On November 26, 2005, a flashy-golden statue of Bruce Lee striking a defensive posture was installed in the Bosnian city of Mostar. Vesilin Gatalo of the Mostar Urban Movement, who spearheaded the effort, explained why a man known for his fictional exploits was an appropriate subject for tribute in post-war Bosnia. The monument, Gatalo stated, was dedicated to the idea '‘that justice, knowledge, honesty, good intentions can fight against corruption, evil, ignorance….'' He continued: He is a hero from childhood of every one of us. Nobody will ask what kind of activities his people made during Second World War, First World War, in Turkish times [… ] it makes him an ideal hero. (Siegle 2005) Reflecting disillusionment with the real-life leaders that the post-war environment offered, the Mostar Urban Movement wisely invested in a fictional embodiment of the ideals that inspired them. They understood a simple fact of the post-war landscape: if you want a story of archetypal heroes, stick to fiction. It is an insight overlooked in the extraction of atrocity prevention and response lessons from Bosnia. In her influential book that helped inform the atrocities prevention and response agenda, Samantha Power described the two-week NATO bombing campaign in August-September 1995 thus: '‘backed by a newly credible threat of military force, the United States was easily able to convince the Serbs to stop shelling civilians’' (Power 2001, p. 440). All that was needed, so the story went, was a show of international force to push petty Balkan war criminals to stop killing civilians and make concessions at the peace table. Closer analysis of endings in Bosnia, however, reveals that despite important variations in the patterns of atrocities, the first year of the war, 1992, witnessed the overwhelming concentration of killing and ethnic cleansing of civilians (UNHCR 1992). A second spike of lethal violence occurred when Srebrenica fell to the Bosnian Serbs in 1995. Neither of these spikes of violence concluded because of international military action. Further, while the NATO bombing was significant, its impact on the perpetration of atrocities and armed conflict can only be assessed in relation to a broader array of factors: shifts in regional alliances; the ground war; the abandonment of both the maximalist ethno-national and an integrated, multiethnic visions of the state; and - the most important international contribution - a change in approach to diplomacy.