From: sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.europe
Subject: How long will we remain civilized?
Date: 16 Aug 92 18:27:53 GMT
Organization: Enea Data AB

Ognen J Nastov (ognastov@athena.mit.edu) writes:
>A few strategic bombs on Belgrade as well as on the Serbian military
>positions and facilities could do the job.

Ross Dargahi (rdargahi@trane.iaims.bcm.tmc.edu) writes:
>Let the Serbian people remember the lessons of Dresden.

Some months ago I read an article by Bogdan Bogdanovic, Serb, architect
and mayor in Belgrade in 1982-87. I found the article slightly meta-
physical, but it wasn't without point. He started to make a link be-
tween urbanity and the modern civilization (this was the part I found
metaphysical), and wrote that the Serb connection with urbanity and thus
with civilization had always been thin, and seemed to once again to be
lost. The complete destruction of Vukovar was an example of this he
claimed.

And I think many of us can agree that the actions from Serbian side
in Croatia and B-H cannot count as acceptable in a civilized society.
But we must be careful, and not let this same attitude prevail among
ourselves. Serbs are not a different biological spieces, they are
also humans. What has happened to them, can happen to us to.

And the signs of it happening are starting to show. We have seen
several people who have advocated armed intervention in B-H against
the Serbs. Above we see two particularly distasteful samples.

We must ask ourselves, what is the purpose with an armed intervention?
Is the purpose to bring peace? We have seen in the papers that several
militaries, both from NATO and the UN, think that the chances to
get along with such a mission, would require a large number of men,
and peace would still not be guaranteed. Not even if we discuss in
terms of joining the war on side, the chances are not very good.

And still, imagine that the UN, NATO or someone else intervenes and
manage to defeat the Bosnian Serbs. What are they to do when the
Muslims and Croats start to fight each other? Or different Croat
groups clash?

Yet many people think that intervention is the thing. "We have to
do something". They see the about the camps on TV and feel the
adrenaline start to flow. But if the Serbs are not civilized starting
a war, how could we be if we join the war because that our adrenalin
is flowing in our veins?

Sure, the camps are bad news (but not very surprising), but we still
have to handle it rationally. Many stories are not very well verified.
It is unpleasent to see some posters who think that since there might
be something we can't neglect it. Sure, but first remember that it's
happening on all sides, at least to some extent. Then, we have to
ask ourselves, could there be any reason for planting such information
about the camps on the other side? Yes, there is. The Muslim side is
in a dire situation, and cannot sustain without outside help. They
want NATO or someone else to fight their war. If they can manipulate
the opinion in the international community with propaganda of bad
Serbian camps, so that an intervention becomes a reality, their odds
improves a lot.

Note, that I am not saying that the story of the concentration camps
are a hoax, but I think skepticism is always healthy, and this case
is not an exception and we have to be careful not to lose our heads
and brush off our layer of civilization and rush to war just in case.
-- 
Erland Sommarskog - ENEA Data, Stockholm - sommar@enea.se
Life is wonderful when the wonderlife is full