Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West

Rating:
Summary: Slaughterhouse
Review: "Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West", by David Rieff, is an in-depth account of the Serbian aggression in Bosnia in the early 1990's. The book's main claim is that the west could have- and obviously should have- stopped the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, but chose not to do so. Rieff is at his best in this book when he is skillfully intertwining the personal stories of Bosnians into the greater political power struggles going on the Balkans. The research conducted by Rieff and the wealth of sources he used in the writing of this book is staggering. Because of the variety of sources, Rieff manages to air drop the reader into the conflict and provide the necessary context of the conflict, without which those who were relatively ignorant about the events in Bosnia-as I certainly was- would be baffled. The West, according to Rieff, was indifferent to the cries of Bosnia. This western indifference was rationalized by several historical myths that Rieff attempts to combat in the book. These myths include that the conflict in Bosnia was an internal affair and thus not the business of outside powers, the second was that the atrocities trickling in from the news sources were exagerrated, that the atrocities that were actually committed were committed equally by both sides of the conflict, that intervening would create another "Vietnam situation", and finally the widespread belief that the Balkans are an eternally damned region of Europe destined for ethnic tensions in perpetuity. This last belief was expressed forcefully by a Russian officer serving in the UN, "They'll kill each other until they're full up and then they'll stop. But not a minute before, whatever any of us do." Rieff spends much of the book attacking these myths, some convincingly, others not so convincingly. Outraged by what he had witnessed, Rieff struggles to find an explanation for what he had seen. In his rush to do so, I believe that he has oversimplified the conflict into a much simpler black and white dichotomy than what existed at the time. Perhaps because of his heavy reliance upon individuals that experienced (survived) the conflict, Rieff's book comes off at times too polemical and bitter. For this reason, I believe this would have been a more evenhanded and thoughtful account of the Bosnian conflict and its greater political ramifications if he had waited some more time between his personal research and the writing of this book (this is always the problem with instant histories). Overall, Rieff provides an interesting and informative tour through the hell that was Bosnia in the early 1990's. For anyone unfamiliar with or interested in the Bosnian conflict, this book should be first on the list.

Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece!
Review: By way of introduction, I would like to state that this book contains virtually every essential element of the Bosnian tragedy. The author reveals the sheer indifference of the United Nations to the slaughter of a great number of innocent Bosnian civilians. As is well-known, one of the worst massacres after the World War 2 took place in Srebrenica before the eyes of the whole world! Admittedly, the United Nations failed to undertake necessary measures to prevent the bloodshed. In spite of the fact that Srebrenica was under UN "protection", eight thousand innocent Bosnian civilians had been killed!! Even today, no one knows whether or not these people are alive. However, it is most likely that these helpless people were brutally murdered. Indisputably, the war in Bosnia was not considered a priority by the international community; on that acccount many innocent civilians were killed. This book divulges that the international community is highly accountable for the Bosnian tragedy and the fact that approximately 300.000 people were killed!

Rating:
Summary: Limp
Review: David Rieff's book is one of many I have read on the Balkan conflict in the 1990s and I must say I was pretty disappointed with it. The book reads like an extended news report -- dry, factual and extremely boring. There wasn't much personal interpretation of the events, or sadly, anything new to say. The worst thing about Rieff's book I can think of is that it does nothing for one who knows zero about the war. A background of the conflict was not given, and he just went straight into talking about the war itself and the crimes on all sides. Mind-boggling and unfriendly.

Rating:
Summary: WHAT Failure?
Review: HEY, When Fat Boy BILL was about to send US troops in there, I saw a lot of Europeans burning American FLags and calling us HITLER....After Clark's high altitude bombing(A war crime) they were all screaaming it. Acording to EU warcrime tribunals Clinton, Clark and Granny Notbright are war criminals. Suposedly the US killed as many people as they "Serbs". NOT my problem. The Eurotrash will always side with the anti-American crowd....and "Genocidal Maniac" is just a lifestyle choice in the EU. Poor victims should of taken it to the UN...oh wait they did. Still not my problem. America is damn if we do, damned if we don't. Screw you and die silently. I'm sick of US dying for YOU. Funny how CLinton went around the Indiferent UN...wonder where Bush got that idea? Same people siding with Milosevec as are siding with Saddam and Osama....

