ABSTRACT
It is the military equivalent of discovering that the moon is not made of green cheese: After three years of offering its soldiers up for sacrifice, the U. N. command in Bosnia has discovered that soldiers under fire are supposed to shoot back. Only the Monday before Gen. Rupert’s command, the reverse-Doctor Strangelove “neutralists” and pacifists of the U. N., such as Yasuhiro Akashi, once again forbade NATO air strikes, even though French soldiers were being targeted and killed by Serbs. Non-business as usual. The reality was that there was no political will in a Europe that was in the mood of 1939, and thus the United Nations went into the former Yugoslavia as a substitute. It brought with it, however, its eerie “neutralism,” thus putting soldiers into a conflagration without their being permitted even to defend themselves. A disaster was assured.
