Virtue Rewarded

Kosovo Names Street For President Bush

(AFP) Kosovo decided Wednesday to name a central street of its capital Pristina after outgoing US President George W. Bush for his support of the territory's split from Serbia.

Backed unanimously by Kosovo's cabinet, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the move was "a sign of the huge state and national respect and appreciation" for the United States' contribution to independence, declared earlier this year.

Located in Pristina's downtown area, Bush Street is to be linked to the main thoroughfare named after Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel Peace Laureate of Albanian origin.

Fans of Michael Totten will not be surprised by this. His raw reports from Iraq gave us the often brutal truth, but never in a sneering, NY Times way. He was also the first to herald the good news of the Sunni Awakening and the positive results from the surge. He has written of Kosovo:

Most of its citizens are Muslim, an oddity in Europe; further, unlike most Muslim-majority nations, Kosovo is overwhelmingly pro-American, and its relations with Israel are excellent as well.

Totten has also written of Albania, Kosovo's neighboring country, which is also majority Muslim:

Albania is fanatically pro-American, which is perhaps a bit counterintuitive to many Americans since it is at least nominally a Muslim-majority country. The conventional assumption that Muslims hate Americans everywhere isn't true.

“You should have seen President Bush’s face when he came to Albania,” an ethnic Albanian man later said to me in Kosovo. “All over Western Europe he was met by protests, but the entire country of Albania turned out to welcome him. He was so happy. You could see it on his face.”

Albanian pro-Americanism resembles that of both Poland and Iraqi Kurdistan. The unspeakably oppressive communist regime pushed Albanians strongly into the U.S.-led Western camp, and the humanitarian rescue of Albanians in Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic's tyrannical despotism bolstered that sentiment even more.

Albania, Kosovo, Kurdistan, and to a lesser extent the newly-free countries of Eastern Europe: Nations with memories of brutal tyranny still fresh in their collective minds, greatly appreciate what the US has done for them. Indeed, even the radically anti-US newspaper, Britain's Guardian headlined their story saying he received a hero's welcome.

So, take a moment to feel good about your country and your president. We've freed a lot of people.