POLITICS

Are We Guilty of Something Someone Did Before Our Time?

A story of a man who blamed me for the murder of children in his country and vowed revenge.

Once upon a time, about seven years ago, in a faraway land called Serbia, I was enjoying coffee with friends. We were minding our own business when an angry-looking man in a red T-shirt approached our table. At first, I didn’t pay him much attention, but then it became impossible to ignore him.

Collective guilt

The man accused us of collective guilt for NATO bombing his nation two decades earlier. People died. Civilians included. We’re a part of NATO, so we’re guilty by association, or so I was told. That was all it took for him to attack us. Luckily, only verbally, but for a moment there, I was afraid things would get ugly.

We were in a foreign country, tourists, and a stranger was blaming us for murdering the children of his nation, threatening our lives and the lives of our children. Things were getting heated, and he warned us that we would never leave his country alive. His words, as I remember them:

“You have our children’s blood on your hands. You murdered our children. Soon, I will watch you carry your dead children in your arms. Soon, you will pay for your sins. We will make sure of it! I will rejoice when I see you suffer as we did! Justice will be served.”

We live as peaceful, distant neighbors, his country and mine.

I was in my “Ghandy — we’re all brothers and sisters mode” while this man’s soul was overrun with darkness. A darkness that found its nest there because of trauma. The trauma of seeing the people he loved get bombed. He told us, a grown man sobbing, stories of how he carried dead children in his arms after they were killed in the bombing.

My perspective differs, naturally. He didn’t care about the reasoning behind the bombing, the justifications, and we didn’t offer them. There was no point. The man was clearly in pain, carrying all this hate, accumulating it, nurturing it, until one day, it would come out and consume him whole and everyone in his vicinity.

When I looked at this man, I saw his pain. I sensed his suffering. I felt nothing but love for the man. Compassion and sadness for what he had to go through. Until he threatened my unborn children. That tends to complicate things. And he felt nothing but hate for me. Blame and resentment for something I had nothing to do with.

Nor did any of my friends, and I believe he would gladly kill us all at that moment if the situation were a bit different. Not just us but our children as well, as he kept threatening. We were labeled murderers for something an organization our country is a part of had done to his country, justified or not.

At the time, we were all little kids, probably about the same age as the ones he carried in his arms from under the rubble. It mattered not to the man.

The mind virus

Something similar seems to be going around. A mind virus, perhaps. Everybody is blaming someone for something they didn’t do but were guilty by association.

Here’s the thing. History is full of horrors and terrible actions of all nations.

There are almost no exceptions to this rule. The reason we mark history is to learn from it. Grow from the mistakes of our forefathers, not use them as excuses, and play the blaming game.

My small country in the middle of Europe has been attacked, conquered, or governed by Austria, Italy, Germany, Turkey, Serbia, and France, and this was just in the last 200 years. Should we go back, the list is endless.

• So now what?
• Are we now to blame all of their descendants for the crimes committed on our land?
• Should we treat them as enemies?
• Wage war against them?
• Demand reparations?
• Insist on borders from way back then?

Grow up! Things happened. Borders changed. Wars were fought, won, and lost. Leave the past to the dead!

Can we forgive?

If there is one glaring example of how something immensely terrible can be forgiven and almost forgotten, are the examples of Nazi Germany and The Empire of Japan.

Why them? Because that is relatively recent history and because the horrifying things happened during their time.

• Where are we now?
• Enemies?
• Do we still hold grudges?
• Do we hate each other?

No. We’re friends and allies. We realize that these people today are not the monsters of yesterday. And most of us, older than forty, know people who were harmed and killed in those wars. We’ve been listening to the stories of survivors all our lives. It’s not some abstract situation. Yet we forgave and moved on.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” by Mahatma Gandhi

We don’t have to go that far back.

The Balkans were at war only two to three decades ago. I was a kid then, but I followed along. I saw the news live. I talked to people under bombardment with my grandfather, a radio operator, which was the only way to talk to people worldwide in a time of war.

I heard bombs echoing on the other side of the line as we encouraged them to cling to hope and not give in to despair. We hosted refugees from those parts. I knew a lot of them. I’ve heard their stories, stories so gruesome, you wouldn’t believe. I’ve seen their pain. It shook me to the core as a young kid. The horror people were willing to do their former brothers and sisters was impossible to understand. Still is.

I was afraid to visit the Balkans for quite some time after the war.

I expected to find a bunch of traumatized murderous, with basements full of guns and resentments guiding their fists. When I visited, and I visited a lot, all I found were friends.

People just like us. People tired of fighting, war, destruction, and suffering. People who only want to live in peace. They were patching their bullet-ridden houses, trying to move on somehow, wanting to forget the horrors of yesterday.

Of course, there are exceptions. There always are, such as the man from the beginning of this story. Some people can’t let go and move on. Some people still believe in the same twisted ideologies and have learned nothing.

But the majority of us can. And we should. The sooner, the better. We’re much better off forgiving and forgetting, among friends and cooperating, than killing our neighbors because of old feuds. The more we trade, mix, and connect our nations, the fewer reasons we have to wage war.

“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.” by Mahatma Gandhi

Luckily, our story had a happy ending.

The man returned three times and did his show-and-tell performance, ruining our day, but that was the end. It left me with questions, though — questions seeding doubt about this conflict being entirely over. As long as people with resentments are alive, things can go haywire.

The Balkans are a powder keg. They always were. One wrong move and the whole region can explode in violence again — something we’re seeing happening worldwide. Hopefully, clearer heads prevail, and we’re past this episode in the region.

The longer the conflicts we’re all watching last, the more chances of the violence spilling over into other regions. Especially in this era of massive propaganda, fake-everything, and intense divide.

It would appear people have forgotten how horrible war truly is.

In situations empty of simple solutions, we must strive to make the difficult ones, hoping for the best possible outcome among horrible choices.

Stay safe, friends.

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