It requires a radical detachment from reality to keep claiming victory, but such is the pornography of power. In fact, our leaders are displaying many of the elements of autoeroticism, starting with fantasies and fixations. Some fantasies are dopey reveries about bombing targets from 15,000 feet in the air to stop ethnic cleansing on the ground. But if the goal remains the original one of saving the Kosovars, then time is almost up. Most of the heavy lifting by the Serbian paramilitary engaged in ethnic cleansing is over.
Fixations also abound, starting with bombing the same sites again and again.
An amazing 80 percent of our sorties have dropped bombs on previous targets. But the chief fixation has become protecting NATO from loss of face. Indeed, in our leaders' heads, the objective of the military action appears to have shifted from protecting the Kosovars to proving NATO's power. Dr. Rade Grbic, the director of the main hospital in Pristina, has been performing many of the amputations. This has not been a campaign for risk-takers.