America and Albania, alliteration buddies

February 6, 2003 8:34 PM

Our stalwart ally ... Albania? When there is much to be concerned about with America's relations with other nations, it's a relief to see that America and Albania can work together militarily after they spent 45 years aligned against the US. What a difference a few decades could make in foreign relations.
posted by RobbieFal (7 comments total)

Well, yeah.. remember a little thing called "Kosovo"? We went in there to protect the ethnic albanians. Obviously this would make the Albianians that live next door in Albania, happy. :)
posted by benh57 at 10:41 PM on February 6, 2003

oh yeah.. Kosovo didn't seem to be as direct as these exercises.

But if you believe the 'Kosovo revisionists', Milosevic isn't too bad, Clinton is a war criminal, the people in Kosovo are Al-Qaida terrorists and we should have let the Serbs do as they wished with them.

It seems that the years 1999 thru 2000 are sorta a haze
posted by RobbieFal at 10:56 PM on February 6, 2003

Man, I am still sad about Sgt. Shoeman's tragic death after that war we (the US) fought in Albania. Shoeman was a true American hero; he guarded the American dream.
posted by rudyfink at 11:18 PM on February 6, 2003

Mother Teresa was an ethnic Albanian. I love some of the strange sounding names like King Zog and Enver Hoxa. In that 45 years or so they hated us they also hated Greece, Italy, Yugoslavia, Russia, China, and finally became the most unaligned country in the world, even more than North Korea. In 1997 Albania's tiny economy was nearly wiped out by pyramid schemes and plunged them into anarchy for a few weeks. I remember seeing on tv workers stealing tanks and mig fighters. Albania and Macedonia are the next countries in line for membership in NATO. Welcome to the 21st century my Albanian friends! (Sorry you had to miss most of the 20th century).
posted by Mack Twain at 12:09 AM on February 7, 2003

Hi RobbieFal, I'm Talos and I'm a Kosovo revisionist:
Milosevic was very bad, Clinton was a war criminal (as were Shea, Solana, Chirac and all the others), some (very few) people in Kosovo were Al-Qaeda terrorists and there was a very simple diplomatic way to stop all atrocities in the region without bombing the civilian water supply or killing civilians.
Now "free Kosovo" is the center of heroin trafficking in Europe, not to mention prostitution. It has become very inhospitable to all non-Albanian populations. At the same time Albanian nationalism is destabilizing two neighbouring countries...
All in all the war in Kosovo was almost as big a success as the one in Afghanistan.
posted by talos at 5:08 AM on February 7, 2003

there was a very simple diplomatic way to stop all atrocities in the region without bombing the civilian water supply or killing civilians.

And what was this magic solution that everyone missed?
posted by jaek at 6:12 AM on February 7, 2003

jaek: Two things that I can think of - and nobody missed them:
Making sure OECD observers remained in Kosovo [scroll down to "The alternative"] while signing the Rambouillet treaty without the final clauses that would have turned of all Yugoslavia into a NATO protectorate and which would have been accepted eagerly by the Yugoslav parliament (and Milosevic).
posted by talos at 6:30 AM on February 7, 2003