Bread & circuses.

The images from Germany, where Bill Clinton visited the troops heading to Bosnia, were striking. Striding alongside the fatigue-clad soldiers with his shoulders squared and his jaw thrust out, Clinton looked . . . taller. The President is pumped. Forget Hubert Humphrey -- Clinton is the Happy Warrior. And the Commander-in-Chief is no summer soldier. Feeling on Capitol Hill for the Bosnia mission is almost as frigid as the climate in the mountains surrounding Tuzla where the First Armored Division will soon be encamped. Every other party to the Dayton Accord displays a reluctance in sharp contrast to Clinton's enthusiasm.

National polls indicate that the public opposes deploying troops to Bosnia by a 2 to 1 margin. The Dayton Accord is not to the liking of any of the three warring factions in the former Yugoslavia, which yielded to U.S. pressure and which are only temporarily resigned to its terms. The Allies refused to provide troops without plenty of U.S. forces to keep them company. And had the Administration not presented Congress with a fait accompli, both houses would certainly have expressed their disapproval. But Clinton displayed a new-found talent for military maneuvers, outflanking his Hill adversaries.

The House has twice voted against committing U.S. ground troops in Bosnia. The House first voted against such a deployment on September 7. Had the Senate been forced to act then, it too would have expressed its opposition, at least in the form of a nonbinding resolution. Faced with this congressional disapproval, the Administration hurried to get an accord premised on the commitment of U.S. troops. By the time the House approved the Hefley amendment on November 17, providing that Congress vote to fund the mission before deployment of troops, the Administration was already warning that congressional naysayers might derail the Dayton talks. When the accord was reached four days later, the argument changed to one of damage to U.S. credibility if Congress did not keep the Administration's Dayton promises. So, like the other parties to the accord, Congress is reluctant but resigned.

At a committee hearing on November 30, a frustrated Henry Hyde asked, "What is the function of a congressman in this situation? Are we to ratify a fait accompli by the President? Are we to rubber-stamp decisions?" Apparently so.

Bob Dole is not himself just rubber-stamping nor, despite his public rhetoric, basing his support on the need to back our Commander-in-Chief. He and Sen. McCain have told colleagues that they don't like the Clinton commitment, but that it gives them an opportunity to remake it into their image, i.e., arm the Bosnians.

Most GOP senators will follow their leader. But some twenty will register strong disapproval. And despite what their critics will say, there is not an isolationist in the bunch: Inhofe, Nickles, Gramm, Hutchison, and Hank Brown (who sponsored last year's amendment to expand NATO). Most of them will argue that Clinton is giving U.S. intervention a bad name with his pointless adventures in Haiti and Somalia. They will not urge cutting off funds, merely state their opposition and seek to hold Clinton accountable for the results.

Politically, the enterprise promises to help Perot, who can say next fall: "The only things Washington can agree on are GATT, NAFTA, and sending our boys to die in a civil war in which we have no interest." Helping Perot, of course, may help Clinton next fall too.

Otherwise, how the President can be gung-ho for a mission in the Balkans where so many others fear to tread stumps Capitol Hill. The ignorance-is-bliss theory holds that the President has such a weak grasp of foreign policy that he is unable to appreciate the odds of failure. Other Hill observers believe the Bosnia policy is the latest example of the Administration's agenda being dictated by the random interaction of policy and politics. The shaky ceasefire reached by combat-weary factions in Bosnia and the Allies' stepped-up pressure for U.S. action coincided with Clinton's need to look decisive. Under this theory, the President confronts his core problem, the character issue, by displaying a willingness to advance his policy in the face of fierce opposition, winning plaudits from the press for his "leadership" and "resolve."

BUT these explanations discount how personally committed Clinton is to the Bosnia peace mission. Arguments over whether or not the U.S. has a vital interest in the Bosnian conflict miss the point under the emerging Clinton Doctrine. The deployment is noble, and worthy of liberals' support, precisely because it is not in our vital national-security interests. Like the U.S. missions in Haiti and Somalia -- and unlike Desert Storm, which liberals opposed -- the Bosnian mission is being undertaken strictly for the benefit of others. Under the Dayton Accord, the U.S. military becomes Americorps with tanks.

The Bosnian mission takes liberal domestic policy for a trip abroad. The government's obligation is to do good, and proponents of government action are to be judged strictly by their intentions. The aims can be fuzzy and the measure of success elusive because one means well. As long as the motives are pure, the ultimate success or failure of liberals' policies is irrelevant -- just as with the Great Society. Bill Clinton told the nation that America's role in Bosnia "will not be about fighting a war," but about helping people, "especially children," secure peace. So despite earlier veto threats, Clinton could sign the defense appropriations bill in good conscience: the Pentagon budget is now the Children's Defense Fund.

As a child of the Sixties the President would be uncomfortable with the use of force in the service of our own (read: selfish) interests. But as a compassion hawk putting American troops at the service of others he stands tall and straight. The naysayers can be ignored; in committing American soldiers to Bosnia, count our Commander-in-Chief among "the few, the proud, the liberal."