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What was Clinton thinking?

That he cannot afford to resist the pressure from Republicans like Bob Dole and their kindred souls among Democrats. He was being painted as Chamberlain style appeaser, so he gave in.

Posted on Bosnian Electronic Network on Thu, 29 Apr 93 by Andras.R. :

As the Clinton Administration continues to "consider its options" while keeping a wary eye on the opinion polls, a mighty chorus of media apologists has emerged from the woodwork to "explain" to the public why the U.S. couldn't and probably shouldn't do anything to save Bosnia. The following piece by Senior Associate Editor H.D.S. Greenway appeared on the op-ed page of the BOSTON GLOBE today (29 Apr 93). On the facing page the LETTERS TO THE EDITOR column is topped by an item entitled "Serbs have been misunderstood by the world" --the second pro-Serbian letter to appear this week (no pro-intervention letters have been published so far).

THIS IS WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT WE LET THE WHITE HOUSE AND CONGRESS KNOW NOW THAT THERE ARE AMERICANS WHO CARE ABOUT BOSNIA AND ITS PEOPLE. PLEASE take a moment and call (again) to tell them you've had enough of the hand-wringing and equivocation. CALL the White House comment line: 202-456-1111 today. Call your legislators. Write and call your local newspapers and TV stations. Do it even if you've done it many times before, before the moment slips away.

Article by a prominent Liberal comentator warning Pres. Clinton against yielding to the anti-Serbian pressure:

(C) BOSTON GLOBE 29 APRIL 1993

BEFORE WE JOIN A WAR, SOME QUESTIONS by H.D.S. Greenway

In the last few weeks, the Bosnian town of Srebrenica has become another Guernica in the eyes of the West, and the Clinton administration is being drawn inexorably toward military intervention in the Balkan civil war.

Secretary of State Warren Christopher has laid out what he calls the "severe tests" of an interventionist policy: It must be clearly stated, there should be a strong likelihood of success, there must be an "exit strategy," and it must win sustained public support in this country.

None of those conditions has been met.

But a public mood is rising. Television has zeroed in on Bosnia while other civil wars and ethnic cleansings go relatively unreported. Respected opinion makers from both left and right have been beating the intervention drum, taunting Clinton, calling his caution a weakness and making shallow, ill-considered comparisons with Hitler-appeasing Neville Chamberlain.

Before the United States commits itself to war, however, there are three questions that the administration needs to answer if intervention is to meet Christopher's "severe tests."

First, who will be our enemies? Second, what are our war aims? Third, what will we do if limited intervention fails to achieve our aims?

Bosnian Serbs are not allowed to link up their territories in what would become a "Greater Serbia," but the Croats in their part of Bosnia-Herzegovina fly the Croatian flag, use Croatian money and have linked up with Croatia.

If we will go to war against Serbian aggrandizement in Bosnia, will we also bomb Croats to prevent Greater Croatia?

Will our war aim be "stopping the genocide now," as Sen. Joseph Biden has said? If so, whose genocide? Only last week in Central Bosnia, Muslims and Croats were at each other's throats and, according to the United Nations, summary executions, massacres and ethnic cleansings were committed by both Muslim and Croat factions.

And while world attention was on Serbs shelling Srebrenica, the BBC reported on the mass graves the Serbs were finding just a few miles away in which lay the corpses of Serbs who had been decapitated, mutilated and tortured by Muslims during the Muslims' Christmas offensive.

Simplistic analysts have put all the blame for the Bosnian civil war on the Serbs and their leader, Slobodan Milosevic, the former Communist turned ultra-nationalist who has played the ethnic card to fan the flames of hatred. That Croatia's leader, Franjo Tudjman, has done much the same thing goes largely ignored. The real cause of the war, however, was as UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali described it in an interview last summer. "You have three ethnic groups, and they have not taken into account the point of view of one of the three, which was the Serbs."

Croats and Muslims were granted rights of self-determination that the large Serb minorities living outside the province of Serbia were denied. Serbs had historical reasons to fear Croatian and Muslim domination, and Milosevic was able to take advantage of those fears.

True, the Serbs are responsible for the most atrocities, but if we intervene to tip the military balance against Serbs, will we be pre- pared to make war on Muslims and Croats if they turn on Serb civilians to enlarge their own territories?

This is not a cut-and-dried matter of forcing an invader out of another country. This is an entangled, tripartite civil war with 500 years of hatred. If putting back together the Humpty Dumpty of Bosnian unity --never more than an illusion-- is our aim, we'd better think in terms of a 100-year "exit strategy."

Lastly, what if a limited intervention fails to end the fighting and accelerates it instead? Unfortunately for Clinton, he will have to live with the results of intervention while pundits promoting war today will be the first to denounce him should things go wrong tomorrow.