Sarajevo (2014 film) Poster from Internet Movie Database promo

This Austrian 2014 film premiered exactly 100 years after the outbreak of WWI. I just saw it on Netflix, and I was fascinated with the acting, design, and photography. What hooked me, however, was the supposedly original conspiracy theory that some of the officials of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire actually pulled off a set-up. They used Serbian youths to do the deed, as was duly recorded in the official record. As far as a limited Google search would provide, it appears that the storyline was fiction.

As much as I despise the conspiracy theories flurrying around in the US political scene, I found this one to be plausible. At least the protagonist in the film appears to have been an actual person and not just a character in the film. If the official report deliberately omitted some of the events portrayed in the film, then it would be impossible to prove a negative simply because the conspiracies were not recorded. The movie’s storyline is all that we have to go on.

I guess that one aspect of the film that stuck with me that waterboarding also was used at Guantanamo to get the confessions that were partially used to justify the invasion of Iraq. Of course, in the case of the US invasion, there were other erroneous reports from a so-called informant who had an axe to grind. The blunder about Iraq was particularly sad because of the recent funeral of Collin Powell. He was duped into making a strategic error before the UN. He was an honorable man.

It’s clear that the intent of the 1914 incident was to get an excuse to go to war however the events played out. But that no one foresaw the devastating consequences it would have. The mindset was that it was just another 19th Century regional clash of competing empires that would be over quickly. Unfortunately, we made the same mistake again in 2003. It was predicted to be a quick and decisive regional conflict that could easily be resolved with our superior military power. Unfortunately, it also was the wrong war played out with the wrong strategies. Such is the utter devastation of modern warfare.

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