Garbanzo Toons

Bosnia and the Blogosphere

After reading a post from Julia Gorin called "A Twist to the Pope's Lapse into Candor", I began to wonder, would we have supported the Muslims in the former Yugoslavia as strongly or at all, had the political blogosphere been active? In those days, we were forced to rely on the MSM for all of our information. The other side was never reported, and Bosnian Christian Serbs are still suffering for it today. Since I couldn't get the link to work, here is Ms. Gorin's entire post:

Most everyone by now has heard that last week Pope Benedict XVI quoted the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologos II as saying, “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

The interesting twist is that this man was married to the daughter of a Serbian prince. Their son Constantine, who went by his mother’s Serbian last name — Dragas, died fighting the Muslim Ottoman Turks in the first Siege of Constantinople in 1453.

Indeed, the Serbs have historically been on the front lines in halting the advance of barbarism into Europe — first against the Ottomans, then against the Third Reich (the Serbian nation lost proportionally more lives fighting the Nazis than any other), and then in the 1990s against the Muslim and Croatian heirs of the Nazis. But in our modernity and shallow historic understanding, we stopped them then — and have been paying for it ever since.

In March, BBC interviewed Bosnian Serbs 10 years after the Siege of Sarajevo. Among them was 52-year-old Slavko Jovicic, who lost a kidney and more than 40 kilograms “during four years of torture and mistreatment at wartime prison camps run by Bosnian Muslims” — just one of the many crimes against Serbs that the UN’s Hague tribunal has no interest in prosecuting, as its main occupation is prosecuting Serbs.

At a bar in Pale, Bosnia-Herzegovina, a man named Miki explained, “‘We were defenders, not aggressors. But the other side managed to convince everyone it was the victim.’” He lamented that his people are excluded from a united Europe.

Nearby, a man sipping a beer added, “‘Europe should not fear the Serbs. We will always be your buffer against Islam.’”

And because they have been that buffer, the Serbs have always suffered. For the past 700 or so years, they've taken it from Muslims and from an ungrateful Christian Europe. But you don't have to take my word for it. Go and read Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.

Labels: Bosnia, islam, Rebecca West, Serbs

posted by Harry @ 8:45 PM