The empire rides again.

• Position: US deployment to Bosnia - Editorial

Again, a President prepares to send U.S. troops overseas. Again, he tells us that it's vital for our values and interests. Again, he has not proven his case. And again, Americans will suffer casualties themselves and inflict even more casualties on others.

In his first televised speech ever on the subject, President Clinton started with the simple fact that Bosnia is in central Europe, and that the United States fought two wars in Europe. From this he concluded that "Europe's freedom, and Europe's security, is vital to our own national security."

But this is the faultiest of reasoning. World War I was one of the most senseless and brutal wars in history; U.S. participation in that one can hardly be used as justification for Bosnian intervention today. World War II, "the good war," was fought not because of some localized conflict like Bosnia but because Hitler's Germany threatened to conquer the world. The Serbs are not capable of such conquest.

Just ask the Pentagon. For three years the Pentagon has been saying Bosnia is not key to our national security. Now that the President says it is, are we all supposed to salute?

Second, Clinton made the facile claim that we must send troops to Bosnia "because problems that start beyond our borders can quickly become problems within them." Among these problems, he cited "the spread of organized crime and weapons of mass destruction and drug trafficking." How Bosnia relates to the mob or nuclear war or the Cali cartel is beyond us. There's no way that the Bosnian crisis can spill across our borders--unless, of course, American soldiers start dying over there.

Third, Clinton, like Lyndon Johnson and Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon and other warmakers before him, invoked the all-purpose rationale of defending "American leadership." This is a particularly galling argument since Clinton made a unilateral pledge to put 20,000 U.S. troops into the field in the first place. Now he wants all of us to go along, just to save face. With such self-vindicating rationales, a President could commit the United States to almost anything and then demand that the American people follow just to protect our reputation.

This is the imperial Presidency at its worst. But Clinton is getting to like the outfit. He made the commitment without Congressional approval. He's already introduced "a small number of American troops" in an advance mission without Congressional approval. And he says he has the authority to send all 20,000 U.S. troops without Congressional approval, even though he's seeking it right now.

The claim of damage to our reputation...