Well, I think I am in decent shape as far as time-sensitive work goes now, and I don’t want to make this really, really long, but all the recent talk about Kosovo calls me to say a few words.  As I have mentioned in the past, the bombing of Kosovo was a crucial moment in bringing me around fully to a non-interventionist foreign policy view and in crystallising my understanding of why our solidarity with Christian peoples in Europe was important to the security of Europe, so I take the matter pretty seriously.  I have not written much about Kosovo lately because I haven’t had much to add, and I find the entire scene to be fairly depressing.  As I remember Dr. Fleming once saying, Kosovo was Waco writ large.  As surely as the latter awoke me to the terrible potential of the central government, the bombing of Kosovo made me see our foreign policy’s corruption by poisonous ideology and corrupting lust for domination.  What they did to the Serbs they could and very well might do to Americans some day.  It would not be for the first time. 

Let’s start with part of Rod’s quote from a “prominent journalist” written in response to Spengler’s Asia Times article on Kosovo:

The salient point is that from a CULTURAL point of view, either prospectively or retrospectively, the significance of this 10% is nil. So I genuinely don’t see why you view this as a make or break issue in terms of Western will versus what you persist (baselessly in my view) to call ‘dhimmitude.’

The “prominent journalist” is right that partition of Kosovo will not solve the problem, but simply postpone its resolution to some future date.  The places and sites sacred to Serbian Orthodox Christians will not cease to be sacred to them simply because they have been pillaged and ravaged.  (Incidentally, the April issue of Chronicles, whose cover is covered with images of icons defaced by the KLA and other Albanian vandals, is a great one and concerns itself with the more general problem of Christophobia.)  Kosovoan independence will ensure that whenever conflict does resume, as it almost certainly will, it will be an international war that has the potential to become a much larger conflict.  With that in mind, partition will only be a stopgap measure and one that does not avoid the fundamental problem, which is that NATO has empowered Islamic terrorists in the middle of the Balkans.   

Whether or not the territory of Kosovo and Metohija is divided politically, this fundamental Serbian and more generally Orthodox attachment to Kosovo will remain undiminished.  It is like the attitude of a Frenchman towards Lorraine after 1871, only many times more intense.  It is probably more like the feeling of Armenians about the Van and Sivas regions.  The desirability of partition is that it will at the very least prevent the renewal of conflict in the immediate future, but as I have noted it will not eliminate the causes for future conflict.  From the Serbian perspective, partition of Kosovo is less than optimal for the very reasons that the “prominent journalist” said, which means that any settlement will not be a stable or lasting one.  Partition is acceptable only inasmuch as it protects the current Serbian population of Kosovo, which is certainly desirable in itself, but it remains only the second-best solution to reincorporating Kosovo into Serbia.  However, there is also a far more fundamental question of preserving Serbian sovereignty.  Given that it is possible to avoid both independence and partition, partition also seems undesirable.  James Jatras writes on partition this week:

Under such circumstances, it is unfortunate that suggestions are heard from various quarters that the best outcome for Serbia would be a partition of Kosovo. Indeed, as claimed by James Lyon in the Sorors-financed Belgrade media conglomerate B92, partition is the secret goal of Serbia’s leadership, which—according to Lyon—is rubbing its hands in anticipation of the majority of Serbs’ eradication from Kosovo, so as to have a pretext to keep the area north of the Ibar. All Belgrade’s brave defense of principle, suggests Lyon, is just maneuvering toward that end.

For whatever it is worth, I do not for a minute believe any such nonsense, which smells of a deliberate effort to sow discord and confusion. To start with, even if any such pro-partition intention existed with anyone in the Serbian government, it is hard to credit the secret collusion necessary to achieve such an outcome amid the obvious political rivalries. Thankfully, the current political dynamic is such that each party vying for power must tout its principled stand on Kosovo while ready to pounce on any opponents foolish enough to weaken their commitment to Serbia’s constitutional and territorial integrity. Oddly enough, the current disunity has redounded to Serbia’s advantage. Even those who might wish to sell out have no chance to do so. 

