Via Some Mysterious and Unknowable Means, the Balkans are Now Safer than Western Europe

The AP has posed a bit of a mystery today around a bit of very good news about the Balkans.

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) – A United Nations report released Thursday says the Balkans, a region once known as a hotbed of crime and violence, has become one of the safest zones in Europe.

“The vicious circle of political instability leading to crime, and vice versa, that plagued the Balkans in the 1990s has been broken,” said Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, which compiled the report.

Gosh, I wonder what could have been responsible for that? Maybe the AP will be helpful enough to remind us. Let’s first see where the problems in that region centered.

The bloody breakup of former Yugoslavia—the worst carnage in Europe since World War II—left the entire region in turmoil throughout the 1990s.

The report says that the levels of crime against people and property, like homicide, robbery, rape, burglary and assault, are now lower in the Balkans than in Western Europe.

“The Balkans is departing from an era when demagogues, secret police and thugs profited from sanctions busting, and the smuggling of people, arms, cigarettes and drugs,” the report says, in an apparent reference to the former Yugoslavia during the warmongering rule of its late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic.

Milosevic…Milosevic. I know I’ve heard that name before. But where, and in what context?

I know he died while on trial for war crimes, but how did he get there? Hmmm…

I vaguely recall something about a President, acting on reports of genocide and concerned for our security and that of our allies, unilaterally defying the will of the UN, chiding a coalition of the willing composed mostly of reluctant NATO allies into sending soldiers and support personnel, and going to war in the former Yugoslavia.

Indeed, US troops are still in Kosovo, some eight years after we went to war there.

Not that any of that got mentioned in the article at all. It’s as if some miracle has just happened and all the thugs and criminals that were running the former Yugoslavia just popped their umbrellas and flew away into the sunset like Mary Poppins. Of course, if you’re a woman in Kosovo, you just might still be in danger from being roped into a UN Peacekeeper-run brothel, which is another little fact the AP didn’t quite get around to mentioning either.

I guess it seems like a long investment in securing a country so a democratic government can build a safer and more stable country isn’t such a bad idea at all. It’s a shame that neither the UN nor the AP could apparently give any credit to the warmongering Bill Clinton and the United States Military. There is no doubt that without them the Balkans would not be as safe and stable as it is today. Alas, if they admit that, then they must admit that the very same result is not only possible but actually occurring in Iraq. That would mean giving George Bush some credit for doing something right, which simply must not be done.

But hey, guys. We know the score.

You’re welcome.

Other Posts of Interest:

• What They Share is Blood on Their Hands
• Did Rush Call for Riots in Denver? Uhh….No.
• The White House Strikes Back

Tags: Bill Clinton, Kosovo, Media Bias

Category: No More Tyrants, Oh, THAT liberal media.