosovo, would too lead to the destruction of global order. If that was the case, what would stop areas of the south-west United States that contain Latino majorities from seceding? Or what would stop continual Muslim immigration into London and Paris from gaining a majority and declaring themselves to be an independent state? This radical democracy cannot serve as the basis for sovereignty.
The recent decision by the Western powers to recognize Kosovo will serve to delegitimize the international order and create more internal conflicts of this sort. In fact regions with aspirations of independence of their own are already using the Kosovo declaration as a potential precedent for them.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov commenting on the dissolution of Serbia said, “We are talking here of the disruption of all the basic fundamentals of international law in Europe.” According to Lavrov “this disruption will undermine the basics of security in Europe and will inevitably result in a chain reaction in many parts of the world, including Europe and elsewhere.” That chain reaction is already apparent.
South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoyty has said: "Both South Ossetia and Abkhazia have more political and legal grounds for their independence than Kosovo... we can clearly see a policy of double standards."
Mehmet Ali Talat too, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots, said “I salute the independence of Kosovo. No people can be forced to live under the rule of another.”
A spokesman for the Basque regional government said Kosovo serves a good lesson and Yevgeny Shevchuk, the chairman of the breakaway Transdniester region of Moldova declared that “a new era started and a new system of international relations was formed the moment part of a country decided to live independently” and successfully gained recognition. Many worry that the Palestinians will follow the Kosovo example and promptly declare an independent Palestinian state.
Shlomo Avineri contradicts this theory. Writing from Jerusalem, she states many of these analogies go too far. She writes that every movement is unique and doesn’t think many separatists, including the Palestinians, can successfully use the Kosovo precedent. She does, however, find one group that is in the exact same situation, the Kurds. She says they are an ethnic minority with a distinct culture that has suffered under brutal Arab regimes. So close are the situations between the two groups that she concludes that it is “difficult, on moral and political grounds, to support the independence of Kosovo while opposing the same rights for Iraqi Kurdistan.”
The Russian foreign minister correctly predicted what effect Kosovo’s independence would have on worldwide separatist movements: it encourages them and serves as model for them. But the legitimation of separatist movements undermines global order.
It is a basic tenant of law that law must be predictable so that actors may know to what code of norms they must conform their behavior. If violent separatist movements are not recognized there is no reason why others would imitate their behavior. If however, a group like the Albanian Kosovars are recognized, every separatist movement has reason to try to violently rebel in the hope that the great powers will decide they are in the right and legitimize (and protect) their independence. Delegitimating the nation-state by preventing it from maintaining its sovereign boarders legitimizes rebellion and encourages disorder. Liberty cannot flourish in disorder. By recognizing the Kosovo bid for independence the world has not only imperiled its safety by encouraging violent rebellion, but in undermining order it has undermined liberty.
It is true, as Shevchuk said, we have entered a new era. But this is not a good thing. By entering this new era we have undermined an international order that has brought unprecedented prosperity to the world since 1945. The binding principles of this system are the sovereign equality of states, the respect for their territorial integrity, and the inviolability of internationally recognized borders. We are exchanging a tried and true model for prosperity for a chaotic, untested model.
Recognizing the unilateral declaration of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia legitimizes the doctrine of imposing solutions to ethnic conflicts. It legitimizes the act of unilateral secession by a provincial or other non-state actor. It transforms the right to self-determination into an avowed right to independence. It legitimizes the forced partition of internationally recognized, sovereign states. This taken together violates the commitment to the peaceful and consensual resolution of disputes in Europe and it supplies any ethnic or religious group that has a grievance against its capital with a playbook on how to achieve its ends. Instead of consensus building, the EU is imposing solutions that leave many dissatisfied. This does nothing to legitimize the international system and an illegitimate system is an unstable system.
In an area where ethnic, religious, and tribal identities are strong and violent, is it such a good idea to legitimate these feelings and create a new nation based on those lines? What if Albanians from neighboring nations demand the right to succeed and join their kinsmen in Kosovo? On what grounds do we oppose them? The inviolability of boarders? What if enclaves of the Serbian majority in Kosovo secede and call on Serbia to protect them? Would the West go to war against Serbia to maintain the territorial integrity of Kosovo after they destroyed the territorial integrity of Serbia? Already the autonomous Serb Republic of Srpska in the Bosnia is talking secession and unification with Serbia. On what grounds would we deny them? This region, to say nothing of other global separatist movements, is rife with confusion and disorder. We have created a precedent of which others may imitate. Their imitation will create further confusion and disorder.
Groups in Chechnya, Palestine, Kashmir, southern Thailand, and northern Sri Lanka, like the Albanians of Kosovo, use terrorism in their demands for independence. Terrorism cannot be rewarded with an independent state. For in rewarding terrorists we legitimate their methods. Legitimating violence only encourages the use of further violence in order to attain one’s demands. The effects of increased terrorism are obvious enough.
Further, every action has an equal counter reaction. Increased terrorism and its recognition is what brought Vladimir Putin to power in Russia. The involvement of NATO in the Serbian civil war legitimated the notion that brute force alone decides secession struggles. This led the Russians to desire a forceful leader. Neither terrorism nor its response is conducive to liberty and order.
The solution to the Kosovo crisis further undermines order by giving victory to the forces of ethnic cleansing. It is true that the Serbs were not perfect, but the Kosovars started the killing in their revolt against a sovereign country and drove out between 150,000 and 200,000 Serbs. In the past eight years 1,248 non-Albanians have been killed, with many more kidnapped, now presumed dead. 151 spiritual and cultural monuments in Kosovo have been destroyed by Albanians and 213 mosques built with money from Saudi Arabia. Eighty per cent of graveyards have been destroyed or desecrated, with no response from the international community. The Albanians have turned Christian graveyards into car parks, playgrounds and rubbish dumps. Anything relating to Serbia or Christianity libraries, public records, books, names of places and even towns have been wiped out. This behavior is unacceptable and we legitimate it at our own peril.
The West’s involvement in Kosovo undermined order by making people less trustful of outside actors. Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post sees Kosovo as a stark warning for Israel. She criticizes the 2004 road map for empowering the US, EU, Russia, and the UN to serve as the judges of Israel. In the event of a conflict, what is to stop these powers from intervening, as they did in Serbia, and prevent Israel from exercising sovereignty over its territory? For NATO did not seek to prevent violence, but rather simply enable Kosovo to gain independence. What is to stop something similar from happening in Israel? That is why Israel should not trust these powers. The international order has been deeply delegitimated.
Having an ethnic majority in a region is not sufficient to disintegrate a country by force. This principle, which seems to be a main principle behind the West’s recognition of Kosovo, would too lead to the destruction of global order. If that was the case, what would stop areas of the south-west United States that contain Latino majorities from seceding? Or what would stop continual Muslim immigration into London and Paris from gaining a majority and declaring themselves to be an independent state? This radical democracy cannot serve as the basis for sovereignty.
Monday, April 14, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Six), Why it Happened
What happened is easy to understand. The illegal involvement of the West in Serbia’s civil war allowed Albanian Muslims in Kosovo to break free of Serbia. Some may say that this is something unique, a change brought about by globalization. But this is nothing new. Great powers have always been interfering in the internal affairs of lesser powers when they think it is in their interest. In 1772 Russia, Austria, and Prussia divided Poland amongst themselves. England ruled India and colonized Australia. They did this much in the same way that Rome ruled the Mediterranean and the Phoenicians settled Carthage.
But intervention has unforeseen consequences. When Germany supported Lenin during World War One in order to undermine the Russian state and advance its own interests, it had no idea that within a generation Lenin’s Soviet Union would conquer and absorb half of the German state. What happened in Serbia is nothing new. However, intervention has unintended consequences and as of now we have no idea what the consequences of the West’s intervention in the Balkans will be.
What happened has already been explained. Why this happened, why there was a civil war in Serbia to begin with and why Kosovo desired to break away, is a very complex and important question. Nietzsche said that God is dead. But it appears he was wrong. Today Nietzsche is dead, but fervent belief in God continues to turn the wheals of history. Though many try to find economic or utilitarian explanations for the Kosovo crisis, the truth is this conflict is rooted in a historical, religious conflict. Religion alone can explain the why of this conflict.
To begin with, one must understand how nationalism operates in Eastern Europe. Generally, ethnic nationalism has been more prevalent in Eastern Europe than civic nationalism. Scholars explain this by pointing out that nationalism began primarily as a response to social and economic change in Western Europe. It became a political phenomenon there and only later traveled east. Because of the different levels of economic development, it took on a different tinge in the east.
