Grounded In Kosovo

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War is hell, but it turns out that some parts burn hotter than others. Only one picture frightens the White House more than televised images of the Chinese embassy aflame from an errant NATO bomb. That is a rerun of the scene from Mogadishu in 1993, when Somalis dragged a G.I.'s body through the streets of their capital. The searing footage, the result of a helicopter assault gone awry, turned Capitol Hill and the American public against the humanitarian Somalia mission overnight. That's what haunts the Clinton team as it struggles to attain victory in Kosovo. "Downed helicopters and dead pilots," an Army officer said last week, "scare this Administration to death."

As the war enters its third inconclusive month, political and public battle fatigue is setting in. Washington and NATO insist their bombing crescendo is slowly but perceptibly sapping Slobodan Milosevic's power and will to fight. Their spokesmen point daily to encouraging signs: last week it was word of soldiers' desertions and scattered antiwar protests inside Yugoslavia. Allied military briefers called the strife the most interesting battle damage they have seen in weeks. Belgrade, spared bombing for days in the wake of the mistaken attack on Beijing's mission, is once again blackened by flames from allied fire.

Yet a growing array of critics contend that the air campaign is doing too little too slowly. The allies, they warn, must fight harder if they are to prevail before NATO unity collapses under a crush of divergent political pressures. Statistically, U.S. pilots were in greater danger of dying during peacetime flights last year than while bombing Serbia last month. Too many laser-guided bombs are going astray and killing innocent civilians. Just last Friday, NATO mistakenly hit a Kosovo rebel base near the capital, Pristina. Washington is not leading the war but shying away from winning it. "If NATO wants a military victory in Yugoslavia, the only way to get it is to risk pilots now," says Maurizio Cremasco, a former general in the Italian air force. "They don't do this for the same reason the Apache helicopters haven't been utilized--because low-altitude flying still involves the risk that pilots and crews will get shot down and killed."

Therein lies the crux of NATO's dilemma. Except for Britain, no other nation has seemed willing to sacrifice its soldiers to this cause, in the skies or on the ground. Yet this week the U.S. will urge NATO to send 50,000 ground troops to the region, either to escort the Kosovars home with Milosevic's assent or to threaten an invasion without it. The war could succeed faster if the allies risked their own troops more, but political leaders fear the first body bags would destroy the public support they need to keep the confrontation going. But the slow and uncertain progress from 12,000 ft. is eating away at popular approval anyhow. Pit that against the prospect that if the air strikes fail to move Milosevic, ground troops might have to step in, and what's a poor NATO leader to do? Scramble for a diplomatic way out--the faster, the better.