And What an Achievement It Was!

Now that the good old unattainable "standards before status" policy for Kosovo seems to have been jettisoned, as I more or less predicted it would be years ago, the Bush Administration is fumbling toward the inevitability of an independent Kosovo in a hurried desire to placate the seething Albanian majority.

The Democrats have been able to get in some digs, though. Reports the IHT:

"...Clinton administration officials, particularly former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, have suggested that the Bush administration was averse to trying to build on an achievement of the Clinton years, namely the bombing of Serbia and the setting up of Kosovo as a semi-independent protectorate."

Nonsense. Why would they need to "build on" on such an "achievement" when they've been overachieving more than enough already in Afghanistan and Iraq?

It's amazing how sheer terror can change the minds of even the most powerful. What used to be an unflinching policy of no independence until you've learned to behave has been downgraded to "hopes": the US apparently believes now in "...discussing the future status of Kosovo simultaneously with improvements in its democratic standards, with the hope that the improvement can become an incentive for achieving independence."

In other words, what we're talking about here is purchasing the province on moral credit - which, while the Western powers may protest otherwise, no one is planning to stay round long enough to collect.