Sorry, Vlade, You Can’t Have It Both Ways

So now we hear that Vlade Divac is “struggling to make sense of the horror” [March 27] saying “innocent people are going to die on both sides” but yet he “doesn’t like to get into the politics of the battle.”

My question is, where was Vlade when the Serbs were perpetrating the horror of ethnic cleansing? Sure, he would offer up vague condemnations of both sides, but did we ever hear Vlade step up and speak out specifically against what Milosevic and Karadzic and Mladic were doing? As a high-profile Serb, his swift and uncompromising condemnation of the genocide being practiced by his countrymen would have resonated throughout his country, bolstering the forces of reason that do exist within Serbia.

Would this have cost him politically within Serbia? Certainly, but that is the price one pays if one is going to rise above the level occupied by politicians and hacks to the level of truth.

Vaclav Havel did it in Czechoslovakia, Muhammad Ali did it here, Tommie Smith and John Carlos did it in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City. But Vlade chose to keep a low profile, enjoy his superstar status among his Serbian countrymen, and to represent Serbia in the 1996 Olympics.

I’m sorry for Vlade, but I have a lot more compassion for those thousands who have been slaughtered, raped, and terrorized by Milosevic and his butchers the past nine years.

RON RICHARDS, Los Angeles