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Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

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An Attack of Seriousness

By Philip Weiss
Posted Monday, June 7, 1999, at 8:08 PM ET

Dear Zoë,

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Forgive me for insulting your pedigree.

Yes I care about Serbia, and I am alive to real suffering. But so much posturing takes place around these events, and it tires me out. I don't think my opinion is going to help anyone, really. Now, this may be a rationale for isolationism. Very well. Still, I am very dubious about voicing opinions about matters I know so little about, matters pervaded by private doubt and public moral certainties. Throughout the war, I've found myself collecting the bitter ironies ... that Saddam Hussein remains enthroned, that we never intervene in the name of human rights when Africans are being massacred, that it is hard to know the real effects of our bombing campaign.

I do have one strong opinion on Kosovo that I hope will surprise you. The refusal to commit ground troops has often struck me as chickenshit in a way that reflects typically on my generation, and on the privileged West. We have conducted a virtual video war, at enormous financial expense--oh, the Dow can bear it--but at physical risk only to Serbians. These tactics offend one's sense of fair play, though no one likes to say so. Still, it's why there was so much hand-wringing and drama over the three American soldiers who were captured on the Macedonian border. Here at last we seemed to have staked blood on the outcome. It is also why there has been so much attention devoted to the "mistakes" of the air campaign: the destruction of the Chinese Embassy, of hospitals, and so forth. It is because the American people would like to believe the fiction that war is not hell. This fiction is sustainable with respect to our people. How many have died? Tell me--none? But when it comes to the deaths of innocent Serbs, the fiction has to be propped up. Because when we see the Serbs on whom we've rained suffering, at such minimal risk to ourselves, we understand how monstrous war is, and this war is.

If American soldiers had been in there, I venture that this thing might have ended far sooner. More, it would have been an affirmation of human rights. For we have maintained throughout this thing that American soldiers' lives are far more precious than Serbian civilians' lives, so much more precious that we won't ask the American people to stand up truly for human rights.

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