YakimaGulagLiteraryGazett

From the laconic announcement, it sounds like your reaction is rather like mine - uncertain which side of the balance sheet to sum up his achievements. I guess we'll never know the full story of any "deals" on Srebrenica and Zepa, but whatever its aftermath Dayton ended the war.
 

I have to admit having a hard time with the division of Bosnia and Hecegovina. For one thing, I think allowing Republika Srpska was a reward for genocide. I don't think Holbrook meant to reward genocide. Like a good American, he was looking for some easy answers. Partition causes trouble down the road every time it's tried. Entity envy has harmed stability in the country and even the region at large.

Then again, the guns are silent. I wish I could say the samr for the rhetoric of corrupt politicians!

I think that we in the U.S. May be worse off without him, bit it's complicated. I wonder what he might have accomplished in Afghanistan?

He was one diplomat with some credibility in the Muslim world. His work saved lives in BiH. My former significamt other and virtually everyone I knew in Sarajevo survived in part because of his work on one hand, and on the other, it can be argued that the Bosniak side was close to a hands down victory in the war. Perhaps the NATO intervention had more to do with not wanting to see any Muslim area of Europe really kick some butt, I think there is in some Europeans an elemental fear of Islam. A partial victory, one that tied all side in knots is what Dayton started.
I also do not think a hands down Bisniak victory would have been so terrible.
 

P.s. I am leaving judgement up to God. I judt don't know.
 

It's the eternal dilemma, stop it as and how you can now, or wait for a better solution. I thought you might like to read Christiane Amanpour. http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/80177/holbrooke

I don't feel in a position to pass judgment either. Dayton was an extraordinary achievement. It stopped the war. But it consolidated the achievements of genocide, as you say, and it made Bosnia's future impossible. Amanpour is not stupid. She clearly respects him despite being aware of his faults. But oddly she steers clear of the Zepa and Srebrenica deal issue.

There's a good paragraph in there: "It was in Bosnia that I learned — I do not mean to make my tribute to my friend too personal, but Bosnia, and his role in it, was inseparable from my own education — what it means to really see what you are witnessing and to call it by its right name. When asked why there was not more balance in my reports from Sarajevo, I asked whether balance should mean making a story up, because there was no balance in the story I was covering. Genocide is an imbalanced situation. Should I, in the name of fairness, have drawn a false moral equivalence between victim and aggressor? I could not, and I would not; but I learned that in Sarajevo. It was there that I learned about objectivity — that giving all sides a fair hearing does not mean treating all sides equally, especially in situations of gross humanitarian violence. Treating all sides equally in Bosnia would have made me into an accomplice."