John Phillips of the Washington Times waxes poetic  in today's edition about our continuing presence in Kosovo.  Phillips maintains that Kosovo was once thought of as the model for a future Iraq, yet neglects to mention even one US policy—maker or military leader who had such thoughts.

Phillips forgets that the Kosovo operation was conducted from 30,000 feet and didn't entail a major ground attack involving 200,000 ground troops against a determined enemy, and later conducting a prolonged fight against Baathist diehards and foreign terrorists.  And, by the way, it does help that Serbia and Kosovo are composed of Europeans with at least a fair level of modern secular thought, as compared to our 8th century Islamofascist enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The reporter also glosses over an obvious fact in his own article when he talks about one of the National Guard platoon leaders stationed in Gnjilane, Serbia:

Lt. Mike Bell, who is in charge of sending out such patrols, evidently enjoys the change of pace after an eight—month tour in Iraq.

So, Lt. Bell gets to go to the Balkans after spending eight months in Iraq — how nice.  Besides, if everything is so hunky—dory in Kosovo as Phillips describes, maybe we can turn this entire mission over to the EU to give our Soldiers some much needed down time.  Hopefully, we wouldn't later have to deploy hundreds of intelligence operatives into this Muslim dominated province much as we did with the 'model' country of Bosnia.

Apparently, the emergence of an extensive Muslim terror network in the Balkans has been ignored by both Mr. Phillips and the EU, and feel—good articles such as this only reinforce a sense of complacency in the American people.

Doug Hanson   11—15—04