Nevertheless the United States and its NATO allies, the self-proclaimed "international community" and champions of democracy, human rights and so forth wherever and whenever it suits their political purposes, continue to embrace the Kosovo entity as a brother-in-arms in the new global order.
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was in the Kosovo capital of Pristina on November 1 for the unveiling of a particularly vulgar and meretricious gold-sprayed statue of himself [13], the ceremony presided over by the former head of the Kosovo Liberation Army, Hashim "The Snake" Thaci, the creation of whose pseudo-nation is a cause of great pride in Western capitals.
The Associated Press reported on the event in Europe's drug-smuggling criminal black hole:
"The statue portrays Clinton with his left arm raised and holding a portfolio bearing his name and the date when NATO started bombing Yugoslavia, on March 24, 1999.
"Many waved American, Albanian and Kosovo flags and chanted 'USA!' as the former president climbed on top of a podium with his poster in the background reading 'Kosovo honors a hero.'" [14]
That Albanian flags were flaunted reveals what NATO mercilessly bombed the length and breadth of Yugoslavia for 78 days to achieve.
Three weeks afterward the mayor of a town in Albania - the distinction between that nation and Kosovo is now a strictly academic one - announced plans to follow suit and dedicate a statue to George W. Bush. Bush and Clinton have jointly sired the Kosovo/Greater Kosovo aberration. "The small Albanian town of Fushe-Kruje plans to erect a statue of former U.S. President George W. Bush to commemorate his June 2007 visit, when he was feted as a hero in an outpouring of love for America."
The town's mayor, Ismet Mavriqi, was quoted as saying, "If I had the final say, I would very much like a three-meter statue, probably in bronze, that captures his trademark way of walking with energy." [15]
The legacy that Washington and Brussels have left the people of Kosovo - those remaining that is, as hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Roma and others have fled for their lives since June of 1999 - was detailed in a recent Reuters report.
It said that although "Over the past decade it has received 3 billion euros in aid, according to the World Bank, and is expecting another billion by 2011," nevertheless "unemployment is 40 percent and average per capita income is 1,760 euros. That compares with average joblessness of just under 10 percent in the European Union and an average salary of about 24,000 euros ($35,930)." [16]
Ten years of NATO-KLA collaboration have produced this human catastrophe.
This is the stability and prosperity that the West has brought to the Balkans.
That afflicted part of Europe has been the testing ground for NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe and since into Asia, Africa and the Middle East, starting with Bosnia in 1995 when NATO dropped its first bombs and deployed its first troops outside the territory of its member states.
As early as January of 1996 the now deceased American scholar Sean Gervasi warned that "There are deeper reasons for the dispatch of NATO forces to the Balkans, and especially for the extension of NATO to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary in the relatively near future. These have to do with an emerging strategy for securing the resources of the Caspian Sea region and for 'stabilizing' the countries of Eastern Europe - ultimately for 'stabilizing' Russia and the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States." [17]
NATO now has solidified military partnerships, conducts regular war games and has established permanent bases in several countries on and near the Caspian Sea - Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, not to mention Afghanistan.
It has absorbed three former Soviet republics - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - and continues to insist that former Commonwealth of Independent States member Georgia and current one Ukraine will become full members of the Alliance.
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