Clark saved people from certain genocide

Let's focus for a moment on Clark's signature issue: security. General Clark met in Portsmouth, NH yesterday with young Albanian-Americans from around the country. They came to thank him. Think about that. Young men and women came to thank this Presidential Candidate for saving their kin from certain genocide. How many other Presidential Candidates can say, "I helped prevent one of the worst post-WWII genocidal campaigns." While Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt bicker about Medicare cuts, Wesley Clark can take credit for taking on Slobodan Milosevic's decadelong campaign of territorial expansion and ethnic cleansing. The Yugoslav wars' culminated in Milosevic's effort in 1998-1999 to completely "Serbify" the mostly ethnic Albanian Serb region of Kosovo. Under the Communists, Kosovo had been granted partial autonomy, and began calling for independence as early as 1979. Coincidentally, Kosovo is the site of "Kosovo Polje", where the Serbs lost a decisive battle against the Ottoman Turks in 1389, leading to centuries of Ottoman rule over the Serbs. Kosovo Polje is the Serbian Alamo. In 1989, almost the entire Kosovo Serb minority (10% of the population) made a pilgrimage to the battlefield. One of the speakers at that rally was the new head of the Serb League of Communists - Slobodan Milosevic. In his speech, Milosevic, (couching his language in socialist pan-Yugoslav phrases), expressed his vision of a united, greater Serbia - one encompassing all areas with Serb populations. The next year - 1990 - Milosevic led an effort to abolish Kosovo's autonomy. Milosevic's actions set the stage for 10 years of genocidal bloodshed, that led to the collapse of Federal Yugoslavia, pariah status for Serbia and Montenegro, and ultimately sent Milosevic to the Hague for his war crimes. Milosevic's career effectively rose and fell on the Kosovo Polje. The people of Serbia ultimately defeated Milosevic on their own. Hundreds of thousands more Albanians would have been murdered or expelled from Kosovo without Wesley Clark's leadership.