For education purpose only for the Big Kahuna a Myth thread.
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April 2, 1999
WSJ
Does Character Matter Yet?
Less than a week into the bombing in Kosovo, the political establishment in Washington is beginning to criticize President Clinton severely for ignoring the advice of the military and CIA that ground troops would be necessary, that air power alone would not deter Milosevic and the Serbs. There is now talk of a military disaster. There are also reports that the White House resents this Monday-morning quarterbacking.
Ironically enough, we're inclined to agree, though not on the White House's terms. We would like to know where this establishment--the politicians, pundits and Beltway press--has been the past six years, when some of us were pressing the argument that Bill Clinton's handling of Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers, the draft, Filegate and all the rest were relevant to the character and conduct of his Presidency. We were told, long before Monica and even before the Lincoln Bedroom rentals, that it didn't matter.
See related
Kosovo Issue Briefing
And indeed it didn't matter in a political world willing to hold leaders to no higher standard than an ability to survive the Beltway Colosseum. Mr. Clinton's double-cross of the Breaux Medicare Commission just last month didn't cost him a political dime. Commentary after commentary told the President his skill at avoiding getting tagged with responsibility for anything was political genius.
Now some half-million refugees are streaming out of Kosovo, three beaten-up U.S. soldiers are in Serbian captivity and President Clinton was on primetime television Wednesday night telling his interviewer that he isn't sending ground troops into Kosovo and he doesn't think impeachment is a badge of shame. Some genius.
It now seems clear that the President went into this military commitment without having thought it through, and is getting himself, his troops, his nation and the NATO alliance into a deeper and deeper mess. It is well established by now that bombing an adversary's army while ruling out ground troops is a recipe for irresolution. Absent ground troops, the only option is bigger bombing, inevitably of civilians. The lesson of war is that if you are compelled to use force, use it overwhelmingly. This is also the responsible course; what saves lives is getting the war over quickly.
There is no reason to be surprised that the U.S. has arrived at this awful moment. Someone who behaves irresponsibly in much of his life is likely to behave irresponsibly in the rest of it. This is what we have meant by character.
Mr. Clinton's character problem is not, and never was, just about sex. From the first overseas engagement--in Haiti or Somalia--the criticism in this quarter of Bill Clinton's foreign policy has been that it's nothing more than managing the next news cycle in the interests of Presidential popularity. It has been a narcissistic foreign policy. Now we, and especially those three captured GIs, are paying the price.
There is danger here to broader U.S. interests. It is not merely a matter of Slobodan Milosevic; Saddam is taking the American President's measure. So obviously are the volatile North Koreans and those elements of the Chinese leadership that want to take Taiwan or who talked blithely awhile back of lobbing missiles at Los Angeles. Mr. Clinton has stumbled into this only six weeks after the impeachment vote that might have given us a new leadership; he has nearly two years left to go, and the price may mount.
Now a moment has arrived that offers Mr. Clinton a chance to prove us critics wrong. Having made this mess, the only thing that can redeem it is the removal from power of Milosevic. The crucial step is to declare removal as a goal. Currently we are slipping toward exactly the wrong way to try to compel this outcome, using escalating air power to attack civilian targets such as power grids.
After all, just over two years ago, these Serbian civilians took to Belgrade's streets to demonstrate against Milosevic. Before that, in 1991, some 200,000 of them demonstrated against Milosevic's war policies, which have been utterly devastating for the Serbs themselves. Indeed, once the goal of removal is in place, the U.S. could announce a pause in the bombing to see whether there are in fact dissidents in the Serbian military who might move against him.
Serbs who stood for election against Milosevic in the past, and did so bravely, could serve as the basis for a legitimate successor government. At the same time, NATO could assemble forces for an assault to change the Serbian government by overwhelming force if that proves necessary. Not so incidentally, this would also chill troublemakers around the world.
There is, in short, a way out of Mr. Clinton's current mess. However, it most certainly would require decisiveness, resolution and a willingness to spend political and personal capital. That is, precisely the traits of character Mr. Clinton has never before displayed.
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