In the 1700 and 1800’s Eastern Europe lacked nation states like France and England with law, some democratic institutions, and the same language. Instead it had the Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Romanovs—vast multi-cultural empires. Instead of binding various parties together into a greater whole, like the nation, as it did in the West, nationalism broke apart the pre-existing massive groups into smaller factions rooted in religion or ethnicity. Instead of breaking down differences of culture and religion as it had in the West, nationalism in Eastern Europe strengthened these differences.
It has already been mentioned how Orthodoxy has influenced this conflict. The seat of Serbian Orthodoxy is in Kosovo, it is akin to the Vatican or Jerusalem for the Catholics or Jews. Further, Orthodox Serbs have suffered for centuries under what they view as Islamic oppression. The religious significance of Kosovo to the Orthodox Serbs and the strong religious persecution they have faced in the past make them loathe to surrender Kosovo, especially to a group under whose hands they have suffered much.
What of the role of Muslims? How does the Islamic faith play into this conflict? In the Western world, the basic unit of human organization is the nation. This is then subdivided in various ways, one of which is by religion. Muslims, however, tend to see not a nation subdivided into religious groups but a religion subdivided into nations. Because of the central importance of religion to Muslims, all conflicts become religious in nature, rather than simple matters of state.
For example there was a clear religious tone in the resistance to the American led Gulf War. One Islamic leader boldly proclaimed that this conflict was a “clear declaration of war by the Americans against Allah, His Prophet, and the Muslims. In such a situation, it is the unanimous opinion of the ulema throughout the centuries that when enemies attack Muslim lands, Jihad becomes the personal duty of every Muslim.”
Complicating matters is the fact that for Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced. This leads to a unique notion of imperialism. Imperialism is a particularly important theme in the Islamic case against the West. For Muslims the word imperialism has a special meaning. This word is, for example, never used by Muslims of the great Muslim empires—the first one founded by the Arabs, the later ones by the Turks—who conquered vast territories and populations and incorporated them into the House of Islam. It was perfectly legitimate for Muslims to conquer and rule Europe and Europeans and thus enable them to embrace the true faith. It was a crime and a sin for Europeans to conquer and rule Muslims and, still worse, to try to lead them astray. In the Muslim perception, conversion to Islam is apostasy—a capital offense for both the one who is misled and the one who misleads him. Even if a new convert renounces his new faith, he is still put to death. In the eyes of the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo it is completely acceptable to take that territory. In fact, all of Serbia and the Balkan region rightly belong to them for it was once under Muslim rule. Any declaration to the contrary, any assertion of sovereignty by a non-Muslim group in this region is in fact an imperialistic power grab.
This understanding of the different notions of imperialism is crucial to explaining the current Kosovo conflict. For Muslims the world is Allah’s and Islam is the true faith. Their religion requires them to reclaim the world of Allah at all costs and in any way possible. I believe that the establishment of the Islamic state of Kosovo is part of a broad, worldwide move to spread the Islamic faith worldwide.
In March of 1683 the Ottomans began a siege of Vienna. This was the furthest they had moved west and until that point they had overcome all resistance. The siege lasted until September 11th when King John Sobieski and the Polish army lifted the siege and defeated the Ottomans. This defeat led to a great change. It was the first major loss and retreat by the Ottoman Empire. This defeat was followed by a number of defeats during the following centuries, during which time the Ottoman Empire continually lost ground.
It is no coincidence that Bin Laden picked the day of the attack that he did. September 11th marked the end of nearly one-thousand years of continual Islamic expansion. Bin Laden’s attack represents a resumption of the expansion of Islam that was brought to an abrupt halt that day.
The establishment of an Islamic Kosovo coincides with this renewed effort. Saudi Arabia is funding mosques that they hope will radicalize the population. Known terrorists from the Middle East have settled and already begun to carry out their operations (as mentioned before, in Spain, Greece, England, and New Jersey). Going along with this is tremendous immigration into Europe by Muslims, followed by high birth rates. Though many immigrate in order to have a better life, some want to infiltrate and take Europe by peaceful means. These radicals consciously refuse to integrate into the West; they move into the West solely to take it for Allah. For them the Kosovo model (gain majority population in a region and take it democratically) provides a good example to emulate. Terrorism is not their only tool, through immigration and democracy they may take ground by peaceful and less suspect means.
Is this to say that every Muslim in Kosovo is a terrorist? Or that all Muslims share this imperialistic goal? By all means no! This radical notion of Islam is held by a very small minority. But that does not mean that this is not a dangerous minority. The Taliban in Afghanistan represented a small minority, yet they were able to brutalize their people in unspeakable ways and carry out global terrorist operations. The Bolsheviks in Russia showed that a small, violent group of men can in fact rule a great land and people and influence the course of world events in a significant way. The majority of Muslims in Kosovo are like the majority of people everywhere, they simply want a peaceful life for them and their families. However, there is a small contingent group of radical Muslims who are intent on world domination and these men must be taken seriously.
We can see how religion motivates the Serbs: they want to keep their holy land and protect their faith from foreign domination. We can see as well how religion influences the Muslims: they desire to spread the truth of Allah and regain the greatness they once had. But there is more than these two groups at work. If it was only these two groups, Kosovo would still be a part of Serbia. The West involved itself in this conflict and so we must, for a moment, consider the religion of the West.
Secular Humanism, of which tolerance is the cardinal virtue, is the religion of the West. This religion has its basis in the brutal wars of religion that ravished Europe in the early seventeenth century. After losing over one-third its population, Europe made peace in 1648 at the Treaty of Westphalia. There it made an agreement that stands even today: no one can prove that their religion is right, so for the sake of peace all must have an equal right to worship as they please. We must live etsi deus non daretur.
Since then this position has evolved. The popular point of view is not only that all have an equal right to believe, but that all beliefs are equally right. We believe Weber: science is all we have. All science can give us is means to ends, it cannot tell us what ends are preferable. So we advocate radical tolerance, not only tolerating all thought, but treating all thought as equal. In the West it is easy for us to discount religious differences because in this secular mentality there is ultimately no such thing as religious truth. All we have are varying religious opinions that should be respected but never given any kind of ultimate value. The only value or truth an opinion has is the value an individual decides to confer upon it. In the West we get along with all, living amongst all sorts of peoples and religions. It comes easy to us so we expect all others to do the same. Because tolerance and the pluralism it produces have for so long been a part of the West, we take them for granted. It is hard for us to appreciate the importance religion plays in the lives of others.
When religion means much to people we are prone to mock them. We say they are unenlightened or backwards. But in doing this we forget our own history. In the West we fought brutal religious wars. The West did not have a rational breakthrough that led it to the truth of tolerance and pluralism; it was forced to adopt these values because, in the midst of these wars, no one side was strong enough to beat the other.
The communists tried to force these values on Yugoslavia, but they failed. Now the West is again trying to force Western thinking upon this region. But maybe these notions and values cannot be simply imposed on a group of people, maybe a people needs to go through historical development to reach the conclusions we have. I believe we are naive in thinking we can change centuries of thinking with our involvement. Sometimes the only lasting lessons are the ones learned the hard wary. By trying to impose a resolution we may have in fact prevented the region from fighting out its civil war and coming to its own, workable solution. By preventing the Balkans from reaching a lasting solution we may have done the region a great disservice in its long term development. The ever constant problem of involvement is that we can never what consequences our actions will bring.
But intervention has unforeseen consequences. When Germany supported Lenin during World War One in order to undermine the Russian state and advance its own interests, it had no idea that within a generation Lenin’s Soviet Union would conquer and absorb half of the German state. What happened in Serbia is nothing new. However, intervention has unintended consequences and as of now we have no idea what the consequences of the West’s intervention in the Balkans will be.
What happened has already been explained. Why this happened, why there was a civil war in Serbia to begin with and why Kosovo desired to break away, is a very complex and important question. Nietzsche said that God is dead. But it appears he was wrong. Today Nietzsche is dead, but fervent belief in God continues to turn the wheals of history. Though many try to find economic or utilitarian explanations for the Kosovo crisis, the truth is this conflict is rooted in a historical, religious conflict. Religion alone can explain the why of this conflict.
To begin with, one must understand how nationalism operates in Eastern Europe. Generally, ethnic nationalism has been more prevalent in Eastern Europe than civic nationalism. Scholars explain this by pointing out that nationalism began primarily as a response to social and economic change in Western Europe. It became a political phenomenon there and only later traveled east. Because of the different levels of economic development, it took on a different tinge in the east.