Rating:
Summary: Betrayal
Review: On January 8, 1993 a UN convoy was transporting the vice-President of Bosnia, Dr. Hakija Turajlic back to Sarajevo when it was stopped by a Serb convoy. The UN commander, French Colonel Patrice Sartre did not call for help from the UNPROFOR aiport garrison. Instead he sent away three British Warrior fighting vehicles on the scene, saying there wasn't a problem. In order to demonstrate that there were no "Mujahedin" riding along with Dr. Turajlic, Sartre opened the door to the truck Turajlic was sitting in. Whereupon a Bosnian Serb promptly assasinated him. For this grotesque act of incompetence, Sartre was not court-martialed and shot, but fully exonerated by the United Nations, and on his return to France was given the Legion of Honor. Later he would help the French intervention to save their genocidal allies in Rwanda.

One might say that this horrible episode, as recounted in David Rieff's excellent and properly outraged book, was typical of the world's reaction to Bosnia: a false neutrality between the murderer and the victim moving towards active indulgence of the former against the latter; a refusal to accept the blame or responsibility for one's actions; a member country of the United Nations actively betrayed by the UN whose paths to peace amount to its liquidation. One might say this, but that would not be enough. Rieff reminds us of the full horror and obscenity of the Bosnian war, and provides a shocking picture of Western callousness.

He reminds us of the obvious. Here is a democratic multicultural republic who has no defenders in either the United Nations or in the European Community. For years the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe was the United States' best argument in the cold war. Yet nothing Husak or Honecker ever did was as foul as the butchery of Srebrenica. 200,000 people were slaughtered in ethnic cleansing and millions made homeless, the worst atrocity in Europe since the death of Stalin. But the ironies of the war are such that the one multicultural community in Bosnia found itself called "the Muslims." Meanwhile the irridentists seeking to destroy it were called the "Serbs" and "Croats" in the international press, and not Orthodox or Catholic, Chetnik or Ustashe. There is the whole pointlessness of the nationalist enterprise, as Serbs and Croats emphasize their distinct variety of Christianity when most of them are agnostic, while special nationalist intellectuals seeks to dream up new vocabularies or emphasize special alphabets to get around the fact that all three countries speak the same language.

Rieff argues, rightly, that only NATO intervention could have stopped ethnic cleansing. He also points out, again rightly as we can see from the case of Kosovo, that had they done so the Bosnian Serbs would have quickly compromised or been quickly defeated. He also notes the strain and pressure that the multicultural and democratic values of Bosnia were put under by the unrelenting strain and viciousness, and he also notes how the thugs of Karadzic and the cowards of the UN and the US leaped on the rising fundamentalism and intolerance as vindication of their own vile stand. We see the United Nations trapped in the worst set of bureaucratic mindset, with corrupt soldiers on the ground. The UN fully accepts George Orwell's ironic dictum that the quickest way to end a war is to lose it, and do everything they can to discourage the Bosnians. Increasingly, it seems that instead of sacrificing its political capital to help Bosnians, Bosnians should sacrifice everything for the UN's convenience. And so we see the Canadian general Lewis Mackenzie and the British General Sir Michael Rose insinuating, never frankly declaring, that the Bosnians shelled their own people. It is amazing that Mackenzie entered federal politics after his return home, and had the voters of an otherwise extremely conservative rural Ontario riding wisely re-elected the liberal incumbent, this most overrated of men could have been viewed as a potential leader of the opposition, even a potential prime minister. Rieff's book is worth reading alone just for pointing out the truth about him.

Rating:
Summary: Elegantly written, reads like poetry
Review: Published while the slaughter in Bosnia was not yet over this book provides a dated, yet chilling, view of the conflict in this God forsaken region. I say conflict because it cannot be considered war. I've read it before in other books and seen it in pictures and movies but Bosnia truly was the "Slaughterhouse" that Mr. Rieff describes.

These were ordinary people; doctors, teachers, parents, etc. that grew up in the bosom of civilization, in Europe. They expected that civilization to shield them from the horrors unleashed by the Bosnian Serbs and were shellshocked when it didn't. Comprehension was beyond them, this simply COULD NOT happen at the end of the 20th century in the heart of Europe, but it did. The worst slaughter in Europe since the Holocaust, 250,000 dead. Why? Mr. Rieff comes to the same conclusion as most; myth and delusion. The Turk/Janissary/Handzar were coming for the Serbs in their beds, only, it was actually the Chetniks murdering and raping instead.

"Why did they murder a 70 year old Bosniac?

Don't you understand they did it because in 1389 the Turks beat Prince Lazar on the Kossovo Polje?"

