KABUL -- Master Sgt. Brett Favre, leading a Special Forces platoon in a ground assault in the southwestern mountains of Afghanistan, said troops need to "go deep and long" in the search for Al Qaeda members.

JERUSALEM -- Approximately 1,000 troops surround historic Bethlehem awaiting orders from the U.S. command post in Jerusalem.

"I'd like us to roll in and take care of business as soon as possible," says tank commander Kobe Bryant. "Playoffs are supposed to begin in two weeks."

If the names sound familiar, it's because they belong to the elite corps of professional athletes that America loves but also often resents for their salaries, their behavior and their highly dubious status as role models. So wouldn't there be less of that resentment if these multi-millionaire jocks had to do double duty as America's first-strike military force?

I'm not talking about the occasional athlete-turned-soldier, or the way dozens of athletes were drafted during WWII. My suggestion is to draft all pro athletes into the armed services. Sign them up as soon as they're drafted by any team, and send them to basic before spring training. Then, when there's an uprising in Somalia, or intelligence about new terror training camps cropping up again in Afghanistan, let ESPN's rich and famous be the first reserves we send into battle.

Think of it: Would all of us be a little less angry if the sport stars that we pamper, spoil and often deify earned their stripes literally? If these same gifted men had to risk their lives for us (instead of just their anterior cruciate ligaments), wouldn't we be more likely to forgive them for charging money for autographs? For striking in order to protest their $3 million per year "slave" wages? For spitting at umpires? For not running out ground balls while making $126,000 -- a baseball player's average take per game?

A $40,000-a-year over-the-road driver might feel a heap better about Kurt Warner making $5 million if he knew the St. Louis Rams quarterback had to train eight weeks at Fort Bragg and then serve two years on call as a reservist. I, for one, would be less inclined to boo the Texas Rangers' Alex Rodriguez ($25 million a year) for striking out if I knew he slept in a tent in the desert in Yemen last week, safeguarding me at home. And when Philadelphia Eagles' Antonio Freeman runs on an opposing team's field signaling that he's number one, fans just might stand up and salute him in agreement.

But what's in it for the athletes? Everything they want, actually. They'd keep their salaries and their sport celebrity. But they'd also finally have a legitimate claim to the oft-debated moniker of "hero." And many of them, especially kids right out of high school like basketball players Tyson Chandler and Eddy Curry, would be able to get a normal education -- one consisting of skills and values that we currently watch them flaunt or struggle with in their daily travails, as they are splashed all over the front page of the sports section, like a World War II poster featuring boxer Joe Louis.

In the Army (or Navy or Marines), they'll cultivate maturity, teamwork, discipline (let Latrell Sprewell try choking a drill sergeant), manners, selflessness, loyalty and patriotism. They'll even acquire a skill or trade to fall back on if it turns out that in the big leagues they cannot hit the curve ball or catch a pass in traffic.

And those are just the known perquisites for the stars. Those pros who covet the limelight -- your Neon Deons and Reggie Millers -- can move up from the toy department (sports page) to world news in the off season, photographed alongside President Bush and Colin Powell and interviewed by Ashleigh Banfield.

Better yet, your Ray Lewises and Leroy Butlers, who confess that they "love to hit people," and hockey enforcers like Marty McSorley, who simply "love to fight," will finally get to be in an arena where their preoccupations are not only legal, but are rewarded with medals and ribbons.

It'll never happen, you say? Consider that Pat Tillman, a 25-year-old safety for the Arizona Cardinals, did exactly that last spring, giving up three years of fame and riches in the NFL to serve as an elite Ranger in the U.S. Army. While Tillman has avoided all interviews, his coach, Dave McGinnis, said it was a matter of pride, integrity and patriotism for him, someone who is clearly not the typical materialistic pro athlete.

In the big leagues of baseball, football, basketball, hockey, soccer, golf and tennis, there are about 10,000 young, superbly conditioned athletes like Tillman (more than 20,000 if you count the minor leagues) who benefit more than most people from America's free capitalistic society. Who better to man (and wo-man) our Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine first-strike forces in times of trouble?

