Hawks, Doves Among Public Switch Sides

In her youth, Lynne Goldstein marched in demonstrations against the Vietnam War. More recently, she opposed sending U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf. “I don’t believe in war,” she says flatly.

But after reading about atrocities against innocent citizens in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the 40-year-old small-business owner in this blue-collar western Massachusetts town believes the United States has an obligation to intervene--with military force, if necessary--to end the civil war there.

A few blocks down Elm Street, Avery Bates, 54, a local real estate broker who served in the Navy during the Vietnam era and supported Operation Desert Storm, is strongly opposed to U.S. military intervention in Bosnia--except in a very limited role as part of a multilateral peacekeeping force.

“We cannot be responsible for maintaining order around the world,” Bates said. “Where does it stop? Northern Ireland? The Sudan? I don’t want to see the United States carrying the brunt of this mission, like we did in Somalia, the Persian Gulf and Vietnam.”

As Americans awaken to the possibility that President Clinton may send U.S. troops into Bosnia, their reactions are decidedly mixed. Furthermore, the traditional boundaries of political debate have been blurred, with some anti-war liberals favoring intervention and some backers of previous U.S. actions expressing a reluctance to send troops now.

In interviews with residents of eight cities and towns across the country--from Westfield in the East to Los Angeles in the West--The Times found that while Americans are very sympathetic to the plight of the victims of war in Bosnia, Clinton faces a difficult task if he hopes to win public support for his first big foreign military adventure.

Even those who admire Clinton’s recent decision to play a more active peacemaking role in Bosnia are not certain that they will continue to support the President if he eventually puts the lives of U.S. soldiers at risk to try to quell a centuries-old ethnic conflict in a part of the world where the United States has no obvious stake.

Predictably, Clinton’s lack of experience as President and his failure to serve in the military himself could undermine public confidence in his ability to make the right decision. While many said they trusted this previously untested President to rely on advice from experienced experts, others questioned his ability to devise a realistic plan of action.

“I don’t think Clinton knows what he wants to do over there,” said Dan Dolan, a 29-year-old Los Angeles lawyer. “I think it is something he will get us involved in and won’t be able to get us out of, and it will be another quagmire like Vietnam. . . . If he could go to the American people and say: ‘This is my plan. This is how I am going to accomplish it, and when the plan has been accomplished, I will get out,’ that would be different.”

In fact, William A. Murray III, 47, a Westfield attorney who voted for Clinton in November, predicted that Bosnia would prove to be a disastrous, no-win experience for the President.

“Either way, Clinton is going to get clobbered,” Murray said. “If he does nothing, he will be criticized. If he takes a first step, no matter what it is, he’s going to be criticized too. . . . He knows whatever he does he’s going to have the howl of backlash and protest.”

And Murray observed that Clinton’s efforts to win support for whatever course of action he takes may be complicated by a domestic political jumble in which many longtime hawks and doves are lining up on the opposite side.

“The right and the far right don’t want to do anything,” he noted. “Ironically, those are the ones who were all gung-ho for Vietnam, as you recall. The left wants to do something and the right wants to stay home, which is kind of an historical reverse, don’t you think?”

Of course, many Americans are still largely unaware of a potential military crisis looming over the horizon. Even as a radio news station, WBBM, was broadcasting live from Chicago’s Daley Plaza on Thursday, airing continuous updates on the war in Bosnia, a number of office workers eating their lunch in the vicinity said they knew nothing about the conflict, in which Serbs are accused of a massive campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against non-Serbs, mostly Muslims.

Gary Millar, 50, of Seattle suggested that perhaps there had been so much coverage of the war in Bosnia in the news media for the past year that many people had stopped paying attention. “You finally get satiated with all this news,” he said, “and then you tend to ignore it.”

Of those who felt knowledgeable enough about Bosnia to discuss it, many confessed ignorance about the history of ethnic conflict in the Balkans. Virtually everyone who favored U.S. intervention said they were influenced primarily by photos in the news media of the bloody victims of war.

Another powerful image that haunts Americans whenever they see pictures of the brutality in Bosnia is that of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. Like many people interviewed, Terry Kalil, director of public relations for Great Plains Software Co. in Fargo, N.D., said she was influenced by the dedication of the Holocaust Museum recently in Washington, D.C.

“If you put us back into the 1930s and 1940s, is the attitude the same as it was then: It’s not our problem?” Kalil asked. “As much as I don’t want U.S. troops to go in, if we don’t, what’s going to happen to these people? Men, women and children are dying in vast numbers, and someone has to do something.”

Larry Rapaport, 50, a Miami coffee shop owner, added: “We have an obligation to intervene on the basis of ethnic cleansing. . . . During World War II, we allowed millions to be exterminated.”

