Molly Ivins April 15

WASHINGTON — When in Washington, one should do as the Washingtonians do and enter the capital's favorite sport, the Blame Game. Everyone here plays, constantly, so the official symbol is the pointed finger.

A few years ago, there was a comparative study of corporate culture in Japan and the United States. The findings were that when something goes wrong in an American corporation, the first thing on the agenda is to hunt for the culprit. "Who's responsible for this mess? We'll find out who it is, and heads will roll!"

In Japan, by contrast, the researchers found that when something went gravely amiss, all hands threw themselves into fixing whatever it was and dealing with whatever the consequences were. And then, the head honcho automatically took responsibility for whatever had gone wrong, more or less throwing himself on his sword.

(I used to work for a newspaper where we were under frequent "Blame Alerts," with managers stalking through the newsroom looking for a head or two to roll while the rest of us assiduously kept ours down. I still think it's a silly exercise, but it certainly makes Washington seem familiar.)

Right now, everybody is blaming everybody else because we have no good options in Kosovo. It's not that you hear anyone suggesting some helpful option that hasn't been tried; the entire discussion is: "Why didn't they do this? Why didn't they do that? They should have had Apache helicopters over there ... had troops ready to go ... never gotten involved in the first place ... bombed harder from the first ... "

Blah, blah, blah. Should have, would have, could have. Except for the military, who are in the happy position of being able to shut up and fight, the whole town is playing the Blame Game. Don't blame me, I didn't do it, wasn't my idea, I had nothing to do with it, someone else's fault, I wasn't there, no one asked me. If they put as much energy into organizing relief for the refugees as they do into blaming one another, there'd be a lot of less-miserable Kosovars.

Taking the longer view, since nobody here voted for Slobodan Milosevic, maybe they should all get a bye. However, since we are all in agreement that we are indeed in a miserable position, perhaps there will be some interest in how we might prevent a repeat of this unfortunate pass in future. This is not a case of shoulda-woulda-coulda but something we can do right now.

A slightly obscure Washington Post story reports that Hillary Rodham Clinton, "alarmed by House and Senate spending plans that would slash foreign aid and diplomatic operations," has pitched in to help a coalition of businessmen, humanitarians and ethnic organizations. The coalition, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, peace groups and even environmental groups, is lobbying Congress to persuade it that further budget cuts to the State Department are not a shrewd idea. ("The Republican-led Congress, looking for spending cuts to help finance tax reductions and other goals, has taken tentative votes to cut, by about 15 percent, the funds for the State Department, the United Nations, embassies and foreign aid," reports the Post.) Their argument is that America should not succumb to isolationist tendencies just when U.S.

leadership is needed to boost new democracies, combat terrorism and protect societies from bullies like Milosevic.

To my embarrassment, I recall that this is at least the fifth or sixth round of this same process. Sen. Jesse Helms cuts the State Department's budget whenever the R's run the Senate; he did it back in the '80s, too.

I have occasionally gotten calls from slightly desperate people saying, "Please help us defend our budget from Sen. Helms," and since there are few arguments more bootless than those in favor of foreign aid, I have rarely bothered. The last such call I got was from a young man who had just spent almost two years in Bosnia.

Awhile back, I talked with a former State Department employee who had taken early retirement, too discouraged to go on. After her budget was cut and cut and cut again, and she was still expected to do the same job with less than half the resources she needed, she left. Which is a shame, because she embodies a formidable degree of expertise on her area. (Her sister, still in the diplomatic service, is going through exactly the same process in another country.) Her take is that even those who understand the importance of first-rate diplomatic work will not put their political chips on the line for it.

In fact, Helms, a know-nothing isolationist from way, way back, has bullied the State Department mercilessly for years. Everyone there tries to placate him, although Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has called the proposed cuts "outrageous and unacceptable."

The silly thing about having a debate on the wisdom of isolationism at this late date is that the world is still out there, whether we deign to recognize it or not. Sort of like the loony time we Did Not Recognize China. (Bud Trillin once suggested that it must have been because the country was hidden behind its Foster Grant sunglasses.) Amazingly enough, even without our recognition, China remained right there, getting bigger and stronger and tougher and smarter and richer all the time we were Not Recognizing it. That did us a fat lot of good, didn't it? And that's just what trying to ignore the rest of the world does for us.

Most of the shoulda-woulda-coulda sloshing around Washington about Milosevic today involves failed diplomatic initiatives going back three years, seven years, nine years. If only we had told him this, done that, known the other, then we wouldn't have to be bombing Serbia today. It wouldn't be our only option and a decidedly bad one at that.

Granted, it is always easier to see what we should have done in hindsight. There is no guarantee that had we had more diplomats on the ground, better reporting and more connections, we would have made the moves then that would give us better options now. But it is more likely.

So here's to making some lemonade out of Slobodan Milosevic. The bully of the Balkans may serve to remind us again that it is smarter to invest in lots and lots of diplomacy than to be forced into fighting. As Winston Churchill said, "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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