THREE DECADES IN THE GRIP OF DILETANTISM: Pro-Bosnian patriotism is a facade, without a return to the idea, we will not succeed!

By: Rasim Belko @rasimbelko

It's not a revelation that political structures that should be of a patriotic orientation lack wise, nor particularly educated cadres. The factual situation on the ground is the best proof that this is the case beyond any reasonable doubt.

And this fact is a dangerous realization that can threaten our future far more than all anti-state organisms in such a Bosnia and Herzegovina.

However, there is an even more dangerous fact, visible to the naked eye, and difficult to change. Because, we have been living through crises and tensions for thirty years, and in all three decades, within this patriotic corps, there have been no individuals who, by knowledge, wisdom, and authority, could be the key ideologues to create strategic directions of action and methods for realizing the set goals along red lines.

Thus, our politics does not read, and its education is often questionable and under scrutiny, while the academic community has entrenched itself in an exclusive desire for existential prosperity, and even the knowledge it possesses, it is reluctant to exploit. Everything has become a commodity, everything is paid for among Bosniaks, including ideology.

Therefore, fundamentally, Bosniaks, or their political and academic leaders, do not have an ideology. And without an idea/ideology, there is no axis around which circles of knowledge and power are created for the sake of general progress and the preservation of the state.

This is why we experience situations where a DIF graduate with a dubious diploma heads diplomacy, a hasty ruffian heads defense, and a drawn-out dilettante heads transport, acting like un-dug howitzers that mostly bombard the patriotic fabric and destroy the state with their bad decisions.

But they are not the only culprits. Because, if our academics had thought less about the quantity of suits and shoes, and more about creating a centrifugal idea of the Pro-Bosnian/Bosniak being, we would not so easily have un-dug howitzers in positions from which we are supposedly represented.

I regularly read a media outlet called “Glas srpske,” which has been a quite successful platform for a considerable time, from which the ideologues of the Serbian world and the all-Serbian assembly launch strategies for the destruction of BiH, according to which Serbian political representatives act as if by holy scripture.

Slavko Mitrović, Lučiano Kaluža, Nenad Kecmanović, and others continuously offer suggestions to political representatives on the direction they should take, and they mostly listen, which is why today the entity has more stable and clearer state lines than the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina itself.

Because, Bosniaks, caught between politicking and armchair dilettantism, have lost the idea of the state as the thread that both unites and guides them in the same direction. This is perhaps why, at the moment of the strongest attack on the constitutional order of Bosnia and Herzegovina, political leaders with the prefix Pro-Bosnian are unable to sit at the same table and define an operational plan for the defense of a dearly paid-for state.

However, as I said, being a politician does not mean being wise or smart, because any serious and statesmanlike policy binds academic strength around it, which keeps it connected to the idea and then creates directions of action.

The Academy of Sciences and Arts of Bosnia and Herzegovina has long lost the opportunity through which the idea of the state and the strategy of its defense/construction could be created through the engagement of wise academic minds. There, for the sake of false brotherhood and unity, they deal with trivial matters at a time when it only takes a shot to be fired for us to say “it can’t get any worse!”.

The fact that the Academy of Sciences and Arts is incapacitated should not absolve the rest of the academic community from the necessity of their active involvement in the return to the idea of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Law, Political Science, and Philosophy faculties have failed the test, because from these reservoirs of intellect, no serious idea has emerged all these years, let alone an ideological framework that would direct the un-dug political howitzers to work for the state.

Everything among Pro-Bosnians/Bosniaks has turned into freelancing, and their patriotism has grown into uncontrolled joy of voting for “ours” to win in Zvezde granda.

Because, that's how it is when there is no guiding idea and directing ideologues to tell us that we are on the path of disappearance. And until this flame of the ideology of statehood and the state is reignited, I fear we will wander in the dark and watch as ignoramuses in expensive suits sell us out under the guise of compromise to those who clearly know their path and how to move along it.

Let's ignite the flame, the darkness has already swallowed us whole!