The menace of war.

• Position: U.S. should not become involved in Bosnian conflict - Editorial

The images on TV and the accounts in the newspapers are horrible: a woman hanging from a tree limb, thousands of refugees streaming away from their captured "safe havens," and thousands of Muslims being led off to unknown fates.

The Bosnian Serbs have committed unspeakable horrors, including mass rapes, and the impulse is to join in the cry for war, or at least for U.S. air attacks, against them. But we do not believe that is the proper course to take.

In general, we don't believe war solves anything. "While there are certainly vicious enemies of liberty and human rights in the world, war itself is the most vicious of enemies," Howard Zinn wrote in You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train. "War itself multiplies the violence, multiplies the cruelty."

Bombing the Bosnian Serbs, or introducing massive numbers of U.N. troops on the side of the Muslims, will certainly bring more killing and horror. And it's extremely unlikely that the Bosnian Serbs will give up; bombing will only make them dig in deeper and behave more ruthlessly. Expect more hostage-taking, more summary executions.

There are other unintended consequences that could be catastrophic. A Western attack on the Bosnian Serbs is likely to put enormous pressure on Serbia to join directly with the Bosnian Serbs in the war against the Bosnian Muslims and the Croats. It will also fuel the hyper-nationalists in an already unstable Russia to meddle dangerously in the conflict; every Zhirinovsky would be up on his soap box. Is the United States, is NATO, prepared to deal with the havoc this would cause?

It is the combustible unpredictability of war that should give anyone pause. "All wars have invariably produced fatal surprises," writes Gabriel Kolko in Century of War. "Those who have led the world's key war-making nations and governments in this century have repeatedly and calamitously misjudged the ultimate consequences of their command decisions."

Has Bill Clinton accurately judged the consequences of his decision to approve massive air strikes against the Serbs? We doubt it. And on what constitutional grounds has Clinton made this commitment? There's been no Congressional approval, no declaration of war. Just because our sympathies lie with the Muslims does not mean we should throw out the Constitution and bow to the imperial Presidency.

Nor are we for an end to the arms embargo, which Bob Dole so sanctimoniously has championed. Yes, the Bosnian Muslims have been at a disadvantage...