Ready to Rumble Again

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Pentagon officials are less sure it is in theirs. While President Clinton thundered last week about NATO determination--"If we and our allies do not have the will to act, there will be more massacres," he said Friday--the Pentagon's top brass went to Capitol Hill to raise some questions. "Will the strikes achieve an end?" Marine Commandant General Charles Krulak asked. "What happens if Milosevic doesn't come back to the table? What if he uses this as a reason to attack? What is the endgame?" Says a Navy officer: "He can just say no--no matter how much pain we inflict."

So the Clinton Administration is falling back on the same weak rationale it offered for the December air strikes on Baghdad: the purpose is not to bomb Milosevic into submission but to cripple his military so he can't devastate Kosovo. "We hope," said a Pentagon spokesman, "that Milosevic has the good sense to prefer negotiation." But with U.S. and nato credibility on the line, hoping for good sense from the Serbs may be the ultimate Balkan folly.