In the 1700 and 1800’s Eastern Europe lacked nation states like France and England with law, some democratic institutions, and the same language. Instead it had the Habsburgs, Ottomans, and Romanovs—vast multi-cultural empires. Instead of binding various parties together into a greater whole, like the nation, as it did in the West, nationalism broke apart the pre-existing massive groups into smaller factions rooted in religion or ethnicity. Instead of breaking down differences of culture and religion as it had in the West, nationalism in Eastern Europe strengthened these differences.
It has already been mentioned how Orthodoxy has influenced this conflict. The seat of Serbian Orthodoxy is in Kosovo, it is akin to the Vatican or Jerusalem for the Catholics or Jews. Further, Orthodox Serbs have suffered for centuries under what they view as Islamic oppression. The religious significance of Kosovo to the Orthodox Serbs and the strong religious persecution they have faced in the past make them loathe to surrender Kosovo, especially to a group under whose hands they have suffered much.
What of the role of Muslims? How does the Islamic faith play into this conflict? In the Western world, the basic unit of human organization is the nation. This is then subdivided in various ways, one of which is by religion. Muslims, however, tend to see not a nation subdivided into religious groups but a religion subdivided into nations. Because of the central importance of religion to Muslims, all conflicts become religious in nature, rather than simple matters of state.
For example there was a clear religious tone in the resistance to the American led Gulf War. One Islamic leader boldly proclaimed that this conflict was a “clear declaration of war by the Americans against Allah, His Prophet, and the Muslims. In such a situation, it is the unanimous opinion of the ulema throughout the centuries that when enemies attack Muslim lands, Jihad becomes the personal duty of every Muslim.”
Complicating matters is the fact that for Muslims, no piece of land once added to the realm of Islam can ever be finally renounced. This leads to a unique notion of imperialism. Imperialism is a particularly important theme in the Islamic case against the West. For Muslims the word imperialism has a special meaning. This word is, for example, never used by Muslims of the great Muslim empires—the first one founded by the Arabs, the later ones by the Turks—who conquered vast territories and populations and incorporated them into the House of Islam. It was perfectly legitimate for Muslims to conquer and rule Europe and Europeans and thus enable them to embrace the true faith. It was a crime and a sin for Europeans to conquer and rule Muslims and, still worse, to try to lead them astray. In the Muslim perception, conversion to Islam is apostasy—a capital offense for both the one who is misled and the one who misleads him. Even if a new convert renounces his new faith, he is still put to death. In the eyes of the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo it is completely acceptable to take that territory. In fact, all of Serbia and the Balkan region rightly belong to them for it was once under Muslim rule. Any declaration to the contrary, any assertion of sovereignty by a non-Muslim group in this region is in fact an imperialistic power grab.
This understanding of the different notions of imperialism is crucial to explaining the current Kosovo conflict. For Muslims the world is Allah’s and Islam is the true faith. Their religion requires them to reclaim the world of Allah at all costs and in any way possible. I believe that the establishment of the Islamic state of Kosovo is part of a broad, worldwide move to spread the Islamic faith worldwide.
In March of 1683 the Ottomans began a siege of Vienna. This was the furthest they had moved west and until that point they had overcome all resistance. The siege lasted until September 11th when King John Sobieski and the Polish army lifted the siege and defeated the Ottomans. This defeat led to a great change. It was the first major loss and retreat by the Ottoman Empire. This defeat was followed by a number of defeats during the following centuries, during which time the Ottoman Empire continually lost ground.
It is no coincidence that Bin Laden picked the day of the attack that he did. September 11th marked the end of nearly one-thousand years of continual Islamic expansion. Bin Laden’s attack represents a resumption of the expansion of Islam that was brought to an abrupt halt that day.
The establishment of an Islamic Kosovo coincides with this renewed effort. Saudi Arabia is funding mosques that they hope will radicalize the population. Known terrorists from the Middle East have settled and already begun to carry out their operations (as mentioned before, in Spain, Greece, England, and New Jersey). Going along with this is tremendous immigration into Europe by Muslims, followed by high birth rates. Though many immigrate in order to have a better life, some want to infiltrate and take Europe by peaceful means. These radicals consciously refuse to integrate into the West; they move into the West solely to take it for Allah. For them the Kosovo model (gain majority population in a region and take it democratically) provides a good example to emulate. Terrorism is not their only tool, through immigration and democracy they may take ground by peaceful and less suspect means.
Is this to say that every Muslim in Kosovo is a terrorist? Or that all Muslims share this imperialistic goal? By all means no! This radical notion of Islam is held by a very small minority. But that does not mean that this is not a dangerous minority. The Taliban in Afghanistan represented a small minority, yet they were able to brutalize their people in unspeakable ways and carry out global terrorist operations. The Bolsheviks in Russia showed that a small, violent group of men can in fact rule a great land and people and influence the course of world events in a significant way. The majority of Muslims in Kosovo are like the majority of people everywhere, they simply want a peaceful life for them and their families. However, there is a small contingent group of radical Muslims who are intent on world domination and these men must be taken seriously.
We can see how religion motivates the Serbs: they want to keep their holy land and protect their faith from foreign domination. We can see as well how religion influences the Muslims: they desire to spread the truth of Allah and regain the greatness they once had. But there is more than these two groups at work. If it was only these two groups, Kosovo would still be a part of Serbia. The West involved itself in this conflict and so we must, for a moment, consider the religion of the West.
Secular Humanism, of which tolerance is the cardinal virtue, is the religion of the West. This religion has its basis in the brutal wars of religion that ravished Europe in the early seventeenth century. After losing over one-third its population, Europe made peace in 1648 at the Treaty of Westphalia. There it made an agreement that stands even today: no one can prove that their religion is right, so for the sake of peace all must have an equal right to worship as they please. We must live etsi deus non daretur.
Since then this position has evolved. The popular point of view is not only that all have an equal right to believe, but that all beliefs are equally right. We believe Weber: science is all we have. All science can give us is means to ends, it cannot tell us what ends are preferable. So we advocate radical tolerance, not only tolerating all thought, but treating all thought as equal. In the West it is easy for us to discount religious differences because in this secular mentality there is ultimately no such thing as religious truth. All we have are varying religious opinions that should be respected but never given any kind of ultimate value. The only value or truth an opinion has is the value an individual decides to confer upon it. In the West we get along with all, living amongst all sorts of peoples and religions. It comes easy to us so we expect all others to do the same. Because tolerance and the pluralism it produces have for so long been a part of the West, we take them for granted. It is hard for us to appreciate the importance religion plays in the lives of others.
When religion means much to people we are prone to mock them. We say they are unenlightened or backwards. But in doing this we forget our own history. In the West we fought brutal religious wars. The West did not have a rational breakthrough that led it to the truth of tolerance and pluralism; it was forced to adopt these values because, in the midst of these wars, no one side was strong enough to beat the other.
The communists tried to force these values on Yugoslavia, but they failed. Now the West is again trying to force Western thinking upon this region. But maybe these notions and values cannot be simply imposed on a group of people, maybe a people needs to go through historical development to reach the conclusions we have. I believe we are naive in thinking we can change centuries of thinking with our involvement. Sometimes the only lasting lessons are the ones learned the hard wary. By trying to impose a resolution we may have in fact prevented the region from fighting out its civil war and coming to its own, workable solution. By preventing the Balkans from reaching a lasting solution we may have done the region a great disservice in its long term development. The ever constant problem of involvement is that we can never what consequences our actions will bring.
Monday, April 7, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Five), What Happened
In violation of international law, on February 15th, 2008 Kosovo made its final break with Serbia, declaring itself to be an independent, sovereign nation. This has opened the door for bold experimentation in nation building. But as support for independence was ratified by only a few and these few alone will rebuild Kosovo, the question of who constitutes the international community arises.
In response to this the European Union has sent in an army of technocrats to transform this new country root-and branch. They are dedicated to a sustained, long term commitment to “nation-building.” This is truly a bold endeavor, to build a model European democracy, almost from scratch.
The question must be asked, is this nothing more than colonialism under a new guise? Will Kosovo become a more convenient place for the cheap labor and goods that the West lives off of? And what will happen to Kosovo if the people resist this movement?
