Punë Muti!

For those who don't speak Albanian the title translates to Shit! in English.

The only thing saving the U.S. embassy in Serbia form being burned to the ground right now is the phalanx of Serbian police officers turning away the drunken rioters angry about our aiding of Kosovo to gain it's independence.

I'm not going to debate the wisdom of our governments decision to recognize Kosovo. However I think this is a good time to talk about foreign policy and what is at stake in the upcoming presidential election.

The Bush administration's spectacular failure in Iraq has overshadowed the other foreign policy issues that our country is facing. The potential chaos in the Balkans is one of those issues.

Eastern Europe has not enjoyed the stability economically or politically that Western has. Poles, Bulgarians and other Eastern Europeans are leaving for Western Europe by the thousands. The Balkans however are teetering on the edge of something horrible right now because for them the issue was never something that could be solved by joining the E.U. and having their citizens hop a plane to London.

A competent administration would understand the underlying complex ethnic tensions surrounding the former Yugoslavia. They would also understand how dealing with the people of would-be states like Kosovo would impact similar hopes of independence not only in Eastern Europe but around the world.

What we have however is a president who, in a press conference, acted too quickly, congratulating Kosovo for achieving independence while the State Department was taking a more cautious tack to see how our European allies would react before advising him on what action to take.

What we have is a military stretched to the brink of total collapse which couldn't respond as it did in the 90s to restore order and a NATO alliance that hasn't been able to define a new mission for itself since the USSR broke up.

We have an adversary in Vladimir Putin that has more brains in his left pinky than Bush has in his entire body, who as an ally to the Serbs to make this into even more of a mess should he choose by stirring up even more nationalistic rhetoric in other provinces that want to break away just to tick us off.

In short we may be screwed and there is no guarantee that the situation in Europe won't get worse before the next president can come in an restore some intelligence to our foreign policy.

So for now memorize and educate yourself on these names, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Catalonia, Euskadi and E.T.A because if we mishandle this we'll be seeing conflict in these places.

Look at the picture above and look at the news tonight, where you see the anger and rioting of the people in the streets of Belgrade as a reminder of all the other things that are at stake.

Even if we get out of Iraq there are still many more challenges requiring our country's leadership than what is going on in the Middle East.