Ljiljana Smajlovic is an editor of the Belgrade  weekly "NIN"

Last Tuesday Americans gained a horrifying common  life experience with the  Serbs: they became collateral damage in the hands of people who harshly  punished ordinary citizens because of their government's politics. The next  day a dumbfounded resident of New York stood before  the television cameras  and asked: "What does politics have to do with  blowing up offices during  working hours?" For years his government has been  dropping bombs on the  Iraqis as regularly as clockwork, weapons paid for  with his tax dollars have been terrorizing Palestinian refugees; in wretchedly  poor Sudan his cruise  missiles destroyed one of two pharmacological  companies in revenge against  the wrong enemy; in his name the Serbs endured three months of merciless  bombing; in three years his government has attacked  four sovereign countries  without so much as asking the United Nations  anything beforehand. But he  knows little of all this and feels responsible for  even less of it. He  wasn't interested but even if he was his chances of  changing anything would  have probably been as negligible as the chances of  an typical resident of  Serbia at one time of preventing police abuses  against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

 

The Americans reacted to terror from the skies just  like the Serbs: they  rallied around their government, their flag and  their national pride. In  accordance with their own national mythology, they  tied thousands of yellow  ribbons of rememberance around their trees and sang  their national songs.  When Serbs responded in a similar manner to their  bombs, the American press  unanimously declared this to be evidence that all  Serbs were supporters of  Milosevic and deserved bombing for this if for no  other reason. American  General Michael Short malevolently stated: We will  put out the lights in  Belgrade; let them sing thenŠ

 

All this shouldn't be taken as a sign that "there is  a God" as some of our  compatriots are joyfully concluding these days as  they privately yet openly  rejoice over the American misfortune. The God they  are referring to would  probably be at least as ill-disposed toward the  Serbs as the Americans. In  electronic messages being exchanged these days among  local intellectuals  (which in a country as poor as our own almost by  definition includes  everyone who owns a personal computer) scenes of  destruction are skillfully  paired up in which the burning building of the  former Central Committee at Usce looks remarkably like the building of the World  Trade Center in lower  Manhattan.

 

The Americans had no right according to the laws of  humanity, God and  international law to target Serbian civilians just  as Osama bin Laden has no  justification for the destruction of American  property and life. However, it  is neither polite nor honorable to neglect the fact  that there were no  victims in the building of the Central Committee  while in the World Trade  Center they have still not managed to dig up and  count the thousands of  dead.

The Serbian tragedy hit bottom in this decade when  the Americans became our  enemies but not only because the Americans are the  most powerful force in  the world and because one cannot best the devil. Our  catastrophe was that we  found ourselves caught in a vice, forced to wage war  against a selfish and  arrogant power which, to our misfortune, represents  the same principles in  which we too believe. Our task was to compel that  unbridled force to use Anglo-Saxon standards outside Anglo-Saxon territory  and to recognize our  membership in the same civilization and values. Our  cataclysm resulted from  the fact that this power enlisted itself among the civilized and us among  the barbarians, leaving us to knock on the gates of  the new Rome. Even know  we are somewhere in between: we have toppled  Milosevic, set fire to our own  Parliament and extradited a former president but we  still have not been  granted the right to sit at the table of equal  nations which direct their own affairs. We are the subject of jeers: two days  ago the "London Times"  published a letter from a reader proposing that the Americans offer  Afghanistan money in exchange for bin Laden then goes on to add cynically  "but maybe the Afghanis are as not as greedy for  dollars as the Serbs".

 

The Americans not only bombed us in violation of  international law: the  Americans must be the only aggressor in our history  arrogant enough to  attempt to convince us that they were doing so for  the noblest of reasons  and for our own good. This trampled our very humanity: if it were not for  these cynical arguments, perhaps we would have also  admitted that no other  aggressor before them invested as much effort into  reducing "collateral  damage", which is normal military jargon for  innocent victims.

 

But what happened to the Americans last Tuesday  happened to them for the  very reason that within their own borders they  represent an open, free  society such as those of us here in the Balkans  would like to live in as  well. The terrorists hatched their plot on American  soil, where they were  protected by constitutional freedoms guaranteed to  American citizens. The  CIA was not successful in infiltrating bin Laden's  group but bin Laden  easily infiltrated American society, where his  supporters who were foreign  citizens easily made use of its openness: they  rented houses, acquired documents, made useful contacts and where the state  did not tape their  telephone conversations. Even in the days of  greatest hysteria the Americans  have shown no inclination to compromise on their  civil liberties in exchange  for greater safety; unfortunately, they have not  demonstrated the same  degree of enthusiasm with respect to the behavior of  their country outside its own borders. Only 39 percent are prepared to  accept taping of their  private conversations by the state but 65 percent  presently believe that the  CIA should be given the right to kill citizens of other countries in its  secret operations.

 

It would be hard to find a Serb who would not like  to have the same civil  rights and guaranteed freedoms as the Americans.  This should be possible and  achievable for citizens of those countries which don't have cruise missiles  and don't impose global economic systems on others  dictating who will  produce what and how much they will pay them for it.  That is why we have so  many deeply contradictory sentiments about the  Americans today. Their battle  for democracy and human rights is our battle, too.  What is not good for the Americans is not good for us, either. The fact that  they will be setting  aside even more money for weapons than in the past  is not in our best  interests, either.

 

To the extent that what happened in America last  Tuesday is our tragedy, too, today we are all Americans.

 

Translated by S. Lazovic (Sep. 18, 2001) --------------------------------------------------------------------