A Cheer for a Job Well Done : Marine rescue operation shows military competence anew

Life offers comparatively few moments of heroic clarity. The opportunity to glimpse the bad and the good in straight-out, head-on competition and then to exult in the triumph of the good is sadly rare indeed. But America enjoyed just such a rare moment Thursday with the deftly executed U.S. Marine rescue of Air Force fighter pilot Capt. Scott F. O’Grady of Spokane, Wash. And exulting as much as anyone was the President of the United States, who, upon hearing the extraordinary news that the downed pilot had been safely fetched from a forest near Bosnian Serb strongholds in war-torn Bosnia, is said to have stepped out onto a White House balcony, let out a deep sigh of relief and lit up a cigar.

Clinton Administration policy on Bosnia has been under withering attack. Congress has been all over the President for seeming to enlarge the U.S. commitment to NATO, and U.S. allies in London and Paris were wondering anew whether their once-reliable American friends could be counted on for anything besides the occasional bombing sortie.

Well, U.S. allies can certainly count on one thing: If the United States does get involved in rescuing British and French units when they move back to “safer” areas, or when they evacuate, the United States will be giving these longtime friends the gift of the competence of the U.S. military.

Although details are still incomplete, it now appears that this rescue of Capt. O’Grady was conducted with textbook skill. The successful operation should be instructive in several ways. To the President, it should serve to calm his nerves. While military operations can always go wrong, the President as commander in chief has the best odds anyone can have, because the U.S. military is the best-trained, best-equipped force in history.

The success should also be instructive to Clinton’s many critics. They should remember that former President George Bush and his well-regarded secretary of state, James A. Baker III, had no magic potion for the tangled and volatile Bosnia mess, either. Moreover, the President’s critics, including Sen. Majority Leader Bob Dole, should reconsider their earlier suggestion that Congress might not support U.S. rescue operations for embattled or isolated U.N. peacekeepers--a suggestion that went over like a lead balloon in London and Paris. If that downed pilot had been French or British and not American, does Congress really want the United States to swear in advance that U.S. forces would not help?

Our view is that the President is on solid, non-controversial ground to the extent that U.S. operations in that theater should aim to deliver on past promises to help U.S. allies if they get into trouble and want help. Yes, there are dangers--it’s impossible to predict every contingency; American lives could be lost. But as a world superpower, the United States has a duty not to shrink from reasonable measures of responsibility. The Clinton Administration’s zigzag on Bosnia policy notwithstanding, Thursday’s search and rescue mission had a happy ending due to the well-executed work of the U.S. military. And that may be something that U.S. policy-makers will come to count on, U.S. allies will come to appreciate and anyone who gets in the way in Bosnia will come to understand all too well.