ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 14, 1996 TAG: 9602140020
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
As a TV story, Bosnia has many disadvantages.
With all its warring factions and its tangled past, that troubled land is the dickens to explain. Besides, right now there's nothing much to point the camera at (desolate terrain, long faces). Peacekeeping, however harrowing, isn't always very visual.
For most of us watching the evening news, then, the Balkans war doesn't hold a candle to the flat tax, Travelgate or the British royal family's tribulations.
So why NOT play a game of avoidance with a story this remote and confounding?
``I understand that thinking,'' Dan Rather admits. ``I don't put down someone for saying, `It's a long way from Broadway, and we don't have any business over there.'''
In fact, he understands that thinking all too well: ``It's been hard, almost impossible, to get people interested,'' Rather says.
Not that the CBS anchor is conceding to the public on this matter. On behalf of all his print- and electronic-news colleagues, he continues to reflect an eat-your-peas attitude about Bosnia coverage.
Not that peas are necessarily so bad.
``I love this story,'' he says - ``because I think it's so important.''
In the past seven weeks, Rather has been to Bosnia twice.
For one piece that aired in December on ``The CBS Evening News,'' he reported on a Bosnian army unit planted some 400 yards from its Serb enemies - and he explained how, on that frozen, mine-littered ground, American soldiers soon would face the dicey task of moving in between the two foes to establish a neutral zone.
Rather did another report from a village housing more than a thousand Muslim refugees, almost all women and children. He asked a little girl if she missed her father, whom she hadn't seen in almost three years.
The little girl replied in the negative: No one here, she explained, has a father.
But even if it seems just-one-more-thing-to-worry-about dreary, what is happening in the Balkans should appeal to the self-interest of the average American.
``We cannot have confidence in our own security unless there is peace and stability in Europe,'' Rather says. ``And there cannot be long-term, lasting peace and stability in Europe, unless you have it in the Balkans.''
And there's an even more pressing interest.
``Whether the decision was right or wrong, we have put 20,000 people on the ground there, and we have 50,000 people at peril in the region overall. We aren't the kind of country that puts 20,000 of our sons and daughters in a hellhole like that, and then just forgets them.
``We HAVE to pay attention.''
Rather expects to go back this month. While there, he will likely encounter the same questions he says he heard from soldiers on past visits: ``Are the folks at home going to stay behind us? Do they care? Do they even know we're here?''
Where they are, Rather says, ``is a very rough environment. The winter is filled with snow, cold and mud the likes of which very few people ever experience in their lives.
``And it is a very dangerous neighborhood.''
Then what's the up side? Rather argues that the payoff is potentially great.
``If our policy is completely successful - if we stay a year and only a year, and if we suffer very, very few casualties - it may very well be a model for what the United States can do in the post-communist era.
``But while things could go well, that's not the way to bet it,'' he cautions. ``I would consider it a miracle if the warring sides don't fight again. Now it's winter and they're fatigued. The critical time is late spring and summer.
``I hope and pray that nothing bad happens, and I think there's a chance that it won't, but...'' Mind you, this is not an alarmist speaking, just a journalist fighting for a story he believes in.
``But if something does happen,'' Rather declares, ``I don't want someone to say to me, `Well, nobody told us.'''
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Rather.by CNB