Theme of the Day: Flashing Back

Bob Dole has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, again causing me to think about the past. Dole appropriately questions Europe's ability to do any heavy lifting, having failed bigtime at its first opportunity in 1991-95.

Speaking for the European Community, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jacques Poos famously declared, "The hour of Europe has dawned." Unfortunately, that was an hour of passivity and noninterventionism, and it turned into years of carnage and the worst European genocide since World War II. The slaughter ended only when the U.S. led a NATO military campaign to halt the violence.

Of course, that is a bit unfair since it is unlikely that the US could have done much to prevent the war either.

Still, the op-ed seems to be mostly on target (although I have not been following events in Bosnia closely these days), that the changes that the EU and US are recommending to the Dayton Accords seem to be exactly the wrong ones. Weakening the Serbian entity (the RS as we called it) is the right way to go, not empowering it.

Thanks to Bob Dole, I am resolved to re-focus a bit and see what is going on in Bosnia while we have all been looking elsewhere. I don't often agree with Dole, and was not a big fan when he was a Senator, but he does demonstrate what a loyal opposition can do when it is not captured by the wingnuts of ruthless opposition.