The EU will have sweeping executive powers over Kosovo. It will have the right to veto the elected government if it deviates from the Brussels-approved reform path. And it will have the power to intervene directly in Kosovo's internal affairs. Of course no one should worry that this power will be misused. According to one official "Our executive power will be put in a box. The box will be locked, it will be put in a safe and the safe will be locked. The EU mission's executive power to intervene in Kosovo will be used only as a last resort."
Yet our recent history is full of misguided, benevolent, and often condescending involvement by the Western powers in the internal affairs of other nations, always, of course, for the good of these other nations. Consider how the United States, after winning the Spanish-American War, took it upon itself to guide Cuba. They drafted a constitution for Cuba and forced the Cuban government to accept and sign it under the watch of its military. This constitution allowed the United States to intervene in Cuba’s government on behalf of the people of Cuba. This power, it was said, would of course probably never be used, but it had to be reserved for emergencies. The basic idea underlying this right to intervene was that the United States government and not the Cuban government knew what was best for the Cuban people. It was out of pure goodness that the United States must take it upon itself to intervene in the internal affairs of Cuba, for who else would protect the Cubans from themselves?
The United States did use this right on a number of occasions, and even when they did not use it, the mere threat of it did in fact modify Cuban behavior. Contrary to what they said, the US did not intervene on behalf of the Cuban people, but time and again on behalf of Western business interests. This led to great popular resentment against the United States that culminated in the Castro revolution.
Intervention has unintended consequences. The European Union may have good intentions (as, perhaps, the United States had at one point as well). However the fact that one has good intentions does not mean they will be perceived as such. And the pressure by corporations to protect Western interests in the region may corrupt the good intentions of the EU. Often the pressure to take a certain course of actions is so great that one, feeling they have no other choice, deludes themselves into thinking that what they are doing is good and really on the behalf of another, when really the good is strictly for oneself.
Is this involvement designed to free an area from Russian influence and open it up for the investment of Western capital? Will this become a source of cheap goods produced by Western controlled factories to compete with, and to some degree, offset the power of China? Is this in fact neo-colonialism? Only time will tell. The EU may have truly humanitarian intentions for involvement but it will be difficult to hold unto these ideals when corporations pressure them to open up the region. And even if they maintain these good motives, the people of Kosovo may not perceive them as such and in fact quickly tire of Western meddling in their affairs. Despite themselves the EU may create a hostile power at their doorstep just as the United States has done with Cuba.
It is said that this declaration of independence and the nation building that will now follow was done with the backing of the international community. But Russia, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Romania, Spain, India, and much of Africa have refused to recognize Kosovo. If countries that refuse to recognize it more than double those that have, this begs the question, what is the international community? Is it merely the US and parts of the EU? Why were these select nations so quick to recognize Kosovo? Could it be that they did so because they believe it to be in their best interest? This new state owes its existence to the West and will be built to a great degree by the west; doesn’t this too raise the specter of neo-colonialism? How can the West resist creating a state in its own interest? The West did not earn this power, it was not invited to help mold a new state. Rather they forced themselves in through their brutal bombing raids of 1999.
A select group of nations intervened in a domestic dispute in the Balkans. This select group of nations allowed Kosovo to break free of Serbian control and in turn ratified this independence. This group says the new state is legitimate because it has the support of the international community, but they themselves, the original interventionalists constitute the international community. How can this community claim to have any legitimacy? Or is the fact of the matter that it needs no legitimacy because it wields greater power than its foes?
The fact is that Kosovo’s independence was declared in direct defiance to of prevailing international law. In The Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States in Accordance with the Chart of the United Nations, the General Assembly in 1970 adopted by consensus the following elaboration on the Charter:
No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the internal or external affairs or any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are in violation of international law.
Without the backing of the Western powers Kosovo could not have broken away from Serbia. The Western powers intervened first in 1999 in the bombing of Serbia and again now in 2008 in their support of Kosovo’s actions. In both cases they intervened directly in the internal affairs of a state in violation of international law. Yet, they claim legitimacy because they have the backing of the international community. It must be asked what type of rule of law we have for the international system if simple, temporal select opinion can undermine order and law and bring about radical change.
Next, UN Security Council Resolution 1244 recognizes Kosovo as a sovereign part of Serbia. Russian opposition ensures that this resolution is not going to change any time soon. Not only was general international law disregarded, but this specific law as well.
Finally, in bombing Serbia in 1999 (the occurrence of which is a significant factor in Serbia’s acceptance of Kosovo’s independence) NATO violated its own charter. NATO was founded to be defensive, not offensive and no member states were under threat. All the fighting took place in Serbia. Yet for the first time in its fifty year history NATO used its power offensively against the Serbs.
There is a way to change laws. If we disregard laws we cannot change lawfully, what is the point of having law at all? Laws are created to bring about order. If they cannot bring order, something else must fill that void. The so called international order has pushed aside the law and replaced the law with itself as the keeper of international order. But as was shown before, their involvement in Kosovo thus far has done far more to destroy order than to create it.
In response to this the European Union has sent in an army of technocrats to transform this new country root-and branch. They are dedicated to a sustained, long term commitment to “nation-building.” This is truly a bold endeavor, to build a model European democracy, almost from scratch.
The question must be asked, is this nothing more than colonialism under a new guise? Will Kosovo become a more convenient place for the cheap labor and goods that the West lives off of? And what will happen to Kosovo if the people resist this movement?
The EU will have sweeping executive powers over Kosovo. It will have the right to veto the elected government if it deviates from the Brussels-approved reform path. And it will have the power to intervene directly in Kosovo's internal affairs. Of course no one should worry that this power will be misused. According to one official "Our executive power will be put in a box. The box will be locked, it will be put in a safe and the safe will be locked. The EU mission's executive power to intervene in Kosovo will be used only as a last resort."
Yet our recent history is full of misguided, benevolent, and often condescending involvement by the Western powers in the internal affairs of other nations, always, of course, for the good of these other nations. Consider how the United States, after winning the Spanish-American War, took it upon itself to guide Cuba. They drafted a constitution for Cuba and forced the Cuban government to accept and sign it under the watch of its military. This constitution allowed the United States to intervene in Cuba’s government on behalf of the people of Cuba. This power, it was said, would of course probably never be used, but it had to be reserved for emergencies. The basic idea underlying this right to intervene was that the United States government and not the Cuban government knew what was best for the Cuban people. It was out of pure goodness that the United States must take it upon itself to intervene in the internal affairs of Cuba, for who else would protect the Cubans from themselves?
The United States did use this right on a number of occasions, and even when they did not use it, the mere threat of it did in fact modify Cuban behavior. Contrary to what they said, the US did not intervene on behalf of the Cuban people, but time and again on behalf of Western business interests. This led to great popular resentment against the United States that culminated in the Castro revolution.
Intervention has unintended consequences. The European Union may have good intentions (as, perhaps, the United States had at one point as well). However the fact that one has good intentions does not mean they will be perceived as such. And the pressure by corporations to protect Western interests in the region may corrupt the good intentions of the EU. Often the pressure to take a certain course of actions is so great that one, feeling they have no other choice, deludes themselves into thinking that what they are doing is good and really on the behalf of another, when really the good is strictly for oneself.
Is this involvement designed to free an area from Russian influence and open it up for the investment of Western capital? Will this become a source of cheap goods produced by Western controlled factories to compete with, and to some degree, offset the power of China? Is this in fact neo-colonialism? Only time will tell. The EU may have truly humanitarian intentions for involvement but it will be difficult to hold unto these ideals when corporations pressure them to open up the region. And even if they maintain these good motives, the people of Kosovo may not perceive them as such and in fact quickly tire of Western meddling in their affairs. Despite themselves the EU may create a hostile power at their doorstep just as the United States has done with Cuba.
It is said that this declaration of independence and the nation building that will now follow was done with the backing of the international community. But Russia, China, Brazil, Indonesia, Romania, Spain, India, and much of Africa have refused to recognize Kosovo. If countries that refuse to recognize it more than double those that have, this begs the question, what is the international community? Is it merely the US and parts of the EU? Why were these select nations so quick to recognize Kosovo? Could it be that they did so because they believe it to be in their best interest? This new state owes its existence to the West and will be built to a great degree by the west; doesn’t this too raise the specter of neo-colonialism? How can the West resist creating a state in its own interest? The West did not earn this power, it was not invited to help mold a new state. Rather they forced themselves in through their brutal bombing raids of 1999.
