Under almost every possible circumstance we at Tikkun have a predisposition to oppose armed force and to seek negotiations. But when we see acts of mass murder and genocide, the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes, and acts of brutality and rape, we feel impelled to act. When it was the United States doing this directly in Vietnam, we did everything possible to disrupt its capacity to wage war. And now, when we see this kind of behavior in Kosovo, we reluctantly conclude that coercive or even violent interventions may be justified and morally required.

To such a position, peace activists respond that the culprit in Yugoslavia is Milosevic, and that we could take a large step towards resolving this crisis by bringing him to trial, while avoiding the bombing of innocent Serbian people. Certainly Milosevic's actions have been criminal. But the murders and rapes and mass expulsions of hundreds of thousands of Kosovars were committed by tens of thousands of "willing executioners" cheered on by a Serbian society which had supported the genocide in Bosnia and seemed willing to go along with its continuation in Kosovo. In the years before the bombing, when alternative media exposed the war crimes in Serbia, the opposition forces received only minimal support from a society that seemed all too ready to rally around Serbian nationalism and to justify genocide to itself.

As someone who was fired from his job in a university, physically beaten, and then sent to prison for his role in organizing nonviolent demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, I'm well aware that the costs for opposing one's government can be high (and higher still under a ruthless dictator). But just as many of us feel that the German people should have done more to oppose Hitler, so we have to hold accountable those in Serbia who did little to organize to oppose its genocidal policies. In most circumstances where violence is advocated, we would oppose it for a stronger reason: We know that we can never get to the kind of world we want by using violence as the means. We respect those who take that stand in this case, and hope that they will couple their pacifist conviction will the traditional pacifists' willingness to put their bodies on the line in a pacifistic way. For example, if hundreds of thousands of pacifists were willing to go to the Balkans to serve as agents of nonviolent witness and to protect the victims of Serbian violence, such an action could have a profound effect on building the world in which we all believe.

In the long term we also agree that the U.N. and other world bodies are the appropriate vehicles to resolve inter- and intra-national disputes. Just as it seems appropriate to call the police when one hears convincing screams from a neighbor's house or when one witnesses a powerful gang beating up on others who seem unable to defend themselves, we'd be willing to call an international police force charged with this task, supervised not to use excessive force, and democratically responsive to the world's population.

Unfortunately, nothing of this sort exists.

In saying that we favor calling the domestic or international police, we don't mean to deny that the police themselves sometimes have dirty hands. The vicious racism of the New York City police department and its propensity to violence is repeated in many communities throughout the United States. But unless we had specific reasons to think that those issues were going to come into play in the specific case in front of us, we'd still call them when we saw someone being raped or physically assaulted and we had been unsuccessful in intervening ourselves. So in this circumstance we are willing to support U.S. intervention, with considerable trepidation, even though we know of its history of dirty hands. For similar reasons, many of us are glad the United States and the Soviet Union intervened against Hitler, even though they both may have had self-interested reasons for doing so, and even though both had a history of oppression in other aspects of their foreign policy.

We would prefer an international and democratically controlled force, and we hope that the United Nations will eventually get restructured in ways that build the confidence of the people of the world that it is democratic, ethically-based, and responsive to some higher vision than the self-interests of the ruling elites of the countries which compose it. But this is not the case at the moment. The structure of the U.N. allows for the major powers to block such interventions when they interfere with that power's perceived self-interest. Thus, the U.N. was totally unable to stop American aggression in Vietnam or Chinese aggression toward Tibet or Russian aggression toward Afghanistan and Czechoslovakia. And in the case at hand, given Russia's close ties and patriarchal sympathies with the thugs in Serbia, it has been totally unable to take decisive steps to prevent genocidal acts in Bosnia or Kosovo. Nor should we mystify the notion of multilateralism -- it is perfectly conceivable to us that had the U.N. been in existence in 1939, it might have opposed any attempts to use force against Hitler and might have turned its back on the genocide of the Jews. If the peoples of the world had democratically decided to stand by and let the genocide continue, we would have supported unilateral intervention by those powers who were willing to do so.

By the same logic, given the role of Russia in the U.N. and the willingness of so many others to stand around and talk about their commitment to diplomacy in Kosovo while people are being murdered and expelled, it becomes appropriate for those who see a clear and present reality of murder and genocide to, after exhausting diplomatic channels, use their own armed forces to intervene. It's not only appropriate; it's morally mandatory. One reason why Jews have such strong criticisms of the nations of the world is that we remember their failure to intervene to assist Jews during the Holocaust. Neutrality in the face of murder is immoral.

It is reasonable to worry that any intervention we make in Kosovo may legitimate future interventions -- interventions officially justified on humanitarian grounds whose real goal is to perpetuate American self-interest. The tragedy of the Balkans today is that the West has so discredited itself in the past that when it finally confronts an intervention that is morally justifiable, it has been far too hesitant to engage.

Yet the assault on this intervention by many people on the Left bespeaks both their inability to make fine distinctions and their crude, ideological interpretation of reality that precludes any complex assessment of a specific reality. The drivel about Kosovo intervention being a manifestation of America's relentless pursuit of self-interest is just ridiculous. In fact, it would have been far easier for Clinton to intervene in Bosnia or Kosovo, and to intervene in a far more decisive way, had there been such an obvious element of self-interest (as there was, for example, in the far more decisive intervention in Kuwait). It is precisely the absence of significant levels of self-interest which accounts both for the U.S. willingness to sit on the sidelines for so many years, and for our hesitancy, even now, to intervene without the decisive force which might have prevented Milosevic's forces from being able to continue to expel the population during the first two weeks of fighting.

