A lot has been said about the inability of the world to stop the war in Yugoslavia. Just this week, President Clinton was accused of flip-flopping and his policy on Bosnia ridiculed alternately as cowardly, muddled and indecisive.
But why are the world and the United States shouldering any blame for Yugoslavia's problems to begin with?After all, Yugoslavia boasts that it's part of the civilized world, with traditions that trace back 4,000 years.
The Muslims, Croats and Serbs live in the midst of spectacular Greco-Roman ruins, enjoy the ease from living in a developed state and draw on the same great cultural roots of the Koran and Orthodox and Catholic traditions from the Bible.
They once marketed Yugo cars to the world, hosted the Olympic Games, sought membership in the United Nations, housed Nobel Prize laureates, fielded athletic champions in tennis and soccer, took part in international peace conferences.
In short, there's no good explanation for this discomfort they're in, except they brought it on themselves.
Ask each side why they're fighting, as I've done since the war began in 1991, and you'll frequently find they have no answer except to blame the other side for starting it, for keeping it going and for failing to stop it.
Moralists who now blame the world for not doing enough will find it unhelpful to note this is the fifth major Balkans conflict during this century.
The first, in 1912, drove Turkey from Europe. The second, in 1913, saw the victorious Greeks, Serbs and Bulgarians squabble among themselves to divide Macedonia and the spoils of victory. The third was touched off by Hitler's embrace of Croatian independence in World War II, which threw the region into a civil war from 1941-45 and created a guerrilla insurgency that took the Greek civil war of 1946-49 to resolve.
This time, no great powers were stirring up the Balkans poisons.
There are no universal causes at stake in the Balkans, only parochial disputes, poisonous blood feuds and murderous street fights. The outside world is getting involved on moral grounds to stop the killings, end the rapes and find an equitable solution.
It clearly isn't working, even though the United Nations has authorized more than 50,000 peacekeepers. Since Clinton took office after campaigning on a pledge of getting more involved in the Balkans, the number of refugees has doubled from 2 million to 4 million and the fighting has spread.
But there's no reason why the United States or the United Nations should share any blame that the war is still going.
After all, we don't have a dog in this fight. It's their quarrel, not ours.