PAUL HOLLANDER
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infrastructure than by the Serbs' ethnic cleansing, not that he ignored the
latter. In his view it was a case of "the big beating up on the small," "the
greatest powers of the world conducting airwar against a little Central
European country." He wrote, "when the big beats up on the small I don't
root for the big." He was put off by the similarity between militaristic
computer games and the computerized advanced technology of high-level
aerial bombardment. He asked, why should "the bridges of Ujvidek (Novi
Sad) be destroyed in defense of the Albanians?" and argued that "it is a
big mistake to bomb human beings in the name of human rights."
In this as in other, similar disputes in Hungary (and elsewhere), the
direction of moral indignation was predetermined by conflicting beliefs
about who was the underdog-or the morally privileged, true under–
dog; the most deserving victim-and by different notions of who
threatened whom. But such perceptions are highly idiosyncratic. The
Nazis felt genuinely threatened by the Jews, Stalin by the kulaks, the
Hutus by the Tutsis, the Serbs by the Albanians. Whose perception of
threat is the most authentic? To put it differently, attitudes in Hungary
as in the U.S. were colored by conflicting ideas about "radical evil in the
world." Susan Sontag came ro believe in the existence of such evil and
located it in the Milosevic regime. Konrad, like many liberals, probably
does not subscribe
to
belief in the existence of such evil, which is why
he optimistically suggested that the Kosovo conflict could have been set–
tled by non-military measures and policies aimed at "loosening up,
domesticating Ithe Yugoslav regimelby the Red-Cross style rescue of
human beings" instead of the strategy chosen by NATO of "crushing,
punishing, and humiliating." Konrad's views were supported by the
Academy of Arts of Germany, of which he has been president for the last
two years.
Peter Nadas, another well-known novelist, disagreed with him. He
saw the Serbs as vastly more powerful than the Kosovar Albanians, and
focused on
their
victimhood. He questioned Konrad's pacifism "as one
which supports the rights of the stronger rather than those of the
weaker just because there is in the world a power yet stronger"-that is,
NATO. Nadas rejected "the placing of an equation mark... between
NATO airstrikes and the activities of the death-commando units carry–
ing out their depredations on behalf of the Serb state."
THE Kosovo
WAR,
with its many victims and incomplete resolution,
leaves one with mixed feelings. There is ample reason for gloom as one
