President Clinton and NATO have begun an illegal war on a sovereign nation.

Ethnic cleansing in Kosovo is sad, but let’s not make a larger mistake. Congress and President Clinton are engaged in talks about arming the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army). This will be the greatest mistake since Vietnam.

Arming the KLA is wrong. The KLA is nothing but a bunch of terrorists. Our mission is to “diminish the capacity of Slobodan Milosevic to attack ethnic Albanians.”

Please tell me how aggressive bombing from the air is going to eliminate the Serbian Army’s continued offensive.

According to international reports, the Serbs have stepped up the killing. As of right now, the Balkans are nothing but a theater of political chaos.

NATO and the U.S. claim they have the “responsibility” to protect our children and defend democracy and freedom. You know what’s ironic? Clinton claims we have a moral responsibility to the Albanians.

President Clinton is the last person to use the word moral. If he felt he should have been moral, he should have done it a year ago. These attacks place the lives of our servicemen in danger. No amount of bombing will stop the murder of the Albanian people. If we want to be moral, stop the bloodier civil war in Rwanda and the Congo.

Another reason to engage in this conflict was to prevent this from spreading into the rest of Europe. Too late for that. Italian news agencies confirmed at 3 p.m. that NATO planes shot down two Mig-29s attacking U.N. peacekeepers in Bosnia. Our bombing has in fact caused this war to spread into Bosnia and Macedonia. It will probably spread into Greece and Albania.

A third reason was that a safer, more stable NATO is of paramount interest to U.S. security interests. Fair enough. Unfortunately, at best we are only going to subdue the Serbs for a short period of time. How long do we stay in this region? The answer? “Indefinitely.” That is too long.

This war is not a U.S. problem. What interest or threat does Serbia present to the U.S.? None.

The purpose here is to save face. The U.S. should not be involved in this conflict because it is a NATO problem, not a U.S. problem. But here we are bombing the hell out of this country. For what? To save face.

We threatened and threatened and threatened. Now we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t.

So the people who have sent my little brother to this imperialistic war are willing to sacrifice him and countless others in the name of humanitarianism. I know that giving one’s life for one’s country is “part of the job.”

Unfortunately, as a former Army General stated last night on FOX news, “this Congress and this president are draft-dodgers who don’t know what the hell they are talking about.”

The same people who dodged service in Korea and Vietnam and protested against our troops in the ’60s are now using our brothers and sister’s to further their own agenda. They have never fought in war; they have never put on a uniform and lost friends and loved ones in war. Therefore, they have nothing to lose if servicemen die.

We have an obligation to protect the weak from those who would abuse power for their own gain. But we also have an obligation to protect our way of life. If we go about bombing others into submission, we do nothing but tarnish what those who wore the uniform years ago fought for. We will stand alone when we really need our friends.

The U.S. military is undoubtedly the fiercest military machine ever created, and it is our duty to halt this imperialism by our government.

Join me and write a letter to Governor Vilsack and your Senate leader. Ask that our troops be brought home.

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Andy Gonzales

Junior

Political science