onegoodmove

The great majority of Americans who support the idea of "war" against
Iraq or other countries (my old employer, the Wall Street Journal,
apparently wants to extend the action to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan
as well) seem to consider war something we Americans do to other
people without them being unpleasant enough to do anything back. Even
the events of September 11, 2001, don't seem to have seriously dented
the illusion that the United States exists in a sort of bubble that
can't really be burst by nasty foreigners.

America's martial engagements in living memory - from both world wars
to Afghanistan - have encouraged that sort of thinking. Sure, a
certain number of military get killed, but the rest of us (and our
property) are okay. Even the smoking hole that used to be the World
Trade Center hasn't really convinced Mr. and Mrs. America that "war"
can be a bloody, give-and-take business, and the next sound they hear
may be the chickens coming home to roost (and drop bombs) in Anytown,
Your State, U.S.A.

Speaking as an American who lives in a country bombed day and night
for 78 days in 1999 by Uncle Sam and the 18 NATO dwarfs, I can assure
doubtful readers that bombs can really mess up a neighborhood. Walking
down one of the main thoroughfares of Belgrade, one comes to an
intersection at which cruise missiles turned three of the four corner
buildings into burnt-out, collapsing houses of cards. Not to mention
shattering windows for blocks around and the eardrums of newly born
babies at a nearby hospital.

These were "military" targets - or at least military office buildings
that had been presciently emptied before the missiles struck. But when
the American flyboys - riding three to five miles up where no
spoilsport Serbian artillery could hit them – couldn't find anything
military to bomb, they had plenty of civilian targets to fall back on:
sixty-six bridges - one with a civilian train crossing it as bombs
fell - a TV station cheek-by-jowl with a children's theater and a
Russian Orthodox Church, a convoy of Ethnic Albanian farmers and their
families riding on tractors and trailers. Now, this was war - at least
for those on the ground.

You probably already knew - and have already forgotten - all that, but
I would like to remind Americans that they cannot expect their country
to be able to go on attacking others without getting a dose of the
same bitter medicine. Some people take being bombed - even by
Americans - hard and tend to hold a grudge. I recall the grim
satisfaction I felt when one of the Serbian anti-aircraft units got
lucky and shot down one of Uncle's high-flying "invisible" airplanes.
It may sound unpatriotic, but it occurred to me that anyone who goes
bombing a country that can't bomb back, deserves whatever he gets.

But, you might ask: Who's going to bomb America? I hate to pop your
collective balloons, but there are other ways to deliver bombs and
other deadly devices than by multi-million-dollar airplane, invisible
or not. Mr. Bush repeatedly reminds us what a nasty man Saddam Hussein
is. But, either he doesn't have WMDs (see above), or Saddam just isn't
nasty enough to smuggle them through the U.S.'s many thousands of
miles of scantily protected borders.

I think that Uncle Sam has been very lucky in his choice of enemies.
But some day, if current policies continue, he is going to pick on
someone with the capability and nastiness to decide that it was about
time that Americans got more than a bit of what they have been dishing
out around the world for more than half a century. I assure you that
if I were Saddam Hussein and had the goods, the moment the first
American bomb or rocket hit Baghdad, the biggest WMD I could muster
would go off in New York or Washington or both. But then, Saddam is
probably a nicer guy than I am.