A NATO soldier that served in Bosnia 2x had this observation...

We build roads, bridges & schools; "they" build mosques.

"Almost everyone in Kosovo despises these people."

No kidding. Its the Balkans, they hate -everybody-. That's their friggin' national sport.

However, I will say that all these Balkan types seem to leave the hate at home when they leave. Immigrants to Canada from there have a long history of getting along with everybody over here, including their ex-countrymen.

Would that this were true of immigrants from other places.

Great post. Yes Saudi money....how often do we hear complaints about Missionairies....well it seems the Wahahbi's are doing the classic accuse others of doing what you are doing.

I hate to think about how much Saudi money is being pumped into Canada in the various muslim communiites.....let alone places like Pakistan.

If others can complain about Western Cultural Imperailism can we not complain about Gulf Arab Cultural Imperialism.....This shouldnt surprise anyone, wealthy societies tend to spread the wealth around so their ideas survive and are taken forward.

Cut the wealth and you cut the spreading of the ideas....how you do that is a totally different question, either you get someone else in charge of the wealth, you plunder the society or you destroy the source of wealth.

The only non violent means, and possibly linked to option 1) is you strengthen your own ideas and culture as both a defence against and a weakening of the other side in contrast.

Same issues as the cold war quite frankly, just need to wake up to the idea that we are in another war of ideas, that is cold for the moment but could go hot.

The Soviets collapsed becasue they ultimately couldnt keep up materially while the society rotted from the inside.

This one is different, Soviets and West each had their own sources of wealth and didnt really trade. In this battle the West's wealth is contuinually transferred to the Gulf, which then re transmits it back to the West but with other purposes.

Best defence against a cultural invader is cultural. They cant win militarily, we need to recommitt to Western values and unapologetically defend and live them.

Julie Gorin has a radically opposed view and thinks Totten is a Balkans tourist and sees things through rose-tinted glasses? Mind you, she's a comedienne. So ?

But recall, our very own Major General Lewis MacKenzie thought We bombed the wrong side in Kosovo

Yes, and all this was made possible by the West with special thanks to Bubba Clinton.

Julie Gorin has a radically opposed view and thinks Totten is a Balkans tourist

I've done field work in the Balkans, as well as deep reading. She has never even been a tourist in the region. She should actually visit the place if she's going to write about it for a living, just as people who mouth off about Iraq for a living need to get off their asses and head over to Baghdad on the next plane.

Thanks for linking, Kate.

Alain: all this was made possible by the West with special thanks to Bubba Clinton.

I think you need to read the whole article, especially this part:

“Why is it so much worse here than in Kosova?” I said. “It feels oppressive.”

“It’s different in Kosova,” he said, “thanks to America and NATO. If Kosova cooperated with Muslim countries instead, it would be different. Americans are bringing their culture to Kosova and Albania, but not to Macedonia.”

Those are some hot babes.

Michael Totten: Thanks for that. While posting that I WAS wondering if Julie Gorin had ever been there. So she hasn't actually been there!? I had assumed she had been.

Just back from a workout with my trainer who is from Montenegro and I must say it is good to get the view from a guy who grew up in the region. Vis-a-vis Kosovo, he says it's not a criminal culture by choice -- that it was the most underdeveloped province of the former Yugoslavia and that their criminal culture is an outgrowth of that reality, namely survival.

Nevertheless, Major General Lewis Mackenzie also worked in the area and I'm presuming he knows at least as much as you do. As mentioned he opined that "we bombed the wrong side".

As Glenn Beck might put it, where did Major General Lewis MacKenzie get it wrong?

Me No Dhimmi,

Kosovo definitely has a problem with political gansterism. And the ethnic relations between Serbs and Albanians is hideous. (There are no problems between Albanian Muslims and Albanian Catholics, I should note.)

I briefly embedded with the U.S. Army in Kosovo. No one I talked to thought "we bombed the wrong side." No one in the Army thinks of Serbs as the enemy either, at least not any more. The Serbs there are viciously anti-American politically, but they seem to get along pretty well with American soldiers because they are correctly seen as protectors from pissed-off Albanian nationalists. The dynamic is actually really fascinating. And because no one is shooting at anybody, it's clarifying and, I think, helps shed some light on the convoluted contradictory opinions of Iraqis.

I will write about this at length on my site...

Thank you so much, Michael Totten. I shall, forthwith, go to your site and read your Kosovo pieces with great interest. No issue has confused me more than this one; your comments however certainly seem to absolve one from feeling any shame over this confusion and, as intimated above, are in step with my trainer who is a ethnic Hungarian from Montenegro.

Keep up the great work.

Me No Dhimmi,

Thanks for the kind words. Be sure to read both Parts I and II from the "Bin Ladens of the Balkans" series. Both are still on the front page of my site.

Don't feel at all ashamed for being confused. The whole topic is bottomlessly complicated, and I'm still not done writing about it. Nor do I understand everything myself. Probably nobody does.

I found this prescient Winston Churchill quote about his opinion of Islam. Churchill wrote this in his book "The River War", after his experiences with Muslims and Islam in India and the Sudan.

A century after Churchill wrote this, it's no less accurate and insightful today:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property - either as a child, a wife, or a concubine - must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men.

Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die. But the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytising faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science - the science against which it had vainly struggled - the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome."

(Note that most of Europe having abandoned it's Judeo-Christian spiritual and moral roots, the last sentence is now in doubt. Cause and effect, IMHO.)

The Bin Ladens of the Balkans

To quote John Oliver, "The Bin Laden of Europe? Excuse me, but Bin Laden is The Bin Laden of Europe."

Thanks again, Michael Totten. I printed instalment 2 on my new colour printer which duplexes (hot damn) and while I was at it hit the tip jar too. Thanks for the reminder on installment one.