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The country of my birth destroyed itself (with ample help from outside, but still) when I was 15. I've been trying to warn the people of my adoptive country for years, so they can avoid the same fate, but it doesn't seem to be working. I wish I could do better.
You do NOT want Bosnia to happen here. But all I see, all day, every day, is people who have NO CLUE what an actual sectarian war is like trying to provoke one here. Who think there's a winner in such a war. Who think they will be that winner.
My people have a saying, "The well-fed don't believe the hungry." I didn't understand it for the longest time, but I think I do now. You just can't explain to someone who's never felt war in person how utterly awful it is. By the time they learn from experience, it's too late.
Even if I shared the personal, eyewitness stories of everyday horrors, you will not believe me. Because it's such a leap from life here, even the past two months of radical disruption, that you just can't. But I really need a way to reach you and make you UNDERSTAND.
Because you really, really, REALLY don't want this to happen here, to you. Even if you think you do. Trust me on this, if on nothing else ever.
Take a deep breath. Look around you. THINK about what's important to you and why.
Take a deep breath. Look around you. THINK about what's important to you and why.
Watch a big Hollywood disaster movie. Imagine that's YOUR house. YOUR city. YOUR family. YOUR life, changed forever. And there's no hero, no happy ending, no saving the day - just wreckage, death, misery and hatred the kind of which you've never seen.
I'm sitting here on a hot, humid May night with the ghosts of the 1990s keeping me company and I just felt the need to share this with you.
It probably won't help. But I had to try. Make of that what you will.
God help us all.
It probably won't help. But I had to try. Make of that what you will.
God help us all.
