Liz Saville Roberts: “Among foes such as Milosevic, Clinton's credibility diminishes with each unbacked threat, each inflated claim of success…”

“Among foes such as Milosevic, Clinton's credibility diminishes with each unbacked threat, each inflated claim of success for pinprick bombings, each recall of military force even once dispatched. Diminished credibility means, in the long run, a greater likelihood that force will have to be used. Now all these chickens--the diminished credibility abroad, the skepticism at home, above all the unwillingness to fashion a strategy--are coming [home] to roost in Kosovo. Clinton has threatened to bomb Milosevic yet again. Maybe this time he means it. [I think he does.] But then what? Clinton also has promised that U.S. troops will not be sent into a ``non-permissive'' environment. They will enter Kosovo, in other words, only when Milosevic welcomes them in. ``These are incompatible objectives.'' [He is quoting my colleague and my friend from Oregon, Senator Gordon Smith, who said in an interview--and, by the way, Senator Smith is the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Europe] [he] is no isolationists; he has said he would support a dispatch of U.S. troops to Kosovo under the right circumstances. But he worries that [there is] no credible plan. Perhaps a round of U.S. bombing will compel Milosevic to call off his war against Kosovo civilians, sign a peace treaty and admit NATO troops. But what if it doesn't? What if Milosevic responds, instead, with a bloody crackdown in Pristina and villages throughout the province?”