A select group of nations intervened in a domestic dispute in the Balkans. This select group of nations allowed Kosovo to break free of Serbian control and in turn ratified this independence. This group says the new state is legitimate because it has the support of the international community, but they themselves, the original interventionalists constitute the international community. How can this community claim to have any legitimacy? Or is the fact of the matter that it needs no legitimacy because it wields greater power than its foes?
The fact is that Kosovo’s independence was declared in direct defiance to of prevailing international law. In The Declaration on Principles of International Law Concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States in Accordance with the Chart of the United Nations, the General Assembly in 1970 adopted by consensus the following elaboration on the Charter:
No State or group of States has the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatsoever, in the internal or external affairs or any other State. Consequently, armed intervention and all other forms of interference or attempted threats against the personality of the State or against its political, economic and cultural elements, are in violation of international law.
Without the backing of the Western powers Kosovo could not have broken away from Serbia. The Western powers intervened first in 1999 in the bombing of Serbia and again now in 2008 in their support of Kosovo’s actions. In both cases they intervened directly in the internal affairs of a state in violation of international law. Yet, they claim legitimacy because they have the backing of the international community. It must be asked what type of rule of law we have for the international system if simple, temporal select opinion can undermine order and law and bring about radical change.
Next, UN Security Council Resolution 1244 recognizes Kosovo as a sovereign part of Serbia. Russian opposition ensures that this resolution is not going to change any time soon. Not only was general international law disregarded, but this specific law as well.
Finally, in bombing Serbia in 1999 (the occurrence of which is a significant factor in Serbia’s acceptance of Kosovo’s independence) NATO violated its own charter. NATO was founded to be defensive, not offensive and no member states were under threat. All the fighting took place in Serbia. Yet for the first time in its fifty year history NATO used its power offensively against the Serbs.
There is a way to change laws. If we disregard laws we cannot change lawfully, what is the point of having law at all? Laws are created to bring about order. If they cannot bring order, something else must fill that void. The so called international order has pushed aside the law and replaced the law with itself as the keeper of international order. But as was shown before, their involvement in Kosovo thus far has done far more to destroy order than to create it.
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Four), The Effects of Intervention
NATO may have won a military campaign in the Balkans, but the effects of this involvement prove it to be an unmitigated failure. Under NATO’s watch Kosovo has instituted a program of ethnic cleansing against the Serbs, become a breeding ground for terrorism, and a center of drug and sexual trafficking.
James Jatras, the director of the American Council for Kosovo, has said that, far from the usual claims that NATO stopped a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in 1999, the past nine years have seen a slow-motion genocide in progress against the province's Christian Serbian population under the nose of the U.N. and NATO, and at times with their facilitation. In regards to this a UN official stated “What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background.”
Two-thirds of the Serbian population of Kosovo along with similar proportions of other groups (Roma, Gorani, Croats and all the Jews), have already been expelled and prevented from returning safely to their homes. At a Serb monastery in Pec Italian troops protect the holy site, which is surrounded by a massive new wall to shield elderly nuns from stone-throwing and other abuse by passing ethnic Albanians. Countless cemeteries have been intentionally defiled. Over 150 churches and monasteries have been destroyed, with crosses and icons of Christ attracting particular vandalistic rage, a testament to Kosovo Albanians' supposed secularism and pro-Western orientation. By intervening on behalf of only one side the West has allowed the Albanians of Kosovo to oppress the Serbs without fear of reprisal. For the moment the Serbs are tempted to defend themselves the memory of the brutal bombing of 1999 comes to mind. Western intervention did not prevent a humanitarian crisis, it created one. For instead of preventing genocide, Western involvement facilitated it.
Terrorism is another consequence of the NATO intervention. Beginning with the conflict in Bosnia, much like it had done in the conflict in Afghanistan a decade earlier, the United States began to encourage radical Muslims to enter the region and join the fight. These Muslims did not return to the Middle East after the conflict was over, but rather, just like in Afghanistan, they set up terrorist operations in the region. Since then, hundreds of new Saudi-funded mosques fomenting the extreme Wahhabi doctrine have sprung up. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has warned: "Kosovo will be a weak state susceptible to radical Islamist influence from outside the region, with the support from some Albanians, in other words, a potential gate for radicalism to enter Europe."
It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as a base for al-Qaida operations, that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida, and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province. Jihadists from Yemen to Chechnya have joined or financially supported the KLA.
Already these radicals in Kosovo have been linked to the missile that struck the US embassy in Athens in 2006 and the explosives used in the London and Madrid train bombings. Further, both the London and Madrid bombings were planned in Kosovo with members of the KLA. Finally, four of the six defendants of the jihad terror plot to attack Fort Dix, NJ were Albanian Muslims from Kosovo.
By encouraging radical Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan the United States allowed the creation of a terrorist run state that in turn attacked it. In the same way its recent involvement in Kosovo and the empowerment of the KLA has already, and will continue, to haunt the West as Kosovo becomes a launching ground for terrorist attacks. Much like Afghanistan before it, Kosovo has ties to al-Qaida and Bin Laden, is becoming a safe haven and launching ground for terror activity, and is active in the global narcotics trade.
Organized crime is used to fund these terrorist operations. Within only six months of the NATO intervention Kosovo was one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. The KLA had long been involved in trafficking, but now, with the backing of Washington they became the defacto rulers of Kosovo. This allowed them to extend their operations. Their drug network exists throughout all of Europe and has even made significant in roads as far away as New York and California. The proceeds for this smuggling go to fund their already mentioned terrorist operations.
Even worse is the explosion of the sex trade in the region. According to a May 2004 report by Amnesty International, “Since the deployment in July 1999 of an international peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) civilian administration, Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution.” Girls are being both trafficked into Kosovo from other Balkan countries and taken from Kosovo and shipped out of the region. This process began less than three months after the deployment of international forces and police officers to Kosovo.
In this report, one girl explained the conditions she existed in while she was held in Kosovo. After being kidnapped and transported to Kosovo she was locked inside a bar and forced into prostitution. She explained, “In the bar I was never paid, I could not go out by myself, the owner became more and more violent as the weeks went by; he was beating me and raping me and the other girls. We were his ‘property’, he said. By buying us, he had bought the right to beat us, rape us, starve us, force us to have sex with clients." Another girl complained that she was forced to have sex 2,700 times in less than one year. She was subjugated to group sex and sex at gunpoint. All the while her owner earned more than 200,000 Deutschmarks.
Worst of all, many of these girls are forced to serve international soldiers and police officers. The very people brought into the region to protect serve and protect it, are exploiting and bringing further misery to its citizenry. A recent report by the European Commission states that there has been no progress made during the past few years in combating organized crime and sexual slavery. For the girls trapped in bondage, Western involvement made life much worse than it had ever been.
This is the basest of all exploitation and brutality. NATO’s involvement destroyed order and empowered a terrorist organization that promotes and benefits from these despicable acts. The rulers the West has empowered are not keepers of law, but allowers of evil. They have cleansed the Serbs from the region, they peddle drugs to fund terrorism, and they traffic young girls. Considering these consequences we must ask ourselves if meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation-state is such a good idea.
James Jatras, the director of the American Council for Kosovo, has said that, far from the usual claims that NATO stopped a humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo in 1999, the past nine years have seen a slow-motion genocide in progress against the province's Christian Serbian population under the nose of the U.N. and NATO, and at times with their facilitation. In regards to this a UN official stated “What is happening in Kosovo must unfortunately be described as a pogrom against Serbs: churches are on fire and people are being attacked for no other reason than their ethnic background.”
Two-thirds of the Serbian population of Kosovo along with similar proportions of other groups (Roma, Gorani, Croats and all the Jews), have already been expelled and prevented from returning safely to their homes. At a Serb monastery in Pec Italian troops protect the holy site, which is surrounded by a massive new wall to shield elderly nuns from stone-throwing and other abuse by passing ethnic Albanians. Countless cemeteries have been intentionally defiled. Over 150 churches and monasteries have been destroyed, with crosses and icons of Christ attracting particular vandalistic rage, a testament to Kosovo Albanians' supposed secularism and pro-Western orientation. By intervening on behalf of only one side the West has allowed the Albanians of Kosovo to oppress the Serbs without fear of reprisal. For the moment the Serbs are tempted to defend themselves the memory of the brutal bombing of 1999 comes to mind. Western intervention did not prevent a humanitarian crisis, it created one. For instead of preventing genocide, Western involvement facilitated it.
