patrick.net

He told the San Francisco Chronicle that he would support covert action to get rid of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, and in other respects he seems more activist than Bush. Speaking to a group of Croatian-Americans in Burlingame, Calif., Buchanan said: ‘I’ll tell you what I’m going to do in the campaign: Every time the question, ‘Pat Buchanan, are you an isolationist?’ comes up, I’ll say, ‘Listen, I’m for recognizing the independence of Croatia.’ ” (Bush is still reluctant to do so.) As President, Buchanan added, he would “send the Sixth Fleet on a courtesy call to Dubrovnik,” the historic Adriatic port city that has been caught in the recent fighting between Serbia and Croatia.

“Pat Buchanan, one can say, permitted a dual loyalty to influence him. Although he had denied any vital American interest in either Kuwait’s oilfields or Iraq’s oilfields or its aggression, in l991 he urged that the Sixth Fleet be sent to Dubrovnik to shield the Catholics of Croatia from Serbian attack. “Croatia is not some faraway desert emirate,” he explained. “It is a ‘piece of the continent, a part of the main,’ a Western republic that belonged to the Habsburg empire and was for centuries the first line of defense of Christian Europe. For their ceaseless resistance to the Ottoman Turks, Croatia was proclaimed by Pope Leo X to be the ‘Antemurale Christianitatis,’ the bulwark of Christianity.””