Winds of Change.NET: A Nobel Too Far

February 7, 2003

A Nobel Too Far

by Trent Telenko at February 7, 2003 3:53 PM

Kosovo and Bosnia are the two things that Bill Clinton did as President that he should have gotten the Nobel Peace prize for...and never will.

Sometimes good deeds really are rewarded:

""When I see scenes on television of people elsewhere burning American flags, I'm deeply hurt," said Dr. Besnik Bardhi, who runs a clinic in the southwestern city of Djakovica, where 1,000 people remain missing after the 1998-99 war.
Bardhi's wife was pregnant with their first child during Slobodan Milosevic's savage crackdown on Muslim ethnic Albanians in the Serbian province. The couple promised each other that if they had a girl they'd name her Madeleine, and Bill if it was a boy.

Their daughter, now 3, danced impishly across their apartment and pointed to a framed photograph of Albright, who was U.S. secretary of state during the conflict. "This is the woman who saved us," she told a visitor brightly.

"If there is a God, his missionaries on Earth are Americans," her father responded.

Such adoration is heady stuff for Americans who live and work in Kosovo.

Reno Harnish, the top U.S. official in Kosovo and a veteran diplomat who has served in Egypt, Nigeria and other countries, said he's astounded.

"I've never been received so well. It's kind of daunting," he said. "The Americans have an unusually strong moral authority in Kosovo. The leadership is quite eager to hear the U.S. opinion on things. I think they want the United States to continue to play a role in their lives." "

(Hat tip to the Corner)

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Comments

#1 from Chuck at 6:29 pm on Feb 07, 2003

Trent,
Very interesting commentary on Kosovo. However, recently I have heard that Muslim interests, through the KLA, have been using physical threats against Kosovars working with Western aid groups. The net result is that these groups are losing local links vital to providing assistance. While this is going on, Middle Eastern money is being used to build mosques that are preaching the more extreme Wahabist tenets of Islam. This is a dangerous trend, if true. Do you have any information on this?

Regards,
Chuck

#2 from Andrew at 7:43 pm on Feb 07, 2003

Why, we had not business being in either place? Neither should we have been in Somalia. Not one of those places had any strategic interest for the US. We need to use American forces where it is in our interest like Afganistan and Iraq, not in civil wars in the Balkans.

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