Military Should Leave the Balkans While It Can

The bumblings of the Clinton foreign-policy team make one yearn for the days when President Bush dismissed the Bosnian conflict as a "European problem."

Though Bush's dismissal may not be an uncontentious claim, the conflict brewing in the Balkans at least is not an American problem. U.S. interests are not materially at stake, nor does the conflict threaten to spread into a continent-wide conflagration.

Though the carnage is by all accounts worthy of condemnation, U.S. intervention is not justified because it would place American lives in jeopardy. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

The staff fails to take into accounts the especially pertinent problem of the Serbs' resolve. To date, the Serbs have shown a determined unwillingness to bend to the wishes of the international community, craftily mixing conciliatory gestures with subsequent offensives. Moreover, the Balkans are not as susceptible to air power as the Persian Gulf. Thus, air strike can only lead to greater involvement.

This case has been made here before. Yet the staff, from the unique vantage of their armchairs, take the recent failure of NATO air strikes to deter the Serbs form overrunning Gorazde as a sign that more intervention is needed, not less. Rather than follow this recipe for disaster, US forces ought to pull out of the region while they can.

Before we venture into another Vietnam, we ought to ask ourselves if we are ready to consign America's youth to such a fate.