Life Comes One to a Customer
As the cross-European trip winds down I can feel the changes it has had on me. There are many small ones - for one, I now have some recipes that will relieve John of his kitchen drudgery and I can navigate just about any computer keyboard thrown my way (the characters are always in a different, annoying place) . But the biggest two are deeper.
For one, I lost that acute self-consciousness plaguing me for years. Sitting unwashed on a bus right next to someone will do that for a person. Second, my tolerance for absurdities has been wiped clean. Voltaire once wrote, "Atrocities will continue to happen as long as people believe in absurdities." I tend to agree, especially after a day in Srebrenica, the living memorial to the darkest moment in Bosnian and U.N. history. The graveyard where just some of the 8,000 civilians slaughtered during the war are buried stretched as far as the eye can see. I read a letter later written by the then-mayor published by The NY Times or some other paper asking the U.S. to simply obliterate the town. He wrote that anything would be better than the hell everyone was living in. I recalled the protests in America that took place when NATO used force in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. There were better ways to end the war but anti-war protests was not one of them. How naive. People really don't want to believe that people are capable of genocide; of dispicable crimes that reduce humans to outlets for pent up anger and fear.
Sadly it is true that such things happen. I used to hold diplomats in high regard. But I understand now that they are middlemen for lies when national interests are more important than people. War is the breakdown of international law and diplomacy. But breakdown is inevitable when the scaffolding is constructed of lies, of political expediency and interests.
If you read this you will surely say, Ah, a diatribe. I could write something subtler and ironic. But what is the use? More attractive packaging - something that attracts the eye? The truth is the truth no matter how it is wrapped.
For one, I lost that acute self-consciousness plaguing me for years. Sitting unwashed on a bus right next to someone will do that for a person. Second, my tolerance for absurdities has been wiped clean. Voltaire once wrote, "Atrocities will continue to happen as long as people believe in absurdities." I tend to agree, especially after a day in Srebrenica, the living memorial to the darkest moment in Bosnian and U.N. history. The graveyard where just some of the 8,000 civilians slaughtered during the war are buried stretched as far as the eye can see. I read a letter later written by the then-mayor published by The NY Times or some other paper asking the U.S. to simply obliterate the town. He wrote that anything would be better than the hell everyone was living in. I recalled the protests in America that took place when NATO used force in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. There were better ways to end the war but anti-war protests was not one of them. How naive. People really don't want to believe that people are capable of genocide; of dispicable crimes that reduce humans to outlets for pent up anger and fear.
Sadly it is true that such things happen. I used to hold diplomats in high regard. But I understand now that they are middlemen for lies when national interests are more important than people. War is the breakdown of international law and diplomacy. But breakdown is inevitable when the scaffolding is constructed of lies, of political expediency and interests.
If you read this you will surely say, Ah, a diatribe. I could write something subtler and ironic. But what is the use? More attractive packaging - something that attracts the eye? The truth is the truth no matter how it is wrapped.
posted by A.W. Woodall at 4:15 PM
1 Comments:
Nice piece..
It's a sad fact that people, in most cases like this one can't change anything... Bosnia once used to be a peaceful country. It's slowly starting to become one again but the wounds are already there... as you have scene.. there is saying..forgive but don't forget...
I will keep reading your postings :)
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