Introduction It is often said that Americans have short memories. For the most part, this student believes this to be true. Although many of us can recall specific or noteworthy events, such as the 1980 Winter Olympics [Do you believe in miracles?!?!], an informal and unscientific survey of this student’s coworkers found a zero percent recollection rate of the location of the 1984 Winter Olympics. For the record, they were held in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia. Why does no one know this? Is it because the U.S. Men’s Hockey Team did not win, place or show? Is it because Disney did not make a movie those particular games? Is it because they were held in a place halfway around the world that most Americans could not find on a map, even then? Richard …show more content…
Blamed in part by the end of the Cold War, in part by Yugoslavia’s leaders, in part by Europe’s failure to deal with those leaders, and ultimately, by a total absence of American action that should have occurred in the vacuum created by European inaction. As the cold war ended, and with it Soviet influence, many Central and Eastern European countries started realigning themselves. Yugoslavia was no different. Catholic Slovenia was the first Yugoslav Republic to consider secession. The Albanians in Kosovo, tired of being ruled by the Serbs, were considering the same. James Baker, George Bush’s Secretary of State, visited Albanian, but made it clear that America was not going to intervene. Immediately thereafter, Croatia and Slovenia declared independence. The Bosnian Serbs, led by Slobodan Milosevic, resisted. The Yugoslav-Slovene war was first; and it ended almost as soon as it started, with Slovenia gaining its independence. This was actually a shrewd move on the part of Milosevic; with Slovenia being predominately Catholic, it left him with a country that had a greater concentration of