Ignoring the butchery _ again

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The horror gets lost in the words. We've heard them all so many times before.

A city is under siege.

People are starving.

Children are dying.

Grenades are exploding.

This time the place is Sarajevo, host to the Winter Olympics in 1984, now host to soldiers and snipers. When Communism collapsed in Eastern Europe more than a year ago, Yugoslavia did, too. The result is that this country, once a federation of six socialist republics - Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Serbia - is now a mishmash of newly independent republics enmeshed in fighting which has already cost some 50,000 lives.

Serbia's president, Slobodan Milosevic, is the bad guy on the scene, the ruthless aggressor who, using old Communist tanks, howitzers, rocket-propelled grenades, incessant mortar rounds, and random sniper attacks, is crushing his old neighbor Bosnia-Herzegovina (whose capital is Sarajevo) in an effort to steal more land for what he is calling a "Greater Serbia." In the process, Milosevic is exterminating Muslims (he calls this "ethnic cleansing") to insure that his "Greater Serbia" will be Christian, not an Islamic stronghold.

"Muslim males have reportedly been crucified while women and girls have been raped before being burned alive, according to Save Humanity, the only independent human rights group tracking deaths and atrocities in Bosnia-Herzegovina," Colin Nickerson reported in the Boston Globe Wednesday.

"All over Bosnia, genocide is being committed on a massive scale," said Dr. Arif Smajkie, head of Bosnia's Medical Crisis Committee.

If all this sounds vaguely familiar, it is. "Ethnic cleansing" is not a new concept. Hitler nearly perfected it 50 years ago. Now a nobody with a sorry army that shoots at women and children, that attacks ambulances and planes full of medicine and food, that trains snipers as well as soldiers, is reviving the art.

Milosevic's Serbian troops are positioned in the hills surrounding Sarajevo and in the countryside beyond and are holding the 300,000 remaining residents hostage there. Late last leek they knocked out the city's water and power supply. "Milosevic actually to starve the Bosnians," one official said.

"It is a disaster," another told a reporter. "Please tell the world only military intervention can save us now."

Incredibly, more than 1,000 United Nations peacekeeping troops are stationed in Sarajevo. But Milosevic's men have no fear of them. They shoot at soldiers, they shoot at planes. They shoot with telescopic sights at pedestrians and motor vehicles crossing intersection.

I have always wondered how it was that Hitler could have targeted a group of people to exterminate, and methodically and quite easily have killed millions of them. Where were all the good people when Hitler was closing down Jewish businesses, when he was banning Jewish kids from public schools, when he said Jews couldn't ride public transportation, when he took away their homes - and then took them away?

On July 3, 1936, 5 1/2 years before the United States was forced into World War II, a 48-year old Czechoslovak Jewish journalist killed himself during a session of the League of Nations to draw the world's attention to the desperate, deadly plight of the German Jews.

The world didn't even pause. Either nobody believed that a man could get other men to kill ordinary people solely because of their race. Or nobody cared.

If the United States and England and France had banded together in 1935, they could have stepped on Hitler like a giant on an ant. But they waited. They met. They debated. They threatened. They condemned. But they did not act. Not when Hitler marched into the Rhineland. Not when he took over Austria. Not when he rolled into Czechoslovakia. Not until he attacked Poland did England and France wake up and move and by then it was too late.

Now there's a new ethnic purist at the head of a government and once again the powers that be sit and do nothing except make threatening sounds.

American interests aren't at stake in Yugoslavia. There is no oil there. This is an election year. Who would fight for Muslims in an election year?

Only a president who puts people before politics. Only a president who puts conviction before convenience. Only a president who recognizes that those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.

"How much more of this must there be before the West realizes what is involved here and takes some action to help us?" the Bosnian vice president asks. How much more indeed?