Bill Clinton’s Secret Trip to Greece

by Richard Poe Friday, July 26, 2002 12:00 am Eastern Time

Archives 3 Comments

My Greek Vacation: A Four-Part Series Terror by Land and Sea: My Greek Vacation, July 5, 2002 One Volk! One Reich! One Euro!, July 12, 2002 Greece: The Cradle of Conservatism, July 19, 2002 Bill Clinton’s Secret Trip to Greece, July 26, 2002

BILL CLINTON made a very quiet visit to Greece this month — so quiet that virtually no one knew about it. I’ve been in Greece since June 26, and have seen nothing on the TV news.

Why all the secrecy? Perhaps safety concerns played a role.

When Clinton last visited Greece in 1999, an estimated 10,000 rioters — angry over Clinton’s war on Yugoslavia — battled police in Athens, smashing windows and throwing firebombs.

Perhaps chastened by that experience, Clinton slunk in and out of Greece this month under cover of a veritable press blackout.

It seems that Bubba was attending a conference on “Globalism and the Future of Europe,” held on the Greek island of Samos, July 6-14, and sponsored by the socialist Andreas Papandreou Foundation.

America-bashing appears to have been the main dish on the menu.

The International Herald Tribune noted that, “American defiance of what Washington likes to call ‘the rest of the world’ was the subject most discussed” at the meeting. Criticisms were also leveled at “the market fundamentalism, aggressive nationalism and exceptionalist convictions of the current government in Washington.” In addition, “criticisms of the implausibility and contradictions in U.S. Middle East policy were expressed with feeling.”

According to IHT, Clinton “offered his own story on what went wrong in the Middle East, while suggesting that nothing went wrong with America’s international economic policy on his watch, except for the odd mistake.”

In view of 9-11, it might have been nice to hear a few more details about what our former president thinks “went wrong in the Middle East,” but IHT apparently did not deem this newsworthy.

We can still make an educated guess. In Clinton’s now-infamous November 7, 2001 speech at Georgetown University, the former president implied that Muslims in the Middle East might hate America less if only they understood how much the Clinton Administration had done for Islam.

“We need to do a better job of getting the facts out,” he said. “Most Muslims in the Middle East I’ll guarantee you don’t know the last time we used our military power was to protect poor Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo.”

Indeed. Most Americans don’t know that either.

Few Americans are aware that Clinton deployed U.S. forces in the Balkans to help prop up Muslim warlords in the heart of Europe — men who preach jihad against Christian civilization and who have military ties to al-Qaeda and the global Islamist movement.

One of the “poor Muslims” we helped was Alija Izetbegovic, who served as the dominant member of Bosnia’s three-man presidency until resigning in 2000.

In his 1970 tract, The Islamic Declaration, Izetbegovic called for “a united Islamic community from Morocco to Indonesia.” He wrote:

“There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions… the Islamic movement must and can take over political power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only destroy the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one.”

The breakup of Yugoslavia enabled Izetbegovic to put his pan-Islamic vision into practice. As leader of the Bosnian Muslims during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 civil war, Izetbegovic received money, arms and even troops from Muslim states around the world.

Mujahedeen from Egypt, Afghanistan and elsewhere flocked to join Izetbegovic’s Bosnian Muslim army, quickly gaining a reputation for barbarous cruelty. In a report to the International War Crimes tribunal in The Hague, Yugoslavia charged that Izetbegovic’s mujahedeen tortured, murdered and terrorized Bosnian Serb civilians and prisoners-of-war held in detention camps.

Osama bin Laden played a key role in deploying these mujahedeen — evidently with the full knowledge and approval of the Clinton administration.

“The United States… turned a blind eye to [bin Laden’s] activities in organizing, arming, and funding mujahedeen units in Bosnia and Kosovo because Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia was Enemy Number One,” observes Nikolas K. Gvosdev of the Institute on Religion and Foreign Policy.

Gvosdev charges that al-Qaeda bases remain in Kosovo and that al-Qaeda is now stirring up trouble in Macedonia. Several al-Qaeda suspects have turned up with Bosnian passports. Bosnia reportedly issued one to Bin Laden himself in 1993.

If Clinton meant what he said at Georgetown, it would appear that he has learned nothing from 9-11. On the contrary, he is proud of his Balkan achievements. With Hillary gearing up for a White House run in 2004 — and for a restoration of the Clinton co-presidency — Americans who work in skyscrapers might want to consider a job change.

---

Cross-posted from FrontPage 07.26.02

Cross-posted to NewsMax.com 07.28.02

My Greek Vacation: A Four-Part Series Terror by Land and Sea: My Greek Vacation, July 5, 2002 One Volk! One Reich! One Euro!, July 12, 2002 Greece: The Cradle of Conservatism, July 19, 2002 Bill Clinton’s Secret Trip to Greece, July 26, 2002