Our Sorry Record?

Milan Markovic, a graduate student at New York University, is saddened that America has not rebuilt countries after toppling brutal dictators and has not reimbursed them for lost income after we attacked? He took his whining to the Canadian Globe and Mail. You see, he doubts America will rebuild Iraq after we overthrow Saddam. Although he groans a bit about the failure to have turned Afghanistan into a first world information age suburban country in the eight months since we toppled the Taliban, he saves most of his ire for complaints that Yugoslavia has not been lavished with aid. Yugoslavia, torn asunder and then set afire by the Serbian lunatics who tried to butcher anyone within reach (they called it "ethnic cleansing"), has not been rewarded. How awful can America get? Attack the Serbs twice in one decade to keep them from slaughtering civilians and this is our best we can do to atone for our sins? What does Milan think this is? A replay of The Mouse that Roared?

Why do I get the impression that Markovic believes the Serbs are victims, and he sees fellow victims on the Tigris and Euphrates? Yes, he probably still pines for the days when Serbian nationalists stood up to the lone superpower. Ah yes, those were the days! When Serbs and Iraqis swapped tips on how to down American warplanes. My response is, in a word (ok, two): "Bite me." Milan should thank God every day that we did not invade and shoot every genocidal maniac in Serbia who thought it was fun and easy to kill Moslems in Bosnia and Kosovo. The Serbs are getting off easy, we just had to bomb Serbia into submission. They get to send Slobo and a couple henchmen to stand in for them all at the war crimes tribunal and go on their merry way. The Iraqis should be so lucky. Saddam is more thorough and brutal than Slobodan Milosevic, however, so instead we will likely need to march on Baghdad. We’ll help them Milan. I mean aside from overthrowing a dictator. We’ll buy all the oil the Iraqis want to sell us and they can rebuild a whole heck of a lot on their own.