Book Review By William Dorich

Kosovo Crisis: A Study in Foreign Policy Mismanagement 
By Vojin Joksimovich

Published by Graphics Management Press
P.O. Box 241811
Los Angeles, CA 90024
(310) 475-2988

ISBN# 1-882383-10-9
460 pages - Soft Cover 
$21.00, plus $4.00 postage in the U.S.
Add $1.75 Sales Tax for California purchases.

For those wanting a second opinion, or in the case of Kosovo, any opinion other than Madeleine Albright's and her compliant media spin doctors, Kosovo Crisis: A Study in Foreign Policy Mismanagement by Dr. Vojin Joksimovich is a first. It's the first book authored by this nuclear scientist, the first comprehensive detailed volume about the war in Kosovo as told from a non-NATO perspective. It's also the first ''no-holds barred'' attack on the NATO propaganda machine and their dirty little illegal war.

Col. David Hackworth says: ''This brilliant fact-filled book exposes a Clinton/Clark phoney victory and the stupidity of the Rambo-like Clinton foreign policy. Kosovo Crisis destroys the myth of Nato's invincibility and exposes Nato's General Clark as an inept fumbler and military lightweight. Contrary to his claims, Clark, a Perfumed Prince, barely scratched the Serbian Army. The Serbs outfoxed him with hundreds of decoys knowing they couldn't win if they slugged it out toe to toe.''

Readers of Kosovo Crisis need to wear a seat belt. This power-packed, ''can't put down'' journey into what the author calls in chapter 10, the ''Devastating Consequences of Fraud'' will have you sitting at the edge of your seat. He exposes the blood of Serbian victims on the hands of political leaders from all 19 NATO governments. 

The foreword to the book is by Sir Eldon Griffiths, President of the World Affairs Council of Orange County, California and former Foreign Editor for Newsweek. Griffiths says, ''Vojin Joksimovich has produced a radioactive commentary so hot and so corrosive, that no historian and few journalists would dare-or deign-to indulge in it. And it is this that makes Kosovo Crisis such compulsive reading for anyone seriously interested in hearing the other side-the non-NATO side-of what actually happened in the first European war to be waged against a sovereign nation...'' 

I was able to send a printer's proof of Kosovo Crisis to Major Richard L. Felman USAF (Ret.) the week before his death. His wife Marianne said he was so please that Joksimovich included a few pages about him and his 50 year quest to pay honor to General Draza Mihailovich. Major Felman gave me the following endorsement for the book two days before hhe died: 

''The truth about the single largest rescue of American troops from behind enemy lines in our nation's history has been muzzled by the American government. My life and that of 500 other American airmen was saved by Serbs. Kosovo Crisis unmasks the facts surrounding Kosovo and NATO expansionism. Joksimovich is to be commended for having the courage to write this book and his willingness to pay the politically incorrect price.'' 

Joksimovich's granduncle, Dr. Dragic Joksimovich was the attorney for General Mihailovich. After the infamous Tito ''show trial'' Mihailovich was executed by a communist firing squad on July 17, 1946. Dr. Dragic was put in prison where he mysteriously died in 1951, so typical of how dissidents were treated under Tito's communist penal system. 

Joksimovich pulls no punches in Kosovo Crisis, and if anyone deserves to be candid about his feelings toward the blatant violations of international laws, the UN charter, the NATO charter, the Helsinki Final Act, the Geneva Conventions, the American Constitution and the War Powers Act, it's Vojin Joksimovich. He is an eyewitness to German and Anglo-American bombing of Belgrade, the city of his birth. Joksimovich is the sole survivor of Nazi bombing which instantly killed seven members of his family. As a teenager and young adult Joksimovich lived under three successive totalitarian regimes, first Hitler's, then Stalin's and finally Tito's. He has a natural aversion for the brainwashing tactics of lying leaders of whom he now adds, Clinton, Albright, Cohen, Clark, Blair and Cook.

The dust has not even settled over Kosovo but Joksimovich refuses to allow the Clinton administration and NATO leaders to put away their smoke and mirrors tools of deception. He exposes in Kosovo Crisis the real damage to his people in which they were used as pawns in a deadly game of political and multi-national corporate interest that resorted to ecological poison and now genocide by sanctions. A process in which the Serbs will to robbed of their land and the mineral wealth, the cruelest hoax of all against humanity at the end of the 20th century... a century in which 70 million perished in the name
of creating a better world. 

