Roger Cohen: The Unquiet American
[Roger Cohen is a columnist for the NYT.]
It was the worst summer. The war seemed as unending as the excuses of Western leaders for their inaction. In a besieged Sarajevo, people raised hands to their necks in a gesture of self-strangulation as the flat fracturing boom of another shell reverberated in the valley.
Then Richard Holbrooke appeared in the snake pit.
Nobody could end the Bosnian war — nobody. Europe’s worst conflict since World War II had gone too far by 1995: the 100,000 dead, the three-way ethnic divisions traced in blood, the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims. Some things can’t be solved. This was one: until Holbrooke went for the Balkan jugular.
Three things distinguished him. The first was his passion. He’d been in Banja Luka in August 1992, where he witnessed “half-drunk Serb paramilitaries” on a raping rampage. Later he was given a wooden carving by a Muslim survivor of a Serbian concentration camp. He put the sculpture in his Washington office, a daily reminder of Western failure....
Read entire article at NYT
It was the worst summer. The war seemed as unending as the excuses of Western leaders for their inaction. In a besieged Sarajevo, people raised hands to their necks in a gesture of self-strangulation as the flat fracturing boom of another shell reverberated in the valley.
Then Richard Holbrooke appeared in the snake pit.
Nobody could end the Bosnian war — nobody. Europe’s worst conflict since World War II had gone too far by 1995: the 100,000 dead, the three-way ethnic divisions traced in blood, the Srebrenica massacre of Muslims. Some things can’t be solved. This was one: until Holbrooke went for the Balkan jugular.
Three things distinguished him. The first was his passion. He’d been in Banja Luka in August 1992, where he witnessed “half-drunk Serb paramilitaries” on a raping rampage. Later he was given a wooden carving by a Muslim survivor of a Serbian concentration camp. He put the sculpture in his Washington office, a daily reminder of Western failure....