From: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)
Subject: SNET: [piml] AMERICA AT WAR - A SHAMELESS LEADER - A CRAVEN CONGRESS
Date: 26 Mar 1999 06:32:13 -0500
To: piml@egroups.com


->  SNETNEWS  Mailing List

AMERICA AT WAR - A SHAMELESS LEADER - A CRAVEN
CONGRESS

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
March 26, 1999 Editorial 

A SHAMELESS LEADER

Bill Clinton has unleashed a ballistic bombardment against Yugoslavia,
exposing
American warriors to the lethal consequences of meddling in a distant
civil war.

The public should dismiss yammering about vital U.S. interests at stake
in a needless
confrontation with Belgrade over the political status of a rebel
province. If the
debaucher-in-chief knew anything about national interests - or cared -
he long ago
would have endorsed deployment of a credible missile defense system. His
recent
embrace of this program was driven by political expediency, nothing
more.

The public also should discount his twaddle about America's moral
obligation of
leadership in fights against extraordinarily evil regimes.
Extraordinarily evil as defined
by whom? Bill Clinton? Yugoslav ruler Slobodan Milosevic is a reptile.
But there are
worse governments with which we're not at war.

Furthermore, Mr. Clinton lacks any standing to lecture the United States
on its
martial responsibilities when he ducked his during the Vietnam War. In
that conflict,
America confronted a far more malevolent force than the regime Milosevic
leads.

But Bill Clinton has no shame and assumes you have no memory. He
dispatches our
armed forces on missions peripheral to the security of the nation and
its citizens, and
incoherent in execution.

Mr. Clinton's stated aims are to relieve suffering in, and promote
autonomy for
Kosovo. His means to that end? Pounding the province with Tomahawk
missiles
and other ordnance. His war may exterminate many Serb soldiers who've
been busy
bloodying ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo. But it almost certainly will
kill many
rebels, their wives and children, who are unlucky enough to have Bill
Clinton as a
benefactor.

We can only hope Milosevic scares easily, thus keeping the carnage to a
minimum.
Yet even if does, even if the Clinton Doctrine yields greater
self-determination for
Kosovo, even if U.S. combat losses are low to none, much damage already
has
been done.

As Steven Komarow wrote in USA TODAY this week, "the world would see
(the
hostilities as setting) a troubling precedent: (NATO) siding with rebels
inside a
sovereign country. The outcome might provide temporary peace but
encourage
uprisings by ethnic groups elsewhere."

And that's the best-case scenario in what could yet deteriorate into a
worst-case
war.

A CRAVEN CONGRESS

The Senate Tuesday endorsed President Clinton's perilous extravagance in
the
projection of American power. A chamber once celebrated for profiles in
courage is
now abetting an Oval Office outlaw.

How many Americans must die before weak or witless specimens on the Hill
reject
further claims against the Treasury by Generalissimo Clinton to fund his
foreign
misadventures?

The president won a 58-vote Senate majority favoring intervention in a
civil war on
behalf of Balkan secessionists.

Virginia Republican John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, cast
his vote with the militant faction. Said the senator: "The case of
inaction is
unacceptable to the world."

Since when did multinational expectations become the foundation for U.S.
foreign
policy decisions that could lead to the loss of American lives?

"I disagree with the policy of what we're doing in Kosovo, but I think
it becomes a
different issue when action is imminent and when you are getting ready
to have
troops go in harm's way.''

That was Texas Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison, a co-sponsor of
legislation to
deny funding for the expedition. This bid was abandoned, however, when
the
president requested Senate support for his policy.

The Senate should have said no. Instead, 42 Democrats and 16 Republicans
said
yes.

Hutchison wasn't among them. Nor was Rick Santorum. Nor was Pete
Domenici, a
New Mexico Republican who remarked: "This president has decided he
doesn't
need our approval. He's already told us he's going to do it."

This predisposition was another good reason to reject Mr. Clinton's
gunboat
diplomacy. But Warner, Arlen Specter and 56 others applauded it. And we
are now
at war.

What if, say, the president someday decides that Liechtenstein has
become an
international menace. Will the Senate, along with the House, similarly
endorse U.S.
bombing of Vaduz, capital of the European principality?

Congress has ceded power to Mr. Clinton that the Constitution forbids
him to wield.
It's the Hill's obligation to constrain this man from despotic and
deadly adventures,
not play midwife to the birth of Clintonian absolutism.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a36fb634c278c.htm

------------------------------------------------------------------------
What's everyone looking at? Check out the Top40 most requested stocks!
Plus quotes, charts, news, portfolios, mutual funds, and discussion.
All free, fast, and easy.   Visit:    http://www.stockmaster.com/?a=f5

eGroup home: http://www.eGroups.com/list/piml
Free Web-based e-mail groups by eGroups.com



-> Send "subscribe   snetnews " to majordomo@world.std.com
->  Posted by: cdhart@laurie.net (Carolyn Hart)