In making connections to explain and evaluate the causes and consequences of violence in the former Yugoslavia it seems useful to explore varying temporal perceptions and the relative uses of power. These alternate perspectives range from the highly political linear time bound year frame of American intervention as presented to the U. S. Congress by the Clinton Administration to the unbounded liminal temporal categories of the combatants linked to medieval battles and ancestral graves. In proceeding to evaluate these categories and examine their impact on current historical process I feel it is first necessary to examine our points of departure.