But Tillman is an extraordinary exception. Since it is a safe bet that the other pros will not follow his example, in order for this plan to work, it will be necessary for Congress to pass a bill that requires any professional sports contract to include a military service provision. Call it a small tax on their American dream of wealth and fame. My guess is that there'd be ample support of such a bill, especially from a citizenry that is asked time and again to subsidize their city's professional sports franchises, their stadia, and especially their skyboxes.

And it's not that there hasn't been some precedent for this arrangement. In its military and Olympian supremacy during the Cold War days, U.S.S.R.'s skaters and weight lifters listed their full time occupations as "soldier." The allegiance they pledged to Mother Russia apparently spilled over into the sporting quest, as they perennially led all nations in gold medals at the summer and winter Olympics. It makes sense, since soldiers moonlighting as athletes (or vice versa) is among the more compatible pairings of pursuits; both share similar goals, skills and the same kind of preparation and training.

So let's reconsider those news lead possibilities: Gen. Bill Walsh's elite infantry men, all of whom could run the 100-yard-dash in less than 10 seconds, pilot the frontal assault against the enemy; Col. Bobby Knight's legion of snipers protects their flank; Maj. Mike Ditka's tank division brings up the rear, roaring ahead with all the pride, fire, might and abandon of a special team covering a kickoff return.

And our country is not only entertained but also protected by a generously paid, super-conditioned, balletically unified, highly motivated strike force that's trained, programmed and, in fact, born to win.

God bless America. Go team!

David McGrath teaches writing and Native American literature at College of DuPage.

His nose must be over a foot wide at its base. True, I did not climb the billboard and measure with a ruler, but I can vouch that the Indian�s nose is broader than each of his arms and legs. This is no 1950s relic staring down at me. The modern billboard towers each day over drivers on Interstate 294 in Alsip, 20 miles outside Chicago: a tri-color image of an Indian aligned to the left of a banner for Arrow Chevrolet.

Get it? Arrow � Indian?

Here�s what drivers see: big nose, little legs, dark skin, headband and single feather. He wears a necklace strung from animal teeth and a loincloth. He displays the same bow-and-arrow combative behavior that Hollywood used to feature.

The same buffoonish character is stenciled on Arrow�s showroom windows in Midlothian, another Chicago suburb, and on Arrow�s Web site, ostensibly to boost recognition of its company name.

What Arrow has done is essentially resurrect the cigar store Indian to shill for Chevrolets. Some Americans may remember the wooden statues of Indians placed in front of drug stores and tobacco emporiums. They were used to advertise cigarettes and cigars, a practice vaguely related to some Indian tribes� use of pipes and tobacco in sacred ceremonies.

Would objecting to Arrow�s ad campaign be just another hysterical charge of political incorrectness? After all, what�s the harm?

�It�s hurtful, dehumanizing,� says Arieahn Matamonasa, a psychologist and professor of contemporary Native American issues at DePaul University.

Matamonasa made the dealership aware of its display ad�s offensive nature as early as four years ago, when she commissioned her students to write research papers on the dangers of stereotyping. Each year since then, several of her students have tackled the subject of the Chevy Indian and have written to the dealership�s management.

�They�ve ignored all of our letters,� says Matamonasa, who has crow-black hair that hangs well below her shoulders, and the straight-on, relentless gaze that reminds one of Natalie Wood�s character in The Searchers, except that Matamonasa is, indeed, of Lakota and Menominee descent.

She is concerned particularly about the social and potentially violent consequences of stereotyping, recalling the cartoons Julius Streicher published prior to and during WWII that gave public �permission� for dehumanizing and exterminating Jews.

Matamonasa compares the Chevy Indian caricature to Chief Wahoo, the mascot of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, and to the �Frito Bandito,� the cartoon character eventually retired, under pressure, by Frito Lay (click here for a Fritos commercial clip).