Still, the question of partition now has been raised. I can confirm that there are some in the United States who are not at all hostile to Serbia and have suggested to me that maybe it’s “better to keep something than lose all.” And even some Serbs, perhaps conditioned by years of mind-numbing propaganda that “Kosovo already is lost,” may be tempted to think the same way. So, as we face the last gasp of the West’s failing policy, the disastrous consequences for Serbia of even considering the possibility of partition must be addressed. Both partition and, should it ever be toyed with, a policy of secretly aiming at partition fail as a matter of practicality, of principle, and of political advantage.

As a practical matter, Serbia’s aiming for partition just as the Ahtisaari plan stands on the brink of collapse would be snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If those “friendly” western governments that wish to detach all of Kosovo from Serbia could do so, they would. If they cannot—and it is increasingly clear they cannot—why should Serbia compliment their failure by conceding the majority of what they have failed to seize?

All of this is why intervening on behalf of irredentists and terrorists (or intervening in any war that is not your fight) is generally a bad idea and should be avoided.  To make amends, our government ought not to continue rewarding irredentists and terrorists for their crimes and should also oppose Kosovoan independence. 

Note that I do not use the Albanian propaganda word Kosovar (taken from the Albanian name of the place, Kosova) when describing any of this.  The extent to which ‘Kosovar’ has entered into the standard lexicon of many people concerned this question reveals the pervasive anti-Serbian bias in media coverage of anything related to Kosovo; it is so widespread that people pick it up without realising its origin or its significance.  Kosovar might be a term that could be applied to the Albanian population, since it is an Albanian word, but obviously it makes no sense to refer to “Kosovar Serbs,” unless one wants to privilege Albanian claims to the place.

In one sense, the independence of Kosovo is not the “make or break issue” that presages either the future collapse or the revival and survival of Europe.  The make-or-break moment arguably already occurred when most Europeans and Americans sided with the Bosnian Muslims, the mujahideen imported from Iran and elsewhere and the KLA against the Serbs.  When the might of the West was used to compel Serbs to cede part of their own country to terrorists and Albanian irredentists, the spirit of capitulation and collaboration had already prevailed in many parts of Europe.  There is another sense, however, in which defeating Kosovo independence or at least ensuring partition will be a strong signal that the West has stopped trying to curry favour with Muslims by selling out their civilisational brethren.  Of course, that is probably too much to hope for at this point.  There is yet another way to view the fate of Kosovo as a symbolic turning point related to Europe as a whole: Kosovo’s fate is a warning to the apostles of assimilationism and mass immigration that immigration can be a prelude to full political takeover, and this final takeover often will be achieved through violence if necessary.

The “journalist” continues also said:

As far as Russia goes, incidentally, don’t exaggerate the importance of Kosovo to them (even to the
Patriarchate). That’s what was said during the Kosovo War itself, about Milosevic’s ouster, etc.. These days, if anything, Kosovo is even less significant in terms of Russian policy goals, though you may well be right that they will end up blocking the current independence deal in the UN Security Council. But the idea that in doing so it will be a case of a latter-day Horatius at the bridge seems to me far-fetched.
 

Statements like this puzzle me.  Whether or not the Russian government officials believe in their heart of hearts that they must stand by the Serbs and deeply treasure the “spirit of Kosovo” (I will guess this is probably not true), this is irrelevant because it is entirely consistent with Russian interests concerning their own territorial integrity vis-a-vis Chechnya and other potential breakaway states to oppose the separation of Kosovo from Serbia.  Whether or not Orthodox and Slavic solidarity enter into it, and we cannot entirely discount these things insofar as they may matter to some of the Russian public for symbolic reasons, Realpolitik dictates that the Russians resist the independence of Kosovo.  Washington and Brussels have given Moscow no reason to trust them or to support their meddling in the Balkans then or now, and whether or not this meddling is ultimately aimed at Russia (Spengler says no, I say don’t be so sure) the Russians think that it is, which is the only thing that matters for determining how they will view this matter.  If the Russians received certain guarantees that no one would attempt to detach Chechnya from Russia through similar efforts at the U.N., they might be willing to take a softer line, but to take those guarantees seriously they would have to believe that the West was acting in good faith…which the move to put ballistic missile defense in central Europe makes entirely impossible. 

