In August, that same newspaper was calling for air strikes against Serbia and denouncing US and European reluctance to use military force in the Balkans. The world seems a benign place, with a natural harmony among peoples only intermittently disrupted by evil men or hostile ideologies. Once those are removed, the natural harmony will be restored. In 1984, most of us envisioned Yugoslavia as a civilized place, the picturesque setting for the Sarajevo Winter Olympics, the one where Torvill and Dean skated to a gold medal. That perhaps intensifies the shock of the incredible slaughter that has occurred in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
History is littered with optimistic assumptions that turned out to be colossally wrong.
Not much, except that he has no magic window on the future. General Powell would no doubt be among the first to agree to the importance of surveying the risks and assessing the probable threats. That is fundamental to planning strategy and force structure. It is quite another thing to decide that a contingency does not exist if it cannot be demonstrated absolutely and described in detail today. A month later, Mr. Hoffa disappeared, and he has not been heard from since.