Loyd is British born-and-bred, and has no direct biological or cultural ties to Bosnia or Chechnya. On one level, this may have made him a more impartial observer than a local reporter would have been. However, I would argue that no one can witness the ravages of war without taking sides to some degree or another.

In fact, Loyd’s memoir is characterized by anger, and he feels a great deal of sympathy for the people whose lives he sees ruined in the course of his work. This is despite the fact that much of the devastation that has been brought into these people’s lives has been brought by the hands of fellow Westerners. Cultural similarity, therefore, has no basis on Loyd’s feelings. By becoming angry on behalf of the people being annihilated and having their lives ruined, Loyd leaves his unbiased views behind him and takes up arms, at least metaphorically speaking, for these victims.

When Loyd reveals his hatred for the Western diplomats who responded to mass killings and ethnic “cleansing” of the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, it is clear that he is far from unbiased. I think a person would have to be almost inhuman to remain unbiased in these conditions. While a journalist could certainly report about these matters in an unbiased fashion, the emotions of that journalist could only be unbiased if they were completely unaffected by human suffering.