A Fool's Task

As can be seen, I am very much inclined to blame the state and politics for this death, even though I know that I would have difficulties with the medical arguments. I've heard that the Italians sometimes blame the government when it rains. Judging by the fact that they have changed governments on an average of once a year in the past fifty years, I'd say that they have a very healthy attitude towards authority. I don't know if Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi will manage to justify the rains and floods in Italy, but I believe that the army of fans who loved Milan Mladenovic's music are mad at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. If not, they should be.

He who covets power, should, in principle, be responsible for everything, especially for some great evil and misfortune. Contrary to what we have been told here for generations, we should ascribe all the nice things which have happened to us to ourselves, and only those that don't turn out properly to the authorities. And let them defend themselves and prove that they aren't thieves and liars, and that they can't stop earthquakes, droughts and floods.

It would be a good thing if the government were in a permanent state of crisis, and we were free and irresponsible and always ready to make impossible demands. For this to at least be achieved in the next generation, I think it necessary that we systematically and carefully spoil our children. But not let them run loose, and then beat them from time to time, and in the end give up. We should consistently nurture in them the virtue of natural ungratefulness.

This all has to do with the fact that we have been called upon to show humble gratitude, worthy of slaves, to those who let us breathe a little, after first having made us incredibly unhappy. We are expected to admire or at least show a bit of human understanding toward the authorities that have dragged us into war and now want to pull us out, and, with this aim in mind, are fighting a difficult and uncertain struggle against all those who remind them of what they said and did yesterday. Now that they are trying to patch things up and put them right, must we harass and distract them with stories about what once happened, the fact that they have burdened us with a historical crime and shame and got us into a quarrel with all who are sane? Shouldn't we be helping them in fighting crime, instead of moaning on and on that this same authority has robbed us?

At the same time, they don't admit to having been guilty, while now they insist that they are in the right. They are simply appealing to our civic awareness and our national duty to be fools. We don't know what we know; we haven't heard or seen anything, but just thought we had; we don't understand their high-level politics and admit that they are always right. This has remained the same, while everything else has changed during these years of stormy transformation. They advise us to get used to and to learn to like that which we cannot change anyway. That way we will become true subjects and sometimes earn an imperial reward. Despite all that has happened to us or will happen, we must know that our highest interest is simply and clearly called Slobodan Milosevic.

Tyranny is best proved and consolidated through a capacity for conducting contradictory policies and carrying out impossible turnabouts, because the citizens are then liberated of all illusions that they can influence anything and are advised to believe in fate, the Almighty and miracles. The problem here isn't that Milosevic has seen reason and abandoned war, but that he wishes to survive and stay put, thus making us suffer irredeemable humiliation. In this, he is paradoxically being helped most by the national opposition, which pinches him where it hurts least, showing us and the world that there can be no peace without Milosevic.

Everything has fallen into place so nicely that the outside world is forced to share our humiliation. At the beginning of the chaos and war they recognized the main guilty party and everything seemed nice and simple, but then the world decided to indulge in strictly diplomatic efforts and things soon got tangled up. Other culprits appeared, so that in the end Milosevic simply disappeared. All agree that the initial inspiration was his, but they must now pretend that they don't remember this and invite him into society and congratulate him for his courage and wisdom.

The police usually catch small-time hoods, lean on them, blackmail them and then let them wriggle away, on condition that they cooperate and identify the big shots. Diplomacy obviously functions the other way around. This is why the international order, in the moral sense, is maintained at a much lower level than in the streets. This is why Milosevic could perform his disappearing act, after first denouncing Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Bosnian Serb Army Commander General Ratko Mladic. But they probably know that they have plenty of time to sign the peace plan and become respected statesmen.

Diplomacy, accompanied by some arms for the Muslims and NATO threats, will achieve something sooner or later in Bosnia, something akin to the Contact Group plan. But the humiliation will remain and become all the more obvious one day when, in the presence of world power representatives, the representatives of Serbs, Croats and Muslims shake hands and kiss. All will be happy that a peaceful solution has been found and a compromise reached, just as we are now happy that Milosevic has given up and that sanctions are being lifted. The dead, wounded and displaced will join the long line of history's victims.

If this war ends without a real winner and without one totally defeated side, which is what world diplomacy is aiming for, then there can be no big culprits. From the standpoint of European historical experience, this outcome is both logical and natural, despite the enormous surplus of victims in comparison to the number of identified criminals. In this respect, American policy is traditionally conservative and more sensitive to humiliation. The matter concerns a big power's well-known pride and the Americans' readiness to differentiate between good and bad. But, in the end they too can say that they have no interests here and give up.

The world can win as much justice in Bosnia as it is prepared to invest and sacrifice in its name. It's hard to tell if this is a lot or a little. Actually, it is just enough to satisfy current international morals and a general need to see some kind of justice done in a place which is neither important nor unimportant. This is why the outcome of the war in Bosnia is a good indicator of the state of things in the world and in leading Western countries.

I believe that Milosevic is on the road to getting away scot-free and, in this sense, the world has the same problem with him as we do. They too must pretend that they haven't seen or understood anything. They also admit that at this moment we are not capable of coming up with anything better, something they are being assured of by our national opposition. To be precise, the opposition claims that it would do a better job everywhere except where it is most important: they wouldn't sign the peace plan and they wouldn't break-off aid to Karadzic. Milosevic's back is well secured.

Our humiliation is not of the same kind faced by world diplomacy, so that it is not necessary to jump to the conclusion that Serbia is the whole world. They need Milosevic only for a short while, but for us he is an inevitable solution. He represents us, not them. He gave them the slip while managing to maintain his position among us. To them he is one of us, the best of the lot. And we must accept this.