Is the Burden of War Lost on Clinton?

“Critics of NATO’s strategy have begun to wonder if a . . . credibility gap is opening up.” --Newsweek

“Clinton Approval Rating Drops.” --Headline in Los Angeles Times

“Hey! Hey! USA! How many kids did you kill today?” --Protesters demonstrating outside

the White House on April 24

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William Jefferson Clinton must be yearning for the good old days as an Oxford University student when he could demonstrate against his country’s war on foreign soil, luxuriate in the rectitude of it all, and head back to the comfort of his room and maybe even not inhale some dope.

Instead, the middle-aged Mr. Clinton is now America’s commander in chief, leader of the free world, and one more in a line of this century’s wartime presidents prosecuting hostilities against a cutthroat thug. It would be hard to believe that he doesn’t bitterly resent the doubters and defeatists or even the thoughtful critics questioning his military and diplomatic policies. Still, one wonders if the obvious ironies even occur to Clinton in those brooding midnight hours when the awe of his undertaking penetrates his slumber.

The ironies are everywhere. Each grows out of the identification he involuntarily shares with his predecessors who guided our nation during the Vietnam War.

A recalcitrant Congress questions Clinton’s every step. The debate has become more rancorous as the war is about to enter its eighth week. Two recent votes, one requiring the president to seek congressional approval before committing ground troops to Yugoslavia and another deadlocked on support for the air war, have evoked angry White House charges that the votes could send a signal to Slobodan Milosevic “that somehow could be misinterpreted.” It’s all reminiscent of Congress’ interference in Vietnam, especially that of Clinton’s hero, Arkansas Sen. J. William Fulbright.

Then there is the unofficial peace emissary. Jesse Jackson is to Clinton as Ramsey Clark was to Richard Nixon. Clark, the former U.S. attorney general turned peacenik, traveled to the enemy capital of Hanoi in 1972 providing oodles of propaganda for a totalitarian regime which made civilian killing just another instrument of its war policy. Clark visited American POWs and then called on the United States to stop its bombing immediately. “Bombing pauses” were leftist mantras in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The Rev. Jackson, after some touchy feely hand-holding and prayer with the Butcher of Belgrade, called for--deja vu--a bombing pause.

Tragically, as in the case with all such conflicts, there has been--and will continue to be--civilians killed by errant missiles and bombs. Several such incidents of “collateral damage” already have taken place. One was the recent bombing of a civilian bus with results described gruesomely by a Times reporter: “mangled bodies included the severed arm of a small child.” So, unsurprisingly, Tom Hayden surfaced last week (can Jane Fonda be far behind?) to decry bitterly “the absence of the voices of protest against the suffering inflicted on civilians and children by our bombardment of Serbia.”

The ugly chants against Lyndon Johnson--”Hey! Hey! LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?”--echo still. How long before they are transmogrified into “Hey! Hey! Bombs-away Bill! How many kids did you manage to kill?”

Vietnam War hero Sen. John McCain was asked on one of the Sunday talk shows whether the Republicans just wanted to make this Clinton’s war. McCain’s answer--the right one: “This is not Clinton’s war, this is not [Madeleine] Albright’s war. It’s America’s war.”

Yet, increasingly the language of Vietnam will continue to seep into the national debate and clearly, as Hayden’s diatribe shows, not merely in a partisan way. “Quagmire,” “credibility gap,” “bombing pauses,” “civilian casualties,” “give peace a chance.” “Clinton’s war” may soon follow. Some even say Serbia is the liberals’ Vietnam--although author Bill Gavin once countered: “Vietnam is the liberals’ Vietnam.”

So Clinton is now a wartime president. Has it sunk in yet? Does he now appreciate more the burden of Messrs. Johnson and Nixon? One wonders. As Jesse Jackson was in enemy territory handing over a propaganda bouquet to the man whose soldiers are trying to kill Americans, Clinton was playing golf with Vernon Jordan in Virginia. One observes that neither national sorrow nor international crisis could keep him off the fairways.

Some advice to our embattled commander in chief: Pay attention, presidents don’t get Mulligans in wartime.

Kenneth L. Khachigian is a veteran political strategist and former White House speech writer who practices law in Orange County. His column appears here every other week.