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And so, finally, the use of ground troops in Kosovo is being spoken of as not a possibility but a probability, perhaps an inevitability. Barring a dramatic diplomatic breakthrough (in all likelihood bartered by the Russians), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the United States will not be able to achieve their stated objectives of returning the ethnic Albanian Kosovars to their homes and ensuring they live there in safety without conventional action on the ground. The five-week-old air campaign, like all long-range, high-explosive bombardments, has only stiffened the enemy's resolve, caused death and suffering among civilians, including some we are supposed to be aiding, and worsened an already bitter conflict.
Pentagon officials began this sorry affair by asserting the objective could be achieved by air, and most politicians believed them. It was left to a few brave legislators, as well as the odd military historian, to shake their heads and see in such thinking classic military hubris and, further, the possibility that Kosovo could become the ugliest, most prolonged European conflict since World War II. Naturally, U.S. commanders didn't listen to any such military progressives: They never have. Ghostly precedents have pervaded this story from the start: the unhappy examples of Vietnam, and the Nazi blitz of Britain and Allied "strategic" bombing of Germany during World War II, all of which only toughened enemy resistance, have now been discussed at length. But perhaps the most pertinent parallel to the use of ground forces in Kosovo is that of the man who was, by general consensus, the father of modern "total war": William Tecumseh Sherman, the great Union general of the Civil War.
There was no shortage of fruitless, long-range artillery bombardments (the 19th-century counterpart of air campaigns) during our savage internecine struggle from 1861-1865. In fact, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant stands as the supreme exponent of the belief that slow, grinding, merciless attacks on cities, as well as armies, would bring victory. In pursuing this course, Grant made a genius of Gen. Robert E. Lee, a military engineer who determined, early on, that...