No to a Ground War

What in God's name do we do now? There are three schools of thought: 1) now that we're in it, we've got to win it--meaning ground troops; 2) cut our losses before it's too late; 3) keep on bombing until we have a better idea.

Option 3, air war on autopilot, is the current policy of the Clinton Administration. It is a hope and a prayer. It is not a policy. At some point the choice will come down to 1) fight on the ground or 2) retreat under some Russian-brokered deal.

What should it be? There is a powerful groundswell to win. Even those who before the bombing thought Bismarck was right when he said the Balkans were "not worth the healthy bones of a single Pomeranian grenadier" are having second thoughts. Many who, like Henry Kissinger, opposed the war, have come to the view that now that we are committed, we must win.

Their case is powerful. Whereas we had no compelling national interest in Kosovo before March 24, we do now. Our actions have created interests. Two in particular. First, a moral obligation to the Kosovars, whom we said we were going in to save and who are now shivering, starving, terrorized and homeless. We owe them--as we did the Kurds, whom we encouraged to rise up against Saddam after the Gulf War--at least safety, if not victory.

Second, the war on Serbia has become a test of NATO credibility. The Administration foolishly staked the credibility--and perhaps the existence--of the most successful defensive alliance in history on the outcome of a civil war in a backwater of minimal strategic significance. But now that we're there, it is minimal no more.

The case seems open and shut. The U.S. should go in and, in the words of John McCain, use all necessary force to finish the job.

Alas, the real question is not Should the U.S. (and its allies) go in on the ground? The real question facing us today is Do you really want this foreign policy team--Clinton and Albright and Cohen and Berger--running a Balkan ground war?

They launched an air war of half-measures, expecting Milosevic to fold at the first sight of Bill Clinton coming over the horizon on a Tomahawk. They had no contingency plan when Milosevic didn't. They had no contingency plan--indeed, they were shocked--when the man they call Hitler countered with a savage campaign of ethnic cleansing. They responded with the feeblest of aerial escalation, recapitulating the disastrous gradualism of Vietnam.

By every one of their criteria--protecting the Kosovars, preventing the crisis from spreading to neighboring countries, keeping the conflict from internationalizing--this campaign has been a disaster. Do we want to entrust a ground war, a far more dangerous and risky enterprise, to a team that has demonstrated a jaw-dropping inability to plan ahead, to adapt to contingencies, to act forcefully?