According to the Julian Calendar used by the Christian Orthodox Church in Serbia, September 11 is one of four “Days of the Cross” observed during the year, calling for strict fasting and prayer. This specific Day of the Cross is devoted to the Beheading of St. John the Baptist, and one is not supposed to wear anything of red color, in piety for the innocent blood spilled on that day. The fact that the new American Day of Infamy occurred on the Day of the Cross observed by the oldest Christian church cannot be an accident.
Living in Serbia and feeling great piety for the innocent blood spilled in America on that same day, one cannot help but remember the innocent blood spilled during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, or the innocent blood spilled during the preceding wars of the Yugoslav secession. Because, whenever great human disasters happen, one needs to think of one fundamental question: Why?
Living through the war, sanctions and all the real or imagined injustices that can be brought upon a country during the past 10 years have given many here in Serbia a chance to reflect on the reasons. Actually, it has taught many the necessity to look for reasons and the lesson that nothing happens without a reason. If one has learned anything, it has been that such stock answers as “madness” or “insanity” or “evil” just aren’t adequate. Even more so, if one has learned anything, it is that finger-pointing isn’t the ultimate answer either. Ultimately, free men and free nations cannot accept the notion that the causes of their fortunes or misfortunes lie outside of themselves.
The Serbs were not able to gain their freedom from communism on October 5, 2000, until they found the strength in sufficient numbers to look within and recognize the true nature of the shackles that were binding them from without. Americans will regain their true, God-given freedom and strength only when they do the same in sufficient numbers.
The Serbs’ problem was the fact that real, eternal Serbia was hijacked from them, and made to stand for things it was not under former president Milosevich. That, of course, had its own roots as well – roots that go back decades. The point is, especially during the years of Clinton, that the real, eternal America has been hijacked from the Americans and made to stand for things it is not. Serbia’s punishment from Above came in the ensuing 10 years of war, sanctions, international pariah status and poverty. It started with the killing of innocents on all sides.
Regrettably, America’s turn for punishment has arrived, and it has also started with the killing of innocents. The evil sent out by Clinton unfortunately had a return address. Those that doubt such things as cosmic punishment need only come to Belgrade and look at the similarity in architecture between the NATO-bombed CK tower and the WTC buildings, or drive by the ruins of the Army General Staff Headquarters in the center of Belgrade and think of the Pentagon building now.
Speaking from a Balkan perspective, the following questions may be asked:
Was it the real America that encouraged Muslim fundamentalists in Bosnia to turn down a peace plan that would have prevented a bloody civil war from breaking out in 1992?
Was it the real America that armed and logistically supported Croat neo-fascists in cleansing the last 250,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995?
Was it the real America that instigated and led the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, a country on which it never officially declared war, in order to help Muslim Albanian fundamentalists cleanse several hundred-thousand Serbs from their spiritual cradle, Kosovo – and is it the real America that is now helping these same Albanians expand their narcotic and white-slavery empire to neighboring Macedonia, all in the name of “human rights”?
If this was and is the real America, then the Americans should listen to the shrill voices directing them to lash out in all directions and bomb all their enemies into submission. If that is the real America, then the Americans should stay true to this new identity to the end and take all the ensuing consequences of choosing such a course.
However, if the real America is somewhere else, buried in the Federalist Papers, George Washington’s Farewell Address and the innocence and wise practicality of its pre-Empire days, then those who still feel its presence under the debris need to reclaim it as quickly as they can. Otherwise, the days of punishment have only just begun. Perhaps Serbia’s own road of disaster may be instructive of what happens to those who forget what they are.
Serbia voluntarily gave up its identity in 1918 and let itself be absorbed into a physically larger, multi-ethnic entity called “Yugoslavia.” The Serb leaders gradually gave up their Christian Orthodox identity – they forgot their religion and values in the name of abstract “tolerance.” They forgot their historical roots and started calling themselves “Yugoslavs.” And, worse, they started acting as “Yugoslavs,” disregarding true, natural Serb interests and strivings for the sake of an abstract entity. (The abstract identity being imposed upon the Americans at present is that of the “international community,” under whose guise America has turned into a cynical Empire-builder with guiding lights no higher than those of raw power and ephemeral economic interest.)
Punishment for Serbia came in several stages:
First, the architect of Yugoslavia, King Alexander Karadjordjevich, was assassinated by anti-Yugoslav secessionists in 1934.
Second, the country was invaded by Nazi Germany on April 6, 1941, and defeated after only 12 days, after its multi-ethnic army disintegrated and most of its non-Serb elements went over to the side of the Axis.
Third, a genocide of Serbs ensued at the hands of these same former countrymen.
Fourth, a communist insurgency broke out as well and was eventually brought to power near the end of World War II by the Allies (yes, the Allies) who were guided by their own interests of the moment. These communists, led by Josip Broz Tito, reconstituted Yugoslavia and partitioned the Serbs into as many smaller political entities as possible.
Fifth, 40 years later, when the Berlin Wall fell, the other non-Serbs took advantage of the situation, seceded and carried away as much Serb-inhabited territory as they could. At the same time, the Serbs were stuck with a former Party apparatchik, Slobodan Milosevich, who took up a false mantle of Serb nationalism only to keep himself in power, and who brought the Serbs international pariah status, war, sanctions, poverty and crime.
When it most needed to be heard, the voice of the true Serbia could not be heard. And the worst that could possibly happen kept happening and no decent Serb seemed to be able to do anything about it. Such are the nature of curses that one brings upon oneself. They tie one’s hands when one most needs them and take away all control over one’s actions and choices. Just like that.
The Serbs’ decades-long wandering through the spiritual desert of their own making finally ended in October of last year, when more than a half million Serbs took to the streets and said, “Enough! Serbia is not Milosevich, Serbia is not Communism, Serbia is not isolation, Serbia is not sanctions, Serbia is not an abstraction.” Now the battle for reclaiming Serbia has just begun. It took decades of war, genocide, tyranny, more war and loss of land for Serbs to realize that one cannot, in the long run, be anything other than what one truly is. It was a punishment that hurt terribly and swept away hundreds of thousands of innocent lives.
Milosevich was not the cause of the national misfortune, he was only the last instrument of a decades-long punishment, the last wake-up call. Perhaps Clinton can be looked at in an analogous way: He was the chief architect of the American loss of identity and straying, and the criminals that carried out the Day of the Cross carnage in America were the brutal instruments of the ensuing punishment. One can only hope that what George Bush does next will be the first step on the road back – a road which is now blocked by the legacy of the years past, a legacy America needs to learn to overcome, as quickly as possible.
The message for Americans is: Start digging through the debris, not only for the bodies of the dead, God rest their souls, but for the roots of what you really are and have lost. Once you find yourselves, you’ll find your enemies. They are the same enemies as that of eternal, awakened, Christian Orthodox Serbia – who is waiting patiently for you to rejoin the ranks, as American-aided fundamentalist terrorists continue gnawing at its southern flank.
Aleksandar Pavic a U.C. Berkeley graduate, quit his job and went back to Yugoslavia in 1990 to take part in ending 50 years of communist rule in Serbia. During the past decade, he has worked as a member of the Serbian opposition, gone through the war in the formerly Serb parts of Croatia and in Bosnia, coordinated aid efforts and served as a senior presidential adviser in the Serbian entity in Bosnia. He is presently working as an investment consultant in Belgrade and has almost completed writing a novel entitled, “Prince of the Balkans.”
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