The “journalist” then concludes:

Incidentally, it is a mark of just how wrong people like Neuhaus, Steyn, and, it seems, yourself are in your ‘Eurabia’ thesis that you’re surprised by the Le Pen story. The truth is that there is so much assimilation (though to say this is not to
underestimate the degree of exclusion and alienation) of Maghrebi immigrants to France that a certain number feel comfortable with Le Pen.

This is absurd.  I’m sure the Muslims quoted in the article citing the 8% of Muslims who will support Le Pen next Sunday are confident that they are assimilated French citizens.  Maybe some of them are.  Perhaps the assimilated Muslims are the only ones backing Le Pen–even so, you almost have to feel sorry for the man quoted in the article saying that Muslim professionals will be able to get proper jobs in a Le Pen regime because Le Pen looks out for French citizens!  It’s difficult to say for sure, but what seems obvious about the Le Pen-Muslim story is that Le Pen has effectively thrown in the demographic and cultural towel and decided to start making a deal with the people he assumes will only become more and more powerful and numerous in the future.  It is smart on his part from a narrow, cynical, political perspective, but it can only confirm the arguments of those warning about Eurabia that the people who might have been relied upon to resist Islamicisation more fiercely than others have given up and sought to make a better deal for themselves.  It may pay off in the short term.  In decades to come, it may be remembered as the moment when French will, strained and weakened by last year’s riots, gave out and paved the way for the gradual Kosovo-isation of southern (and central?) France.

For those interested in a compelling account of the problems with U.S. Balkan policy over the years and the deeper pathologies that drive globalist interventionism, here is an old but excellent piece by Dr. Trifkovic.

Shorter neoconservatism: Culture matters when it vindicates our opposition to domestic policies we wouldn’t have wanted to support anyway, but it is absolutely irrelevant when it undermines the argument for the interventionist foreign policy we want to pursue.

Elsewhere, Ross and The Plank’s Isaac Chotiner notice pundit conflict-of-interest problems, citing the most recent and egregious example of boosterism posing as analysis in Niall Ferguson’s assessment that McCain is the only man up to the challenge of understanding the value of the navy, which might be related to Ferguson’s close ties to McCain.  As a remedy to this sort of unethical punditry, it may be necessary to have the political equivalent of some enormous Henry Blodgett/Merrill Lynch-style scandal of irresponsible flacks boosting for interests in which they have a personal stake.  Just as this sort of unethical stock boosterism contributed to the boom in the late ’90s followed by the implosion of the NASDAQ, which ushered in new rules of public disclosure for analysts on business channels, these pundits are contributing to the creation of a market full of dangerously overbought candidates whose stock can only go down at a rapid rate once their loyalists are no longer able to artificially inflate their value.  In fairness to Ferguson, however, he was flacking for imperialism and war a long time before he joined up with McCain, so there’s a kind of integrity about his unethical behaviour.

I’ll be away from Eunomia for a bit.  Between work that needs to get done and another few weeks of traveling hither and thither, there just isn’t time right now for any more posting.  There should be some interesting things to report from an ISI/Liberty Fund conference up at Mecosta later this week.  We will be talking about federalism and constitutionalism.  Regular posting may resume sometime next month, or perhaps a little sooner, depending on how quickly I can get some things done.  Right now I have to get ready for my Sayat Nova session.   

Update: Ross and Reihan will have lots of interesting things to say while they and Megan McArdle substitute for Andrew Sullivan during his vacation, so go read them while I’m away.

Joshua Cohen and Brink Lindsey rehash liberaltarianism.  Try to stay awake, if you can.  If you’re still awake, Lindsey talks about his book.

