I have no problem with NATO, and I think it’s appropriate the US stays involved without civilizational peers in Europe. But NATO is supposed to be a defensive alliance, and it’s retarded to have it involved in the internal affairs of Serbia, even if it “keeps the alliance together.”

I’m also not so sure what we get out of it anymore, since Europe is so piss poor at power projection.

Not sure it has done us much good.

I’ve lived in a Muslim country, Turkey, and I can tell you that when the Balkan wars come up in conversation, there are two, near-universal impressions of America’s repsonse.

The first is an utter lack of awareness that US ever did anything to intervene on befalf of the Bosnians or Kosovar Albanias. I’ve actually had to explain to university-educated Turks that the US took military action against the Serbs. Apparently, they’d never heard of this, or they simply pretended that they’d never heard of it.

If they do acknowledge that such a campaign occured, the predominant reaction is that the US stood by and watched as countless Muslims were slaughtered, and then only intervened at the last minute, and only to serve the cynical purposes of the US. In other words, the US was complicit in an anti-Muslim genocide, which it then pretended to oppose once the bulk of the killing had been done.

Bear in mind that people form these opinions without having read anything about the subject, or at least anything that might contradict their preconceptions. “Don’t confuse me with the facts,” is more or less the a priori assumption. Lest we feel to sorry for ourselves as Americans, this is the way they form opinions about everything. And here, I’m not speaking of the common man, but of the educated, professional class.

Leaving aside for a moment the wisdom of having interevened in the Kosovo conflict, it was certainly a failure as a foreign policy ploy. The people who formulate our theories about how to manipulate public opinion in foreign nations are, it seems to me, absolutely detached from any awareness of how public opinion is actually formed in these places.

Karen Hughes, this gangly, androgynous Texan, and her “women-should-be-driving” Saudi Arabian tour. My god, we really are led by a cadre of Sunday school teachers and circus clowns.