Clinton, the Balkans, and al Qaeda

The Bosnian story mentioned below touches on an important historical issue.

Police also confirmed they are keeping close tabs on dozens of mujahedeen _ Islamic fighters who came to Bosnia to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 war. Although most left for other conflicts in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and elsewhere, some stayed and married local women.

The vast majority of Bosnia's Muslims rejects the mujahedeen's fiery brand of Islam. Yet young, restless men frustrated with 40 percent joblessness and angered by real or perceived insults to Islam can be open to hard-line dogma, the Prague-based think tank Transitions Online said in a recent report.

And

The U.S.-Croatian report says infiltration actually dates back long before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. It says Islamic militants with ties to al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations have been crisscrossing the Balkans for more than 15 years, financed in part with cash from narcotics smuggling and coming from Afghanistan and points further east via Turkey, Kosovo and Albania.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, evidence has emerged that extremists have been trying to carve out a beachhead in the Balkans. The region is home to 8 million Muslims, roughly a third of Europe's Islamic faithful, and arms and explosives are easily obtained in what Lukac calls "a kind of El Dorado" for criminals.

When Clinton went to war against the Serbs, he brought the US into a tacit alliance with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. That was not his intention, but it was the messy reality given the facts on the ground. It is one more reason why the Balkan war was not the clear-cut Good War II that CNN thought it was.

Let's also be clear on this. CNN covered the Balkans with all the objectivity that Hearst displayed in Cuba in 1898.