I just want to clarify something because I didn’t [by] any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things. ~Tommy Thompson 

Good grief.  Abe Foxman’s talking points are already written for him here.  This is one worthy of Biden.  I mean, what was going through his mind?  There’s something to be said for not trying to lamely pander to every group you speak to in the course of a campaign.  Just consider Romney’s disastrous “patria o muerte” moment down in south Florida as an another example of trying to play to the crowd way too much.  Here’s the thing about ethnic audiences: they know what their traditions are, and they want you, the candidate, to respect them.  They do not want to hear about how you “understand” or “share” their traditions, because, unless you come from that group, you don’t.  Don’t even try to pretend that you do.  It’s embarrassing, and it’s liable to get you a lot of bad press coverage to boot.

In the latest of many gaffe-strewn interviews, she [Segolene Royal] seemed to be blissfully unaware that the Taliban was no longer the official government of Afghanistan. ~Christopher Hitchens

Ms. Royal has been a bit, shall we say, spotty on the campaign trail over the past few months, but with things like this she manages to make Nancy Pelosi look like a savvy foreign policy thinker. 

I have to confess that the French presidential election this time around bores me unusually, even when compared to other uninteresting, predictable European elections of the recent past.  Those who have been following this closely will laugh and say, “This is a very unpredictable race–no one knows what will happen!”  But this isn’t really true. 

It’s true that no one knows who will be the challenger against whom Sarkozy will run in the second round.  It could be Royal, or it could be Le Pen, and it might even be the other guy (who might be winning the all-important Donzy primary in Burgundy), but as we know from the ’02 election it won’t matter much who goes up against Sarkozy, particularly if it is Le Pen.  The Socialists have shown total collapse for the last five years ever since they were knocked out in round one last time, and La France presidente campaign isn’t going to save them.  Bayrou has the novelty factor working in his favour, but has limited party support and doesn’t really tap into the visceral or powerful symbolic issues of the day.  A Sarko-Le Pen showdown could be amusing, if only to see Le Pen take the relatively more pro-Muslim positions of the two of them–what would the multicultis do with that one?  In that event, I look forward to the socialist rallying chants, “Vote for the fascist, not the old fascist!” 

Sarkozy will rally the right around himself if he has to face Royal, who will probably manage to distinguish herself by reenacting the main role of Delacroix’s Liberty Leading The People before it’s all over.  After all, she has shamelessly pandered to every other nationalist symbol she can think of.  If she thought there were enough votes in it, she would probably suggest restoring the Orleanists to the throne, unless that alienated too many of the other monarchists.  In her tawdry flag-waving, Marseillaise-singing and Joan of Arc-loving, she is a bit like Howard Dean with his appeal to Confederate flag owners.  There is nothing wrong with the things she is promoting and embracing (just as there wasn’t actually anything wrong with what Dean proposed), but the lateness and desperation of her embrace have to be embarrassing to the head of her party and father of her children, Francois Hollande.  If Sarko faces Le Pen the entire country (minus 17-18%) will join together in mindless groupthink to “save the Republic” once more.  Of course, the French could surprise us all, but my guess is that the only truly uncertain factor of any interest will be how large Sarkozy’s margin of victory will be and whether that will represent some sort of mandate for his policies.

Now it is difficult to know with any certainty which respondents were ignorant of some of the things asked of them in this latest poll, but one figure stood out for me.  The percentage of Americans who know that “more civilians than troops have died in Iraq” was 69%, which obviously means that this most glaring and obvious fact of the Iraq war is unknown to nearly one-third of the public.  As it happens, roughly one-third of the public still supports the war.  Is it the same one-third?  I don’t know, but it might help explain why there is a singular lack of moral indignation about the slaughter unleashed by this war among war supporters if so many people literally don’t know that a slaughter is going on. 

Add to that the even more appalling figure that only 55% of Americans knew that American killed in the war were approximately 3,000 in number (it is now over 3,300 since the invasion), and it begins to make sense why some people are so unimpressed by the outraged opposition to the war.  If huge numbers of Americans don’t know how many soldiers have died, but believe for some reason that more soldiers than civilians have died in Iraq, it isn’t hard to imagine how those people could convince themselves to stick with Mr. Bush through thick and thin–after all, it’s not that bad right now, so why wouldn’t they? 

