Horror and Responsibility

This is a courageous and painfully honest book that must have been very hard to write. Although it is very well written, it will earn David Rieff few friends. It is extraordinarily difficult to write serious reportage about Bosnia-Herzegovina while the carnage continues. Being analytical opens you to the charge of depraved indifference. If you report that victimization does not make people nobler and that hunger, deprivation, and constant fear of death make them appear “self-centered,” you are taken to be unsympathetic to their pain. If you argue that the demand to “lift the unjust arms embargo against the victims” must necessarily be accompanied by a call for military intervention by NATO or the United States, yo...