�He has a feather tucked in a headband, and he has no shirt. He looks ridiculous,� she told me. �And we are such a small group that people don�t have real life experiences with Indian people. So for them, he represents the whole culture.

�When people see, on the other hand, something like the leprechaun of the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, they know enough of the Irish culture that this mythic figure is not representative.�

As a cartoon image, this is not the characteristically touted noble, sacred or serious Indian stereotype, ala University of Illinois�s Chief Illiniwek, the school's mascot. Neither is it a frolicsome or supposedly innocent depiction, like Disney�s Pocahontas. The Arrow Chevy Indian is, in fact, more akin to the TV series Pow Wow the Indian Boy meets F-Troop -- which may speak to the age as well as to the cynicism of the dealership�s management.

Perhaps because the company would be hard-pressed to claim, as does the U. of I. or the Atlanta Braves, that they are �honoring� Indians with their billboard and Web site art, they have decided not to talk at all: The general manager of Arrow would not return my calls. So I can only speculate about how they would refute Matamoras�s challenge to stop using the cartoon character.

One of the usual arguments, that �no one seems to mind,� is baseless considering Matamonasa�s protests as well as resolutions passed by state governments condemning the use of Indian logos and mascots. A bill was recently proposed by a California state assemblywoman banning the use of Indian logos and mascots in public institutions, though it failed to muster enough support and was defeated in May.

More such legislative crusades are imminent, however, as Indian political and economic influence grows as a result of the proliferation and success of casinos. According to a recent survey by Indian Country Today, the national Indian weekly, �81 percent of respondents indicated use of American Indian names, symbols and mascots are predominantly offensive and deeply disparaging to Native Americans.�

Additionally, the logo defenders� claim to their right of free speech sounds similarly fallacious in light of the recent recommendation issued by the United States Civil Rights Commission that calls for an end to the use of Native American images and team names by non-Native schools. The recommendation, which was released in April 2001, states: �These references, whether mascots � logos, or names, are disrespectful and offensive to American Indians and others who are offended by such stereotyping.�

The call was accompanied by the more telling warning that the mascots and logos �� may violate anti-discrimination laws.� In legal precedent, the point at which discrimination against others begins is where free speech ends.

Finally, though some continue to maintain that Indian iconography is intended to �honor� Indians, what community has ever felt sincerely �honored� by a nation or group that vanquished them? Would present day Jews feel honored by Germans drawing caricatures of yarmulke-wearing Jews to sell cars or watches? Would African Americans feel �honored� if �Spears Stereo� used native African warriors wielding spears to hawk its CD players?

Professor Matamonasa said that following one of her presentations about Native American culture, a child came up to her and proclaimed with enthusiasm, �I believe in Indians,� evoking the famous chant of faith in fairies from the movie Peter Pan, though Native Americans still make up close to 1 percent of the U.S. population.

�If people knew more about Native Americans, it [the Arrow cartoon character] might not be as damaging,� she says. But our culture does not provide a diversity of representations, nor are students well educated about Native American history and current cultural issues. Images such as the Arrow Chevrolet Indian end up being larger than life -- in this sense literally as well as figuratively.

What�s clear is that Native Americans are offended. What�s also clear is that the logos and mascots will continue to appear until a lot more non-Natives take offense.

David McGrath teaches writing and Native American literature at College of DuPage. His essays and short stories have been published in The Chicago Reader, Education Digest, Chicago Tribune and Artful Dodge. His short story "Broken Wing" was nominated for the Pushcart Award for Fiction, and he recently published his first novel, Siege at Ojibwa.

Was I dreaming, or did novelist Ann Beattie whisper in my ear that she had not done her homework?

It was Day Two of the Key West Writers Workshop led by instructor and author Harry Mathews (The Conversions, Cigarettes). Seated around a rectangular table in the historic Village Hall in downtown Key West, Fla., 11 aspiring novelists and poets who had plunked down $300 for eight hours of dicta and philosophy from the enigmatic Mathews listened in awed silence.

