With the prosecution portion of the Milosevic trial coming to a close at the Hague last month, it is worth looking back at our own trials of the past year in the war on terror. For some distinct parallels emerge between our fight and that of another multiethnic nation, once called Yugoslavia.

The attempts to sabotage the armed forces should not be catching us off guard. Not because of any cynical assumption that Muslim Americans are naturally traitorous and can't be trusted in the military, but because we've seen this before: in Yugoslavia.

In addition to the post-9/11 headlines trickling out of the Balkans about terror cells being uncovered in Bosnia and about unsurprising links between al Qaeda and the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army), there is an uncomfortably prescient New York Times article from 1987. It is a piece that the Times was careful to not dredge up in April 1999, when it endorsed the offensive air war on Belgrade, unleashed by otherwise-scandalized Bill Clinton. [Albanian Muslims worship Bill Clinton. Click here to see] The article tells of an ethnic Albanian conscript who shot up his Slavic fellow soldiers as they slept, killing four and wounding six. It tells of other Albanian Yugoslavs raiding arsenals to steal weapons to equip the KLA.

A quote appears in the article from Yugoslavia's then-defense secretary, Fleet Admiral Branko Mamula, who reported to the army brass three weeks after the slaughter that ethnic Albanian subversives, as the Times referred to them, were "preparing for 'killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.'"

In the immediate aftermath of the fatal attack by Sergeant Hasan Akbar against our troops last March, while concerns about possible attacks by Muslim-American military personnel were quietly included in an intelligence report given to senior administration members, officials did their best to downplay any Muslim connection. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told reporters asking about the Muslim threat in the military simply that the motivation for Akbar's attack was unconfirmed and under investigation. [How can anyone believe that U.S. 'Intelligence' is that far in the dark?]  Akbar was ultimately charged not with terrorism, but with premeditated and attempted murder. What's more, no additional security measures were taken by the Navy or Marines at that time. [U.S. military regularly visits this website] Navy spokesman Commander Tom Van Leunen asserted, "We view our sailors as Americans first,  Americans with full religious freedom. We do not single out any religious group." And Marine spokesman Major Matt McLaughlin offered, "The Marine Corps is built on shared group values. We draw strength from our diversity, but to the extent that any Marine would force personal beliefs on fellow Marines runs counter to the Corps's culture."  Drawing 'strength' on diversity is foolish.  A house divided--falls.

Certainly we're not facing anything so well organized or epidemic in the American armed forces as what Yugoslavia was facing. The connections, if any, among detained or arrested U.S. military personnel are unclear. Yet the Muslim chaplain Yousef Yee — who (according to the AP) was once "the public face of the Bush administration's effort to assure Muslims that they were not the targets of the war on terrorism," and whose father last month accused the military of ethnic and religious profiling — dodged questions about how deeply involved he was with the detainees, and about whether he sympathized with them.

Defending a population against problem members who invoke their religion to wreak havoc is not waging a war against a religion. To confuse the two can lead to dangerous misperceptions, and to purposely obfuscate the two is criminal calculation.  It is self destruction.

As we feel justified in going halfway around the globe to fight terrorism, to do essentially what Belgrade was trying to do in its own backyard before we bombed it and killed 2,000 Serb civilians, perhaps we can finally start to appreciate what that country was up against. Even post-breakup, Yugoslavia was composed of 27 different nationalities, all struggling to work together so they could continue to live as a single nation. But the allah of the Koran does not allow that.

In our efforts to maintain perspective in the face of those who would have us believe that, rather than defending ourselves, we are waging a war against Islam, we should learn from history — specifically from the history of another experiment in diversity that now has been reduced to the name "Serbia and Montenegro."

The following commands have been rejected by this world:

1Th 5:15 See that none render evil for evil unto any man; but ever follow that which is good.

Rom 13:9  Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Thou shalt not covet; and if there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

Rom 13:10 Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.  These do not break International laws.

But those who make International laws---defend Islam--which DOES break ALL International and humanitarian laws.