Ethnic wars, despite the distinctions drawn by participants, are essentially fratricides. Neighbors murder neighbors. People who are indistinguishable racially or linguistically kill each other over absurd differences. The piles of corpses spread fear, panic, and a thirst for revenge. The barbarity becomes the rationale to continue the conflict and destroys all hope for a return to a multi-ethnic community.
Nationalist movements feed off of each other.
Such intoxication is always easier to bear than reflection, honesty, and self-criticism. We are quick to accept the facile ideological veneer wrapped like a mantle around the thugs who prosecute the slaughter. Tito had made an important player in international affairs, had failed to give its citizens a national identity. In part we do this to avoid intervention, but also because the media often lacks the perspective and analysis to debunk the myths served up by opposing sides. In the final months of the siege of Sarajevo television crews, many of whom showed great courage, recorded scenes of carnage on the city streets.