Will American Empire End Before It Ends the World? By Paul Craig Roberts

[Joanne98]

February 24, 2008

The hypocrisy of US government officials is boundless. On February 18, the US government inflamed Serbians by recognizing Muslim separatists in Kosovo, a historic province of Serbia, as an independent country. Two hundred thousand Serbs marched in protest and the US embassy in Belgrade was damaged. Is this surprising? No, not unless you are an official in the American Empire. The notorious Empire Neocon Counsel, Azlmay Khalilzad, Bush’s representative to the UN, declared: “I’m outraged by the mob attack.”

What’s an embassy building compared to a province of Serbia, a province that stirs nationalist sentiments associated with the Serbs’ long military struggles with the Turks? Had it not been for the Serbs, Europeans would probably be Turks.

To neocon Khalilzad a province of Serbia is nothing. It is merely real estate to be given away by US recognition bestowed on a break-away movement led by what some consider to be a gang of Muslim drug runners.

Secretary of State Condi Rice also found the Serbian response to the US giving away part of their country to be “intolerable.”

Former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke also sees no reason for the Serbs to be upset that America gave away part of their country. He explained away the Serbian protests by declaring: “The Russians are behind this.”

We can understand why US diplomacy is a failure when we see our diplomats explaining that, had it not been for the Russians stirring them up, Serbians wouldn’t have noticed the loss of a historic part of their country.

Perhaps Kosovo should have its independence. However, the US government could not have handled the issue in a more provocative way.

Washington has been interfering in Serbian internal affairs since the Clinton administration. Told that Americans had to prevent genocide, few paid enough attention to Washington’s facilitation of the breakup of the Yugoslav state during the 1990s and to the Clinton administration’s bombing and murder of Serbian civilians in order to support Muslim separatists in Kosovo in 1999. Clinton used NATO as cover, but the bombing campaign was not backed by the UN Security Council. Bombs fell on Serbia for 78 days, taking out public infrastructure, bridges, factories, power stations, petrochemical plants, telecommunications facilities, markets, refugees, the Chinese Embassy and a passenger train. “Sorry honey, tell the kids I won’t be home tonight. President Clinton decided to bomb my train.” Cluster bombs and depleted uranium were used. Clearly, the US government and its NATO puppets were guilty of war crimes under the Nuremberg standard.
http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/will-american-empire-end-before-it-ends-the-world-by-paul-craig-roberts/

[liberal N proud]

1. If the fundies have their way, the end of the world would come

under the reign of King bu$h

[ConcernedCanuk]

2. The American Empire WILL end b4 it ends the World, but the Empire will do a lot of damage

.
.
.

They's gonna be sore losers, and unleash hell for a while;

But they WILL lose.

Empires do that.

Every time.

[CTyankee]

3. You are so right. There are a lot of similarities of Bush's ill fated campaign in

Iraq and even the 5th century bce Peloponnesian War, where democratic Athens finally lost to autocratic Sparta. We should read Thucydides' "The History of the Peloponnesian War" and weep.