Joksimovich turns the mirror square into the face of American ''humanitarianism'' and ''human rights'' values that was used to incite a war and to deliberately demonize an entire nation with collective guilt. The reflection is not a pretty picture, it reveals the face of outrageous hypocrisy by politicians who spent billions of taxpayer's dollars to support Albanian insurrection and guarantee their return to their homes while continuing to ignore the 1.2 million Serbian refugees cleansed from Croatia and Bosnia 4 years ago. NATO went to war to protect Albanians but do not give a damn that the result is a reversed ethnic cleansing in which 330,000 non-Albanians have been cleansed from Kosovo and robbed of their rights, their property and land on which Serbs have lived for a thousand years. Joksimovich also reveals that this was not just another Muslim land grab in the Balkans but the creation of yet another NATO base in Europe as a disguise to defend Caspian oil routes throu! gh the Balkans. Kosovo Crisis reveals that the biggest prize of all was the Trepca Mines in Kosovo with enough coal to last 400 years, a prize worth billions.  

A few people of integrity in the media are already proving that Kosovo Crisis is right on target. They include Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times who was quoted in Rome's Manifesto Daily as saying, ''Jamie Shea and NATO lied during the bombing of Yugoslavia.'' 

John Laughland wrote an article entitled ''The Massacres That Never Were'' in the October 30 issue of The Spectator. He says ''Contrary to propaganda, mass graves in Kosovo are a myth.'' 

Alexander Cockburn wrote an article in the November 8th issue of The Nation entitled ''Genocide in Kosovo?'' Cockburn wrote, ''Whatever horrors they may have been planning, the Serbs were not engaged in genocidal activities in Kosovo before the bombing began. They were fighting a separatist movement, led by the KLA, and behaving with the brutality typical of security forces, though to a degree infinitely more restrained than those backed by the United States in Central America.'' Cockburn reveals that even Bernard Kouchner, the overlord of Kosovo lied through his teeth when he said ''11,000 bodies
have already been discovered in mass graves in the province'' citing the International Criminal Tribunal as his authority, but the Tribunal has said ''it hadn't provided any such information.'' We now know the truth, forensic teams from more than 15 countries found 187 bodies, not 44,000 as NATO claimed, not even the 10,000 of their revised figure. Even The Hague has resorted to half! -truths and outrageous omissions. In their body count of 2,081 victims they fail to reveal that half were killed by NATO bombs or that one-third are Serbian victims. Even the so-called ''mass grave in Pristina'' promoted by NATO officials to contain 350 bodies contained only 5 bodies. So it appears that Bernard Kouchner, the UN's chief administrator turns out to be just another liar, too. His ability to disarm the KLA has become a mockery of the peace agreement signed by both sides. Kouchner's repugnant ability to stand in stark silence as the KLA burned 2 million Serbian books reveals the level of duplicity of his mandate.

In the first chapter of Kosovo Crisis, Joksimovich takes his readers through some of the Serbian history in Kosovo that has been deliberately omitted from news accounts and by racist politicians. Chapter 3 is entitled ''Milosevic: Master of Opportunism-Not Nationalism.'' The thorough research of chapter 5 reveals the low intensity conflict in 1998 in which the victims were usually unarmed Serbs or Albanians who worked for the Serbian government, or, terrorist attacks against the Serbian police. During this period he illustrates that the average number of victims killed per day was 5, but escalated to a figure of 250 per day during 78 days of bombing. Chapter 9, entitled ''Operation Allied Force: 78 Days of Infamy'' is a day-by-day accounting of the bombing including numerous pictures. One of those pictures from the Serbian military reveals the cockpit of the downed $45 million Stealth Fighter and the heretofore secret identity of the Stealth pilot 

Chapter 9 proves, without a shadow of a doubt, that NATO targeted civilians in violation of numerous international laws and treaties. Joksimovich reproduces General Michael Short's testimony before the House and Senate that revealed NATO's effort was intended to make Serbs suffer so badly that they would turn on their leader. It also reveals that the destruction of 105 non-military industrial plants were deliberately targeted; that over 300 Serbian schools were deliberately destroyed; that 60 bridges were deliberately destroyed, that 11 Serbian hospitals were deliberate targets; that over 65 cultural landmarks were deliberately targeted including Churches, Synagogues, museums, ancient Byzantine tombs, and historical sites such as the Cele Tower, built in 1809 with the skulls of Serbian victims. Kosovo Crisis shows evidence that even Serbian cemeteries were not spared NATO's wrath-dozens were bombed numerous times according to Joksimovich who says, the surest way of erasing t! he history of a people is to bomb the oldest of their accurate cultural records, their tomb stones.  

