Horror suddenly drives the public debate over NATO strategy in the Balkans. Revulsion and anguish eclipse the logic, patience and calculation of national interest that U.S. President Bill Clinton and his European allies hoped would underpin their air campaign against Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic.
This is a grave development. NATO's leaders are being dragged toward a gradual escalation they promised to avoid. They become increasingly uncertain of the relationship among their aims, their battlefield methods and the mood of their publics. They cede a bit at a time to the pressures to do more but still run behind the horrors Milosevic has created to confound them.
NATO's leaders have grudgingly begun to admit they miscalculated Milosevic's willingness to turn his corner of southern Europe into a modern heart of darkness. This miscalculation has left their strategy vulnerable to pressures they must now find ways to contain - but not ignore.
Viscerally and emotionally sickened by the televised scenes of unending lines of cold, hungry and ill Kosovars herded like so many sheep into the wilds of neighboring lands, Americans and Europeans reach out for the certainty that this cannot, will not, must not be allowed to continue.
But each day it does continue. And each day the cry for a NATO ground war against the Serbs rises, even as Clinton and other alliance leaders insist it is not an option. To counter the pressure, they lapse into explanations of the goals of the air war that are increasingly vague and increasingly ambitious, a dangerous combination.
On Monday the president - echoing the words former U.S. President George Bush used in announcing he would not permit Iraq's Saddam Hussein to erase Kuwait from the map - said: "The ethnic cleansing of Kosovo cannot stand as a permanent event." Clinton clearly anticipated, and rejected in advance, Belgrade's offer Tuesday of a cease-fire that would leave Milosevic's marauding forces in control in Kosovo.
But the president also acknowledged that the air campaign had been chosen out of "a bunch of bad options." Bombing was "the best available option to show aggressive action, to keep NATO's word, to keep our NATO allies together and to give us a chance to preserve our objectives," he explained defensively to reporters.
This is a lawyer going to war, constructing an argument for all eventualities - including the possible need to argue failure as victory. Milosevic has raised the stakes by attacking Macedonia and Albania with refugee armies. Clinton and his aides have trouble explaining how they will stay in this bloody game.
Worse: By describing the military choices given him as "a bunch of bad options," the president inadvertently points out the significant doubts the generals and admirals at the Pentagon have about the strategy they have been asked to carry out.
A Clinton aide told The New York Times that the president is personally giving clearance to the Pentagon on buildings hit in Belgrade, to make sure the targets are chosen with political sensitivity. The aide, evidently showcasing the president's skills as a warrior-diplomat, seems never to have heard of former U.S. President Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson came to grief constantly reviewing target lists and making them conform to his political goals during the Vietnam War. Bush made a point of leaving targeting and other military decisions to the Pentagon during Desert Storm.
Clinton should immediately revert to the Desert Storm practice. He needs to insulate his commanders from political pressures, not leave them with a sense of being second-guessed.
And Clinton should adopt a much more straightforward, less defensive explanation for the public, including not only what he intends to accomplish on the ground in Kosovo but also how and when he will achieve it.
Clinton's desire not to be nailed down to a deadline and to precise courses of action is understandable. But the vague way in which he and his aides wave off questions about their assessments of what they have achieved and how long the remaining tasks will take is self-defeating. That approach forces the media to be ever more inquisitorial, to hammer every day on the question of ground troops, and thus to feed public questioning of the current strategy and public hunger for a quick solution.
Lyndon Johnson pretended that the Vietnam War could be pursued without great cost to Americans. He compounded that error by hiding his true intentions and assessments from the public.
These were huge mistakes that no president should ever risk duplicating. It is time for Clinton to tell the nation in concrete, believable terms where he is taking us in this Balkan war. If he still knows.
Jim Hoagland is an associate editor, senior foreign correspondent and columnist for The Washington Post.