S.A.M.
08-02-07, 09:39 AM
The persecution of Muslims in Bosnia also radicalized international Islamic fighters like Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a London School of Economics student who went to war in Bosnia after watching a British-made film that depicted the horrible plight of Bosnian Muslims (the same Sheikh who later participated in the beheading of Daniel Pearl).
Hitchens experienced his conversion at the same time. Where the 1992 images of Bosnian Muslim suffering transformed Sheikh into a Mujahideen, they turned Hitchens—who until then had been a leftist opposed to Western military intervention—toward neoconservatism. As Hitchens said in an interview in 2004, "I first became interested in the neocons during the war in Bosnia. That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons."
Many of today's liberal hawks, who call for war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Iraq , and elsewhere, were on the side of the militants during the Bosnian conflict. Indeed, back then the pro-interventionist Left and al-Qaeda were allies. Both groups backed the Bosnian Muslim Army and demonized the Bosnian Serbs as savages. Liberal hawks, including Hitchens, did it with propaganda; al-Qaeda did it by deed. But both the black-and-white worldviews of the Left neocons and the bin Ladenites were forged in the fires of the Bosnian war.
The Mujahideen, which received western aid in Afghanistan against the Soviets, continued to receive aid in the war against the Serbs. O'Neill argues that many Islamic fighters were indeed encouraged and emboldened by the western press.
Many of the Mujahideen who fought in Bosnia would relate that they were inspired to do so by the saber-rattling reports of Western journalists. Some may even have been moved to Holy War by Hitchens.
Ah, but now the two forces are on opposing sides, which obviously creates a very dangerous situation. Two sides, both convinced they are fighting for good against evil, neither at all interested in compromise.
Liberal hawks and al-Qaeda have no moral equivalence whatsoever. The hawks are merely misguided whereas al-Qaeda is murderous. Yet both camps view world affairs in simple terms in which everything is reducible to a clash between good and evil. Maybe that is because both were forged during that most moralized of wars— Bosnia.
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2007/08/bosnian-connection.html
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_07_16/feature.html
Hitchens experienced his conversion at the same time. Where the 1992 images of Bosnian Muslim suffering transformed Sheikh into a Mujahideen, they turned Hitchens—who until then had been a leftist opposed to Western military intervention—toward neoconservatism. As Hitchens said in an interview in 2004, "I first became interested in the neocons during the war in Bosnia. That war in the early 1990s changed a lot for me. That's when I began to first find myself on the same side as the neocons."
Many of today's liberal hawks, who call for war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, Iraq , and elsewhere, were on the side of the militants during the Bosnian conflict. Indeed, back then the pro-interventionist Left and al-Qaeda were allies. Both groups backed the Bosnian Muslim Army and demonized the Bosnian Serbs as savages. Liberal hawks, including Hitchens, did it with propaganda; al-Qaeda did it by deed. But both the black-and-white worldviews of the Left neocons and the bin Ladenites were forged in the fires of the Bosnian war.
The Mujahideen, which received western aid in Afghanistan against the Soviets, continued to receive aid in the war against the Serbs. O'Neill argues that many Islamic fighters were indeed encouraged and emboldened by the western press.
Many of the Mujahideen who fought in Bosnia would relate that they were inspired to do so by the saber-rattling reports of Western journalists. Some may even have been moved to Holy War by Hitchens.
Ah, but now the two forces are on opposing sides, which obviously creates a very dangerous situation. Two sides, both convinced they are fighting for good against evil, neither at all interested in compromise.
Liberal hawks and al-Qaeda have no moral equivalence whatsoever. The hawks are merely misguided whereas al-Qaeda is murderous. Yet both camps view world affairs in simple terms in which everything is reducible to a clash between good and evil. Maybe that is because both were forged during that most moralized of wars— Bosnia.
http://christopherhitchenswatch.blogspot.com/2007/08/bosnian-connection.html
http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_07_16/feature.html