Way back in 1991, I was still in college. Actually, I was about halfway through college, but still taking the occasional large lecture class that signals the beginning of a long struggle. The class I'm thinking of is Sociology 101. But it wasn't the class (which, at the time, felt like watered down psychology peppered with opinion polls), but an incident that happened near the end of class.

One of the 700 in the class was a student from Serbia. She wasn't an exchange student, she was there because her parents were rich and wanted to get her out of the country. She wanted to get out of her country, too. And one day, she got to air all the dirty laundry about what was going on in her part of the world.

There was a civil war going on, see. Families and friends were getting separated because of invisible things called ethnicity and religion. And this girl, not even twenty, was pissed off about it. But most of all, she was grateful that her parents could afford to send her to the U.S. for college.

She talked about her friends (who were of mixed heritage--Bosnian, Serbian, all those other -ians). She said that, most likely, she would never see some of them again. She was mad at her country (for allowing this to happen), our government (for not doing anything about it) and some of her friends who were buying the idea that those invisible things no one can do anything about were good reasons to tear her homeland apart. And most of all (this was the impression I got, anyway), she was really glad she was rich and would never have to go back to that hellhole again if she didn't want to.

I had a mixed reaction to her speech. I didn't know much about the conflict in that part of the world because, well, I was really into worrying about my own problems. Besides, we had just gotten over the Gulf War scare--the closest I ever got to being drafted. And I didn't want our country to rush to any kind of military decision about another place I didn't know much about.

That was in the fall of 1991.

It is now the spring of 1999 and military action by the U.S. and a few of its NATO allies have begun. Talk about a delay.

My thoughts on this conflict are conflicted.

We talk about race relations in this country and don't even have a clue about how good we've got it here. Racial lines are blurring around here so much, no one really knows who is part what and who is part another. Yes, there are idiots who feel tying someone to the back of a truck and dragging them to their death because of what they look like is a good idea. But that is an extreme minority.

I can't tell the difference between Bosnians or Serbs or Albanians or Russians or any of the other people in that part of the world. They all look pasty white too me, which indicates a lack of sunshine. I can't tell if someone is Protestant or Muslim just by looking at them (well, unless they're wearing some kind of headgear that gives it away). And not only that, I don't care.

The beautiful thing we have in the U.S. (barring the occasional surge of idiocy) is a blasé-ness about race. We work and play and drink and sleep with whoever we please. We're all mixed and matched to the point of not caring.

But in Kosovo and areas nearby, they are still in a tribal state of mind. Ethnic cleansing (i.e. mass murder of a race of people) is perpetrated in the misguided thought (y'know, I've never even been to Europe and I remember Hitler) that killing the entire enemy will make it all better.

But what happens when the enemy is all gone and the shock troops are still around? Is that when the "cleansing" goes a little bit farther? Maybe there's a section of their own people who have unclean blood--or are significantly more susceptible to male pattern baldness. Should those people be wiped out so those genes aren't passed on to the chosen ones? What about people who have to wear coke-bottle glasses because their eyesight sucks? And what about all those people who don't know how to type? Is it time to separate those able to use a computer from those who can't operate a gas pump?

Silly, isn't it. So is fighting because of religion or ethnicity or perceived, but unseen, differences. This is why I am conflicted. I don't understand why they're fighting. This isn't about the economy or the style of government or even what toppings are best for pizza (not that these are good reasons for killing people, either). This fight is about unchangeable intangibles.

And our bombs aren't changing anyone's mind.

Matt Worley is a melting pot and invites everyone to bubble in his hot water.