Text 19775, 48 rader
Skriven 2011-06-05 19:48:48 av Robert Bashe (2:2448/44)
  Kommentar till text 19744 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
Ärende: Body slammed and arrested for dancing
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Ross Cassell wrote to Björn Felten on Thursday June 02 2011 at 20:57:

RC> I have to wonder what was going through your mind when the ethnic
RC> cleansing was taking place in the Balkans before Clinton with NATO
RC> pulled the trigger, I bet your kind said "its not our problem", much
RC> like your brethren did in ww2.

No, I was here in Germany at the time, and disgusted as you probably were at
the European inaction, but the reason was different. Europeans love to talk,
and they think _every_ problem can be negotiated away. They negotiated with
Milosevic, they negotiated with Karacic, they negotiated with Mladic - all the
time these various "gentlemen" were doing their best to turn the Balkans into a
sea of blood.

Promises were made and broken, agreements signed and ignored, and still the
Europeans wanted to negotiate. I'm convinced they would have negotiated until
there wouldn't have been a muslim left alive in Bosnia or Kosovo, or a Croat in
Bosnia.

I watched the news every evening, and it was worse than a horror show because
it was real and not a game. And the Europeans, in particular the Germans,
_still_ wanted to negotiate.

Finally, one fine day, the Serbs shot a few rockets into the open market in
Sarajevo, killing quite a number of people, and the Americans (who up to this
point had held back and let the Europeans "deal" with the problem) finally had
enough of the carnage. They pushed NATO into action, even though the UN was
waffling still again about what to do (and quite a number of European NATO
members, including Germany, wanted a UN mandate to do anything except talk),
and led NATO more or less kicking and screaming against the Serb aggression in
the Balkans, finally stopping the bloodletting.

The upshot is simply that the Europeans are fine negotiators - when they're
dealing with civilized people and there's anything to negotiate - but lousy
when it comes to action. The Americans, on the other hand, aren't that great at
negotiations, but get their asses off the ground pretty fast when they see
something they can't and won't let happen without lifting a finger.

Both sides have their strong and weak points, but unfortunately neither side
realizes this and both try to be all things to all people. Which is what gets
us into fruitless discussions like this.

Have a nice Sunday :-)

Cheers, Bob

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