SUC Do-Nothing Congress
From: William Dorich I do not know you personally and I do not want you to misread the following or take this as a personal attack. As someone who spent nearly all of his life savings on trying to lobby for the Serbs by creating SAVA, (The Serbian American Voters Alliance in 1989) the ONLY Serbian lobby in Washington, I speak from experience and pain. SUC deserves to fail as from the outset it lied to the Serbs in this country. Your organization was never a lobby, you were a "non-profit" organization that pretended to be a lobby and most naive Serbians in this country did not comprehend the difference. Your members met with high ranking elected officials in direct violation of the laws. Even the dumb Serbian church office was established and spent tens of thousands of dollars when we warned them it would failed for obvious political reasons. But you can't tell our priests anything either. They thought they knew more than expert politicians and public relations experts and would take no advice from any of them. It was disgraceful and demeaning for one of our priests to head a political office. Saving the only Serbian lobby on the hill was within the grasp of SUC and your former president sold his banking interest in Serbia for tens of millions of dollars and had an opportunity to buy SAVA from me and David Vuich for as little as $350,000 the amount owed to the two of us for our personal investment in SAVA, a corporation that remains in "suspension." The Justice Department and the State Department said "NO NEW SERBIAN LOBBY can be established in Washington until the Serbian War Criminals are brought to justice." But everyone in SUC was smarter then David and I and you simply would not listen to logic in buying our lobby and taking it out of suspension by merely filing past annual reports since the bombing in 1999 when I placed the corporation in suspension as its president. There would be no way for the Justice or State Department to stop placing SAVA back into operation as the legal lobby that was established in 1989. We still have a board of directors. But Serbs are too bull headed to listen. Instead SUC treated us like pariah and discounted our knowledge, experience and involvement in Washington politics because SUC knew best. Well you did not know best and at every turn you poked a stick in the eye of everyone who wanted to help the Serbs. Now you need to make this sorry appeal to survive because there was never any process within SUC to educate the Serbian diaspora about the urgent need of a Serbian lobby and how we were being out spent and out foxed at every turn by the Croatians who spent over $40 million dollars to obtain their independence and the Bosnian Muslims who spent another $75 million gaining their independence. Meanwhile the Serbs could not rub ten dinar together, what a disgrace. I can assure you after a decade of involvement in the Serbian Diaspora that raising a million dollars for anything is next to impossible. Expecting naive Serbs to contribute even $500,000 for your effort reveals the total lack of understanding Washington politics. More than $30 million per year is needed to counter what our enemies have done to us. And the sorry aspect this willful lack of concern is that the next generation of Serbs will suffer from our apathy. All I ever got was "At a boy Bill...go get um" from Serbs with a big mouth and an empty pocket. These were the same Serbs who buy a round of drinks for a dozen Serbs at a banquet to impress their friends but won't give you $20 for starving refugees and that includes refugees who managed to escape and could care less about those they left behind. The SNF pulled one of the most disgraceful stunts even seen when they called me to a meeting in Washington after they had secretly filed papers the day before with the Justice and State Department that presented a new "Board of Directors" and a new name for SAVA. My attorney threatened everyone of those bastards with a law suit for this illegal act and eventually each of them signed a letter admitting their guilt. If stealing an American corporation is accomplished by simply filing phony paperwork and naming a fictitious board of directors then I want to take over Microsoft by using these same sleazy tactics. George Martic, a banker by profession and president of the SNF at the time, knew full well that what he and the other dozen from the SNF were doing was illegal but that did not stop them from this ugly charade. In the end David Vuich and I still own the SAVA corporation. And now you know why I stopped writing for the American Srbobran. Being in the publishing business for the past 23 years I can count on my fingers and toes how many Serbs bought books I published like Kosovo, Kosovo Crisis, Media Cleansing and Suppressed Serbian Voice. Too many Serbs were more concerned that I would "get rich" instead of creating best sellers on the New York Times list that would have enlightened a stupid public about Serbian politics and how we were being demonized. At St. Steven Cathedral in Alhambra California one of the richest Serbian churches in this country, I have sold a grand total of 37 books over the past decade. Shame on us for being this arrogant and this ill informed. Or are Serbs merely intellectually challenged? It always angered me when SUC would hold convention meetings on Sunday mornings with a total disregard that church services were taking place in these cities. You thumbed your nose at those of us who respect our Christian heritage. Too many in SUC still harbor the ideas of Communist upbringing and pretending to be defenders of our ethnic heritage which always appeared as some kind of sick joke. I paid thousands of dollars to hold a press conference at the National Press Club to announce Peter Brock's book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, I could count on two hands how many Serbs showed up to support this effort. And we wonder why we are outfoxed by our enemies? Brock has lost a 30 year career for defending the Serbs. He has not been able to find gainful employment as a journalist since publishing this powerful book, and he has been blacklisted by the media and we Serbs thank him by buying less than 3,000 copies of his book. What a shameful display of Serbian gratitude and apathy, especially since there are 1.5 million Serbs in this country, enough to keep Media Cleansing on the best seller list for months. But we are too arrogant to comprehend that our ego is less important than our survival as a race. SUC is such an accurate description for an organization that "sucked" from the outset. Too many of your members were too ignorant to row this boat in only one direction. A Serbian friend once joked that if you put ten Serbs in a room you will have ten presidents. I wonder some time how we managed to defeat the Nazis since there were so many "Serbian generals" and so few Serbian patriots willing to fight and die to defend our people. In these recent Balkan wars we discovered what a cowardly race we have become. It was this exact same Serbian stupidity that caused a bill in the House to fail when David Vuich, Major Felman, and Representative Philip Crane among others tried to build a monument to Draza Mihailovich in Washington DC with private funds. The stupid Serbs in Chicago demanded a full hearing but David had already gotten the votes to move it through Congress without any hearings. But no! Those Serbs who never set foot in Washington knew better than the experts by demanded a hearing, and they got one, in which angry Croatians came and fought in the hall ways and got Lawrence Eagleberger to stop the hearing and the vote to build the monument failed. Don't expect a check from me to save SUC, I have never been a member because I always believed the organization lacked political expertise in addition to a total lack of political will. Time and again you have shot yourselves in the foot while stepping on each other, it was a shameful display of ignorance and arrogance. Even some of the elected officials who joined your so-called "Serbian Caucus" voted against you, a betrayal that reveals how really shallow your experience was in Washington. Roasting Lamb on a weekend when nearly every member of the House and Senate go home for the holiday showed how out of touch your members were in organizing such events. I feel sorry for the innocent Serbs who believed that American Serbs would come to their aid when too many of your SUC leaders were more interested in lining their pockets or were getting in line for the great rebuilding give-away in Serbia where they could really steal big bucks. I apologize for being so offensive, but unfortunately it has to be said and heard! William Dorich Los Angeles
