Stalingrad Nonsense; The Girl Who Got Away; Poor Macedonia; Leave it to Beaver
The One That Got Away
On his deathbed the English poet Sir John Betjeman was asked whether he had any regrets and he said yes, as a matter of fact he did. He wished he'd had more sex. I may only be 37, but on July 21 I'm getting married, and when I look back on my life I, too, wish I'd had more sex?or at least slept with more women. In particular, I wish I'd slept with Nicole.
The memory of that missed opportunity is far more vivid than any sexual experience I've ever had. I fully expect to take it to my grave. I fancied Nicole from the first day I arrived at King Edwards VI Comprehensive School?or "Kevics," as it was known. I'd moved to South Devon from London in the summer of 1976, and by the time I started at Kevics, aged 13, my hormones were in full bloom.
Nicole had strawberry-blonde hair and freckles and two slightly protruding front teeth: I only have to close my eyes to see her face, 24 years later. Every morning, as I trooped into assembly, I scanned the room until I found her, sitting cross-legged in her uniform. Unfortunately, my interest wasn't reciprocated. At 14 she was a year older than I and at that age girls only look up, not down. Indeed, if she ever had noticed me she would have literally had to look down. I was about six inches shorter than she.
It took me three years to work up the nerve to ask her out. It was 1979, the year of the mod revival, and I invited her to come to see Quadrophenia with me in Torquay. I'd been given a 50-cc Vespa for my 16th birthday and, as an inducement, I offered to take her on the back. She was 17 by now and used to being on the back of proper motorcycles, but?astonishingly?she said yes. We rode out with three of my male friends, all with 50-cc Vespas of their own. We must have made a ridiculous sight, our parkas flapping in the wind as we puttered along, flat out at 30 mph. It was illegal for 16-year-olds to take people on the back, and I was the only one stupid enough to have a passenger. I thought Nicole was worth the risk.
We sat in the balcony and during the fight scene, when the mods take on the rockers in South End, my friends and I let rip with the traditional mod war chant: "We are the mods, we are the mods, we are, we are, we are the mods?" I cringe with embarrassment to think of it now but, incredibly, Nicole wasn't put off. We were the only mods in the cinema, and when the film was over people treated us as if we were?celebrities, almost. A boy came up to me and asked me where I'd bought my parka. "In London," I said, grandly. In fact, I'd got it in the army surplus shop in Totnes, a South Devon market town. While we were loitering outside the cinema afterward, instructing the locals in the finer points of mod etiquette, Nicole squeezed my hand.
We didn't have any "blues"?the mod drug of choice?so we went back to my friend Matthew's house and raided his parents' drinks cabinet. I helped myself to some cherry brandy and poured Nicole a stiff creme de menthe. About an hour later we were snogging in Matthew's dad's greenhouse, rolling around among the tomato plants. I remember thinking at the time that this was the happiest I'd ever been. I'd finally got the girl I'd been lusting after for three years! To this day I can't smell a fresh, ripe tomato without thinking of that moment. It was one of those brushes with eternity that stay with you for forever.
At about midnight Nicole asked me to take her home. At her urging I left the Vespa at Matthew's and we walked up the hill arm in arm, past Totnes Castle silhouetted against the night sky. It's become a cliche to say it, but suddenly all the cliches churned out in sentimental ballads made sense. Pop songs I'd long ago dismissed as formulaic pap started playing in my head. I was in love!
I was expecting a quick kiss on her doorstep, but she invited me in. "My parents are away," she explained, her eyes twinkling in the moonlight. She led me to her bedroom and, in an act I regarded as breathtakingly grownup, took off all her clothes and got straight into bed. Naturally, I followed suit. We started kissing again, our hands scurrying around like overexcited puppies. It slowly dawned on me that, for the first time in my life, here was a girl who'd go all the way. It was at this point that I did something I've regretted ever since: I decided not to go any further. I reasoned that if I made love to her she'd think that I was just interested in her body, whereas if I held off she'd know that I valued her as a person. All my previous relationships had foundered when the girls had accused me of "just being interested in one thing" and I didn't want to screw this one up. This was special?I wanted to go out with this one. Indeed, I'd wanted to go out with Nicole for three years.
So after about half an hour I said I'd better be getting home. Nicole looked at me in open-mouthed disbelief: was I insane? At the time I thought I was being incredibly sensible, sacrificing short-term interest for long-term gain, but in retrospect, yes, I was insane. As I left the room she looked at me withering contempt?I'd injured her pride?and when I called the following day her brother said she was out. I must have called a dozen times over the next two weeks but she never took my call. I'd had my chance and I'd blown it. Not long after that, she started going out with Matthew.