Some of the awe was because of Mathews -- a bespectacled, bald, serious writing professor (Columbia and Bennington) who had a habit resting both elbows on the table and leaning forward, peering intently at each participant as if defying them to doubt his proclamations. And then there was yesterday's surprise discovery that one of the 11 students was the acclaimed novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie (Picturing Will; My Life, Starring Dara Falcon). Seated at the table's end opposite Mathews, the striking, smiling, silken-haired literary phenom seemed as dazed by Mathews as the rest of us.

But the major kick for the amateurs, or why we had traveled thousands of miles for a weekend workshop, had more to do with where we were on this sunny 70-degree morning. Would-be writers, hanging with the pros in the tropical lair of word-gods like Hemingway, Elizabeth Bishop, Tennessee Williams and now Beattie, we were living out a literary fantasy. Really.

In this age of extreme adventure vacations, you could, for the right price, indulge any lifelong fantasy for a week or a day. Ante up for baseball fantasy camp and shag grounders hit by Cub great Billy Williams in Mesa, Ariz. Sign on for the crew of a tall sailing ship, and climb to the crow's nest 40 feet above the Caribbean. Register for the Navajo cultural exchange, and sleep in an authentic hogan, 100 yards down the hill from an authentic outhouse.

And to provide a similar fix for the countless number of aspiring writers in the United States and England, conferences, conventions, writers' groups, writers' colonies and writing workshops have bloomed. An Internet search turns up hundreds of such offerings each season. Some are affiliated with schools and universities; others are private, for-profit monthly services. Registration fees vary -- from $35 for a single Adventure Travel writing session to $1,200 for a week at the prestigious Stonecoast Conference in Maine, including credits -- and depend on the length of experience, and, of course, the name value (read celebrity) of the pros who will be in attendance.

Add the expense of flights, car rentals and bed and breakfasts (literary types eschew hotel chains), and its easy to see how an entire industry is making money off those who think and type and, most importantly, dream. The market pool is limitless; you don't have to be blessed with athletic talent, beauty or wealth to entertain a serious ambition to write. All you need is the conviction, secret or public, that you have a story to tell.

For a total of about $1,500 (including tuition, lodging, too much Key West Sunset lager and not enough key lime pie), I participated in this year's Key West Writers' Workshop (KWWW). Sponsored by Florida Keys Community College, the program schedules weekend writers gatherings, each proctored by a reputable artist. This year's instructors included novelist Robert Stone, poets Robert Creely, Sharon Olds and Carolyn Forch, and poet/novelist/essayist Harry Mathews, in whose workshop I was lucky enough to secure a seat (writing samples were required). The KWWW Web site urges those interested to apply early, as the workshops fill fast because of the additional lure of the brilliant Florida Keys sunsets in the middle of February, when the rest of the country is freezer burned and stir crazy.

KWWW Director Irving Weinman has this whole beguiling fantasy thing down pat. At the end of your mundane week, after emerging from some arctic city to land under sunshine in Key West, you follow his careful directions to the Friday night orientation session. Pass by the palatial home of Ernest Hemingway and his old watering hole, Sloppy Joe's, as you walk in short sleeves to the Westwinds Inn for the sunset gathering. Proceed to the torch-lighted courtyard, where, seated under palm trees, you're served white wine and literary anecdotes by Mathews and Weinman, novelists who hobnob with John Ashbery and Raymond Roussel. You keep silent, sipping and smiling and nodding. The evening ensues and you shake hands and say, "'Till tomorrow," as if you always speak that way. You walk in the dark toward Mallory Square, slightly abuzz from the wine, the smell of flowers in mid-winter, the music tingling from the water front, and, most powerfully, from the question inside that you dare not even whisper: Am I one of them?

Harry Mathews turned out to be the ideal tease for this dream. At 73, he stood erect in a black T-shirt and white deck pants, soberly assaying anyone who dared approach him in the courtyard. I say dare because Harry disclosed to us tuition payers that he is repelled by people who flatter him, quoting another writer who compares the act of complimenting his novels to a stranger remarking how beautiful his ex wife is. Wanting to meet a writer because you like his work is like wanting to meet a goose because you like its droppings, Mathews said.

