The MSM views the creation of a second Muslim state in Europe as a positive development, seeing it as a satisfyingly just conclusion to the suffering inflicted on ethnic Albanians by Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, whose repressive measures against the minority culminated in the Srebrenica massacre.

Here are a few alternative views about this legacy of the Clinton Administration that President Bush played out to this disastrous result:

† The raison d'être of an independent Kosovo – genocide of Muslim Albanians committed by Christian Serbians – is a fiction, insists Pat Buchanan (others go further, maintaining that a “myth of sympathy” has cloaked Kosovo’s Nazi war crimes against Serbs and Jews):

In the spring of 1999, the United States bombed Serbia for 78 days to force its army out of that nation's cradle province of Kosovo. The Serbs were fighting Albanian separatists of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). And we had no more right to bomb Belgrade than the Royal Navy would have had to bombard New York in our Civil War.

We bombed Serbia, we were told, to stop the genocide in Kosovo. But there was no genocide. This was propaganda. The United Nations' final casualty count of Serbs and Albanians in Slobodan Milosevic's war did not add up to 1 percent of the dead in Mr. Lincoln's war.

Albanians did flee in the tens of thousands during the war. But since that war's end, the Serbs of Kosovo have seen their churches and monasteries smashed and vandalized and have been ethnically cleansed in the scores of thousands from their ancestral province. In the exodus they have lost everything. The remaining Serb population of 120,000 is largely confined to enclaves guarded by NATO troops.

Buchanan sees no good coming of this:

By intervening in a civil war to aid the secession of an ancient province, to create a new nation that has never before existed and, to erect it along ethnic, religious and tribal lines, we have established a dangerous precedent. Muslim and Albanian extremists are already talking of a Greater Albania, consisting of Albania, Kosovo and the Albanian-Muslim sectors of Serbia, Montenegro and Macedonia.

† In an op-ed published by WorldNetDaily, James George Jatras, director of the American Council for Kosovo - whose book details a “hidden” genocide against Christians in Kosovo since the end of the war in 1999 completely ignored by the MSM – argues that the U.S. has provoked a needless confrontation with Russia – which fears violent separatists in Chechnya, Abkhazia and South Ossetia will be heartened by this development - and has given Israel, in particular, the jitters:

Any sovereign state with restive ethnic or religious minorities would recognize Kosovo at its own peril. What Washington seeks to inflict on Serbia today could be the fate of the American southwest tomorrow. Israel, in particular, is closely pondering its next move. While loath to anger Washington, Jerusalem must consider that a Kosovo precedent could, absent any negotiated agreement, prompt proclamation of a Palestinian state, to be recognized by Arab and Muslim regimes. The same precedent could apply to heavily Muslim areas such as Galilee and the Negev within Israel's formal borders. …

Meanwhile, Christian Serbs in Kosovo are bracing for the worst. “We are all expecting something difficult and horrible," said Bishop Artemije, pastor of Kosovo's Orthodox Christians. "Our message to you, all Serbs in Kosovo, is to remain in your homes and around your monasteries, regardless of what G-d allows or our enemies do.”

† Media critic Cliff Kinkaid of the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media sees Kosovo as part of President Bush’s misguided strategy to win the hearts and minds of Muslims by sacrificing Christians in Iraq and Kosovo – he could also add Christians in Turkey, by the way:

Bush is also going along with the U.N. in Kosovo, which they want to make into an independent Muslim state by separating the province from Serbia. Kosovo is mostly Albanian and Muslim and Serbia is Christian. Christian churches are being destroyed in Kosovo and Christians are being forced to flee. Bush has indicated no concern about that state of affairs, either. … Islamic dominance of Europe is the goal here.

† In an interview on “Hannity & Colmes” last week (video), former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer and Ron Paul (R-TX) supporter – who nonetheless opposes a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq - contends that supporting Kosovo’s independence from Serbia is the latest example of “endless intervention by the American political class” and that the U.S. “lit a fuse in the Balkans, which will result in a new war over an issue which was of zero concern to the United States of America.”

Scheuer predicts that, “at some point in the future, American troops with NATO troops will be addressing another war in the Balkans.”

And what schizoid message does U.S. support of Muslim ambitions for a Greater Albania send to Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, who have been labeled “terrorists” by our government for waging their own protracted struggle to free themselves from Turkish repression? How can the U.S. offer diplomatic recognition to Kosovo the same week Bush allowed Turkish troops to invade Northern Iraq to go (supposedly) after the PKK?

“Mike Huckabee Does Not Overstay His Welcome”

Mike Huckabee’s guest appearance (video) on Saturday Night Live’s “Week-End Update” - which ended with the funniest gag in the so-so show - he explains to co-host Seth Myers in a mock interview why he’s yet to concede the race for the Republican nomination to John McCain – and promised that “when it’s time for me to go … I’ll exit with class and grace” – which isn’t at all what he said during a real interview with San Antonio radio station WOAI in which he envisioned a brokered convention should he win TX and OH, and called for more debates between himself and McCain.

Huckabee got an enthusiastic reception by the audience – and the show got its highest ratings in two years. 
 

The Stiletto Scoops "Best of the Web Today" – Twice

She’s burning through Other People’s Money as fast as it's coming in. Imagine how much of your income she’ll burn through to pay for universal healthcare and other expensive government programs. Do you really want this woman minding the nation’s purse-strings?

- Hillary’s Campaign Has Been Stiffing Small Businesses Nationwide, The Stiletto Blog, February 13, 2008

Hillary’s spending Other People’s Money like there’s no tomorrow, reports The New York Times … Now, extrapolate Hillary’s errors of judgment in campaign spending to spending on entitlement programs, and money given to her by donors to money taken from you by taxes.

- "The Other Shoe Drops" (second item), The Stiletto Blog, February 22, 2008

Doesn't this make you think that if she had control over federal purse strings, she'd be spending our money on luxuries and enrichment of her cronies?

- "Other People's Money,"  Best of the Web Today (second item), February 22, 2008

Editorial Note: The Stiletto Blog posted at 9:30 am on February 22^nd (the blog typically posts at 12:01 am Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays); Best of the Web Today (BOTWT) posted at 3:15 pm. Both included the opening grafs of The Times piece - the juiciest bits of the article - but the other similarities between the two posts about Hillary’s spending habits on The Stiletto Blog and Friday’s post on BOTWT is a matter of speculation. BOTWT readers send James Taranto story ideas, often with the clever jokey headlines already written for him. The manner in which Taranto “credits” these submissions makes it difficult to link a particular item/joke to a specific contributor, so The Stiletto cannot tell which reader sent Taranto the item - or whether (s)he reads The Stiletto Blog. The Heel, a friend of The Stiletto’s and sometime contributor to this blog, quips that Barack Obama might have given this item to Taranto. As The Stiletto has not given Obama - or anyone else - permission to crib from her, BOTWT needs to properly attribute any stuff that comes from The Stiletto Blog. The Stiletto is only bringing this up now because it’s not the first time she’s posted an item only to see an eerily similar version of it on BOTWT several hours or days later. Coincidence? Maybe … or maybe not.