This morning, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who eulogized Colin Powell last year, is scheduled to be eulogized by President Joe Biden and Bill and Hillary Clinton at the National Cathedral.
SAM HUSSEINI, samhusseini@gmail.com, @
Communications director for the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini just wrote the piece “Albright’s Funeral — The Sword and the Cross Come Together” on his Substack. He said today: “Albright’s policies of expanding NATO, bombing Yugoslavia and falsely claiming that the bombing of the Chinese embassy there was not intentional helped set the stage for the extraordinarily dangerous situation now with Russia and China, despite recent claims from the Clintons. These policies may have actually helped lead to the rise of Vladimir Putin — he was given an elevated position by then-President Boris Yeltsin just after the bombing of Yugoslavia started in March of 1999. Albright helped deceive the public regarding the negotiations with Yugoslavia at Rambouillet, setting them up to fail to justify the bombing.
“Regarding Iraq, some are aware that she said the price of hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqi children was ‘worth it,’ but even more insidious was her forcing a policy which maintained the sanctions regardless of the Iraqi government’s actions. This led to massive suffering, and ultimately, to the destruction of the UNSCOM weapons inspection regime. It also set the stage for the ultimate invasion of Iraq by her successor and friend, Colin Powell. And it helped propel an era where sanctions, which frequently target civilians, are quickly utilized. Albright worked hand in glove with Biden and the Clintons in all this, when the credibility of any were scrutinized, each would back up the other, regardless of the facts.”
JAMES CARDEN, james.carden@gmail.com
Columnist for the Asia Times and a former U.S. State Department advisor. He said today: “If President Clinton’s major mistake with regard to Russia was pushing NATO expansion, a close runner up would be his policy toward the former Yugoslavia. It was in this area that Clinton failed to take heed of the warning his predecessor Bush issued in Kiev on August 1, 1991 regarding ‘suicidal nationalism.’ It indeed might be fair to say that Clinton’s policy towards Serbia set the stage for what we are now seeing in Ukraine.
“The Clinton administration’s bombing of Serbia 1999 set the template for what George W. Bush attempted in Iraq, and, later, what Barack Obama attempted in Libya and Syria. In the absence of U.N. sanction, Clinton launched a 78-day bombardment of Serbia, ostensibly undertaken to prevent what was said to be the looming slaughter of Albanian Kosovars by Serbian forces.
“Kosovo, and later American interventions in Iraq, Syria, Libya, combined with the American-sponsored ‘color revolutions’ in Eastern Europe in the 2000s, all fed Russian president Putin’s paranoia about American intentions — and his fears of American-sponsored regime change in Moscow. As the novelist Joseph Heller once wrote: ‘Just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.’
“Russia’s reaction to Clinton’s policy, particularly with regard to its illegal war on Belgrade helped to feed the crisis from the other end: It is useful to recall that the precedent for Russia’s unilateral recognition of the breakaway republics of Dontesk and Luhansk was set by the U.S. in February 2008 when the it recognized the independence of Kosovo.
“To the end, Albright took immense, if perverse pride in her role in violently carving out a footprint for Saudi Arabia in the middle of Europe. In 2012, a small group of Serbians, who, after all, were the targets of the American aerial assault in 1999, showed up to protest Albright’s appearance at a bookstore in Prague in 2012. Albright arrogantly shouted ‘Get out disgusting Serbs!’ before slithering away from the protestors.”
