Highway to the Danger Zone

ATHENS, May 23 — Greek and Turkish F-16 fighter planes collided in midair today in disputed airspace over the Aegean Sea.

While Greek rescue teams searched for their missing pilot, Defense officials in Athens said the Turkish pilot, Lt. Halil Ibrahim Ozdemir, survived the crash, ejecting safely from his aircraft.... "We have no signs that the Greek pilot managed to eject," said a spokesman for the Hellenic Air Force, Yannis Papageorgiou.

One of the sillier arguments about Afghanistan was that we had to continue in our war-fighting mission because our NATO allies demanded it. I tend to believe that if NATO were so all-encompassing and demanding, maybe the Greeks and Turks could go a few weeks without playing aerial chicken at Mach 2. It doesn't always end like this, but they've been playing the odds for more than a decade now.