James George Jatras | One can’t help but wonder how many times we have to be hit over the head before it begins to sink in that America’s intervention in Kosovo was based on a pack of lies from the start.

The “accepted” narrative of Kosovo as the great success story parades under the headline: U.S. and NATO Allies Nobly Stepped in to Stop Genocide by Evil Serbs. The reality was U.S. Dragged NATO Allies Kicking and Screaming Into Support for Muslim Mafia Committing Genocide Against Christian Serbs.

Comes now the Council of Europe’s human rights investigator Dick Marty with damning accusations that Hashim Thaci, a/k/a Gjarpër (“Snake”), currently masquerading as “prime minister” of the illegal separatist administration in Pristina, heads a “mafia-like” operation that included murdering captives, mainly Serbs, to sell their organs on the black market. Is even that ghoulish revelation enough to force a reconsideration of the preening self-justification of a “humanitarian” intervention most Americans have long since forgotten?  We can hope. But did the plotted attack on Fort Dix changes any minds? No.

Snake on the right and Biden, in a hug.

Now we have organ trafficking.  Let’s remember the organ-trafficking story first broke over two years ago and seemed to be withering away in the face of brazen stonewalling by “authorities” in Pristina and Tirana (with full backing from Washington, of course.)

Release of Mr. Marty’s report, just as Thaci is claiming victory in Kosovo’s recent elections, suggests that somebody in Europe wants to jump off this bandwagon to disaster. But for Americans, the question is: How horrible do the facts need to be before we start looking behind the curtain to see what our government is so desperate to conceal?

In the unfortunate partisan myopia that plagues American politics, some of my fellow conservatives might be tempted to blame it on Bill Clinton and leave it at that. Of course, it was largely a “Clinton problem” back during the 1999 NATO war against Serbia. To their credit, most Congressional Republicans voted against the war, which our Razorback Rommel illegally launched even though the House of Representatives had voted down the authorization to use military force.

Snake and (now French foreign minister) Bernard Koushner, British General Michael Jackson, fellow KLA thug Agim Ceku, and American General Wesley Clark

But while Republicans mainly voted No, the neoconservative establishment was whipping up support for the Clinton White House.   Unfortunately, with neocon domination of the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy, and their desperation to win Islamic friends after 9/11, the Bush policy on Kosovo was even more Clinton than Clinton, leading to the decision to try to force the issue of Kosovo’s independence in violation of every principle of international law and national sovereignty.

So, what will Washington do now about “our” guy Thaci?  Do a Google Image search for his name with almost any top U.S. figure of either party you can think of and you’ll see him in a warm handshake, often a chummy embrace with a virtual Who’s Who of the American establishment: George W. Bush, Condi Rice, Bill Gates, Clinton (both of them), Joseph Biden, Madeleine Albright, Wesley Clark, etc.  (See “Snake and Friends” at the end of this message.)  One would like to think some one of these worthies would now have the decency to say (even if only in virtuous hypocrisy), “What?  I didn’t know!  I’d never have supported these guys if I had!”

But the problem is, even aside from these organ-trafficking peccadilloes, the U.S. establishment did know – from Day One – that Thaci and Co. (the “Kosovo Liberation Army,” KLA) were a bunch of thugs.  So did the intelligence services of our allies. (And make no mistake – it’s not just Thaci.  If Thaci needs to be dumped, we can guess that “Plan B” will be to install in his place another of his equally vicious KLA colleagues.)

They – our government – knew the KLA were criminals running the drug, slave, and weapons rackets throughout Europe.  They knew the KLA was supported by Osama bin Laden (with whom Thaci met personally in Tirana in 1998 to plan the jihad in Kosovo, according to the former head of Albanian intelligence), the Iranians, the Saudis, the Turks, and other supporters of an Islamic re-re-conquest of the Balkans. And we supported them anyway, shredding every rule of law and decency in the process.  Now what?  In all probability, circle the wagons, hope it will blow over, and keep twisting arms around the world in support of the illegal separatist terrorist entity “KosovA.”

As for Serbia – if there were a respectable government in Belgrade, instead of a group of quislings, they wouldn’t be preparing to meet with representatives of Thaci’s “government” in direct negotiations. Instead, conspiring with their U.S. and European supporters and collaborators in the Serbian Orthodox Church, Belgrade’s recent “contribution” to the Kosovo fiasco is their persecution of Vladika Artemije, Bishop of Ras and Prizren and Kosovo and Metohija, who over two years ago was calling for then-President Bush to refuse to meet with Thaci and demanding an accounting for the organ-selling outrage!

Let us hope that Mr. Marty’s fine work doesn’t get thrown down the Memory Hole with any and all other facts inconvenient to Washington’s policy.

But it’s not enough just to track down the individual perpetrators, or even to pack Thaci off to jail (though both would be a good start).  It’s time for the lies that have undergirded our entire Balkan policy to be exposed, for the United States to stop its obsessive support for Islamic jihad against the indigenous Christian population, and specifically to back off from our absurd and destructive global lobbying on behalf of the KLA regime.

Some might argue that “we’ve come too far” to reverse course now, that American commitment to “KosovA” is irreversible.  But it’s never too late to stop doing the wrong thing and start doing the right thing.   If Mr. Marty’s organ-trafficking revelations can be a catalyst for a truthful reassessment of American policy and of the events of recent years, the victims will not have died in vain.

James George Jatras is the Director of the American Council for Kosovo.

• A Permanent Economic Emergency