KEEP TROOPS OUT OF EUROPEAN CONFLICT

Our world has gone nuts. Doves have become hawks. Hawks now are doves. Former peaceniks, led by a flower-power president who resisted the Vietnam draft, are clamoring for war. Congressional hawks are resisting, fearing we'll get bogged down in another dirty little civil war. Somebody must have slipped something in the water.

The doves were right in the '60s. The neo-doves are right now.

Kosovo has no more strategic value to the United States today than South Vietnam did then. It won't ignite World War III unless the missiles and rhetoric launched by Bill Clinton and NATO incite Turks, Albanians, Macedonians, Greeks, Russians and who knows who else. Nor is its version of ethnic cleansing any worse than the mass murder going on in a dozen other world hot spots, including Most Favored Nation China. Maybe Slobodan Milosevic should make a small donation to the National Democratic Party to get Clinton to back off - or at least a better missile tracking system. Incredibly, Clinton has no strategy to make the Serbs behave themselves, other than to bomb them. That was apparent in early March when visiting Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema asked Clinton what he'd do if Milosevic refused to back down in a bombing campaign. Clinton was silent, according to the Washington Post. Finally, National Security Adviser Sandy Berger piped up: "We will continue the bombing." So far, Clinton has rained bombs down on the Serbs without much risk to American life. But that must change if he's going to save armed Kosovar thugs from the Serbian ones. The only thing that can keep these historic enemies apart are ground troops, sent by a president who promised to withdraw our forces from the Balkans by 1996 and who wrote 30 years ago how much he loathed the military. That means long-term commitment and body bags. The Balkans aren't "at the heart of Europe" any more than Little Rock is at the heart of the United States. Contrary to Clinton revisionism, this European backwater didn't explode into two world wars (although it did play a minor role in starting the first one). He has no business risking America's sons and daughters to clean up another European mess. Undoubtedly, Clinton would be singing a different tune if he were young enough to fight.

Copyright 1999 Cowles Publishing Company
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