Hawk Still Rules White House

First, let’s eavesdrop on a commander in chief, brooding on the great themes of war and death: “ ‘When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers.’ Then, with his face reddening, his voice rising and his fist pounding his thigh, “I believe in killing people who try to hurt you, and I can’t believe we’re being pushed around by these two-bit [jerks].’ ”

LBJ at the time of the Tonkin Gulf resolution? Nixon during the Christmas bombing of Haiphong?

No. This was Bill Clinton, as recalled by George Stephanopoulos in his recent memoir, privately ranting at the time U.S. “humanitarian” intervention in Somalia was falling apart, in 1993. In other words, the first post-Cold War president’s instinctive reaction to a challenge from a foreign adversary, however diminutive, is exactly the same as those of commanders in chief in the years of the Cold War.

And alas, one can imagine Clinton ranting this week in the Oval Office to his national security advisor, Sandy Berger. Is the “two-bit” jerk, Slobodan Milosevic, still defiant? Then bombard Serbia’s cities ever more heavily. He still won’t succumb and acknowledge NATO’s writ? Send in the infantry.

There is a rhythm to these imperial forays, and we should understand clearly what stage we’re approaching, for Clinton war policy is in the process of congealing into a long-term military strategy of appalling contours. As always, the initial predictions were optimistic, the rhetoric ebullient and the public reaction firmly adverse. The NATO bombing was to be of Serbian military units, and brief in duration. Milosevic soon would come to his senses. Ground forces were out of the question. Public opinion was hesitant even on the bombing, and dead set against any ground war.

So, the bombs and missiles have been falling steadily. Belgrade itself is going the way of Baghdad, on exactly the same U.S. targeting strategy: bridges gone, power plants gone, sewage treatment destroyed. Missiles will go astray, killing civilians as they did in Aleksinac. The limitations of air power are once again being exposed.

Surveying the infinite worsening of the misery and flight of the Albanians of Kosovo, the NATO generals and some of the Joint Chiefs are saying that they knew this would happen. There are increasing rumbles about the need for a ground invasion by NATO to finish the job. Meanwhile, American public opinion is massaged by State Department propaganda bulletins and unending footage about the plight of the Albanian refugees.

Sure enough, under this barrage, American public opinion is beginning to shift. Maybe a ground war is the only way. Policies get set in stone, sometimes for years, because now American “resolve” is under duress. It’s not difficult now to look down the tunnel and see a NATO troop buildup in Macedonia, Albania and other more distant NATO allies.

Contrary to some predictions, American public opinion would endure body bags and would rally to the flag. Any peace movement here would take a long time to get off the ground. Many liberals and so-called progressives favor the bombing.

Or maybe, for logistical reasons, the recalcitrance of allies, fear of too many casualties, there won’t be a land war, but just continued bombing of Serbia, along with such economic and trade sanctions as can be imposed. Serbia will be shoved into the living conditions of a very poor Third World country, as was Iraq after the 1991 war. Public opinion will tolerate this, just as it has the dreadful toll, particularly on Iraq’s children, caused by the sanctions against Iraq.

So now, as policy starts to harden, let us retain a sense of realism and proportion. The lot of the Kosovo Albanians, of the refugees, awful though it may be, was no reason to go to war. The U.S. didn’t bomb Croatia in the mid-1990s when President Franjo Tudjman sent in Croat troops to ethnically cleanse Serbs in the Krajina.

The bloody Vietnamese quagmire owed much to the insistence of U.S. presidents Johnson and Nixon that there was no viable “exit strategy.” Of course, there were many, but those available were withheld from public discussion. It’s the same now. Milosevic’s recent suggestion of a cease-fire was brushed aside as unthinkable. The efforts of Russian Premier Yevgeny M. Primakov and of the Vatican have been scorned. We’re already hearing derision about the “faint hearts” in NATO. Many people thought Clinton was the president who somehow would prefer Ken Starr’s report as his epitaph, however embarrassing. But like all the others, he wants bomb craters as his requiem.