In the Land of Blood and Honey: Madeleine K Albright

Madeleine K. Albright: It is now possible to see the kinds of things that are going on in a country. One could make the argument - I would not be one of them - to say that we didn't know what was going on during World War II but we did know what was going on in Bosnia - there were all kinds of news reporting and photographs, movies, videos of people being dragged off to their version of concentration camps and people being driven off their land and a variety of horrible things happening.

MKA: If somebody is in charge of a country as a president or a prime minister it is his or her responsibility to protect the citizens of that country. If that is not being done because of violations of their human rights and a variety of crimes then this concept has now developed that it is absolutely actually up to the international community to intervene in order to protect those people -- that that is the responsibility to protect is something that is an international responsibility.

MKA: The Bosnians themselves were beginning to call upon the international community, there was the thought the Europeans themselves would do something about it after all this was happening in Europe, so the argument often was, well why should the United States get involved this is a European issue - on the other hand there were some of us that were saying this is an international issue, this is offensive to humanity and it is the responsibility of the United States to be a part of trying to do something about it.

MKA: I was Ambassador to the United Nations at the time, having gotten there in February 1993 and people would come up, various representatives, including the Ambassador from Bosnia who would come up and say: Look at these terrible things that are going on, the United States has to do something about it.

MKA: And in fact it was said we have no dog in this fight, and that we didn't particularly care, and that the Europeans can handle it -- I disagreed with that because I could see what a difference it makes when the United States, given our power and our capabilities should get involved.

MKA: So it wasn't a matter of saying the US is going to do this no matter what - we really did try a variety of ways, from my perspective I thought it took too long and I did in these meetings say: Gentlemen, 'cause they all were, we are going to be judged very harshly by history if we don't do something about this.

MKA: I am, I've said this often, a mere mortal female civilian, arguing against military people.

MKA: But you have to look at the military context, you have to look at the political context and you have to kind of do what I talk about as the doability - I mean can you actually get something done.

MKA: I actually believe we should have done something earlier, there is something morally wrong with watching people die and deciding that you would not use a certain amount of force in order to make them stop killing each other.

MKA: There are many many discussions about it but from my perspective - if you have the capability of stopping the killing of one group of people for no reason except because you're prejudice against that group of people, and you have a capability of using the force surgically, then I think it's worth doing.

MKA: You can remember your history without avenging it in a way that discriminates against other people, and that the identity comes only from revenge -- identity can come from positive lessons of history and those are the ones I think need to be emphasized.

MKA: It's very hard all of a sudden to say to a group of people: you're all going to get along now. You know, you've just finished this horrible war but you're all going to get along. I think that the thing I advocated was that they would have things that they needed to do together -- it was more kind of action forcing to build a road together, or to learn how to run/operate a business together so that they were doing real things and not kind of having 'encounter sessions' saying we're going to like each other they they rediscovered what they, I thought they could rediscover what they had in common in terms of being able to run a community -but it's very hard.

MKA: I think by doing real things and giving people a stake in a future that requires there to be cooperation is the only way to go about it. But it takes a long time, there's no question.

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