Terrorism is another consequence of the NATO intervention. Beginning with the conflict in Bosnia, much like it had done in the conflict in Afghanistan a decade earlier, the United States began to encourage radical Muslims to enter the region and join the fight. These Muslims did not return to the Middle East after the conflict was over, but rather, just like in Afghanistan, they set up terrorist operations in the region. Since then, hundreds of new Saudi-funded mosques fomenting the extreme Wahhabi doctrine have sprung up. Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has warned: "Kosovo will be a weak state susceptible to radical Islamist influence from outside the region, with the support from some Albanians, in other words, a potential gate for radicalism to enter Europe."
It is true that Kosovar Muslims by and large do not subscribe to radical Islam. But it is also true that they have allowed their territory to be used as a base for al-Qaida operations, that members of the ruling Kosovo Liberation Army have direct links to al-Qaida, and that the Islamic world as a whole perceived Kosovo's fight for independence from Serbia as a jihad for Islamic domination of the disputed province. Jihadists from Yemen to Chechnya have joined or financially supported the KLA.
Already these radicals in Kosovo have been linked to the missile that struck the US embassy in Athens in 2006 and the explosives used in the London and Madrid train bombings. Further, both the London and Madrid bombings were planned in Kosovo with members of the KLA. Finally, four of the six defendants of the jihad terror plot to attack Fort Dix, NJ were Albanian Muslims from Kosovo.
By encouraging radical Muslims to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan the United States allowed the creation of a terrorist run state that in turn attacked it. In the same way its recent involvement in Kosovo and the empowerment of the KLA has already, and will continue, to haunt the West as Kosovo becomes a launching ground for terrorist attacks. Much like Afghanistan before it, Kosovo has ties to al-Qaida and Bin Laden, is becoming a safe haven and launching ground for terror activity, and is active in the global narcotics trade.
Organized crime is used to fund these terrorist operations. Within only six months of the NATO intervention Kosovo was one of the biggest conduits for global heroin trafficking. The KLA had long been involved in trafficking, but now, with the backing of Washington they became the defacto rulers of Kosovo. This allowed them to extend their operations. Their drug network exists throughout all of Europe and has even made significant in roads as far away as New York and California. The proceeds for this smuggling go to fund their already mentioned terrorist operations.
Even worse is the explosion of the sex trade in the region. According to a May 2004 report by Amnesty International, “Since the deployment in July 1999 of an international peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) civilian administration, Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution.” Girls are being both trafficked into Kosovo from other Balkan countries and taken from Kosovo and shipped out of the region. This process began less than three months after the deployment of international forces and police officers to Kosovo.
In this report, one girl explained the conditions she existed in while she was held in Kosovo. After being kidnapped and transported to Kosovo she was locked inside a bar and forced into prostitution. She explained, “In the bar I was never paid, I could not go out by myself, the owner became more and more violent as the weeks went by; he was beating me and raping me and the other girls. We were his ‘property’, he said. By buying us, he had bought the right to beat us, rape us, starve us, force us to have sex with clients." Another girl complained that she was forced to have sex 2,700 times in less than one year. She was subjugated to group sex and sex at gunpoint. All the while her owner earned more than 200,000 Deutschmarks.
Worst of all, many of these girls are forced to serve international soldiers and police officers. The very people brought into the region to protect serve and protect it, are exploiting and bringing further misery to its citizenry. A recent report by the European Commission states that there has been no progress made during the past few years in combating organized crime and sexual slavery. For the girls trapped in bondage, Western involvement made life much worse than it had ever been.
This is the basest of all exploitation and brutality. NATO’s involvement destroyed order and empowered a terrorist organization that promotes and benefits from these despicable acts. The rulers the West has empowered are not keepers of law, but allowers of evil. They have cleansed the Serbs from the region, they peddle drugs to fund terrorism, and they traffic young girls. Considering these consequences we must ask ourselves if meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation-state is such a good idea.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Three), The Civil War
At the end of World War Two, Serbs constituted more than fifty-percent of the population of Kosovo. Due to high birth rates and large amounts of immigration, Muslim Albanians quickly became the majority group. In 1961 Albanians comprised sixty-seven percent of the population, by 1971 that number climbed to seventy-four percent, and by 1991 that number was as high as eighty-two percent. The Serbs, fearful of losing Kosovo to this new majority, enacted harsh measures to keep the Albanian population in line. The Serbs closed schools that taught classes in the Albanian language, Albanians faced unequal treatment under the law, and Albanians faced systematic discrimination by the Serbs. Yet these measures did not appease the brutal Serbs, so they turned a policy of genocide under Milošević. The Serbs would have in fact succeeded in ethnically cleansing Kosovo of all Albanians had it not been for the humanitarian NATO campaign.
That is how the story is commonly told; I would like to present a different view. The post World War Two Yugoslav government was not dominated by the Serbs; rather it was hostile toward them. After the war the government prevented new Serbs from entering Kosovo and formerly displaced Serbs from returning. The Yugoslav government watched idly and did nothing while Serbs were beaten and assaulted by their Albanian neighbors. It was the Serbs who were discriminated at the workplace and market because they could not speak Albanian. It was their homes and fields that were burned and their children who were discriminated at school. This systematic oppression of the Serbs by the Albanians is what allowed the Albanians to gain a majority in the region.
Gangs of Albanian youths harassed the young and old alike. When a Serb was unjustly injured, there was no recourse. Many Serbs feared to tell of the true nature of an injury even to a doctor or nurse. The police refused to investigate crimes against Serbs. Murders went unsolved. One could drive down the road and tell what property was Serbian or Albanian owned by looking at the vandalism; it was rare to see a Serbian home, business, or field untouched. This daily terrorism was organized and intentional. The goal was of this terrorism was to drive the Serbs from Kosovo, to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of all Serbs. And it worked; Serbs fled the region in overwhelming numbers.
In an interview, a Serbian man explained why he left Kosovo in the mid 1990’s. He knew of a man whose wife, while minding her own business, was knocked unconscious from a rock thrown by a gang Albanian youths. He knew a number of Serbs who had lost jobs because they were unable to learn Albanian and claimed it was common for brutal acts of rape and assault to go unpunished if they were committed by Albanians against Serbs.
One day he was in a no fault accident that caused the tragic death of a young Albanian boy. An enraged Albanian mob surrounded his house and threatened to kill his whole family if he did not immediately leave. Believing their threat he left. He said, “Down there in Kosovo you cannot live under the threat of blood vengeance . . . not being able to send your child to school or to the store. Such life is worthless. With things like that nobody can help you, no law, no police, nobody.”
In the midst of this chaos Milošević came to power. His main goals were to stop the ethnic cleansing in the region, restore justice for the Serbs of Kosovo, and return the area to order. He was successful in that after he came to power rape, robbery, and killing could no longer be done openly.
But Milošević’s reforms were met with violent opposition from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA, the modern-day successor to the Albanian fascist party, is a radical terrorist organization with ties to Osama Bin Laden. This group was determined to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of all Serbs and create a greater Albanian. They led the resistance against Serbian control of the region. Serbia, like any sovereign nation, did not want to cede territory to a separatist group, so they fought (like the United States once did) to preserve their state.
A civil war ensued between the Serbian army and the KLA. There was no genocide of the Albanians, indeed how can one increase in population at radical rates in the midst of genocide? On the contrary, the genocide that occurred was against the Serbs by the Albanians. And this genocide came on the heels of decades of harsh treatment and abuse of the Serbs. The systematic oppression and genocide of the Serbs created the Albanian majority in the region that now legitimates the sovereignty of the new Kosovo state.
In this war the Albanians needed the support of the West to win. The KLA knew they could not defeat the Serbian army by military means, so they turned to propaganda. The KLA buried their fallen comrades in mass graves to fabricate a story of genocide, claiming these men were executed and buried in mass graves by the Serbs. The myth of genocide in the region that legitimated Western involvement originated in this propaganda campaign.
This propaganda campaign worked. At the height of the conflict it was believed that four hundred thousand innocent Albanians had died at the hands of the Serbs. However, these facts soon proved to be false. By the time of the Milošević trial, the number of Albanian causalities was reduced to about four thousand. This was nothing more than a civil war with casualties on both sides and a relatively minor war at that. Nonetheless, the West intervened.
