Tough on Crime, Murky on Genocide : Bosnia: The lack of U.S. leadership is incomprehensible; how many ‘strikes’ will Clinton give before the Serbs are ‘out’?

Perhaps it is because I come from a country that benefited from so much international solidarity when our Solidarity movement was in trouble that I’m puzzled by the lack of support for the Bosnians. After all, our fight was merely for freedom and democracy; the Bosnians’ fight is for life as well.

I ask myself why there is no mobilization of public opinion, why demonstrations in U.S. cities draw so few people to the streets, why there are no 800 numbers on TV networks indicating where blood donations and monetary contributions should go, why American hospitals do not rush with offers of free treatment for the wounded, why there is no plan for accepting Bosnian refugees.

I know that Americans are capable of showing compassion, so I am surprised at their passivity this time. Yes, it was easier to show solidarity with Poles who fought by nonviolent means, but Polish communism was relatively nonviolent, too (the death toll for the whole period of martial law was roughly equal to the daily toll in Sarajevo). Yes, the struggle between communism and democracy in Poland was easier to understand; but in Bosnia the choice is between a secular, multiethnic and multicultural state on the one side and an ethnically cleansed and mentally brainwashed totalitarian dictatorship on the other. The choice should be equally easy.

But because the American people are constantly misinformed, they see the issue as muddy. It is not the facts that are murky--the media have done an excellent job in providing daily news from this hell--it is the U.S. government’s interpretation. Perhaps this is done on purpose? Perhaps it is meant to be muddy?

Why otherwise would the Administration continue to describe aggressors and victims alike as “warring sides” (recently the words civil war were introduced by the White House). Sadly, President Clinton, instead of correcting this misinterpretation, adds offense to injury. “Until those folks get tired of killing each other over there, bad things will continue to happen,” he declared after the slaughter in Sarajevo’s market. I guess if President Clinton had been around during the 1943 uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, he would also have called it “those folks out there killing each other” (some Jewish combatants, though crudely and sparsely armed, managed to inflict casualties on the Nazis). How would he describe the brief armed rebellion in the Treblinka concentration camp?

But President Clinton does know how to be tough. He has, for instance, supported a stern domestic stance against crime. But isn’t genocide a crime? Is it merely a “bad thing”? He declared war on repeat felony offenders with “three strikes and you’re out.” How many strikes does he give the Bosnian Serbs and their recidivist leader, Radovan Karadzic?

True, there is not overwhelming public support for action in Bosnia. A CNN/USA Today poll conducted after the Sarajevo marketplace carnage shows 48% of Americans favoring air strikes and 43% opposing them. But considering that the Clinton Administration’s main policy on Bosnia is to keep it out of the headlines as long as possible, 48% is a surprisingly high level of support. Bosnia was mentioned only once, in passing, in the State of the Union address; Clinton chose not to quote from any letter he got about the atrocities; he did not invite the editor of the Sarajevo daily Oslobodjenje (who was in Washington that day) to sit in the gallery, although that newspaper is certainly a perfect example of nonviolent resistance. The mortar attack on the market, which took 68 lives, was downgraded in State Department descriptions from the worst atrocity of the war to “no more horrible or less horrible” than other attacks.

Instead of trying to galvanize public support for a tough stance, the President is desperately looking for excuses to do nothing. All forms of inaction have been tried, but action has not.

Perhaps this time it will be. According to the same opinion poll, 65% of Americans would support Clinton if he did use air strikes. By acting, by keeping his word, he would also save some of his credibility abroad. It may come in handy when confronting other warlords and naughty boys of this world. North Korea’s Kim Il Sung, Haiti’s Raoul Cedras, Russia’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Somalia’s Mohammed Farah Aidid can all sit in front of their televisions and watch, live, President Clinton’s handling of the Serbian warlord. So far, they’ve sighed with relief and proceeded with their plans. My own Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski watches too, wishing he had had it so easy.