The peace movement goes to war

Irony comes cheap these days.

NATO has gone to war against Yugoslavia led by men who first entered politics by protesting America's involvement in Vietnam.

President Bill Clinton plunged into national politics working on the anti-war presidential campaign of George McGovern. Great Britain's Tony Blair and Germany's Gerhard Schroeder were '60s-era European doves.

Bill Clinton sees himself as the Great Conciliator, the man who would heal the wounds of America's racial divide and bridge the gap between the haves and the have-nots, who would make the world a more rational, compassionate place for the new millennium.

Those aspirations were heard a generation ago.

President Lyndon Johnson never wanted to be a Cold Warrior. He wanted to make life better for poor folks and for black Americans who had for a century been free in name only.

But America's credibility as an ally was at stake in South Vietnam. If "Communist aggression" was allowed to stand, it was only a matter of time before it destabilized all of Asia and eventually lapped at our shores. So Johnson took us to war.

Sound familiar?

NATO's credibility is at stake in the Balkans; it was only a matter of time before Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic launched an aggressive effort to "ethnically cleanse" Kosovo, potentially destabilizing all of Europe.

Johnson hoped to use our vast superiority in technology and firepower to win the war in Vietnam with a minimum of commitment. It was a vain hope. The commitment grew and with it grew dissatisfaction with a war where - to paraphrase a Marine captain at Hue City - it became necessary to destroy a country in order to save it.

Johnson's vision of a Great Society drowned in the quagmire of Vietnam, his call for a more just and united America was drowned out by the cries of protest.

Bill Clinton's was one of those voices.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Clinton has taken us to war, again relying on superior technology and firepower to carry us through. Air power may eventually bring Milosevic to the peace table (remember the Christmas bombings of 1972?) but Kosovo may be destroyed in the struggle to save it.

And America and NATO will have to stay involved in Yugoslavia for a long, long time.

We may debate whether Clinton handled the Kosovo crisis properly. We may debate whether the Commander-in-Chief and his counterparts in the NATO alliance understand military force well enough to employ it to good effect.

But it seems likely that instead of a legacy of racial harmony and economic prosperity, even overshadowing a legacy of scandal, the Great Conciliator may leave to his successors the last great conflict of the 20th Century.

We don't yet see college students waving Serbian flags and chanting "Slo! Slo! Slo-bo-dan!" to echo the past generation's red flags and cries of "Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!"

Times have changed. The Cold War is over. There is no draft.

The peaceniks are running the war.

Jim Cornelius