In the spring of 1999 NATO dropped twenty-three thousand bombs on Serbia. This bombing began as a military campaign, but it quickly turned into an organized campaign of terror bent on breaking the Serb’s morale and standard of living. Bridges, hospitals, and other parts of the infostructure were destroyed as well as trains and churches (the latter two on accident) that killed hundreds of civilians. With the help of NATO the Albanians drove out two-hundred thousand Serbs and one-hundred thousand Roma out of Kosovo by means of brutal attacks and intimidation. When all was said and done in this so called genocide, more Serbs had died than Albanians.
The Albanians could never have taken Kosovo by their own strength. The former government of Yugoslavia allowed them to oppress the Serbs, which helped them gain a majority. Albania and other Islamic groups supported the KLA with arms and money. NATO bombed Serbia, preventing it from maintaining control over part of its land. And now by the support of the US and the EU, Kosovo has declared complete independence from Serbia. Before discussing this final break of independence, why it happened, and the effects it will have, we will take a moment to consider the consequences of intervention by the international community in a domestic conflict of a sovereign nation-state.
That is how the story is commonly told; I would like to present a different view. The post World War Two Yugoslav government was not dominated by the Serbs; rather it was hostile toward them. After the war the government prevented new Serbs from entering Kosovo and formerly displaced Serbs from returning. The Yugoslav government watched idly and did nothing while Serbs were beaten and assaulted by their Albanian neighbors. It was the Serbs who were discriminated at the workplace and market because they could not speak Albanian. It was their homes and fields that were burned and their children who were discriminated at school. This systematic oppression of the Serbs by the Albanians is what allowed the Albanians to gain a majority in the region.
Gangs of Albanian youths harassed the young and old alike. When a Serb was unjustly injured, there was no recourse. Many Serbs feared to tell of the true nature of an injury even to a doctor or nurse. The police refused to investigate crimes against Serbs. Murders went unsolved. One could drive down the road and tell what property was Serbian or Albanian owned by looking at the vandalism; it was rare to see a Serbian home, business, or field untouched. This daily terrorism was organized and intentional. The goal was of this terrorism was to drive the Serbs from Kosovo, to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of all Serbs. And it worked; Serbs fled the region in overwhelming numbers.
In an interview, a Serbian man explained why he left Kosovo in the mid 1990’s. He knew of a man whose wife, while minding her own business, was knocked unconscious from a rock thrown by a gang Albanian youths. He knew a number of Serbs who had lost jobs because they were unable to learn Albanian and claimed it was common for brutal acts of rape and assault to go unpunished if they were committed by Albanians against Serbs.
One day he was in a no fault accident that caused the tragic death of a young Albanian boy. An enraged Albanian mob surrounded his house and threatened to kill his whole family if he did not immediately leave. Believing their threat he left. He said, “Down there in Kosovo you cannot live under the threat of blood vengeance . . . not being able to send your child to school or to the store. Such life is worthless. With things like that nobody can help you, no law, no police, nobody.”
In the midst of this chaos Milošević came to power. His main goals were to stop the ethnic cleansing in the region, restore justice for the Serbs of Kosovo, and return the area to order. He was successful in that after he came to power rape, robbery, and killing could no longer be done openly.
But Milošević’s reforms were met with violent opposition from the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA, the modern-day successor to the Albanian fascist party, is a radical terrorist organization with ties to Osama Bin Laden. This group was determined to ethnically cleanse Kosovo of all Serbs and create a greater Albanian. They led the resistance against Serbian control of the region. Serbia, like any sovereign nation, did not want to cede territory to a separatist group, so they fought (like the United States once did) to preserve their state.
A civil war ensued between the Serbian army and the KLA. There was no genocide of the Albanians, indeed how can one increase in population at radical rates in the midst of genocide? On the contrary, the genocide that occurred was against the Serbs by the Albanians. And this genocide came on the heels of decades of harsh treatment and abuse of the Serbs. The systematic oppression and genocide of the Serbs created the Albanian majority in the region that now legitimates the sovereignty of the new Kosovo state.
In this war the Albanians needed the support of the West to win. The KLA knew they could not defeat the Serbian army by military means, so they turned to propaganda. The KLA buried their fallen comrades in mass graves to fabricate a story of genocide, claiming these men were executed and buried in mass graves by the Serbs. The myth of genocide in the region that legitimated Western involvement originated in this propaganda campaign.
This propaganda campaign worked. At the height of the conflict it was believed that four hundred thousand innocent Albanians had died at the hands of the Serbs. However, these facts soon proved to be false. By the time of the Milošević trial, the number of Albanian causalities was reduced to about four thousand. This was nothing more than a civil war with casualties on both sides and a relatively minor war at that. Nonetheless, the West intervened.
In the spring of 1999 NATO dropped twenty-three thousand bombs on Serbia. This bombing began as a military campaign, but it quickly turned into an organized campaign of terror bent on breaking the Serb’s morale and standard of living. Bridges, hospitals, and other parts of the infostructure were destroyed as well as trains and churches (the latter two on accident) that killed hundreds of civilians. With the help of NATO the Albanians drove out two-hundred thousand Serbs and one-hundred thousand Roma out of Kosovo by means of brutal attacks and intimidation. When all was said and done in this so called genocide, more Serbs had died than Albanians.
The Albanians could never have taken Kosovo by their own strength. The former government of Yugoslavia allowed them to oppress the Serbs, which helped them gain a majority. Albania and other Islamic groups supported the KLA with arms and money. NATO bombed Serbia, preventing it from maintaining control over part of its land. And now by the support of the US and the EU, Kosovo has declared complete independence from Serbia. Before discussing this final break of independence, why it happened, and the effects it will have, we will take a moment to consider the consequences of intervention by the international community in a domestic conflict of a sovereign nation-state.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
The Kosovo Crisis (Part Two), A General Historical Overview
Though history may not determine behavior today, it helps to explain it. According to historian John Cox, the single most important date in Serbian history is June 28, 1389. That was the day of the Battle of Kosovo. On that day the Christian armies of Serbia lost Kosovo fought the Muslim armies of the Ottoman Sultan to a standstill. In doing so they protected Europe from further Ottoman invasion, but lost Kosovo to the Turks. Cox writes that the events of that June day more than six hundred years ago have come to define the Serbs’ identity and mission as a people.
History in Eastern Europe and the Balkans is much closer and plays a greater role in memory and daily life than in the west. A friend of mine from the Eastern Ukraine tells me that people in her village still recount with terror the horrors that Genghis Khan wrought upon them.
When I studied Russian history as an undergraduate I read in a number of sources and was told by my professor that Russians are still very conscious of the conquest of their land by the Tatars. The best known of this conquest is The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, which was written by a monastic chronicler. This account explains that at the time of the Mongol invasion the ruling princes of Russia refused to unite against their common foe and instead fought amongst themselves. This internal discord allowed the “infidels from all lands to invade the Russian land and to win victory.” From that moment on the Russians decided that they must have a strong ruler at all costs. The liberty of each prince and person to do as they pleased led to slavery. Russia must unite under even a tyrant in order to stay free.
I always thought the importance of this historical event was overestimated until I traveled to Russia and talked to people myself. I asked the people I met what they thought of President Putin. The overwhelming majority of the people I talked to loved and supported him (empirical data supports this as well, in December of 2007 Putin’s United Russia Party swept Russia’s last election, gaining six times more votes than the second closest party). I asked the people of Russia what they thought about the way Putin has undermined democratic institutions, expelled international organizations, and curtailed the rights of the press. They were well aware of these things, but were not bothered by them. Over and over I got the same response: Russia is a great and enormous land and it must be ruled by a strong leader or it will be divided and it will fall. They continued by stating, the last time we were divided the Tatars enslaved us. Putin is strong; he will keep us united and safe.
I was amazed. I was surprised and astonished that many modern Russians base their support and inform their votes from an event that took place eight-hundred years ago. I can’t imagine Englishmen basing their vote or support on Prime Minister Brown from their memory and interpretation of the Norman invasions. I doubt many Italians worry about falling into a collection of autonomous republics if they don’t vote a certain way. And yet, so important was the Mongol attack that Russians continue to reference it.
Seeing clearly the importance history is this region of the world we must keep in mind that the Battle of Kosovo is no less significant to the Serbs than the Tatar invasion is for the Russians. While history does not determine the present or the future, it plays a far greater role in these societies than it does in the west. So great in fact that it is hard for us to really understand history’s significance for these people.
Keeping this understanding of history in mind we may continue with our brief historical overview. Next we will consider the importance of Kosovo to the Serbian people.
