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A very good article and one that I will save. The author is incorrect in one part, however...

"In fact, Mr. Clinton and Ms. Albright ordered bombs to be dropped almost everywhere — Kosovo, Belgrade, the Sudan, and, yes (remember General Zinni's 1998 Operation Desert Fox) — Iraq. I suppose the moral lesson caught on, and so now we are doing the same once more to Saddam Hussein. Thanks in part to Mr. Clinton, unilateralism and preemption to try to protect us in advance, while saving innocents from monsters — in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Haiti — are now good, while the wobbliness and moral equivocation of multilateralism and U.N. approval are deemed bad. Or at least I think they are."

Mr Clinton provided no moral compass to this nation in his actions in the Balkans. I was a member of the USAF stationed in support of operations in Italy. We received briefings (some secret, some not) that made it very clear to us that we had no dog in the hunt in that region. In an effort to "get involved" in the conflict, we engaged an organization (the KLA) which was listed as a known terrorist and drug-smuggling group as our allies against the Serbians who were trying to retain control of their historical capital province. Understand this clearly, we supported the side of the Muslim terrorists against the national government of Serbia on Serbia's soil.

Mr Clinton had troubles at home that encouraged him to "wag the dog." Maddy Albright even made the comment after the conflict that she had ambitions to be president of the Czech Republic...surely her ambitions didn't cloud her judgement in engaging the most powerful military in the world in her home region... not possible.

We precipitated that operation through force and CAUSED the action we took. Without national interests in the area, we "brokered" a "peace" agreement with Milosevic where we insisted that he allow foreign troops on his soil to "keep the peace." This would be similar to Russia not liking our treatment of inner-city Washington DC and insisting that we allow their troops into our capital province to keep the peace for us. When they refused, as was obvious to all observers that they would, we attacked.

In an effort to "keep the conflict from escalating" we went nose to nose with the Russians and came close to military confrontations in a number of operations (anyone remember the "race" to secure the airport?).

We propagandized the massacres with rhetoric that more than 100,000 innocents had been targeted and eliminated in a genocidal campaign. The facts as discovered after the operation haven't borne this out...not even close. We took a refugee SITUATION in which terrorists from Albania (in the guise of the KLA) attacked and harrassed Serbians and created a refugee CRISIS that hasn't abated today.

In trying to stop a refugee crisis and save innocent life, we precipitated a refugee crisis and took innocent life (yes, accidentally, as always). In trying to prevent escalation, we escalated the conflict. In trying to liberate the people from their oppressors, we delivered them into their oppressors hands in the form of the KLA. No one can take an objective look at our actions and say that the Clinton administration acted with anything close to a moral compass.