CNN's Brent Sadler stood rock-faced beside Arkan, as he explained how Kosovo was sacred ground to the Serbs, and he couldn't give it up to the Albanians even though he had nothing against them and was happy enough to allow them to have full autonomous cultural rights. This should be acceptable to them. "What is the problem?" he wondered. (I heard a report the day before that the Serbian Army was knocking on the doors of Muslims in Kosovo and telling them to get out because Arkan's men were coming. They were telling them to flee to save their lives.) When asked about the war-crimes charges brought against him by the World Court, Arkan said he had no use for that international body. He didn't accept their right to judge him. The cause gleamed in his eyes. Everything he said had a logic. If you take a twisted string and push back the twisted parts into an unfathomable mass, you'll find a straight line somewhere. Then came a report by Christianne Amanpour. When the Yugoslav Army was demoralized, Arkan got money from Milosevic to have his own army in shiny black uniforms. They were fed. They were paid. They just had to slaughter for it. Get the Muslims out. House to house. Slit throats. Indiscriminate murder. Her documentation was air tight. I think that perfectionism is how she expresses her rage against war criminals. I hear her voice. On the one hand, my reason tells me that media attention has pulled a moment out of a long, complex history of violence in this region. Look, everyone, the story of the moment. War as TV mini-series. Then it simplistically assigns one tribe to be villians and and the other to be victims, as images of Albanian refugees, stories of neighbors burning their houses, and shocking pain are absorbed into the international consciousness. The media might be right for this moment, but you can't begin to understand over 600 years of hate with a photograph of one moment. On the other hand, my Jewish eyes looked at Arkan and thought, "This man could kill me without blinking an eye." The ease of murder. The nonchalant acceptance of it as a political tool. I saw the murderer in him so clearly, I was ready to run out of the room, and he was halfway across the world in a television studio. He was a Nazi to me. The only thing he didn't have was the sophisticated, large-scale, technological vision the Germans enlisted to serve the genocidal rage of a few leaders. The psychosis, thirst for blood, and cause were all in tact. He married a beautiful pop star. What memories must he have to put aside when he makes love to her? I felt that the method of Milosevic's madness, accompanied by intense international media focus, was taking away the world's opportunity to understand the human drama of this region. I think the truth of this war in Yugoslavia is that everyone is dying and atrocity discriminates against no one. So how am I supposed to understand this interview with Arkan? Use gut instinct? Or reason? He is fighting for a Greater Serbia. Land for the glory of self-image. Not one person from any tribe, anywhere in the world, is immune from the insanity that comes from this psychosis. $TribalPride = (land, power)
If disagreement
then massacre
elsif negotiaion
then uneasy peace
elsif sanity?
I don't know what would happen in the world if someone found a way to replace war with sanity. Wondering what everyone was thinking... Home | FAQ | Gallery | Subscribe | Interact | 