Those sentiments are particularly strong among Jewish Americans such as Goldstein and Dara Jaffe, 27, a Los Angeles paralegal.

“My being Jewish greatly influences my feelings about this,” Jaffe said. “I think it is an especially high priority in the Jewish community.”

Also like Goldstein, many who favor military intervention in Bosnia said they are normally opposed to war. “I think of myself generally as a pacifist,” said Maxine Rock, an Atlanta author. “However, there are some moments when the philosophy crumbles. I’m afraid this is one of them.”

To these liberals, Clinton’s opposition to the Vietnam War is seen as a virtue, not a handicap. “Because he’s not a hawk,” said Cheryl Dotson, a 38-year-old Houston accountant, “he’s not going to jump into war without talking long and hard about it.”

For some who want the United States to intervene in Bosnia, it is also a matter of consistency: They believe that the United States should step in there because it did so recently in Somalia and the Persian Gulf.

John Peterson, 30, of Denver noted that when the United States intervened in the Persian Gulf, then-President George Bush said it was to protect human rights for the Kuwaitis. As a result, he said, the United States has a similar obligation to protect human rights in Bosnia.

But many who are inclined to help in Bosnia become ambivalent when they think about the prospect of Americans dying in the Balkans. As a result, they are eager for Clinton to find some way to avoid the commitment of U.S. ground troops, either by arming the Muslims, pressing for further negotiations or dropping bombs on the Serbs from U.S. warplanes.

“Once we showed our ability to make war, the war would stop,” said Spencer Hill, 66, a retired Air Force officer who favors using U.S. air power in Bosnia.

Those seeking an alternative to sending U.S. ground troops to Bosnia said Clinton should bring more pressure on European leaders to play a bigger role in the Balkans. Paul Martin, 47, a computer consultant in western Massachusetts, said he gets angry when he sees Europeans quoted in the newspaper saying the Americans do not understand the situation in Bosnia.

“I think it’s the Europeans who don’t understand,” Martin said. “I keep thinking about the Holocaust and the words ‘Never again.’ I think the European countries have forgotten already.”

Many of those opposed to military intervention would be amenable to sending U.S. troops into Bosnia as part of an allied peacekeeping force, although some recognize that might lead to combat.

“In order to be a peacekeeper in that situation, you’re going to have to have some kind of offensive role,” said Greg Sealey, a 22-year-old student at the University of Washington in Seattle. “I don’t think we could just go in and stand between them and say, ‘Don’t shoot.’ ”

Without strong allied cooperation and U.N. backing, however, very few Americans support U.S. intervention--even in a peacekeeping role.

Opponents of U.S. intervention in Bosnia question why any American soldiers should die in a conflict that does not involve the United States.

“I think there’ll be a lot of unnecessary bloodshed, both ours and theirs,” said Kim Sargent, a 31-year-old legal secretary in Denver. “It might end, but we might kill more people than would die otherwise.”

With a son in the Navy, Bates was equally adamant: “I just think it’s time to stop sending the cream of the crop of American young people on these missions. We are spending the flower of our youth. We did it in Vietnam; we did it in the Gulf War.”

Many Americans see a moral obligation to help, but they feel the United States has too many problems of its own right now. In Westfield, Scott Andrews, 39, a private pilot, said the government should concentrate all of its efforts on reducing the federal deficit and improving the economy.

“I’d support military intervention if I thought there was some economic reason for us being there,” added Dolan of Los Angeles, “but there isn’t.”

Likewise, John Lewan, 64, who works for the state’s attorney in Chicago, said Clinton should stop the killing at home before he intervenes in a remote part of the world. “There is so much hatred right here in Chicago,” he said. “Maybe we should spend the money here.”

Just as recollections of the Holocaust motivate calls for action, memories of the long-fought U.S. struggle in Vietnam cause others to question whether Bosnia could be another no-win adventure for the United States. In Fargo, Susan D. Geib put it succinctly: “The question is, is this another Vietnam?”

Some opponents of U.S. involvement fear Clinton will stumble into a Vietnam-type predicament because he chose not to serve in that war himself. “I would feel more comfortable if the President had a military background,” Bates said.

But far more said they trusted Clinton to listen to the advice of experienced military leaders. Joe Smice, 32, a Denver accounting associate, spoke for many when he said: “I feel Clinton’s got a good head on his shoulders. I don’t think he wants to send kids over there to be massacred.”

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang in Fargo and researchers Lianne Hartin in Houston, Ann Rovin in Denver, D’Jamila Salem in Los Angeles, Tracy Shryer in Chicago, Edith Stanley in Atlanta, Doug Conner in Seattle and Anna M. Virtue in Miami contributed to this story.