AGIM CEKU AND THE INVITATION
TO ADDRESS A U.S. MILITARY
ACADEMY GRADUATING CLASS
OR HOW TO SELF-DEFEAT THE
WAR AGAINST TERROISM: AN
OPEN LETTER
R.K.Kent, Historian
Daniel Serwer of the USIP reports that an Albanian named Agim Ceku will be
the keynote speaker at the Citadel Military Academy which has two Albanian
cadets and a second pro-Albanian speaker. The invitation originated
apparently in the current State Department, under Secretary Rice. As a
supporter of free speech , the present writer would defend Agim Ceku's
freedom to express his views before any audience despite the knowledge that
Agim Ceku is a documented war criminal. The objection is to the invitation
itself. As the saying goes "the devil is in the details" and herewith are
just some.
A former officer in the Yugoslav Army, which he deserted in 1991, Ceku has
a long and documented record of the most gruesome kind. In Gospic in 1991 he
was in-charge of the murder of 156 prominent Serb civilians. Two years
later, he did the same to about 200 Serb civilians in the Medock area. In
the same year of 1993, he was one of the two or three top commanders in the
Croatian Army's blitzkrieg, called "Oluja" (Storm)resulting in some 250,000
Serbs "ethnically cleansed" from Krajina (border area of Croatia accorded
centuries earlier to Serb settlers-defenders against the Ottoman Turks by
its Imperial Rulers ). Over 5000 of the elderly Serbs were killed as well,
properties were looted and many Orthodox Christian Churches were
torched. .The Croatian Army was trained by Retired U.S. Officers for the
"Oluja." It led to some bonding with Ceku, without regard to his past.
Nonetheless, the Hague Tribunal could not flagrantly avoid placing him
under its indictment as his record is entirely OPEN.
Subsequently, Ceku became the commanding "general" of the so-called
"Kosovo Liberation Army" (KLA or UCK locally) at the time when NATO decided
to attack "the Serbs" at Kosovo and in Serbia proper. The KLA, despite
all of the propaganda in the West on its behalf, began as a terrorist
organization doing exactly what the "insurgents" are doing in Iraq today ,
namely murdering Albanian "collaborators" and Serb policemen. The KLA was
"cleansed" at the bogus "peace conference" at Rambouillet as a state
co-equal with Yugoslavia. Its representatives were persuaded by Madeleine
Albright and General Wesley Clark to sign a document which did not give
Kosovo quite its independence but which was ardently sought in order to
initiate the bombing of Serb military targets at Kosovo and, later, the Serb
civilians and infrastructure in Serbia proper. This was the prelude to
"Madeleine's War " (see THE TIMES issue with this title).
(2)
Since NATO "liberated" Kosovo and placed it under the UN, the KLA under
Ceku, has been involved in endless kidnappings, murders and expulsions of
what was left of the Serb population at Kosovo. Some 200,000 Serbs managed
to flee to Serbia, but a few thousand were less fortunate. There is a vast
documentation of crimes against the Serbs at Kosovo since it went under the
UN control.
It is not too difficult to unravel the motives and links which led to Ceku's
invitation to come to the U.S. Secretary Rice is a close friend of former
Secretary Albright whose father provided help for Rice's dissertation
on the Soviet Generals. Rice's predecessor favored the KLA but, what is
closer to the present, the KLA is dissatisfied with the length of time it is
taking to finally yank away Kosovo, Serbia's birthplace, from "the Serbs."
The Pentagon does not wish to see an already threatened Albanian KLA
"Blowback," as its forces are too thinly deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq
already, as the home-spun volunteers are drying up and while the same people
who got us into the Iraqi mess fear
nothing more deadly in the political sense than the draft. The invitation
to Ceku is thus perceived as both good pro-Albanian PR and Real Politik.
Therein lies the key and much greater problem.
If we prop-up and promote one group of foreign terrorists against someone
we had opposed (and no longer should, having punished enough) how can we
ever come to hope
to secure any solid external support for our own fight against terrorists
and terrorism? Just before we went into Iraq, its Foreign Minister and the
sole Christian in Saddam's Cabinet, Tariq Azziz, warned us that we are
"walking into a quagmire." We did not listen.
After the lengthy reporton 911, Lee Hamilton coined an immortal and apt
phrase "We just did not get it." The State Department, under the current
Secretary, may well be writing our own epitaph by turning one terrorist
(Gen. Agim Ceku) into a freedom-fighter and accusing the one who
defends the civilian population in the same area(Gen. Lukic) as a "war
criminal."
In fact, we are not "getting it." The so called "Balkan Victory" proclaimed
by the Clinton Administration is a sham, an exercise in "virtual reality"
which is the one thread that has led to the demise of all empires in
history, the thread of self-delusion.
7.V.2005
Serbian News Network - SNN
[email protected]
http://www.antic.org/