GAAAH!

Because of when this was written it is a dated history but still very valuable because Mr. Rieff was there, as an American, whose perspective any American (Westerner) will understand. His disbelief and horror echoes your own. A horrible read in that it will make you want to weep but a great way to begin to comprehend what happened.

Rating:
Summary: Dated but sobering.
Review: Published while the slaughter in Bosnia was not yet over this book provides a dated, yet chilling, view of the conflict in this God forsaken region. I say conflict because it cannot be considered war. I've read it before in other books and seen it in pictures and movies but Bosnia truly was the "Slaughterhouse" that Mr. Rieff describes.

These were ordinary people; doctors, teachers, parents, etc. that grew up in the bosom of civilization, in Europe. They expected that civilization to shield them from the horrors unleashed by the Bosnian Serbs and were shellshocked when it didn't. Comprehension was beyond them, this simply COULD NOT happen at the end of the 20th century in the heart of Europe, but it did. The worst slaughter in Europe since the Holocaust, 250,000 dead. Why? Mr. Rieff comes to the same conclusion as most; myth and delusion. The Turk/Janissary/Handzar were coming for the Serbs in their beds, only, it was actually the Chetniks murdering and raping instead.

"Why did they murder a 70 year old Bosniac?

Don't you understand they did it because in 1389 the Turks beat Prince Lazar on the Kossovo Polje?"

GAAAH!

Because of when this was written it is a dated history but still very valuable because Mr. Rieff was there, as an American, whose perspective any American (Westerner) will understand. His disbelief and horror echoes your own. A horrible read in that it will make you want to weep but a great way to begin to comprehend what happened.

Rating:
Summary: Bosnian Slaughter; not the wests problem
Review: Slaughterhouse; Bosnia and the failure of the west; in David Rieff's mind and words this means, Slaughterhouse the by Ustashi & Chetniks; Bosnia, not Herzegovina, and the failure of the west to do anything. This book basically has been written by an Alngo-Saxon, Capitalist, who has not been into the depth of the Bosnian conflict. I am a Croatian-Born Australian, but me myslef, i know the full effect of the Croatian war, meeting people who have been hardest effected by it. And now spending my freetime researching the Balkans and wars and conflicts and as to why they errupted. Mr Rieff basically didn't go into the fact that the west didn't do anything to stop or lessen the effect of the Bosnian and Hercegovina war, but all he managed to do was to get the point of view from either Serbs or Moslem Nationalists. Therefor pointing the finger at Serbs and Croats, many times re-phrasing the Ustashi and Chetnik terms. he wrote a whol;e 220 page or so book, rewritting what thew western world had kept saying while Bosnia and Herzegovina, many of u have forgotten it's Bosnia and Herzegovina, that the west have tried to steer clear of the bosnian conflict.

ei, the western world, saw the power of the serbs and saw that if the croats and bosnjaks were crushed there would be peace in the balkans because the serbs were chiefs. they didn't step in due to that... why did all of a sudden in 94-95 the USA turn on the side of the croats??? the croats were throwing the serbs out of western BiH. Rieff manages only to say that the western world did what it could to spare lives in BiH. exactly what the west had been wanting to hear all along.

Propaganda......Tudman was said to have questioned Jasenovac, he himself went to jasenovac to comemorate the jews and serbs killed there. he was also said to have written a book doubting the holocaust. he wrote a statement saying that the killing of jews and serbs in Croatia duroing WW2 by facsists was exagguratted by the communists.

the authour needs to get his facts write before he writes such a book.

Rating:
Summary: A bit light weight, and now perhaps a bit out of date
Review: The author of _Slaughterhouse_ advertises himself as a "human rights journalist", but it must be admitted that the tragedy of Bosnia has been better described and explicated elsewhere. But my only real gripe with this otherwise competent, Newsweeky-type of book, is that it is so clumsily written. Much of the contents reads like journalistic dispatches from second-rate newspapers, rather than the gripping, morally involving account that the subject demands. What this book lacks in passion and writerly skill, it makes up for in seriousness and a responsible clarity.

Rating:
Summary: Great analysis
Review: This book is an excellent analysis of the Bosnian war. While the writer at times might ramble on, it is still one of the best books out there by a great journalist. Rieff knows his stuff and I would say that this book is essential for any study on the conflict. His points are quite cogent and he makes an excellent case against the UN's conduct in the war. This is an important piece for the serious Balkan reader.