I was a graduate student in Washington DC when Sarajevo became a by-word of genocide ethnic cleansing and world impotence. Let me correct that last part: European impotence. For 43 months a major European city was besieged and thousands of its citizens butchered while no one did anything about it. I remember feeling so angry, me a raised Roman Catholic, about the fate of a majority Muslim city.
I admit that this event set my mind about a number of things:
1. I distrust any kind of nationalism. I find it to be murderous foolery.
2. I have no confidence whatsoever on European military muscle or will of action. Srebrenica, a name that will forever live in infamy, an infamy that the Dutch may not live down in generations.
3. Bill Clinton is the best USA president EVER!!!!.
That the end of this prolonged atrocity came by the hands of US troops and military action stills fills me to this day with enormous pride. If there has ever been a clear case for justified war this was it. The same case was replayed few years later in Kosovo: the same assholes, the same heroes.
Radovan Karadzic has been arrested today. What kind of justice awaits a mass murderer, the man responsible of destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands?
I guess a civilized trial and civilized imprisonment will be all the Justice he will get. May the souls of so many rest in peace.
