We Have To Go All Out In Kosovo
[Author's original title: "AMERICANS HAVEN'T LOST THE WILL TO FIGHT--BUT TOO MANY OF THEIR LEADERS HAVE"]

By Christopher Bassford

SEEMINGLY STUNNED that Serbs regard NATO bombing as an act of war, America's political class faces a quandary largely of its own making. Our policy wonks seem determined to wage war in Kosovo without admitting it is war, without identifying an attackable enemy and without identifying a military objective. Most bizarre of all, they seem to think we can wage war without actually hurting anybody on either side--an absurdity that has our soldiers tied in knots.

Political leaders justify their tepid efforts by pointing to the American public's alleged intolerance for casualties--friendly, enemy or "innocent civilian." They point to Vietnam and Somalia as evidence that the public simply will not support a real fight. This view ignores the fact that Americans signed on to the Persian Gulf War in the expectation--fortunately unfulfilled--of 30,000 casualties.

Opinion polls consistently show that Americans consider enemy civilian casualties inevitable in war, and no one has raised much hell over the thousand or so Somalis killed or wounded in the barbaric 1993 fight in Mogadishu. Clearly, few care how many Serbian thugs get whacked in Kosovo.

The true lesson of the Vietnam and Somalia experiences is quite different. It is not bloodshed that the American people won't tolerate: It is futile bloodshed in pursuit of weak, indecisive policies aimed at accomplishing nothing worthwhile. Basically, members of our ruling class are still sulking over Vietnam--where, a generation ago, after 10 long years of demonstrating their utter political and military incompetence, they were told by the American people to bag their pointless military adventure.

It is hard to get public support for a costly policy that virtually everyone recognizes cannot work. It's not the casualties--it's the policy, stupid.

This is not a problem of liberal vs. conservative. President George Bush prematurely pulled the plug on the bombing of Baghdad and the pursuit of retreating Iraqi forces. For fear of alienating the American people, allegedly horrified by civilian casualties in the Al Firdos bunker and the carnage on the "Highway of Death," he thus ended any hope of permanently stopping Saddam Hussein's reign of terror. (In actuality, Joe Sixpack was standing on his living room coffee table rooting the troops and pilots on via CNN.) Republicans, who generally castigate Bill Clinton for having opposed the biggest strategic mistake this country ever made (Vietnam), now hold copyright to the slogan "Hell no, we won't go!" Of Republican presidential hopefuls, only John McCain, to whom five years in a North Vietnamese POW camp give genuine moral authority on issues of war and peace, has had the courage to unambiguously advocate winning the war against Serbia on the ground.

Meanwhile, liberal film maker Steven Spielberg has given us the most inspiring war movie ever, "Saving Private Ryan." Americans flocked to see it despite the emotional upheaval it caused viewers. Other former Vietnam War protesters are clamoring for American armor to roll down the avenues of Belgrade. Growing public support for a NATO ground operation clearly includes an understanding that casualties will be involved.

Nonetheless, the leadership's illusion of widespread public pacifism persists.

As a result, like an abused child reliving his parent's mistakes, Clinton seems to have turned into Vietnam-era President Lyndon Baines Johnson: micromanaging the bombing campaign, gradually escalating in baseless hopes the enemy will crack, and refusing to mobilize the American people for a serious war.

The American military itself is not blameless in all this. While most soldiers will tell you that the high-tech, low-casualty Gulf War left Americans spoiled, they are, in fact, intensely (and justly) proud of their achievements there and are eager to prove they can do even better.

That will be hard to do in the terrain of the Balkans against a determined European enemy. But more important, most professional soldiers are romantics at heart. They really crave old-fashioned thrills like victory and the adulation of the people they protect. The most gratifying payoff for the sacrifices of military service--especially in combat--does not come in a retirement check. Rather, it comes in the flag-waving crowds of liberated peoples in places like France, 1944, or Kuwait, 1991, and in the ticker-tape parades back home.

Unfortunately, whatever the polls may say about public support for the troops in the 1990s, soldiers remember Vietnam. They tend to confuse the "American people" with the 70-or-so professional 1960s nostalgia-freaks who routinely show up to protest every American military involvement. Their mistrust of the people prevents them from making the military case the public must hear.

The famous German military thinker Carl von Clausewitz noted the dangers of timidity and half-hearted efforts in war: "A short jump is certainly easier than a long one: but no one wanting to get across a wide ditch would begin by jumping half-way." Whether we should have taken the first step over this Balkan abyss is now a moot point. There is no way back to the crumbling ledge from which we jumped, and no soft landing awaiting us at the bottom.

The only real option now is to switch on the old Buck Rogers rocket-pack and blast our way through to the other side as fast as possible. To accomplish this, and to gain enduring public support, America's soldiers must be given clear military objectives (e.g., the seizure and occupation of Kosovo and the destruction--not "degradation"--of Serbian military power), then given the freedom and the trust they need to do the job. Failure is not an option, unless we are prepared to kiss NATO goodbye.

Sometimes, there really is no substitute for victory.