On July 2nd we passed through metal detectors, armed guards and police cordons so that we could join the other Americans and their invited guests eating hamburgers and hot dogs. There can't possibly be a single enemy of America in Pristina, but still, because we are Americans, we must shut down the streets and divert traffic and have the utmost in security measures for an early Independence Day celebration at the museum, with an exhibition honoring the relationship between our countries.
The Kosovo constitution had been reproduced by hand to resemble its American counterpart. There were numerous ordinary items of clothing on display too, clothing that had been worn by Madeline Albright and Wesley Clark. American flags were hung side by side with Albanian flags and there were pins for Greater Albania and signs for Get Serbia Out of Kosovo, and I was embarrassed to be seen there, as if this display was making any attempt to grapple with history and truth, because it wasn't. It was only more adoration and patriotism, hamburgers and rock music.
Not that the items on display weren't historical. Many of them were. But this was a museum, and the uncritical homage seemed out of place there, like a political speech in a church, or an execution in a hospital.
I had a funny feeling as we ate hamburgers and the band played “Money for Nothing” and “One Love.” I wished I could have celebrated, because there were people present who were truly happy and truly thankful to my country. But it seemed like such a simple and stupid mistake that my country had made—to use a museum this way. The displays were perhaps even somewhat less self-analytical than those in the Military Museum of Belgrade, and I was scared that my country had really become hopeless, that we had become incapable of learning, that we would always ignore that which didn't suit our needs until it was too late, and that when real tragedy struck again here—as it had only the day before, when a pediatrician died in the streets of Mitrovica—the people from my country would only stare in wonder, dumbstruck, convinced that there was nothing they could have done better, and then go back to patting themselves on the back. I felt like I was getting dizzy, and spinning in circles, because it was me and my fellow citizens who used a museum this way; we had paid to have our praises sung, and we would probably have to pay for it again, one way or another, for years to come, because I've never yet read of self-satisfaction like this ever coming to any good.
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