THE PRECARIOUS WORLD IN WHICH CLINTON LEADS AMERICA

Sixty-eight people were killed when a mortar bomb devastated a Sarajevo street market this weekend. "In the worst atrocity of the 22-month war," The Reuter news service reported, "the explosion transformed the crowded open market into a scene from a charnel house .... Horribly mutilated bodies littered pavements where moments earlier hundreds of shoppers bartered food and clothes.

"Survivors and police, many weeping and vomiting, tried to separate the living from the dead among a mass of mangled bodies strewn between market stalls in the city centre.

"'These are not the bodies of people -- it's minced meat,' a distraught man screamed amid the devastation."

We don't mean to upset your morning coffee with such images, but we believe it important that we all remember the world is a dangerous place, and American foreign policy making should not be taken lightly. American presidents have been criticized in the past for focusing too much on foreign affairs and not enough on domestic matters. But we would urge our current president to get his foreign policy act together, or we fear the United States will come to suffer for it. Already, we are concerned, the United States has lost much credibility among world leaders because of our president's penchant for idle threats -- whether they be towards Bosnia, North Korea or Haitian thugs.

Saturday's bombing in Sarajevo was just the bloodiest recent example of how dangerous the world is. While United Nation's officials in Sarajevo have yet to pinpoint the location where the mortar bomb was fired, there is little doubt among them that the Serbs set it off. For weeks the Serbs have been intensifying their bombardment of the Muslim city -- on Friday alone, the day before the market bombing, nine others were killed in a bomb attack while waiting to buy bread.

In fact, the Serbs began their most recent intensification of bombing the day after President Clinton warned them that renewed bombing would bring a NATO airstrike. If you remember when Clinton gave this threat last month at a NATO conference, he pounded his hand on the table and warned, "This time we mean it." But three days later, six children were killed as they played in the snow outside of Sarajevo, and President Clinton, then in Moscow, deferred the issue to the secretary general of the United Nations.

We do not blame the president for the turmoil in the former Yugoslavia, although many experts say United States' policies have done more harm than good. And we do not believe that just because suffering is televised in horrific detail on American TV, American troops should be sent off to be policemen in foreign wars. In fact, we believe that television-driven policy is foolish.

We do believe that the president must stop playing to the cameras, however, and decide what exactly is his policy concerning Bosnia. Should the United States end the Western arms embargo so weapons can be sent to Bosnian Muslims to defend themselves against Serb attacks (as was done successfully during the Afghanistan War)? Should there be NATO air strikes, as Mr. Clinton promised there would be if Serbs intensified the bombing of Sarajevo (as George Bush did to protect Kurds in Northern Iraq)? Or, should the United States just walk away and admit that this area has no direct national security implications for our nation (as was the much criticized position towards Bosnia of the previous administration)?

Sen. Minority Leader Bob Dole has offered his support to the president if Mr. Clinton chooses to act more decisively than he has up until now. Strong bi-partisan urging is evident in Congress for at least the lifting of the arms embargo. Even Pope John Paul II has called upon the West and the United States to act, condemning the latest attack as "a massacre ... by criminal hands which continue systematically to slaughter and destroy."

We don't presume to have the answer here for what would be the best course for American action. We do know that idle threats do nobody good -- while harming United States' influence in this and future conflicts. So please, Mr. President, if you say you mean business, then mean it. If you don't mean it, don't say it.

Meanwhile, people continue to die in Sarajevo.