They fight. Sometimes they die.

Mad About the Boys

By Rick Horowitz

In the movie in my mind, it goes like this: Deep in some nasty corner of the world, the latest crisis has come to the boiling point, and our top diplomat, our top-of-the-line negotiator, is pressed into service for one final attempt to stare down the bad guys and hold back the allied bombs. Hour after hour, he presses for concessions. Hour after hour, the other side resists. Finally, with resignation in his voice, he rises from his seat, extends a weary hand.

"I am sorry," he says, "but there is nothing more I can do for you." He is halfway to the door when he hears the click of weapons.

"You are going nowhere," says the chief bad guy. "You are our hostage."

So: What do you think? Does it work for you? As a plot device? As real life? A bold move like that would certainly tip the balance of forces more than a little, don't you agree? "Bomb us," they say, "and your striped-suit bigwig is history!" How many presidents or NATO commanders could give the order to launch under those circumstances?

It's a hard one. Let's make it harder: Instead of a diplomat hostage, let's make it a pilot.

That's right: Instead of some wrinkled, rumpled government careerist, let's make it some fresh-faced flyboy from the heartland, shot down over God-knows-where in the first wave of attacks. Shot down and captured alive and displayed for all the world to see.

"Bomb us again," they say, "and we will have our vengeance on this one. You will watch."

Is it so farfetched? Hardly. And would the public cry, "Call their bluff"? Or "Call it off"? Good question.

Welcome to the Kosovo campaign. It could get ugly.

We're perfectly willing to do the right thing over there -- for the moment, as long as it doesn't cost us anything important. If it starts to cost us anything important -- hostages, casualties, gruesome displays on the nightly news -- all bets are off. It's a strange way to run a war. These days, though, it may be the only way. Tube War is a different breed of cat.

Tube War has to be quick and clean; we don't have the patience for a drawn-out fight anymore, and we don't have the stomach for it. In and out, that's the way we like it. In Tube War, we need an "exit strategy" in our pocket before we've even made our entrance. Anything with a human face on it -- especially a bloodied, human, American face -- and we get seriously rattled.

Good luck. War is war -- and hell is included. Sometimes we forget.

This is from last year, a different campaign against a different opponent. As soon as the bombing stopped, the Secretary of State hit the Sunday-morning talk shows. So there was Madeleine Albright sitting across the table from Tim Russert, and this was Russert's first question: "The operation is over -- did everyone return home safely?"

Not "Did we accomplish our objectives?" Not "Did we destroy our targets?" Not "Did Saddam Hussein flinch even a tiny bit?" None of those.

"Did everyone return home safely?"

This, mind you, for the assurance of the very same audience that had flocked to the multiplexes for "Saving Private Ryan." Carnage on a grand scale, that one was -- the movie, and the war it portrayed -- with bodies dropping everywhere, and thousands upon thousands not returning home safely.

True, it was The Good War, with a monster for an enemy and the fate of the world hanging in the balance. But the question comes anyway: What if The Good War had been a Tube War?

Could we have made the fight -- even against a monster, even battling for the world -- seeing the casualties spilling off the TV screen and into our living rooms night after night? Could we have kept at it with victory merely a distant hope, with the toll climbing ever higher? Or would we have said: "Enough."

Tube War is different -- but war is still war.

It could get ugly.

Posted 3/26/99. Fresh stuff right here twice weekly!

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