Even putting aside the fact that the analogy doesn’t make sense because the hispanics in the USA are not organized within that party system along ‘ethnic’ lines. This question that the pommy bastard asks reveals one of the major biases that many people have towards the war in Bosnia.

First of all, you look at Bosnia as a mirror for your own anxiety over the need to cope with diversity. This is a trend among some of the regular commentors in this blog.

But, most importantly, your argument does not make sense if we look at facts and the process that led to the war. Bosnia opted for independence rather reluctantly, given that the dissolution of Yugoslavia was an undeniable fact.

Furthermore, arguments based on the security dilemma don’t apply to the case of the bosnian Serbs, because the facts don’t match, it’s as simple as that. Rational people with any attachment to intellectual honesty should be able to question their assumptions in the face of facts.

As for the SDA deciding in private meetings that war was inevitable, check this clip from 1:30 on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5kD1FdxvIE&feature=related

I’d say Karadzic made the decision for them, and in public.

The Bin Laden in the Balkans theory cannot be proved or disproved. I don’t see how anyone could have stopped him going to the country during war time but the idea that he was hanging around Izetbegovic’s office has the whiff of Serb propaganda all over it. The idea that the militant Bin Laden would have been impressed with the wishy washy “synthesis” Islam of Izetbegovic seems rather faint to me. If he really was there every day the Bosnian government would certainly have been trying to “make him go away” as you suggest.

“The SDA, the ruling party of Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic, decides in private meetings that war in Bosnia is inevitable. They begin forming their own paramilitary force called the Patriotic League, which answers to Izetbegovic and his party, not the Bosnian government as a whole. Hasan Cengic, a radical militant imam, is given control of the Patriotic League and begins arming it. The Bosnian Muslims have no armed force at all at this time while the Yugoslavian army they face is very large and well supplied. Cengic travels to many countries arranging secret arms deals to supply the new force, planned to be 30,000 soldiers strong. By the end of the year, he arranges deals with Slovenia, Lebanon, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. [SCHINDLER, 2007, PP. 70] Cengic’s efforts will be the start of an illegal arms pipeline into Bosnia of massive proportions (see Mid-1991-1996).”

and

“Renate Flottau, a reporter for Der Spiegel, later claims she meets Osama bin Laden in Bosnia some time in 1994. She is in a waiting room of Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic’s office in order to interview him when she runs into bin Laden. He gives her a business card but at the time she does not recognize the name. They speak for about ten minutes and he talks to her in excellent English. He asks no questions but reveals that he is in Bosnia to help bring Muslim fighters into the country and that he has a Bosnian passport. Izetbegovic’s staffers seem displeased that bin Laden is speaking to a Western journalist. One tells her that bin Laden is “here every day and we don’t know how to make him go away.” She sees bin Laden at Izetbegovic’s office again one week later. This time he is accompanied by several senior members of Izetbegovic’s political party that she recognizes, including members from the secret police. She later calls the encounter “incredibly bizarre.” [SCHINDLER, 2007, PP. 123-125] A journalist for the London Times will witness Flottau’s first encounter with bin Laden and testify about it in a later court trial (see November 1994). Members of the SDA, Izetbegovic’s political party, will later deny the existence of such visits. But one Muslim politician, Sejfudin Tokic, speaker of the upper house of the Bosnian parliament, will say that such visits were “not a fabrication,” and that photos exist of bin Laden and Izetbegovic together. One such photo will later appear in a local magazine. Author John Schindler will say the photo is “fuzzy but appears to be genuine.” [SCHINDLER, 2007, PP. 124-125, 342] According to one account, bin Laden continues to visit the Balkan region as late as 1996. [WALL STREET JOURNAL (EUROPE), 1/11/2001]”

This is not an attempt to deflect attention from the crimes of Karadzic or in anyway to muddy the waters, I am just trying to find out if these people, John Schindler and Renate Flottau are credible.

Thanks.