Don't Send the Air Force to Do an Angel's Job.

• Author: Ehrenreich, Barbara
• Position: NATO-Yugoslavia conflict - Brief Article

Here's a paradigmatic image of the NATO effort to date, thanks to Fox TV News. A U.S. transport helicopter lands somewhere in Albania, and a Marine, in full combat gear, leaps out. Assuming the ritual half-crouching position, he duly points his automatic weapon in various directions, although there is no one around, not even a shrub. His form is admirable, his mien menacing. And his mission, according to the voice-over? He has come to build houses for the Kosovar refugees.

NATO's mission in the Balkans started with the noblest of aims. Faced with scenes of mass misery afflicting telegenic white people by the hundreds of thousands, European socialists, social democrats, even the formerly pacifistic Greens dropped all their customary objections to heavy-handed, U.S.-led military interventions. So what if NATO is a zombie kept alive largely as a market for U.S. made weapons? If your spouse is being molested and screaming for help, you intervene with whatever tools lie at hand, rusty and imperfect as they may be, and leave the debates over Lenin's theory of imperialism for later. As for the argument that intervention in a civil war constitutes a gross violation of "national sovereignty," tell that to the Rwandan Tutsis, if you can find any of them around to listen.

But this mission of mercy--heralded by Tony Blair as a "progressive war"--quickly took a nasty turn. NATO bombs have already killed about 500 Serbian civilians, including children and, no doubt, a few anti-Milosevic peaceniks as well. Innocent people do, regrettably, die in wars, as the NATO spokesmen continually remind us. But since when was Operation Allied Force a "war"? In a war, it may be all right to kill the enemy and anyone who looks like him, but in a mission of mercy, the most urgent priority is to rescue the enemy's victims. To go back to the case where that intruder is menacing your spouse, would your first reaction be to run over to the intruder's house and strangle his wife and child? If so, you might as well blow your own spouse a last, fervent kiss goodbye.

What is happening with NATO is known technically as "mission creep": You start out doing--or claiming to do---one thing and end up doing quite another. While the bombs rain down on Serbia, the humanitarian crisis that originally inspired the whole operation has been relegated to a purely propagandistic role. The United States, for example, has budgeted only $58.5 million for humanitarian aid, less than the cost of...