The Dragon Died Before He Could Be Slayed

Slobodan Milosevic was probably the closest thing my generation has seen to Adolph Hitler. He caused an unnecessary death and encouraged horrific ethnic cleansing. It is too bad that he died quietly in a jail cell, rather than being burned (or boiled) to death.

Every week the economist chooses one death to write an obituary about. It is a nice feature and as a younger fan of politics, I enjoy it quite a bit when trying to understand the past. In this case, I remember the horrors of Milosevic, but it was interesting to learn of his early life and how the suicides of his two parents seem to have sparked his evil.

However, I think the man's evil was underdeveloped. Perhaps the writer did this on purpose (the opening sentence makes reference to the Roman tradition of only mentioning good things about the dead), but I think it is a bit misleading when writing about the 1990 version of Hitler.