Roger Cohen

During the Bosnian war, daily reports about conditions in Bosnia reached the outside world with regularity. Thousands of international journalists and photographers described the fighting, the concentration camps, the ethnic cleansing and the siege of Sarajevo. In addition, refugees streaming from the country told their stories to anyone who would listen. In spite of how well-informed the West was, however, the war in Bosnia went on for three years without military intervention from any Western nation.

In the following excerpt from his book, Hearts Grown Brutal, Roger Cohen argues that the West refused to see the gravity of the Bosnian war in order to avoid having to do something about it. Furthermore, Cohen maintains that it has become easy to ignore the graphic photographs taken of wartorn regions. He contends that contemporary global culture bombards people with so many images...