Isn't Albania Enough?

The inimitable Taki Theodoracopoulos does a drive-by assessment of the Empire's Kosovo policy in his most recent column:

Even worse is the issue of Kosovo. With a few prominent exceptions, NATO, the EU, the USA, and the UN all favor speedy recognition of a rogue state led by drug dealers and terrorists and militant Muslims. What the hell is going on here? Why must we have a second Muslim state in our midst? Isn’t Albania enough?

Of course it's not enough to those who see "Kosova" as just the first step in annexing parts of Montenegro, Macedonia, Greece, and even more of Serbia. And after that, who knows? If one believes the 19th-century canard about Albanians descending from ancient Illyrians, it's only a matter of time before some "reputable expert" asserts that all of the Balkans is actually "ethnic Albania." And why stop there? There's Albanians in Switzerland, Britain, New Jersey...

Anyway, at this stage slogans won't do Serbia much good. The people dismembering her, Czechoslovakia-style, seem to believe only in coercion. When dealing with aggression, polite arguments can only get one so far. Maybe it's high time to start doing some coercin' right back.

Schooled

Roger Cohen, one of the "star reporters" of the Bosnian War and a columnist for the International Herald Tribune, apparently wrote a screed recently blasting former British foreign secretary Douglas Hurd for daring to protest the war in Iraq. Hurd, opined Cohen, should keep quiet, since he stood idly by while the evil Serb aggressors were committing genocide against the poor defenseless "Bosnians," etc, ad nauseam.

Cohen's text didn't register on my radar. I was a little busy observing the anniversary of the 2004 Kosovo Kristallnacht, and about half a dozen other more important things pertaining to this corner of the world than the ramblings of some American Serbophobe.

Fortunately, the indomitable Taki Theodoracopulos seized on the opportunity to school Cohen in a bit of European history. After describing the centuries of Muslim invasions, often aided and abetted by power-hungry European nobles, Taki finishes thusly:

Hurd was right when he blamed ancient hatreds and warring factions for keeping cool and detached in the Balkans. If anything, Blair and Bush should have attacked the Muslim infiltrators in Kosovo. Instead, they went and attacked the only secular state in the Middle East. We armed and trained bin Laden in Afghanistan. He was given Bosnian citizenship soon after, and when his gang went down to Kosovo and began to blow up 500-year-old churches, we bombed a European city on the gang’s behalf. Cohen should shut up.

Bravo, sir.