MARINA DEL REY, CA -- The continuing U.S. bombing campaign in Kosovo is sacrificing American lives and interests for nothing, said an Ayn Rand Institute senior writer.
     "We have no more business in Kosovo than in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti or Vietnam," said Andrew Lewis. "Even if NATO forces can bludgeon Milosevic back to the bargaining table, American troops will then become part of the permanent 'peace-keeping' force necessary to uphold and enforce any diplomatic solutions. Clinton will be sacrificing our troops for a cause that achieves nothing, except the momentary enhancement of his 'prestige.'"
     Lewis, who is also the host of the nationally syndicated radio-talk show, "The Andrew Lewis Show," noted that the U.S. bombing of Kosovo, no matter how intense, will not end the conflict between Kosovars and Serbs because the conflict is fueled by irrational tribal enmity.
     "The Serbs' hostility towards the Albanians is ethnically motivated -- and so is the Kosovars' demand for secession," Lewis said. "The Kosovars are not fighting for the value of individual liberty, but for the sanctity of their ethnicity. They hate Milosevic, not because he is a dictator -- but because he is a non-Albanian."
     "Force is pointless in a battle between two authoritarian tribes who share the belief that a person is nothing more than his collective, ethnic identity. One cannot change a tribal mind-set by a clubbing over the head. In fact, as events are already indicating, NATO's actions may well generate a wider, bloodier war -- the very thing Clinton claims he wants to prevent. The only legitimate purpose of the American military is the defense of the interests of American citizens, not futile intervention in tribal warfare."