Bosnia and Herzegovina

And this is about a war where Serbia was, I think most of the world would agree, not the good guy.

This was an insurgency that started against because Bosnia was a breakaway Bosnia Herzegovina was a breakaway country from Yugoslavia, which is breaking up after the end of the Cold War.

There were two insurgent kind of groups in the country, one Croatian and one Serbian.

The Serbian was the army Spurska.

I don't know how you say that Spurska.

It's like it's lacking a vowel anyways to my tongue.

Uh, but yeah, so they were, they were fighting, they were Christians, uh, allegedly, and they were fighting Muslims and, uh, it, uh, who were the, the Bosniaks.

And it became like, uh, it was, it was a holy war.

It really was a comedy of errors, structurally speaking, with the deeply tragic outcome.

So Ferdinand, the heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, is making a state visit to Sarajevo and recently annexed Bosnia.

Now, he knows the local Serbian nationalists fiercely resent being ruled by his family.

You're well aware.

And he knows his family has a long, bloody history of being the victims of political assassinations.

He is very aware he has a massive target on his back.

And despite taking precautions, a coordinated assassination attempt is indeed made by a group of young revolutionaries called Young Bosnia, who were supplied by a secret society known as the Black Hand.

Right, right.

And those men were the core of what became Al-Qaeda.

And then what did Bill Clinton do? As soon as the war was over, Bill Clinton starts shipping them to Bosnia.

And this is what really turned Al-Qaeda into the international movement that it became.

And they didn't appreciate the support.

They had no reason.

Iranians were in the middle of sucking up to us at that time.

Or, well, just one year prior, Iran had been arming Osama bin Laden in Bosnia as a favor to Bill Clinton.

They were in the middle of sucking up to us.

But that sort of expedited these efforts in the Balkan theater, which would have been a lot more difficult if the Usta show was openly hostile.

to Bosnia populations.

The Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, they granted a lot of religious freedom to Muslim recruits.

Muslim formations, the religious calendar was taken into account, dietary laws with respect to, you know, the mess hall and things.

And these education programs were almost unfailingly delivered by military imams.

The only times they weren't is when an imam wasn't available.

And Bosniak imams in particular played an outsized role.

Again, Sarajevo...

I think we can support these guys, but you know, man acts and people are individuals and they got their own priorities.

And just cause Bill Clinton was willing to help these guys in Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya didn't mean he bought their loyalty or favor in order to prevent their terror war against us.

They kept waging it anyway.

And, um, The fact that Obama took their side and that Biden and now Trump take their side in Bin Ladenite rule in Syria, that doesn't mean that they love us now and that they wouldn't take the opportunity to attack the United States if they thought that they could get away with it.

Did you know? Yeah.

They got nothing from Bosnia-Herzegovina, who were debuting the same year, and neither from Slovenia.

So their neighbours, nothing.

Didn't even get anything from Austria, which Croatia always get points for.

But that sort of expedited these efforts in the Balgan theater, which would have been a lot more difficult if the Usta show was openly hostile.

to Bosnia populations.

The Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS, they granted a lot of religious freedom to Muslim recruits.

Muslim formations, the religious calendar was taken into account, dietary laws with respect to, you know, the mess hall and things.

And these education programs were almost unfailingly delivered by military imams.

The only times they weren't is when an imam wasn't available.

And Bosniak imams in particular played an outsized role.

Again, Sarajevo Only about 2 million Muslims lived in Sarajevo, but that's the European seat of Islam.

So when we're talking about causes of the war, inevitably we're also assigning blame.

The immediate cause was of course the assassination in Sarajevo of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 by a Bosnian Serb nationalist named Gavrilo Princip.

Quick aside, it's worth noting that the first big war of the 20th century began with an act of terrorism.

So Franz Ferdinand wasn't particularly well liked by his uncle, the Emperor Franz Joseph.