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Is Bush applying his Iraq policy to Bosnia?
After 12 years, the U.S. is apparently seeking to undo the 1995 Dayton Accords whereby Bosnia was divided into a Croatian-Muslim entity (the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which in turn is divided into Croatian and Muslim cantons) and a Serb entity, with the two entities under a formally unified Bosnian sovereignty. In reality the two entities are self-governing and their common border is patrolled by an international peace keeping force, including several thousand U.S. troops, that initially was only supposed to be there for one year but has become permanent, as the only way to prevent renewed violence between the Serbs and Muslims. The real solution all along was to dispense with the fiction of a single Bosnian state and allow the two Bosnian entities to split off into separate sovereignties with real international borders between them, making the peacekeepers unnecessary. But that solution conflicted with the U.S. policy, started by President Clinton and continued under President Bush, of forcing multicultural “solutions”—and thus endless unrest—on foreign countries. And now, far from allowing partition, the U.S. is moving in the opposite direction. According to a NewsMax report, the Bush administration has summoned the Bosnian Serb prime minister Milorad Dodik to Washington and is pressuring him to merge his government into that of the majority Bosnian Muslims. I don’t see how this could have any result other than a recommencement of the murderous ethnic warfare that was brought to an end by the Dayton Accords. But it would be wonderfully consistent with President Bush’s stance in Iraq. What do I mean by this? Let us start with the general rule, frequently referenced at VFR, that the institutions of a society tend over time to conform themselves to whatever is the highest principle of that society. Logically, the same applies to a nation’s foreign policy. Iraq for the last four years has been the centerpiece of America’s foreign policy. In Iraq, we destroyed a despotic regime that had kept the Shi’ites and Sunnis from killing each other. In the name of pluralist democracy, we then forced the two peoples into a single, self-governing entity. And as a result they began killing each other, big time. Based on the rule that all aspects of a nation’s foreign policy will tend over time to conform with its highest foreign policy, our management of Bosnia must follow the pattern of our management of Iraq. Since we have forced the totally incompatible Shi’ites and Sunnis of Iraq into a unitary “democratic” state that makes ethnic warfare inevitable, the Bush administration must have felt compelled to do the same in Bosnia. However, the guiding principle here does not ultimately derive from our Iraq policy but from our domestic policy. Through our embrace of non-discriminatory mass immigration since 1965 we have turned America into a mix of incompatible peoples, who, we devoutly insist, can all live together as one. We have hinged our identity—our very sense of being good and decent people—on the success of this mad experiment. Far from admitting its failures, we must push ever harder for its expansion. Thus the “Comprehensive” National Suicide Act now being debated in the U.S. Senate. Furthermore, since the forcing together of mutually incompatible peoples into a single democratic state is now America’s organizing principle, we naturally applied the same principle to Iraq, and are now seeking to apply it to Bosnia as well.
Maureen C. writes:
You have outdone yourself. Brilliant analysis. I wish it could appear on the front page of every newspaper in the country. Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 26, 2007 06:48 AM | Send Email entry |