Buchanan: Clinton Blew It

Pat Buchanan, the conservative candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, says the war in the Balkans "is clearly a blunder and mistake" and if the president had the opportunity to make his decision to strike Yugoslavia over again, Mr. Clinton would not come to the same conclusions.

"Quite frankly," says Buchanan, "we are throwing away the fruits of our Cold War victory when you see what's happening to our relationship with Russia."

Buchanan made his remarks during an interview Sunday with CBS News Face the Nation Anchor Bob Schieffer and CBS News Political Consultant Gloria Borger.

From the beginning of the conflict, Buchanan has been opposed to U.S. involvement. But, now that it is under way, Schieffer asked: Can we just cut and run?

"You can't cut and run, but there is no question that we have ignited the very human rights catastrophe the war was started to avoid," Buchanan replied. "You can't cut and run, but I do think that we ought to cut the best possible deal we can to get American forces out of there, to end this, and, quite frankly,
provide some relief to the hundreds of thousands of Albanians."

He suggested that an acceptable solution would be a partition of Kosovo, whereby the Serbs could retain territories "they deem necessary." Then the ethnic Albanians could return home with "an international force that would provide them with protection that had no American troops involved."

Borger asked him to whom he was referring when he wrote that the people who urged the NATO strikes were "idiot adventurers."

Said Buchanan, "I'm referring to the people who launched this warÂ…. They are the ones, quite frankly, who launched an effortÂ…in the Balkans where there is no vital American interest involved, where they did not think through the consequences of air strikes, where basically NATO, a defensive alliance, is launching an offensive war. And the Serbs are fighting for their own country."

Asked if he was specifically blaming the president, the secretary of state, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, or NATO, Buchanan said, "Look. The president was given horrendous adviceÂ…. I think if he had to do it over again, he would say, 'Let's not do this.' Does anyone think the Albanian Kosovars are better off now than three weeks ago? That the Balkans are more stabilized now? Of course not. All of our objectives are further away than when we began.

"Whoever advised the president on this and told him to do this, in my judgment, really ought to stand up and resign, because it is a debacle from every standpoint of our original strategic aims."

He also said that the best way to help halt the ethnic cleansing would be to stop bombing and allow aid workers to go into Kosovo to help them. "The people who are dying right now are inside Kosovo," Buchanan added. "I don't care about dropping any more bridges in the Danube River. I do't know how that helps those people."