THE NEVERENDING WAR: Matt Welch wonders why the architects of Kosovo are so hard on Bush:

Of all the historical precedents that paved the way for President George W. Bush’s war against Iraq, the most directly relevant was Bill Clinton’s 1999 bombing of the rump Yugoslavia.

Like Gulf War II, the 78-day NATO air campaign in Kosovo was waged without the explicit authorization of the United Nations. (Of the two, the Iraq war had much more of a U.N. mandate, through Resolution 1441, which gave Iraq a “final opportunity” — one it did not take — to comply fully with all previous Security Council resolutions or else face “serious consequences.”) Like Iraq, Yugoslavia was a sovereign country that was bombed into submission for essentially internal infractions. Both wars were expressions of American exasperation at European impotence in the face of dictatorial slaughter.

Yet the media and the foreign policy establishment are much more critical of Bush’s war than Clinton’s — even though Clinton’s is still going on.

What’s the difference? Read the whole thing.