do our interests in kosovo justify the dangers to our armed forces? i thought long and hard about that question. i am convinced that the dangers of acting are far outweighed by the dangers of not acting. dangers to defenseless people and to our national interests. if we and our allies were to allow this war to continue with no response, president milosevic would read our hesitation as a license to kill. >> bill clinton in march of 1999 telling americans he'd decided without the consent of congress or the united nations that the united states would take the lead in a nato air campaign against yugoslavia. it was billed as a humanitarian intervention to top yugoslav president slobodan milosevic's bloody crackdown against the ethnic albanian population. it worked. after 78 days of bombings, the serbs withdrew and the violence stopped. this week "the new york times" called that intervention, quote, the obvious precedent for air