This rather overexcited piece on the attack on the US Embassy in Belgrade is catching some attention.

The author is one Stephen Schwartz, former Trotskyist-style Leftist who has undergone a metamorphosis into a sui generis new category of moderate US Muslim neocon. Nice niche marketing.

One thing about Trotskyists (and it seems former Trotskyists) is that they lack the inner ‘don’t overdo the adjectives and adverbs’ circuit breaker which passionate but also good writers need.

Thus some of us might think that the Nuremburg Trials after WW2 did not do too bad a job in difficult circumstances. We would be wrong.

Mr Schwartz’s fevered denunciation of Serbs fails to convince, on the simple basis that if one rummages around in Balkan history it is easy to pull out a similarly impressive catalogue of horrors perpetrated by most if not all of the ethnic communities there. 

Indeed, that’s the point.

Down the decades in this region exists the following grotesque syndrome:

  • "They massacred us, so we need to massacre them".
  • Which leads to even worse: "Whatever we do, they are likely to massacre us, so let’s get our massacre of them in first".
  • And when Our massacre of Them is duly followed by Their massacre of Us, we say to the world in a sorrowful-wise tone of voice "look, we knew this would happen – those people are primitive!"

For anyone interested in the psychology of all this or who ought to be interested (eg policy-makers in key capitals and the UN/Brussels, not to mention the new army of EU Justice-Dispensers now marching on Kosova/Kosovo), there is nothing better than reading the collection of essays in a moving and profound little book Truths, Responsibilities, Reconciliations published by SAMIZDAT/Free B92.

One piece in particular by Sreten Ugricic The Sakic-Milosevic Syndrome is especially poignant, describing how in the perverted logic of Balkan extremism the WW2 Jasenovac Croatian concentration camp in which tens of thousands of Serbs were murdered somehow justifies the far smaller but catastrophic 1991 massacre of Croats by Serbs at Vukovar.

And, amazingly, vice versa.

The point?

None, except to say that if Serbs burn down part of the US Embassy in Belgrade most Americans will be unimpressed.

As I used to tell anyone who would listen in Belgrade, "Serbia has two problems. First, you have an image problem. And second, you don’t know you have an image problem."

Or is it even worse that that?

"We know that we have an image problem. And we just don’t care any more. Is that a problem? And if so, is it our problem – or your problem?"