The tanned, chain-smoking Mathews fixes his listeners with a steady gaze and carries over his legendary literary economy into his social interaction, discouraging meaningless small talk. He will abide someone else's remarks or questions but prefers to pivot to a monologue on Key West's atmosphere (a feel of the continental), on France (where he lives half the year), or on fishing for prized permit in the flats.

On the first day of the workshop, (a misnomer for what is essentially a series of lectures punctuated by student sessions of free writing, which Mathews does not read), he set out the rules for the weekend like the boss man in Cool Hand Luke: "You will not be late. You must go to all four sessions. Do not interrupt with questions. Say nothing if you disagree (or take it up with me outside of class). Do not take notes, as note taking is actually a form of not paying attention," he said.

I looked around the table, expecting to see a welling up of protest, or maybe grudging resignation. Instead, what I saw was glee, a welcoming of rules and discipline, as if this answered their craving for order, for punishment, for initiation into the writer's life.

And then Harry Mathews asked for a show of hands: How many of you got into writing as awkward adolescents, spurned by your peers, homely social outcasts who sought in reading and in writing a refuge from the world?

Every hand went up. (Even Ann Beattie's, though I cannot swear since note taking was disallowed.) I dont know if I was embarrassed by the admission or embarrassed that I and these 10 others, and the 10-hundred others who show up at these seminars each month in all 50 states, had gravitated to this life not out of talent or avocation, but because of a social behavioral disorder.

Though Mathews is internationally known, and his work is critically acclaimed for its freshness, intelligence and departure from literary convention, his work is not widely read. As with Faulkner or Joyce, his prose is not reader friendly. A musicologist who graduated from Harvard, Mathews does not find conventional writing challenging, so he experiments with and invents forms that lead to unique modes of expression, giving him a kind of literary liberty.

One of these experiments involved writing without using the letter e. He said he had taped a thumbtack to the e key on his typewriter to compel him to use alternative words and, concomitantly, phrases and clauses that he would not otherwise use.

The results of his inventiveness are challenging novels that are more imaginative than realistic. Even his most conventional novel, Cigarettes, which explores the tentacled body relationships among a battery of male and female characters, is based on a structure that can befuddle casual readers. (His controversial book Singular Pleasures contains 61 one-page descriptions of methods of masturbation.)

So one of things he must do is teach. And Ann Beattie, who was taking the class because she is, of course, interested in Mathews thought processes (her missing homework notwithstanding), also indicated that she was auditing the workshop in preparation for her own teaching, which she and her sculptor husband must do to supplement their artists income.

One would think that the revelation of Beatties finances would be a sobering dose of reality for the workshop neophytes. Apparently, not even the life of a successful literary artist is worry-free. But it was never about wealth, as Mathews' first lesson on motivation testified.

The problem with some writers, said Mathews, is that they don't know why they are writing. If they think it's for self-expression, or for escape, or to get published and reviewed and win prizes, their writing will fail them. The writer's real mission, he says, is to search for his own story with which to fill the blank page. It may take years of pain, volumes of work, reams of paper; even at life's end, he may not have entirely fulfilled that mission. But the journey is key.

As far as fantasy camps go -- and for the illusion of immersion in the Key West artist's cachet -- Mathews was contrarily well suited. As an intellectual figurehead, he kept the dream safely remote. Granted, we did learn important attitudes about, and approaches to, writing. And while its hard to expect any improvement in writing skills after a two- or three-day workshop, the value of networking at these venues can't be overestimated (Novelist Lynn Crawford began a collaboration with Mathews as a result of an earlier workshop, which led to her inclusion in his latest anthology, The Oulipo Compendium).

But because Mathews joined us for cigarette breaks on Duvall Street and for lunch at a harbor side oyster bar during our one weekend in paradise, we flew home sated, tanned and star-dusted, though not necessarily any better at writing.