When I went on our guided walk through a part of Vukovar, I realized I was wearing a Belgrade, Serbia, baseball cap, which my sister-in-law bought me as a souvenir. I asked our guide, Marda if that bothered her. I had been thoughtless to wear it. Marda said it was not a problem. It happened before my time. She was really too young. It was 30 years ago. To me a short time ago. To her a lifetime ago. I was happy that she held no resentments against the Serbs. If there is anything the wars of Serbia teach us it is, as Nietzsche pointed out, resentment is a sterile feeling that helps no one.
Places like Vukovar make clear the language of nationalism. It turns the world into one of black and white. Us against Them. The Good against the Bad. Dostoevsky said that ‘if God is dead then all is permitted.’ Though profound I believe that he did not quite get it right. Rather I would say that if you reduce the other to an object, to an it, then all is permitted. Then it is not just possible, but honorable, to destroy towns in order to free them. Like Vukovar had been completely destroyed. Then it is possible to make rape an instrument of warfare. Rape as national policy. Then there is nothing wrong with shooting hostages. Or your neighbours. Then heroes commit mass murders. It does not matter if young boys are included. All is permitted in the holy cause. All is permitted when the other side is reduced to things. They are no longer people. They are objects of our wrath. It has nothing to do with the death of God. All is permitted when the world is transformed into a world of Us against Them.
In such a world, as Ignatieff said, in his book Blood and Belonging,
“It was in Vukovar that I began to see how nationalism works as a moral vocabulary of self-exoneration. No one is responsible for anything but the other side… The pistol toting hoodlums, holed up in the ruins of the Hotel Dunav, who came out and threatened to kill my translator simply because he was Hungarian; the Krajinan Minster who had no information that was not a lie; the mayor of Vukovar, who went around the Vukovar hospital handing out Serbian flags to men whose legs ended at a bandaged stump—not one of these creatures ever expressed the slightest shame, regret, or puzzlement that the insensate prosecution of their cause had led to the ruination of their own city. For all of them, the responsibility was solely Croat.
That is what happens in the world of Us v Them. Bob Dylan put it well when he said, “you don’t count the dead with God on your side.” Or as our guide for the day, Marda said, “We’ve been to hell and back.”
When fighting subsided in Croatia a 14,000-person UN force was installed to keep Croats and Serbs apart. Croats had obtained an independent State and Milošević suffered the second of his string of ignominious defeats. Defeats that never gave him pause to consider the wisdom, or lack thereof, of his approach. Brutes like him rarely seem to reflect on their lives. At least I have seen few records of such reflections. That’s too bad. They might be able to offer some insights.
Shakespeare wrote, “Hell is Empty, the devils are all here. After walking through Vukovar I think I think I know what he meant.