how do you know you’re innocent, if you don’t know vvliat therncliarge is?” I retrieved the E-mail message sent from Londonrnand discovered that in substance, the indicted journalists werernaccused of writing propaganda that was part of the BosnianrnSerbs’ campaign to deprive the Muslims of their human rights.rnThe style had changed from Kafka to Lewis Carroll. Here 1 wasrnat the Mad Hatter’s tea part’, where grown men and womenrnwere keeping up a solemn pretense of sanity, while yet proclaimingrnopenly their belief in human rights. Knowing that arnfrank statement of my opinion would be tantamount to a confessionrnof guilt, I packed my suitcase and took the shuttle tornO’Hare Airport. On the way to the bus, I posted the followingrnmemorandum.rnA brief submitted in Case 042745 for defendant charged withrncrimes against humanity by the International Tribunal for thernProsecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of InternationalrnHumanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of thernFormer Yugoslavia.rnLet me begin, like Rousseau, by setting aside the facts: Thernhonorable judges are probably aware that I have had virtuallyrnno contact with the government in Pale; never met either Mr.rnKaradzic or General Mladic; never received any support fromrntheir government, unless vou count the barracks bed and can ofrnspam provided b Colonel Gusic in Herzegovina.rnFacts have never been an element in The Hague Tribunal’srndeliberations. All the parties to the Bosnian civil war have lied,rnand the worst liars have not been the so-called “Half-Turks,”rnwith their fantasies of reestablishing a fundamentalist corner ofrnOttoman rule. Their lies begin with themselves: everv time arnBosnian Muslim looks in the mirror, his own blond hair andrnblue eves tell him that to carry out the final solution of the Serbianrnproblem, he will end up killing himself. Everv day theyrnspend in Mr. Izetbegovic’s Islamic Magic Kingdom is punishmentrnenough for the self-deluded Muslims who lie for therngreater glory of Mahound.rnFor all their butcheries, the Half-Turks who are finally livingrnout their dream are entitled to a chivalrous respect they do notrnaccord to their Christian enemies. Even the Germans can bernpardoned, like the kleptomaniac caught swiping discardedrneight-track tapes, for their single-minded pursuit of empire inrnthe Balkans. The are addicted to empire—of which they canrnne’er get enough—and like all addicts, Mr. I lelmct Kohl has tornlie to cover up the evidence of his bad habits.rnBut what can be said in defense of the U.S. State Departmentrnand its satellites (the so-called free press of the UnitedrnStates)? They dream neither of an ancient empire restored norrnof a new empire created out of the ruins. To them belongs neitherrnthe courage of the Muslims nor the national honor of thernGermans. If minds so blank can be said to dream, then Mr.rnChristopher and his colleagues dream of a world inhabited onlyrnby peoples as coloricss and bloodless as themselves: a woridrnwithout song, because songs recall old battles and ancientrnheroes; a world without faith, because men will die for eitherrnthe Cross or the Crescent; a wodd without honor, because honorablernmen are not reasonable, and they will sacrifice even arncomfortable income and a house with a two-car garage to vindicaterntheir private honor and the honor of their people.rnThe New Order imagined by the internationalists is nothingrnmore than their own petty bureaucracy puffed up to burstingrnlike the mother frog who tried to impress her children that shernwas as large as a bull. Ivo Andric, in The Bridge On thernDrina—a book that no one in NATO or ITNPROFOR has read,rnbecause if they had, their stupidity would be inexcusable—rnportrays the arrival of the new imperial mind in Bosnia in thernperson of Emperor Franz Joseph’s soldiers and officials whorncannot leave anyone alone:rnThe newcomers were never at peace; and they allowedrnno one else to live in peace. It seemed that they were resoKedrnwith their impalpable yet ever more noticeablernweb of laws, regulations and orders to embrace all formsrnof life, men, beasts and things, and to change and alterrnever} thing, both the outward appearance of the townrnand the customs and habits of men from the cradle tornthe grave.. . . Every task that they began seemed uselessrnand even silly. They measured out the waste land, numberedrnthe trees in the forest, inspected kuatories andrndrains, looked at the teeth of horses and cows, askedrnabout the illnesses of the people, noted the number andrntpes of fruit-trees and of different kinds of sheep andrnpoultry…. [A] few months later, sometimes even a yearrnlater, when the whole thing had been completely forgottenrnby the people, the real sense of these measures whichrnhad seemed so senseless was suddenly revealed. Thernmuklitars of the individual quarters would be summonedrnto the konak (the administrative center) and told of arnnew regulation against forest felling, or of the fightrnagainst typhus, or the manner of sale of fruit and sweetmeats,rnor of permits for the movement of cattle. Everyrnday a fresh regulation. [Undoubtedly they also prescribedrnthe height limits on shrubs near intersections.]rnWith each regulation men saw their individual libertiesrncurtailed or their obligations increased.rnAndric concluded by sa’ing that the life of the towns and villagesrnbecame “wider and fuller.” I assume he was being ironic.rnWider, perhaps, but not fuller, since the Bosnian Serbs andrnTurks had all thc- needed for a full life, which is not to sa thatrnthere is not always room for improvement even in Eden, but order,rnregulation, control are the objects of l^urcaucracy, not improvement,rnper se. Order and control mean, in essence, subordinatingrnyour will to mine, replacing your identity with myrnidentity, reducing the flesh and blood of your aspirations downrnto the aridity of paper and ink, statistics and regs, and all thatrncannot be anah’zed is boiled away, all that cannot be regulatedrnis suppressed, and this includes—along with honor andrncourage, love and loyalty, songs and legends—the truth.rnSince the rules of the game do not allow the truth to be discussed,rnlet us simply assume (as any good witch-hunter will)rnthat I am an agent, conscious or otherwise, of the Serbs. In onernsense, any principled man is the servant of his friends, and forrngood or ill, I have adopted the Serbs, as I have also adopted thernItalians. We can never be entirely reasonable about our kin,rneven if they arc adopted. If the President’s wife were right, thatrnthere is no such thing as other people’s children, then the onlyrnlogical conclusion would be to treat our own kids with the samernrational indifference we display toward the children ofrnstrangers. Fairness would dictate that I portion out the sum ofrnmy paternal love among the hundreds of millions of childrenrnon the planet, my own four included. My love, spread so thin,rnyvould have as much an effect as my income, if it were redistributedrnto the wodd’s poor.rnAUGUST 1996/9rnrnrn