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The cruelty is unimaginable
Macedonia cracks down on Kosovar refugees to force other nations to pitch in.
By Laura Rozen

Bloody blundering
If administration leaders really expected NATO airstrikes to accelerate the carnage in Kosovo, they should be indicted for war crimes.
By Christopher Hitchens

Broken contract
Republicans find populism is easier when you don't have any power.
By Jake Tapper

Belgrade under siege NATO warplanes and missiles strike more strategic targets in and around the Yugoslav capital on the 11th night of bombing.
[ News 04/05/99]

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Darkest Europe
Today's heart of darkness lies at the far end of the Danube. And the savages have white skin.

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By Richard Rodriguez

April 5, 1999 | Air fares to Europe are inexpensive now. So why not? And what a lovely time, April, to see the Adriatic or sail the Danube! For many Americans, Europe is a happy tourist attraction -- old castles, gold churches -- despite the fact that most Americans don't speak the lingo and most Americans are the descendants of immigrants who fled one European calamity or another.

Immigrant Americans -- Ellis Island Americans -- spoke of Europe as "the old country," glad to be out of it. But it took only a generation for their sons and daughters to forget the reasons their parents left. By the 19th century, native-born Americans were feeling embarrassed by the rawness of this country. "All educated Americans, first or last, go to Europe," opined Ralph Waldo Emerson. And newly rich Americans went to Europe for the "grand tour" -- anxious for culture, to marry a title, learn how to read a French menu or, at least, to gaze upon something older than anything they might find in Pittsburgh.

This terrible, dark European century began, as it is ending, with bloodshed in the Balkans. Between then and now came the slaughter of a generation in the trenches of World War I, the Nazi ovens and Communist purges, to say nothing of English vs. Irish or Greeks against Turks or, today, skinheads in Bavaria prowling the streets for anyone who might not be Aryan.

Cary Grant was always amused by the deference of Americans to his working-class British accent. Only a few months ago, during the arguments over Bill and Monica, the haughty, liberal American opinion deferred to European sophistication. Europeans would never understand our Puritanism. Europeans are more experienced than we are.

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