Bosnia

When the vital interests of the big powers are not involved, can the international community ever muster the will to take collective military action against tyrants and aggressors who outrage humanity? The Persian Gulf war, when oil supplies were at stake, inspired brave talk about a "new world order." But since then, international resolve has been found wanting, not least because the United States has been unable to live up to its self-proclaimed leadership role.The twin tragedies of Haiti and Bosnia underscore the problem.

Embarrassed by a record of empty bombast, NATO continues to trip over itself in dealing with the murderous civil war in Bosnia. By renewing its threat to launch aerial strikes at Bosnian Serb forces hindering United Nations relief operations, it once again faces the risk of ending up doing nothing or getting entangled in a conflict practically of all its members would rather avoid.President Clinton has demonstrated American clout by bringing Britain and France into line behind long-held U.S. offers to use its air power to end the "strangulation" of Sarajevo and (this is new)

Washington -- IT IS hard to imagine a more amiable American hero than Scott F. O'Grady, miraculously rescued from the jungles of Bosnia. Handsome, charming, valiant. Wonderful family and a John Wayne "aw-shucks" smile. Faithful to God and to country.One is grateful that this fine young Air Force captain -- the quintessence of what an American fighting man or woman should be -- is safe and sane. And yet . . .Apart from the issue of his safety, I have the oddest feeling that this picture presents a very strange image of America to the world.

THE WEST'S worst moral and political disaster since the Nazis is coming to a climax. And just as many politicians and institutions paid for the failure to stop Hitler, so many will pay dearly for allowing the Serbian tyrant, Slobodan Milosevic, to destroy Bosnia.George Bush will go down in history as the president who promised a new world order and then undermined it by his own weakness. The man who rallied the world to save the feudal regime of Kuwait and its oil did nothing to stop the dismemberment of a civilized country in Europe, or the genocide of its people.

WASHINGTON -- Half a world away, Bosnia Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, a psychiatrist with no military training -- who himself takes anti-depressants to regulate mood swings -- sits in a house, overseeing a ragtag, undisciplined army of 80,000 men, 400 tanks and 20 airplanes.In the White House, President Clinton sits as commander in chief of the United States and first among equals of NATO's leaders. They have a fighting force in Europe of 2.6 million men, 23,000 tanks and 1,600 attack jets.

THE tragedy in Bosnia is terrible now, the worst human disaster in Europe since the crimes of the Nazis. It is going to get a lot worse soon.The last Muslim enclaves in eastern Bosnia cannot hold out against Serbian attacks more than another two or three weeks, according to U.N. officials there. If and when the Serbs overrun them, 60,000 desperate civilians will try to find some way out through the mountains to join the already more than one million refugees.And then there will be Sarajevo, the besieged capital.

Bosnia, Europe's recurring nightmare, is pushing its way into the NATO summit and providing more irritants in the troubled U.S.-France relationship. In the run-up to the alliance meeting, the Paris government has been putting pressure on a reluctant President Clinton to intervene militarily in the 21-month conflict. This comes at a sensitive time as Serbian forces renew heavy shelling of Sarajevo, a step Washington warned last year could lead to U.S. aerial counter-strikes.The United States should resist such pressure for higher reasons than because it comes from a nation, France, that has opted out of the NATO military command for more than a quarter-century.

Broadway, Virginia. -- We in the West have rationalized our acquiescence in the Bosnia atrocities, telling ourselves that, however terrible, this bloodletting is localized, confined to a more peripheral and primitive part of the European continent than where the mainstream of history is flowing.Too bad about Bosnia, we say; it's really terrible to see these people, day after day, at each other's throats. But ultimately, it's not our problem.We can believe this, however, only because we fail to recognize the nature of contagion in human affairs.

Paris. -- The troubling aspect of American and U.N. policies in the former Yugoslavia is the hypocrisy in both. The United States and those West European countries who are the main contributors to the U.N. Protection Force in Yugoslavia have all acted with the intention of helping the former Yugoslavia.Whether they have actually done so -- in comparison to what alternative? -- cannot be known.Their policies by now have become hardened by commitments already made. There is a problem in distinguishing good intentions from motives of national or political self-interest.

Navy Seaman Recruit Todd D. Jenkins is serving in the Adriatic Sea near Bosnia aboard the guided missile cruiser USS South Carolina as part of the USS America Battle Group.The ship has been helping enforce the no-fly zone over Bosnia with its anti-air warfare equipment.Recruit Jenkins is part of an allied operation that includes other NATO ships and aircraft.The 1993 graduate of Liberty High School joined the Navy in March 1993.FireSykesville: Sykesville and West Friendship of Howard County responded to a fire alarm sounding on Third Avenue at 2:58 p.m. Sunday.