Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West

by David Rieff

Book Overview

In a shocking and deeply disturbing tour de force, David Rieff, reporting from the Bosnia war zone and from Western capitals and United Nations headquarters, indicts the West and the United Nations... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684819031
• ISBN13: 9780684819037
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: Touchstone Books
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 8.8"

Customer Reviews

Great analysis

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.

Elegantly written, reads like poetry

Mr. Rieff writes with such a poetic style that the subject becomes alive and fluid! Though the subject is tragic the writing style is magical. Every page drew me in and refused to let me go until I had turned to the next. A very well researched and poignant book.

Dated but sobering.

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.

A Masterpiece!

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!

Betrayal

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