Still, even Putin’s deeds, which have transformed Russia from one of the greatest losers into a land of hope, would have passed unnoticed by the self-appointed supreme judge of such matters—the West—had it not been for Putin’s firm and fearless refusal to permit the United States of America to snatch Kosovo away from Serbia and to grant it to Serbia’s Albanian minority’s criminal leaders.

In this context Kosovo by itself (although sacred to the Serbs and appetizing for the Albanians) is not important but it serves as a test of Russia’s strength and America’s weakness. Putin realized that if he waited for this test until America’s arrogance demanded Russia’s territory it would be too late for him to appear as a protector of the most sacred international principles—the sovereignty and territorial integrity of an internationally recognized state.

Napoleon said: “Principles are fine, they don’t commit you to anything.” This could be applied in the case of Kosovo. Russia might think first of its own interests before stepping in to defend principles if America, yet again, breaks international and humanitarian laws. But Russia’s “NYET!” shocked everyone in the West, lulled by the Gorbachev and Yeltsin decades of obedience and servitude.

Only because he stood up to the US (and, so far, successfully), Putin has gained the title of the person of the year by one of the most important media outlets in the West. No other achievement would have given him such visibility or recognition. He could have fed everyone in Russia, repaired all the roads in Siberia, installed computers in all schools, ended corruption in his realm, none of that would have been enough! But, slapping America’s face publicly, the very thing many European Union leaders probably  dream of doing, and arresting her drang nach everywhere – that is remarkable and worthy of reward!

It is obvious that, after turning Russia into a sober and capable giant very quickly, Putin looked carefully and long for just such an opportunity. (1)

Yet, no international conflict had all the right elements necessary for Russia to win and for America to lose. The Georgian mess could have exposed Russia’s dirty laundry; Ukraine would have been too quickly abandoned by America and would only get Russia into an inter-Slavic conflict; any involvement in Africa would have remained unnoticed by the Western media which use Africa only to make the West feel good about itself; the Moslem world would have rejected any “infidel”, even the one opposed to “The Great Satan.”

But Mr. Putin couldn’t wait too long. America was creeping ever closer to Russia’s virgin rear territory of Siberia, like an old lecher ready to immerse himself in wicked jollies.

A cause was needed, something truly pure and just, a call that must not be left unanswered.

And that brings us to another man – The Man of the Year 7515 since the Creation of the World, the Bishop of Kosovo, His Grace Artemije!

No man is more worthy of praise and admiration than the physically tiny bishop, yet, it is abuse, verbal and physical, that is heaped upon him daily. So true are the words: “Blessed are ye when men shall hate you… for the Son of man’s sake.”(2)

The wrath of his logical enemies that lashes against him is understandable–this man is solely responsible for American inability to create yet another Moslem state in the Balkans in the foolish belief that it would appease the Islamists worldwide.(3)

America’s prodigal leaders’ madness is understandable. Even if they have never officially or publicly stated it, the US pro-Albanian officials know that sovereignty cannot be acquired by the simple fact of conquest. The sovereign must cede it to the conqueror–otherwise it will forever be illegal. Certain of the fact that memory endures longer than defeat or fear, the US itself created a long list of reminders–hundreds of treaties with Indian nations testify to the need to ensure that the land conquered is the legal property of the new owner.

In the case of Kosovo, they know that its only true sovereign is its Serbian bishop, and that only he could cede this land to their current favorites.

So, they unleashed every possible evil upon him and his flock to make him succumb. But, they, immune to it, forgot that he is a man fully diagnosed of the disease of righteousness, and that he could unbendingly and fearlessly witness the hell created in Kosovo by the US, acknowledging it with the words: “This is what must be.”

He never bent or gave in.

It was senators, the so-called civil servants, ambassadors and other notables who shriveled and withdrew before his denouncement of the evil they supported, the crimes they hid, the suffering they refused to ease or even recognize.

And he never signed the transfer of the deed!

All their men and monies wasted! All their careers and reputations destabilized! All their acts exposed and entered in the Congressional Record!

It was not supposed to be that way!

The bishop was expected to thank them for his misfortune and the new despots of Kosovo were to grant him the right to remain silent.

Now they have to force each other to forget each other’s failures, to stifle their own consciences, and to rob themselves of the last hope of consolation.

However, one does understand the Islamist Albanian hatred for him. Not only is he a Serb, but a Christian bishop too, and the only Serbian leader in Kosovo with unbroken continuity of office and uncompromised by scandal–the very facts which make their robbery openly criminal today, and punishable and correctible in the future.

Albanians, that unfortunate race, dispersed throughout other peoples’ lands in the Balkans, appear yet again, after their previous roles as Turkish and Nazi favorites, ready to demolish every trace of another’s legacy in the land they claim, but are unable to point at any of their own. It is because those lands were never theirs.

And yet – the bishop always welcomed them and invited them to join forces to labor together on the land that can sustain both Serbs and Albanians. The bishop never rejected them or denied their right to be there. The bishop protected them when they were in danger and persecuted.

Forgetting decency and gratitude, the Albanians deny his right to be there and wish him gone forever.

But, such notions are logical and predictable from those who see him as an obstacle to their goal.

What is tragic and repugnant, however, is that the greatest and most serious obstacles and attacks, along with the most self-defeatist and irrational refusals of cooperation and recognition come from within the Serbian Orthodox Church and the Government of Serbia (all three branches of it!), which, officially, albeit paradoxically, declare Kosovo’s preservation within the realm of Serbia their most sacred and important task.

Who or what caused some of the ecclesiastics’ strife with the bishop?

