US Deception during Bosnian war

[Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema]

I am the last person to be an automatic, or even a moderately eager defender of the US and US
government policies. But this leaves me ambivalent:

Chris Burford wrote:


>
>
> Senior European negotiators believe that with US backing the war could have
> ended two years earlier, but US desire to see the Serbs punished meant that
> they instead encouraged the Bosnian Government to continue fighting. The
> price in human terms? Over 15,000 dead and nearly 600,000 refugees.

At the time Milosevic was riding high, a hard line towards him seemed, and still seems, quite
appropriate. Thoroughly defeating Serbia reminded me of the demand for unconditional defeat of
Nazism fifty some years ago.

I am dubious about the European willingness to compromise with him. I suspect there is more than a
bit of the old sense of fighting against the infidel moors that encourages a fellow feeling with
Serbian nationalism. Perhaps the defeat of Serbia should have been more thorough even than it was.

Christopher Rhoades Dÿkema