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Date: 27 Aug 1995 06:09:14
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From: 100440.270@compuserve.com
Subject: A Time to Live
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From: Robert Bennett <100440.270@compuserve.com>


Dear President Clinton:

One of the surprising effects of these letters is the various kinds of 
people it has brought me into contact with, both over the Internet and 
in person. The following conversation is perhaps significant because it 
indicates, after four years of war in the Balkans, the perception many 
people now have of the Serbs.

"You should be careful, you know," one of my former students said to me 
suddenly one evening. We were sitting in one of those bars you can find 
in any university quarter in a German city: stark, crowded, smoky, dimly
lit.

I asked her what in the world she meant.

"The Serbs. They've tried everything they could think of to discourage 
those letters you keep writing to Clinton, and the copies you send out. 
Some of the flames you've been getting have been pretty savage." She 
took a sip of weissbier. "What I mean," she said, almost starting to 
stammer, "is that the Serbs might not stop with nasty computer messages.
They might try to get you out of the way permanently."

I stared at her for a moment, and as it dawned on me what she was 
talking about, I burst out laughing. When I saw the wounded expression 
on her face, though, I stopped cold.

"Okay," I said quietly. "I'm sorry." Then I smiled and slipped into my 
best Victor Laszlo accent. "'If you kill people like me, Major 
Strasser,'" I tried to quote from "Casablanca," "'hundreds, even 
thousands will rise to take our place. Even Serbs can't kill that 
fast.'"

Now it was her turn to smile, for a few seconds. "I'm serious," she 
said. "Any group that's capable of sending snipers to murder women on 
the streets of Sarajevo or shelling three girls last week in Gorazde, 
any group that can murder a thousand Moslem men and boys in a football 
stadium in Srebrenica, is certainly able to manage a fatal "accident" on
the streets of any West European city, if they put their minds to it."

Now I was serious too. "Look," I said. "After what they've done already,
God only knows what the Serbs are capable of. Okay, let's say they 
actually can continue getting away with murder." I looked directly at 
her and spoke slowly and carefully. "When I was an undergraduate at 
Harvard, one of my professors said to a group of us one day, 'If a man 
has nothing he's willing to die for, then he has nothing to live for 
either.' I didn't understand what he meant at the time, but I do now. 
Whether death is imminent or not, that seems to a lot of us a reasonable
way to think."

She looked at me with an expression I'd never seen before, a mixture of 
sadness, exasperation, and kindness. "All right," she said, "maybe I'm 
just imagining it all." She hesitated. "And I know it sounds crazy," she
blurted out, "but just don't stand too close to the edge of the platform
when you're waiting for the subway." She examined the expression on my 
face. "And tell all your friends that, too."

This time, she was so absolutely serious that I wouldn't have dreamed of
laughing.

Sincerely yours,

Robert J. Bennett