It had almost everything. There was the fanatical-genocide-committing president on the enemy's side, the poor helpless refugees fleeing for their lives, the pinpoint bomb shots destroying bridges and refineries, American POWs beaten, battered and on television, Serbian POWs which were not televised so much, screw ups like bombing the Chinese Embassy, and an American president who recently seemed to be without conviction standing firm by his convictions.

The one notable absence in this war was the deaths of American soldiers. There was the helicopter training accident, but that occurred with the same probability as a training exercise accident at an Air Force Base back in the States. Our POWs got beaten up rather viciously, but Jesse Jackson walked in, told everyone what to do, and got them returned. Jesse may never be able to be president, but never say he doesn't have the power to get things done. There were no dead Marines dragged through the streets of Belgrade to mirror the disaster in Somalia. There were very few friendly fire deaths which marred the Desert Storm offensive. There was no Ho Chih Minh to employ brilliant counterattacks against NATO forces.

The bombing worked. The country was pummeled to rubble by planes the enemy could not see from ground. A simple plan. It took longer than many people wanted, but it took absolutely no army unit to storm the border.

It didn't seem possible. How can you win a war without deploying troops and controlling the land? The answer is to just blow up the land to the point that it's not worth defending. Who (besides the Israelis and Palestinians) wants to fight over a pile of blasted rock?

We may be done bombing, but we've just begun paying for this war. Strangely, I am at peace with this idea. I would much rather pay a country to fix its bridges than requisition a weaponry company for another shipment of the bombs labeled Big Nasty.

Somehow, we even got a message across--it's not a wise idea to commit genocide. We may not remember much about WWII, but we did learn that people are capable of mass murder. And they will keep killing people they don't like until somebody makes them stop. Maybe this will send a message to the next leader who wants to wipe out a certain chunk of the population that there may be serious consequences to their actions.

I'm not a big fan of war, and I was never quite sure how I felt about the Kosovo crisis. How much of the problems of the world are really our business? In a land full of contradictions and hypocrisies, who are we to judge the horrendous actions of others? NATO pretty much answered those questions for the United States. They backed us in our tiff with Iraq, so we had to back them in Kosovo. NATO is a bully to be sure, but sometimes the big bully has to beat up a little one.

For some strange reason, everything seems to be working out the way it should. China is calming down about our screw up, Milosevic is looking through an atlas to find his best options for asylum (I'm betting on a tiny village in Russia), and no one gets money unless a democratic government is set up.

Clinton and Blair will get credit for standing firm, Russia will get credit for helping (even though they didn't), China will get credit for not doing anything, NATO will get credit for stopping the atrocities, the Albanians will get credit for surviving, and the American people will get credit for not turning against its leaders.

Lots of winners, a few losers. Just the way a war should be. And I hope beyond all hope that it will be a long time before we have to do anything like this again.

Chris Jungle was neither a hawk nor a dove, just an owl.