I don't know very much about world politics. And I don't know the roles that powerful world leaders, such as the United States, Britain or France, have historically played in aiding other countries plagued by war, but I do know this: Bosnia was left to die while the rest of the world (at least those in political amity) slept peacefully.
During a long phone conversation, with a good friend in Portland, I asked him why he assumed the U.S. turned its back on the Bosnian people even after the genocidal truth was revealed. He instantly blurted out, "There's no oil there." What an interesting response. I expected him to say things such as ignorance or a sick sense of U.S. ethnocentrism. Could it be that one reason the U.S. did not intervene is because it had absolutely nothing to gain? Forget the slaughter and rape a world power could have prevented or stopped. There was nothing overly important happening in the former Yugoslavia that would affect the daily existence of Americans; no oil shortage, so why give a damn? After reading David Reiff's Slaughterhouse, it would not surprise me to find any amount of truth to this notion.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is the only international organization (of the ones I have learned about thus far) for which I have developed due respect. They made courageous efforts to aid and defend (politically) the Bosnian Muslims. "UNHCR staffers, international and local alike, fought and improvised, and, in an impossible situation for which there were no precedents, time and again pulled off what seemed like miracles" (Reiff 195). Where were the UN protection forces? Where was the U.S.? Where were any of the world's powers? They have stopped horrific atrocities of genocide within other countries - have they not? Why not Bosnia?