One might suppose that a martyr’s presence in their midst reminds them that the Divine is absent from their synods made unholy by infiltration of the fiendish. Or that his almost superhuman valor before the diabolical shows that they only ape the appearance of courage, safely away from the place of trial. Or, it could be that having witnessed almost every possible villainy, he knows when the ultimate is planned, so some among them might tremble at the thought of being prematurely exposed and wish to prevent it by neutralizing him.

In the beginning his detractors ridiculed his plight but never understood that a man ridiculed is the clearest mirror in which the attackers’ abjection is reflected. But they expected him to remain confined in the concentration camp NATO created for him in Kosovo. He, instead, aimed directly at the heart of darkness. His mission took him to the US, to awaken the good and the caring Americans, to protest before the mighty, and to accuse the evil and the criminal before the world.

As soon as the word of the bishop’s mission to Washington spread, so did the silken robes of his adversaries quicken, gathering in their folds the allies to counter the bishop’s good deeds. Either before or after the solitary figure of the bishop rose to thunder before DC’s “deciders”(4), a most extraordinary retinue would mince its way along the corridors of the Congress or the State Department, humble and pleading, as appropriate, before the seats of democracy and freedom. There were quite a few of their graces the bishops among them, attended by a following of laity, and between them they all but undid the bishop’s success.  Had they been allowed an appearance at the French court before the Revolution, a princess would have remarked in her diary about the sacerdotal (in)dignitaries and their packs: “All in all, very little grace and the rest of the company utterly common.”(5)

As a sight, they were erased faster than the memory of their words, for Washington pretends to recognize and remember only true power or true beauty. And they possessed neither.

The other, far greater, misfortune which that cluster of demimonde encountered was that they performed before the wrong crowd. It was as if the mariachi sang an anti-serenade below the windows of the one who ordered it. Or, if the severed finger were sent to the Godfather, not to the family of the kidnapped.

It was the Serbs, not the Americans, they were supposed to convince that suicide is good for their own health.

And, thus, they failed each time they attempted to undo or diminish the bishop’s labor in America.

On the other hand, the political factors of Serbia, both in the government and in the nominal opposition, at best ignore the bishop. Some, actually, declare him a disturbing factor in Kosovo and denounce him before the foreign occupiers of Serbia’s territory.

Lost in the minefield they cannot traverse without being blown up, Serbian leaders remain stuck, inactive and trembling in fear before any move they are forced to make. Their greatest fear is that the bishop’s activity might expose their uselessness and insignificance, both to the Serbs and to the foreign powers that they are deceiving.

Yet, one must admit that the government wasn’t completely idle. It did make some changes. The national leaders implemented reforms, especially in the military: The duty to serve and protect they transformed into the farce of red-carpeted returns from international humiliations, welcomed by guards of honor, and rounds of photo-ops with refugees and “border” guards deep inside the safe territory.

Although Serbia’s leaders pose as brave defenders of her honor, their vulgar instinct command them never to displease anyone who wields power, to remember every name that scares their colleagues, to kiss every hand that distributes wealth and to bow before every image of authority.

More than anything else, they love to gather and congratulate themselves on their own shame.

Blind to the fact that their own children are next on the list of extermination, they abandon themselves to the most ancient rite of politics: the orgy of the division of the spoils. After receiving the awards for bartering Kosovo for a pie in the sky, they never stopped to think what they would do with the loot when their doors are knocked down and they are dragged out into the streets by the enraged mob that is swarming ever more closely.

In contrast to the deaf ears of his enemies abroad and the plugged up ears of his compatriots, after years of endless struggle to save the Serbs and Kosovo, the bishop’s words reached the open and receptive ears of President Putin, who understood the importance of the Kosovo matter both in global terms in general and for Russia’s international importance in particular.

It was the golden opportunity he needed to make history!

The Bishop of Kosovo’s persistence and courage gave time to Putin to reach the strength he needed to be named the Person of the Year 2007.

Putin’s stand on Kosovo confirms the Bishop of Kosovo as the Person of the Year 7515.

Regardless of what the temporal outcome of the Russian-American standoff will be, Kosovo’s eternal role remains what it has always been—the symbol of the struggle between good and evil, the test of one’s faith and courage, the land where heavenly principles clash with those of the underworld.

Kosovo’s invaders and occupiers trumpet to the whole world that they won Kosovo by the right of conquest but they forget that Kosovo has never been more Serbian than today. So much Serbian blood has irrigated the flora there that the forests whisper in the wind “serb, serb, serb…” So much Serbian flesh and bone has become one with the fertile soil of Kosovo that the produce which henceforth will nourish Kosovo’s inhabitants will eventually turn them into Serbs—you are what you eat.

The Serbs are not only part of Kosovo’s cultural and social history any more.

Precisely because of their eradication from Kosovo by the Albanians, Serbs became incorporated into Kosovo’s very essence. Grounded into that same holy land in which the murderers buried them to hide the evidence of their genocide, the Serbs are now forever part of Kosovo’s Natural History.

Footnotes:
1. We must not forget that the US/NATO horrific bombing of Serbia in 1999 awakened the Russian  people to the realities of Western attitudes in international relations, which made it possible for  Putin to  change the course of Russia and become the first real Russian statesman in almost 100  years.

2. Lk, 6:22.

3. At an open hearing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs (April 17, 2007), Chairman of the  Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) said: “Just a reminder to the predominantly  Muslim-led government[s] in this world that here is yet another example that the United States  leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe. This  should be noted by both responsible leaders of Islamic governments, such as Indonesia, and also  for jihadists of all color and hue. The United States' principles are universal, and in this instance,  the United States stands foursquare for the creation of an overwhelmingly Muslim country in the  very heart of Europe.”

4. President Bush said that he is “the decider.”

5. Actual words of Madame de Dino, Prince Talleyrand’s friend, about some people he received.

*(Since the Creation of the World According to the Orthodox Christian Count)