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When to go to war is the most important question a democracy faces. You cannot disqualify all dissent on the grounds that it helps the enemy. And Vietnam put an end to the notion that dissent should stop once the decision to fight has been made. If not for protests while that war was going on, it might still be going on. But there's a distinction between making a moral or strategic argument against the use of military force and relentlessly predicting military disaster. There's also a distinction between heartfelt opposition to a use of military force and treating this issue as fodder for a different and less important battle of politics and personalities. The intense suspicion of President Clinton by the Washington press corps and punditocracy and the extreme partisanship of the Republican congressional leadership heavily influenced the public dialogue on Kosovo. No one called Vietnam a quagmire for five years. Kosovo was declared a quagmire after about five days. Press suspicion and Republican partisanship are reasonable enough, but there ought to be a sense that criticism of a military operation in progress should meet a higher standard of seriousness because such criticism does aid the enemy, whether it is intended to or not.
Yes, Kosovo critics generally took care to say they opposed the war but supported the troops. Even that usually meaningless ritualistic distinction, though, often came barbed with the innuendo that the draft dodger President did not support or respect the troops (or he wouldn't put them at risk so promiscuously). It was very clever to have figured out how to use Clinton's antiwar past against him when he decides to use force and when he decides not to. But this is just the kind of sound-bite strategizing that ought to be suspended for the duration.
Faced with the unpleasant choice between acquiescing to ethnic cleansing and paying in American blood to stop it, Bill Clinton characteristically chose "neither"--and characteristically seems to have lucked out. No doubt this is annoying to political opponents and unfriendly commentators who thought they had him in a checkmate. In their annoyance, the critics should at least keep in mind that their country lucked out too.