Kosovo is the heartland of Serbia: the focus of statehood, religion, and culture. Thousands of churches and monasteries were built there and it is the seat of the Patriarchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church. There are four Patriarchy seats in the Orthodox Church: one in Russia, one in Greece, one in Syria, and one in Kosovo. Each Patriarch is the head of his respective church; no one has authority above him. For the Serbs the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church is vested with the same authority and respect as the Catholics treat the Pope. Kosovo, the seat of their church, is just as holy as the Vatican to Catholics and Jerusalem to the Jews.
Think of how the Jews would feel if the Palestinians, with the backing of the international community, drove them out of Jerusalem and proceeded to desecrate their holy sights. Think of the outrage there would be in the Catholic community if members of another religion expelled the Bishop of Rome from the Vatican and destroyed St. Peter’s Cathedral. Both cases would mark a significant loss to both peoples. When considering the Serbian loss of Kosovo we must keep these analogies in mind. Kosovo is no less significant to the Serbs than Jerusalem to the Jews and the Vatican to the Catholics. It represents a loss of the greatest magnitude.
After the loss of 1389, Kosovo became the light at the end of the tunnel for the Serbs: someday Serbia would reclaim it and celebrate a return to freedom and greatness. Kosovo became the central driving force behind the numerous Serbian rebellions throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule.
Not only did the Serbs lose Kosovo, they lost their political liberty as well. For the Serbs the year 1389 became synonymous with a loss of freedom and brutal enslavement at the hands of an ethnically and religiously alien people, the Turks.
The administration of the Ottoman Empire grouped people together on the basis of religion. Believing that they had to conquer people to show them the strength (and thereby the truth) of Islam, the Turks refused to offer Jews and Christians equal rights. This inequality of treatment led to brutal exploitation. Serbian woman were routinely forced into prostitution, and the Ottoman’s imposed an atrocious blood tax on the Christians of the Balkans. This child levy, known as devširme, involved the taking of Balkan children away from their parents to be raised in the Islamic/Turkish culture of Istanbul.
This harsh oppression led to constant uprisings, which were met with brutal reprisals. In 1804 there was one such large uprising. The Sultan responded with a Jihad and won. To deter future rebellions he slaughtered many men and sold woman and kids into slavery. He also employed routine searches, beatings, and torture to keep the native population in check.
In The Brothers Karamazov Ivan and Alyosha discuss the oppression of the Serbs by the Ottomans. Ivan says he heard of Turks nailing people by their ears to fences and leaving them there overnight, only to hang them in the morning. Further, these same Turks outraged countless women, murdered innocent men, and burned villages wholesale in order to prevent an uprising. Ivan concludes by saying that when we classify this behavior as beastly, we insult the animal world for only man is cruel enough to think of these things.
The centuries of Ottoman oppression finally came to an end when the Allies defeated the Ottoman Empire in World War One. Serbia gained its independence for but a moment; within a generation it was subsumed into communist Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia broke apart at the end of the twentieth century. During this time Serbia had a civil war in which NATO chose to intervene. This event set the groundwork for the partition of Kosovo from Serbia, so it must be treated with some depth.
History in Eastern Europe and the Balkans is much closer and plays a greater role in memory and daily life than in the west. A friend of mine from the Eastern Ukraine tells me that people in her village still recount with terror the horrors that Genghis Khan wrought upon them.
When I studied Russian history as an undergraduate I read in a number of sources and was told by my professor that Russians are still very conscious of the conquest of their land by the Tatars. The best known of this conquest is The Lay of Igor’s Campaign, which was written by a monastic chronicler. This account explains that at the time of the Mongol invasion the ruling princes of Russia refused to unite against their common foe and instead fought amongst themselves. This internal discord allowed the “infidels from all lands to invade the Russian land and to win victory.” From that moment on the Russians decided that they must have a strong ruler at all costs. The liberty of each prince and person to do as they pleased led to slavery. Russia must unite under even a tyrant in order to stay free.
I always thought the importance of this historical event was overestimated until I traveled to Russia and talked to people myself. I asked the people I met what they thought of President Putin. The overwhelming majority of the people I talked to loved and supported him (empirical data supports this as well, in December of 2007 Putin’s United Russia Party swept Russia’s last election, gaining six times more votes than the second closest party). I asked the people of Russia what they thought about the way Putin has undermined democratic institutions, expelled international organizations, and curtailed the rights of the press. They were well aware of these things, but were not bothered by them. Over and over I got the same response: Russia is a great and enormous land and it must be ruled by a strong leader or it will be divided and it will fall. They continued by stating, the last time we were divided the Tatars enslaved us. Putin is strong; he will keep us united and safe.
I was amazed. I was surprised and astonished that many modern Russians base their support and inform their votes from an event that took place eight-hundred years ago. I can’t imagine Englishmen basing their vote or support on Prime Minister Brown from their memory and interpretation of the Norman invasions. I doubt many Italians worry about falling into a collection of autonomous republics if they don’t vote a certain way. And yet, so important was the Mongol attack that Russians continue to reference it.
Seeing clearly the importance history is this region of the world we must keep in mind that the Battle of Kosovo is no less significant to the Serbs than the Tatar invasion is for the Russians. While history does not determine the present or the future, it plays a far greater role in these societies than it does in the west. So great in fact that it is hard for us to really understand history’s significance for these people.
Keeping this understanding of history in mind we may continue with our brief historical overview. Next we will consider the importance of Kosovo to the Serbian people.
Kosovo is the heartland of Serbia: the focus of statehood, religion, and culture. Thousands of churches and monasteries were built there and it is the seat of the Patriarchy of the Serbian Orthodox Church. There are four Patriarchy seats in the Orthodox Church: one in Russia, one in Greece, one in Syria, and one in Kosovo. Each Patriarch is the head of his respective church; no one has authority above him. For the Serbs the Patriarch of the Serbian Orthodox Church is vested with the same authority and respect as the Catholics treat the Pope. Kosovo, the seat of their church, is just as holy as the Vatican to Catholics and Jerusalem to the Jews.
Think of how the Jews would feel if the Palestinians, with the backing of the international community, drove them out of Jerusalem and proceeded to desecrate their holy sights. Think of the outrage there would be in the Catholic community if members of another religion expelled the Bishop of Rome from the Vatican and destroyed St. Peter’s Cathedral. Both cases would mark a significant loss to both peoples. When considering the Serbian loss of Kosovo we must keep these analogies in mind. Kosovo is no less significant to the Serbs than Jerusalem to the Jews and the Vatican to the Catholics. It represents a loss of the greatest magnitude.
After the loss of 1389, Kosovo became the light at the end of the tunnel for the Serbs: someday Serbia would reclaim it and celebrate a return to freedom and greatness. Kosovo became the central driving force behind the numerous Serbian rebellions throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule.
Not only did the Serbs lose Kosovo, they lost their political liberty as well. For the Serbs the year 1389 became synonymous with a loss of freedom and brutal enslavement at the hands of an ethnically and religiously alien people, the Turks.
The administration of the Ottoman Empire grouped people together on the basis of religion. Believing that they had to conquer people to show them the strength (and thereby the truth) of Islam, the Turks refused to offer Jews and Christians equal rights. This inequality of treatment led to brutal exploitation. Serbian woman were routinely forced into prostitution, and the Ottoman’s imposed an atrocious blood tax on the Christians of the Balkans. This child levy, known as devširme, involved the taking of Balkan children away from their parents to be raised in the Islamic/Turkish culture of Istanbul.
This harsh oppression led to constant uprisings, which were met with brutal reprisals. In 1804 there was one such large uprising. The Sultan responded with a Jihad and won. To deter future rebellions he slaughtered many men and sold woman and kids into slavery. He also employed routine searches, beatings, and torture to keep the native population in check.
In The Brothers Karamazov Ivan and Alyosha discuss the oppression of the Serbs by the Ottomans. Ivan says he heard of Turks nailing people by their ears to fences and leaving them there overnight, only to hang them in the morning. Further, these same Turks outraged countless women, murdered innocent men, and burned villages wholesale in order to prevent an uprising. Ivan concludes by saying that when we classify this behavior as beastly, we insult the animal world for only man is cruel enough to think of these things.
The centuries of Ottoman oppression finally came to an end when the Allies defeated the Ottoman Empire in World War One. Serbia gained its independence for but a moment; within a generation it was subsumed into communist Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia broke apart at the end of the twentieth century. During this time Serbia had a civil war in which NATO chose to intervene. This event set the groundwork for the partition of Kosovo from Serbia, so it must be treated with some depth.
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