Evidently, Washington has decided to wind up the state of Macedonia?or, rather, to give it its proper name, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). This may seem jolly ungrateful on our part. Macedonia has been nothing if not the most loyal of client-states. It supported the bombing of its fellow Slavs in neighboring Serbia. It dutifully adhered to the sanctions regime against Belgrade even though its effects were economically disastrous. It swallowed its bitter dose of IMF medicine, zealously privatizing and shutting down "uneconomic" factories, even as unemployment soared above 30 percent.
For years, Macedonia was touted as an example of multiethnic cooperation?a multicultural paradise in the strife-torn Balkans. Suddenly it is tottering on its last legs as its armed forces flail around helplessly against Albanian gunmen entering the country from NATO-occupied Kosovo. NATO, which had been ready to smash Belgrade into the ground two years ago on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians, today abjectly declares that it cannot do anything to help the Skopje government because that would be?well, interference in another country's internal affairs.
U.S. ingratitude should come as no surprise. NATO littered Kosovo with tens of thousands of depleted uranium shells. This is what the United States does for people it professes to love! Imagine what it is ready to do for people it couldn't care less about.
FYROM is one of the artificial phony states that the West created out of the wreckage of Yugoslavia. "Macedonians" were a nation alongside other newly discovered nations like "Bosniaks" or "Kosovars." Devoid of national or historic reality, FYROM naturally won the heart of financier George Soros. Starting in the early 90s, Soros poured millions of dollars into Macedonia. But the billionaire and Ruritania eventually fell out. The Macedonians got fed up with Soros telling them what to do. Soros was even telling them that they should rename the country Slavomakedonija. Soros decided Macedonia was not such a multiethnic democracy after all.
Macedonia stood in the way of ethnic Albanian irredentism, whose chief sponsor for the past decade has been the United States. NATO and the Albanians have been chummy since at least 1992. The CIA created the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Then, having driven the Serbs out of Kosovo, the United States promptly decided to drive the Serbs out of Southern Serbia as well. The KLA was armed, trained and instructed to launch an insurgency in the Presevo Valley and also in Macedonia. According to a recent article in the Observer of London: "The United States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian extremists now behind insurgencies in Macedonia and southern Serbia. The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia?according to senior European officers" with KFOR.
Thus U.S. professions of horror at Albanian "extremism" are a fraud. NATO will dismantle Macedonia by steadily demoralizing and undermining the Skopje regime. Officials denounce Albanian "extremists" one day and express sympathy for their plight the next. EU security affairs chief, Javier Solana, announces one minute that the Macedonian government should not negotiate with the terrorists. Next minute he announces: "The solution has to be political. The Balkans have suffered too many wars already." French President Chirac denounces Albanian "terrorists" one day. French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine pontificates about the need to make Macedonian Albanians "feel more at ease in Macedonia and [to] play a greater role in national life" the next. Insane former NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark splutters in The Washington Post: "We must make clear to the government of Macedonia that it?is under close scrutiny. The use of force alone will only worsen the underlying problem."
The Macedonian government must address the grievances of the Albanians then. What are these grievances? Albanian should be recognized as an official language. There should be a state-funded Albanian-language university. This is laughable. Macedonia already has Albanian-language schools, Albanian media and Albanian political parties who are in the government. Yet this has not, to put it mildly, made Albanians feel "Macedonian." The KLA does not want Albanians to feel "Macedonian." It wants to create a Greater Albania incorporating Albania, Kosovo, as well as large parts of Serbia, Macedonia and Greece. Encouraging even more ethnic Albanian separatism hardly sounds like the most effective way of thwarting this project.
In the meantime, NATO claims to be making a serious effort to seal the border to prevent terrorists entering Macedonia from Kosovo. In reality, NATO is doing nothing. Macedonian Prime Minister Ljubco Georgievski recently attacked NATO for creating a "a new Taliban in Europe." The analogy was entirely apt. The KLA and the Taliban are both CIA creatures. According to Georgievski: "You cannot convince us that the chieftains of these gangs are unknown to your governments, nor can you persuade us that they cannot be stopped." He is absolutely right. The Kosovo-Macedonia border is no Rio Grande. A recent story in the Times reveals just how much effort the U.S. is really making to stop the Albanian gunmen: "Despite assurances from NATO officers?the guerrillas' cross-border supply routes appear brazenly obvious. In the U.S. sector, mule columns of supplies have been climbing almost nightly in the past weeks through beech forests up the mountains to reach" the Albanian villages.
Western diplomats are already putting out the line that the Macedonian government is too feeble to win this war. This is but a prelude to NATO's takeover of Western Macedonia. The Albanians will set up a de facto state there and join up with Kosovo. Greater Albania rolls on.