So far, no one is talking seriously about committing U.S. ground troops; the idea is that we can deal with Serbia from the air. The plan, if it comes to that, would be to replay the gulf war with all its laser and stealth wonder toys: totally antiseptic, almost bloodless and oh, by the way, a boon for the depressed U.S. defense industry, which is a heavy-duty political contributor. U.S. fighter aircraft would be used to support U.N. convoys and to attack hostile targets if on-again, off-again cease-fires break down. Since, as things stand now, the combatants stop firing only long enough to reload, it’s a sure bet that our pilots would see action. And history also guarantees that when the going on the ground gets rough for U.N. troops, the United States will become a major player down there in the mud and blood.
Air-control teams on the ground will be essential, especially since the USAF no longer has on active duty the slow A-10 Warthogs that were so useful in the Persian Gulf Instead, it has only fast-burner jets. They can’t loiter long over a target while getting to know the terrain and situation; they have to come in hot and fast, making accuracy more miss than hit. Air-control parties will be needed on the ground to find and fix targets for fighter aircraft. After a few are knocked off, U.S. grunts will undoubtedly be brought in to protect them. Without these teams, our air would hit friendly troops and nonmilitary targets.
The rugged terrain, not open like the Iraqi desert, will make it easy for guerrillas to disappear, as in Afghanistan. Villages will provide perfect hideouts where insurgents can mingle with noncombatants. As in Vietnam and Iraq, fast jets will splash napalm and rain bombs on civilians, inciting the people and the guerrillas to fight harder and to treat our downed pilots with savage reprisals.
A replay of Desert Storm (a serious U.S. commitment in Yugoslavia would eventually require at least the same amount of military muscle as the fight in the desert) might temporarily galvanize the nation and bring back the yellow ribbons and those high gulf-war poll ratings during a hotly contested political campaign. But Yugoslavia is an impossible mission. If hawks want to “stop the slaughter,” they should review how air power failed Truman in Korea and Johnson in Vietnam. Both turned into nasty, prolonged ground wars that caused more than half a million American casualties between them.
The first dead man I ever saw was a U.S. Army captain zapped by a Yugoslav partisan. I helped scrape him off an Italian roadside near the border city of Trieste. I was 15 years old, having lied about my age to enlist. I served in the 88th “Blue Devil” Division’s crack 351st Infantry Regiment’s reconnaissance platoon. It was our job to patrol the rugged mountain border between Italy and Yugoslavia and man the many observation posts that looked into “Jug Land.” I concluded way back then, with all the wisdom of a child grunt, that Yugoslavian soldiers, irregular or regular, are the meanest mothers in the valley of death and the last tigers the United States ever wants to try to tame. This doesn’t mean we have to stand by and do nothing. To help prevent starvation, for example, the U.S. military could fly well above harm’s way and airdrop bundles of food and water to the poor people who are trapped in the quagmire below. But this time it should be their quagmire, not ours.
