One of the 20th century’s last at-large war criminals, Radovan Karadzic, was arrested yesterday in Belgrade. In Belgrade. Take that in for a moment — inhale its aroma. For all the horrors, all the depths of descent, for all the false starts, for all the frustrations of the past 15 years in the Balkans, the war-criminal ex-leader of the Bosnian Serbs was arrested in the capitol of Serbia, and a Serbian war-crimes prosecutor will be turning Karadzic over to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

My friends Laura Rozen and Rich Byrne know a ton about the Balkans and I know nothing, so read their posts. But I want to share one story about Bosnia, Iraq and American memory. In 2005, I was in an editorial meeting and we were discussing Iraq. The awfulness of Iraq was apparent to most people in the room, and one of our number piped up to say that it was time to get really tough on the Sunnis, who had rejected the precious flower of American occupation. They were hopeless, this writer said, and then added something I’ve never forgotten and will never forget: "They’re like Serbs."

They’re like Serbs. In other words, Sunnis are implacable brutes who understand and respect superior violence and nothing else. There is no reasoning with them — they must only be put down like rabid animals. Needless to say, this person postured as a defender of human rights and backed both the Balkan wars and the Iraq invasions largely for those reasons. And now most Sunnis in Iraq have rejected al-Qaeda and the Serbs arrested and will extradite their former Bosnian proxy. So much for essentialism. Justice will find a way to prevail.