BUSH TO ALBANIA-- THE ONLY PLACE ON EARTH THEY ACTUALLY LIKE HIM, OTHER THAN UTAH

The first I ever heard of Albania, when I was just a small kid, was when I was figuring out what to do with a stamp that said Shqipëria. "Where the hell is that?," I wondered. It was between Yugoslavia, Greece and the Adriatic and we call it Albania. At the time it was neither a U.S. nor a Soviet ally, but a Red Chinese ally-- with a Chinese submarine base in Durres. And, on top of that, a Muslim country in Europe! And it was an authoritarian state ruled by a guy named Hoxha right out of Orwell's 1984. For me an interest developed that has, to this day, remained. In 1969 I was wandering around in that part of the world and decided to visit. Visas were hard to come by-- it was as much a Hermit Kingdom as North Korea is today-- and I ambled over to the Albanian Embassy in Belgrade. It was a dark, secretive and suspicious place. Someone opened a tiny window in the door and asked what I wanted. I said I wanted a visa so I could visit his country. He slammed it shut-- and that's the closest I've ever gotten to visiting Albania. (I went to Bulgaria instead and loved it; more recently the NY Times has promoted Albania as a hip, off-the-beaten-path tourist destination and I've been thinking about going.)


Suffering from severe diarrhea after drinking a beer with Tony Blair, George Bush is making a 6 hour visit to Albania tomorrow, the first sitting American president to do so. For historical reasons, Albanians love Woodrow Wilson and Bill Clinton. They don't understand that the historical anomaly that has illegitimately made Bush president has nothing to do with either. Sometimes you just gotta work with the U.S. president you've got, not the president you wish you had.

Thousands of young Albanians have been named Bill or Hillary thanks to the Clinton administration’s role in rescuing ethnic Albanians from the Kosovo war. After the visit on Sunday, some people expect to see a rash of babies named George.

So eager is the country to accommodate Mr. Bush that Parliament unanimously approved a bill last month allowing “American forces to engage in any kind of operation, including the use of force, in order to provide security for the president.” One newspaper, reporting on the effusive mood, published a headline that read, “Please Occupy Us!”

...While much of the world berates Mr. Bush for warmongering, unilateralism, trampling civil liberties and even turning a blind eye to torture, Albania still loves him without restraint.

Wherever I've wandered in the world in the wake of a trip by Bill and Hill, people were excited, even years later. President Clinton-- and even the less ebullient Hillary-- were the ultimate empathic, curious and interested visitors, eager to drink in as much of the local reality as they could. Bush has never been one for any kind of reality and he doesn't exactly get out among the teeming masses and shake hands the way Clinton always did. But in Albania... no matter. Just showing up goes a long way. And for Bush, it's one of the only pro-American countries left anywhere in the world after 7 years of him and his crew of cutthroats at the helm.

There are a lot of Albanians living in the New York City area and in Massachusetts. Teachers and social workers I know uniformly tell me they are by far the most dysfunctional ethnic group they ever come across. John Belushi was Albanian.

Bush’s visit is a reward for Albania’s unflinching performance as an unquestioning ally. The country was among the first American allies to support Washington’s refusal to submit to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. It was one of the first countries to send troops to Afghanistan and one of the first to join the forces in Iraq. It has soldiers in both places.

“They will continue to be deployed as long as the Americans are there,” Albania’s president, Alfred Moisiu, said proudly in an interview.

Most recently, the country has quietly taken several former detainees from the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, off the Bush administration’s hands when sending them to their home countries was out of the question. There are eight so far, and Mr. Moisiu said he is open to accepting more.

Albanians, where Mafia-like culture is as strong, if not stronger, than in Sicily, is perfect for someone like Bush. They hired one of his cronies, Tom Ridge, as a lobbyist and Bechtel won a no-bid contract-- which was questioned by even the pro-American Albanians-- to oversee Albania’s largest public spending project ever, a contract to build a highway linking Albania and Kosovo. President Moisiu said state prosecutors were now looking at the deal."

In preparation for Mr. Bush’s six-hour visit, Tirana has been draped in American flags and banners that proclaim, “Proud to be Partners.” A portrait of Mr. Bush hangs on the “Pyramid,” a cultural center in the middle of town that was built as a monument to Albania’s Communist strongman, Enver Hoxha. State television is repeatedly playing a slickly produced spot in which Prime Minister Sali Berisha welcomes Mr. Bush in English.

What Mr. Bush will get in return from the visit is the sight of cheering crowds in a predominantly Muslim nation. When asked by an Albanian reporter before leaving Washington what came to mind when he thought of Albania, Mr. Bush replied, “Muslim people who can live at peace.”

Albania is about 70 percent Muslim, with large Orthodox and Catholic populations. To underscore the country’s history of tolerance, President Moisiu will present Mr. Bush with the reproduction of an 18th-century Orthodox icon depicting the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus flanked by two mosques.

“President Bush is safer in Albania than in America,” said Ermin Gjinishti, a Muslim leader in Albania.

Maybe he can move there after 2009 if things don't work out for him in Paraguay.


Today Bush went to Rome and met the Pope, a right-winger like himself, but not as amenable to Bush's insane agenda as the Albanians. He then met with Prime Minister Prodi, who is also unhappy with Bush's disastrous leadership of the western alliance, and with Italy's disgraced ex-prime minister, neo-fascist criminal Silvio Berlusconi, a personal friend. Tomorrow: Albania and Bulgaria.