Sunday February 16, 2008 the Kosovo region of southern Serbia declared its independence from that state. The move prompted great fanfare from the ethnic Albanians who make up the region and stark horror from the nation of Serbia.

What is interesting to me is that despite the USs War on Terror the Bush Administration has backed the move by the Kosovo Parliament. The Prime Minister of the new Kosovo state, Hashim Thaci has been accused of being a terrorist and is/was the head of the Kosovo Liberation Army at one time. The KLA is defined as a terrorist organization by both the United States and the United Nations. (And here we are helping them.) Cheering us along is the usual band of western super powers  namely the French and the British.

The list of people opposed to this declaration is much longer: Greece, Russia, Spain and Serbia just to name a few.

To back history up a little bit, Kosovo was the region that NATO got involved in during the late 1990s. Reports were coming out that the fighting between the Kosovo Liberation Army and Serb security forces was getting out of control. There were stories of terrible things happening on both sides  of Serb Security Forces killing innocents and KLA thugs doing the same. Some of these stories were false. Some of them were exaggerated. This is to be expected of two peoples locked in bitter conflict. The only thing that can really be said for sure is that millions of noncombatants on both sides were fleeing for their lives.

NATO entered the conflict and drove the Serb forces out of the region before moving in to take control themselves. Civilian Serbs fearing their Albanian neighbors they thought would do bad things since they would now have the upper hand. The Serb population was supposed to be encouraged to come back, but instead it dwindled.

UN peacekeepers were brought in to manage the situation. I guess it was believed that the region should be governed by a neutral third party. And it has been this way for the past 9 years.

All of this noted, I think there is a bad precedent being set here. If I remember correctly, Serbia allowed UN peacekeepers into the region partly on the agreement that Kosovo would remain a part of Serbia. They have just been lied too. Now every UN Peacekeeping force that moves in to an area will be looked at with suspicion. And it is understandable why.

Its also kind of nasty of Kosovo to declare its independence while hiding behind international forces that are not supposed to be involved in such conflicts. There is real potential for people who are truly are third party in this fiasco to be injured/hurt in a war that is truly not theirs.

Then you have to factor in the fact that just about every nation on Earth has populations looking to break away from the nations theyre a part of  including the United States, France and England.

How can the United States welcome a nation like Kosovo while denying the Kurds of North Iraq a homeland?

This is going to turn in to a very large mess that will drag on for years in to the future.

Jeremy Meister graduated with a Bachelor's degree in History from the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1998 and a Bachelor's degree in Media Production from Missouri State University at Springfield in 2005. He is also a film director, producer and author of over seven feature length screenplays including 'Hollow Dogs' and 'Epic: the Flames of Summer', as well as owning his own film company LWC Productions. Jeremy is the former host and producer of the Conservative internet radio program "The Tzimisce Show". Presently he is a producer for Hansen and Cokin, Last Man Standing, The Clubhouse, Showerless and Mr. Sunshine as well The Las Vegas 51's baseball games at Lotus Broadcasting (AM 1460 and AM 920 - check out the streams at LVRocks.com). Contact him at LWC_Productions@hotmail.com or at www.myspace.com/tzimiscechi or at www.dndorks.com or at TownHall.com. Art for the People:dndorks.com/forums/thread/790122.aspx