Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 10:34 AM by Gene

From TheNation.com (!):

Whenever I think of Radovan Karadzic, one picture remains my mind. It is from a documentary shot during the siege of Sarajevo, in which he arrives at Pale, on a hill above Sarajevo, from which the military of Republika Srpska was shelling the city. Karadzic arrives with a guest, the Russian poet Eduard Limonov. Besieged Sarajevo lies in the valley below, and they can clearly see every building, every street, every tree: an ideal position for shooting. Dressed in a black coat, with a shawl around his neck to ward off the winter chill, Karadzic gallantly offers his guest and a fellow poet a "special treat" befitting an arbiter of life and death. He asks Limonov to try a shot from a machine gun pointed at the city. Just like that; just for fun. Just like in the movies, when a king offers a gun to his guest to shoot the wild beasts. Only down in that besieged city are not beasts, but people.

Limonov takes the challenge, kneels behind a machine gun and shoots. Everyone is delighted: this man is one of them! Despite the fact that he is a poet, he is not a sissy. Like their own poet, Limonov proved he was a real man--as if to be a poet in the Balkans--or to be a psychiatrist or intellectual, for that matter--doesn't really count. Then the two of them drink sljivovica with the soldiers and dine on roasted pig, apparently unconcerned about whether Limonov shot someone or not.

How is it that an intellectual, poet and psychiatrist like Karadzic could do such a thing? It took me time to understand that this is the wrong question. It is wrong because it takes for granted that people like this--the educated ones, the sophisticated ones, the artists, for God's sake--should know better. Don't they have higher moral standards that ordinary people? The answer is no.