Update: It doesn’t exact inspire me with confidence that a full 7% of the public believes that Mikhail Gorbachev is still in power.  Have these people been living in a cave?  Oddly enough, more people knew Gorbachev was in charge of the USSR when he actually was in charge than now know that Putin is the President of Russia.  Fewer Americans (68%) know that we have a trade deficit today than in 1989 (81%), yet our trade deficit today is worse than it was then.  One would think that the imbalance of trade, along with other ills of the free-trading regime, would be something that more people know about than they used to, but that isn’t the case.

My traffic rankings in the UAE and Egypt are excellent, and my readers from there evidently currently constitute almost one-fifth of my readership.  Is it the result of all the Nawal al-Zoghbi links I have been putting up lately?  I don’t know.

Mickey [Kaus] now spends his energies primarily defending the furthest extremes of right-wing culture. ~Andrew Sullivan

It is true that Mickey Kaus will defend Ann Coulter, much to the aggravation of his fellow liberals, but it is exceedingly difficult to credit that he “primarily” works on defending the extremes of “right-wing culture.”  I have watched a fair number of his exchanges on bloggingheads, and for someone supposedly preoccupied with vindicating right-wingers he spends remarkably little time talking about them.  First of all, he probably wouldn’t even be familiar with what those extremes are, or if he were familiar with them he would probably strongly disagree with them.  What did Kaus do that made Sullivan flip out (again)?  He said that Paul Krugman made an unconvincing argument–specifically about the alleged “Christian hack” problem in the federal government generally and the Justice Department specifically.  In essence, Krugman cites a few Christians serving at Justice and NASA who act like, well, Christians.  They disapprove of Lawrence v. Texas (as would any decent 10th Amendment supporter)!  They cite Scripture!  They think that a cosmological theory is a cosmological…theory!  For their next trick, they might start praying.  These were the best Krugman could come up with? 

The first one about Lawrence is bound to set Sullivan off, and probably not because he believes that the Court’s ruling was carefully argued and impeccably supported by precedent.  There is not one instance in the Krugman column that demonstrates that the people in question were actually unqualified for their positions or that they gave their religion priority over what their work required–unless you believe, as Krugman does, that disagreeing with the Lawrence decision more than any other in the last 20 years (personally, I would have gone with either Casey or Kelo) is automatically proof of your lack of qualification for a job in the Justice Department.  But to acknowledge this wouldn’t back up Sullivan’s far-fetched story that “the Christianists are coming!”  So he has to go into overdrive and declare that Kaus is carrying water for Christianists…because that makes a lot of sense.  Then again, this is the guy who thought that The Weekly Standard existed to promote religious fundamentalism.

What does Kaus actually say?  He wrote:

I’m not saying theocratic incompetents from the “700 Club” aren’t fanning out through the government. Maybe they are. I’m saying Paul Krugman is not convincing on this issue.  He doesn’t even seem to be trying to be convincing. Why should he try? There’s always been a market for anti-hick editorializing in the New York Times, especially anti-Southern-hick editorializing….Krugman’s select Times readers aren’t exactly going to demand rigor when it comes to attacking Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell.

Indeed.  We saw much the same thing in The New York Times Magazine just a little while ago when Gary Rosen, editor of Commentary, took the easy route in mocking religious conservatives, praising the atheist-cons who were rebelling against them and approving of the divorcees and secular men leading the Republican pack at the time, reserving especially unfounded insults (“authoritarian bullies”) for the Concerned Women of America. 

Now, it’s true that Larry Kudlow, for instance, has made an entire career out of saying that Paul Krugman makes unconvincing arguments (I exaggerate a little), but saying that Paul Krugman isn’t making a very good argument is a tiny bit different from “primarily” focusing on “defending the furthest extremes of right-wing culture.”

This was good to see.

Update: It is also worth noting that today Pope Benedict shares a birthday with my mother.  Happy Birthday, Mom!