Ronghi set impassively through the reading of his verdict on July 30th. He offered the grieving family a convoluted apology: "I don't know what went wrong that day". Pathological Narcissists are characterized by alloplastic defences. They blame the world, destiny, the Universe, fate, or other people for their behaviour and for its (usually deleterious) outcomes. Faulty maps were blamed on the demolition of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The unfortunate event of the downing of an Iranian airliner was attributed to "human error". An American pilot violated his flight instructions, killing vacationers in Italy in the process - and was exculpated. Ronghi, described as a wholesome American phenomenon by friends, family and commanders, blamed the day: "I don't know what went wrong that day", he said. He might as well have been discussing a scorched omelette. Devoid of all emotion or compunction, he added stolidly, reading from a crumpled piece of paper his lines of what evidently was, to him, merely a bad script. "I apologize from the bottom of my heart to the family. I ask them for my forgiveness" [sic! How Freudian!]. He added: "I never did anything wrong before. I know what I did was very wrong. That's why I pleaded guilty." In other words: I am a good and upright man, who can tell right from wrong and who assumes responsibility for his wrongful acts. The brutal rape and thrashing to death of a pre-adolescent girl is the exception in an otherwise commendable life and virtuous conduct.
But Ronghi was unfazed by what he did. To bury Merita's body, ensconced in two UN flour sacks, under the staircase in the basement, Ronghi took with him another soldier, a private, who finally turned him in. He told him: "(it was) easy to get away with something like this in a Third World country." Sergeant Christopher Rice, who was on duty the night Ronghi murdered the child, added: ""He knew because he'd done it before in the desert (in operation 'Desert Storm' in Iraq - SV)".
If Rice knew this about Ronghi - why didn't he turn him in? If the Army knew this about Ronghi - why did they send him on a peacekeeping mission involving contact with civilian population? Is it true that peacekeeping operations are the dumping grounds of mercenaries and military misfits, drug addicts and the criminally-inclined? That the selection criteria and procedures are less than rigorous is an open secret. Peacekeepers are notoriously culturally insensitive, undressing publicly (in Kumanovo), getting embroiled in inebriated brawls (in restaurants and bars), raping and thieving, smuggling and trading, playing with pistols during the famous Struga poetry festival. This has come to be expected of them. But not murder and, perhaps, not the rape of a pre-pubescent girl.
So many under-estimated the pernicious effects of promiscuousness and disdain combined. Many more have turned a blind eye to the convergence of the armed presence of Albanian thugs of all political hues and their counterparts in KFOR. To many soldiers, the citizens of Kosovo, both Albanian and Serb, were but sub-humans - a view shared by the Albanian predators that confiscated their apartments and killed them by the hundreds. This confluence of jaded scorn, this somnolent sadism and condescending malfeasance, this propinquity of criminal and law - made Kosovo the Dantesque netherland it has become. It killed Merita. It had the face of Ronghi but the number of the beast.
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