Chapter 9 ends with Joksimovich showing his readers some of the hundreds of fake airplane decoys the Serb built to deceive General Wesley Clark and his NATO ''wiz'' kids. The general called the Serbs ''cunning.'' Joksimovich takes his best shot at the General pointing out that ''he graduated at the head of his class at West Point then led his computer-raised technocrats into battle dependent on 21st century technology instead of common sense.'' He reminds the general that the Trojans were deceived by a wooden horse and that Golliath was brought down by a simple slingshot and a stone. How demoralizing it must be for General Clark that this small nation of Serbs proved capable of outsmarting some of the finest military minds in the world. One of the funniest deceptions revealed in Kosovo Crisis is how the Serbs rigged microwave ovens to work with their doors open. The ensuing heat attracted dozens of HARM missiles. Was it ''cunning'' or simply brilliant that the Serbs figured ! out that NATO's arrogant ego would used HARM missiles costing $750,000 each to knock out $75 dollar microwave ovens? General Clark looked exactly like Col. Hackworth describes him, ''an inept fumbler.'' 

Since the arrival of KFOR some 77 Serbian churches have been blown up. According to Joksimovich, ''more than 1,300 Serbian churches survived 415 years of Ottoman slavery, two Balkan wars in this century and two World Wars, but it appears they cannot survive 120 days of KFOR occupation.'' Yet KFOR still will not allow the Serbian police to return to protect these historic sites, part of the peace agreement and UN Resolution #1244 signed by both parties and ratified by the Serbian parliament. Revealing the horrific duplicity of the Clinton administration who bombed the Serbs into signing this
agreement then betray its content at every turn.

There are three major points of this book. The first is the cynically simplistic illustration on the front cover which shows a scale of justice as of March 24, 1999 in which we went to war based on 2,000 Kosovo victims that are outweighed by the brutal liquidations of 37,000 Kurds, 75,000 Algerians, 800,000 in Rwanda, 500,000 in Angola, 200,000 in East Timor, 25,000 in Sierra Leone, and the 2 million victims in the Sudan. As the designer and publisher of this book I am very proud of that cover and to have played a role in the production and printing of this book. 

The second important point is at the end of the book on page 410 which shows a billboard in Belgrade with a bombed and burning 23 story building in the background. The billboard shows the Eiffel tower being bombed. The caption reads, ''Just Imagine.'' A stunning question asked of 19 NATO countries to imagine how they would feel if their national monuments, their important churches, museums, schools, hospitals and historic sites were bombed.

The final photograph is the one that disturbs me the most about this war. It shows one of the many television relay towers bombed. Next to the picture is a list of the 15 victims killed when Belgrade Television was bombed on April 23. The headline consist of the now famous quote by Robert Fisk of the Independent, ''Once you kill people because you don't like what they say, you change the rules of war.'' The bombing of all the radio and television relay stations in Serbia mocks everything this democracy stands for. It reveals the duplicity of NATO and hateful world leaders who shut down Serbian
television and call it free speech, who ban the work of historic Serbian writers in Bosnia and call this freedom of the press and who select the politicians ''fit'' to run for elected office and then unseat a duly elected president and call it democracy. Vojin Joksimovich's effort in telling what is happening in Serbia is a chilling story of world power gone mad.We went to war to sav! e NATO's reputation, not any so-called victims, and Kosovo Crisis proves this point. Vice President Al Gore is the biggest of all hypocrites. According to evidence in Kosovo Crisis, Al Gore, our ''mother earth'' candidate helped make decisions on bombing in Serbia based on the calculated ecological damage that would ensue by bombing chemical and petroleum factories then went ahead and bombed anyway, polluting the Danube River for a thousand miles through 11 countries. He has yet to distance himself from the Commander and Chief who made these decisions. That is why politicians like Gore and McCain have no conscience in starving to death a half million Iraqi children, all of course in the pursuit of democratic principles.

The epilogue of Kosovo Crisis is entitled ''The Immorality of the Calculated Lie.'' It was written by Dr. Samuel J. Mikolaski, a Southern Baptist with a degree in Theology from Oxford University and a close personal friend of the author. The epilogue includes such sections as, ''The Immorality of Misleading Verbal Jousting''; ''The Immorality of Unjust War''; ''The Immorality of Convenient Ideological Inversion''; ''The Immorality of Moral Pretext''; ''The Immorality of Betraying the Democratic Impulse''; and ''The Final Judgment.'' 

However the final judgment on Kosovo Crisis: A study in Foreign Policy Mismanagement, will be yours. Send your check today to Graphics Management Press, P.O. Box 241811, Los Angeles, CA 90024. 

William Dorich is the author of a number of books on Balkan subjects including his 1992 book, Kosovo.