Yet the move towards intervention may ultimately represent the best moment in Clinton's presidency, a moment in which he remembered the dramatic appeal of Elie Wiesel at the opening of the Holocaust Museum some six years ago, when Wiesel turned to Clinton and told him he must act in Bosnia to prevent genocide. Leftist and rightist ideologues may be unable to accept this -- but sometimes there are moments when a human being suddenly responds to his or her own highest voice and refuses to take the easiest and most self-interested path. The cynicism of a society, a media, and a Left so deeply committed to self-interest may be unable to recognize this moment of transcendence, and may insist on reducing it to some convoluted story of self-interest. Yet from our standpoint, it is critical for all of us to learn how to validate a more complex story.

It may be true that by the time you read these words Clinton will have moved away from this voice of principle, just as it may be true that his own wavering about going with that voice may be part of the reason that he moved so timidly even after deciding to intervene. We know that Clinton may quickly move back into his place of fear, and from there calculate that getting out of the war in Kosovo fits his narrow self-interest. But it is equally true that virtually all people on this planet have a higher part of themselves, and that that part does sometimes respond to moral and spiritual values and not just to self-interest. A more sophisticated account of human motivations has to recognize the flow of hope that sometimes makes it possible for people to go for their highest values, and also the ways in which the surrounding cynicism often makes people retreat from their highest values and fall back into more narrowly self-interested paths.

Because we wish to forge a different foreign policy in the United States, we need to be engaged in creating the circumstances in which Americans can feel greater confidence in staying with those moments of transcendence even when they seem to violate self-interest. The struggle for a politics of meaning foreign policy starts by combating the instinctive cynicism that makes us feel that "everyone is always going to be motivated by self-interest" with its correlate that "therefore the only rational thing for us is to be similarly motivated." If we want a different foreign policy, we need to foster confidence in people's sense that they can follow their highest moral voice. That's why we must intervene on behalf of the powerless in Kosovo-and thereby begin to counter the deep cynicism that has built up among so many people of the world when they have seen that no one was willing to intervene on behalf of the victims in Bosnia, Rwanda, Kurdistan, Palestine, and other places of oppression.

A politics of meaning foreign policy is one directed at building this sense of mutual confidence and hope. International law and human rights may sometimes express the level of hope and trust being constructed. But there is a danger that in talking the language of law and rights we move too far away from what we are really seeking, which is to develop in each of us a deep understanding of our mutual interconnectedness, of respect and even awe for the way each person on this planet is a manifestation of God, of the necessary unity of all human beings and the ultimate Unity of All Being. The language of law and rights often stultifies our capacity to remember what we are really fighting for.

The tragic irony of the real world is that to create a world that feels safe, we must sometimes use force to restrain those who are acting in a bullying manner. If Russia, fearful that the world might challenge its treatment of Chechnyans, and China, fearful that the world might challenge its treatment of Tibet, use their vetoes on the Security Council to paralyze the United Nations, then it is morally appropriate for NATO to intervene against war-crimes-indicted Milosevic.

The only appropriate intervention would be one which would seek to overthrow Milosevic and his Serbian "willing executioners" who have participated in genocidal murder, rapes, and expulsion of over seven hundred thousand people from their homes-and to create a free and independent Kosovo.

But through what means?

I advocate first that we create an international peace force. Let five hundred thousand peace-oriented volunteers show up in Albania, drawn from every country of the world, and let us proceed into Kosovo to put our non-violent bodies on the line between the Kosovar refugees and the Serb occupiers. Let us be moral witnesses to peace as we push the Serbian troops back and allow Kosovars to return and rebuild.

That should always be step one-and we should use this historical moment to create such a peace force. Immediately. Let's circulate a statement that says, "I will go to Kosovo and put my body on the line to stop the genocide if five hundred thousand others sign this statement as well." If we get 500,000 signatures by July 1, we go! Creating such a force could be an amazing precedent for a nonviolent way to solve future conflicts, and the United States and U.N. should take the lead in helping create it.

But if there are not half a million people willing to put their bodies on the line in this nonviolent way, then I think we have to support a ground invasion with armed troops.

So what about bombing? U.S. bombing, without ground troops and without a commitment to an independent Kosovo, is inappropriate. It has no plausible relationship to the goal of giving Kosovars safety, 100 percent security, and independence.

But what would be justified is a full-scale NATO ground troop invasion, if and only if it is committed to full independence of Kosovo (without ceding to Serbia the richer, northern part of Kosovo), the full punishment of Serbian war criminals, and full reparations from Serbia to the people of Kosovo.

All the negotiations now focus on too much less: leaving Kosovo part of Yugoslavia, and negotiating with indicted war criminals. Kosovars cannot be expected to return to their homes while the war criminals remain in power in Belgrade and a "settlement" negotiated by NATO gives these war criminals and the Serbian ultra-nationalist thugs who support them continuing legal authority over Kosovo.

The only reason the United States is looking for that kind of settlement is that we think our blood is more precious than the blood of the people of the Balkans. As long as we maintain that, we will stay committed to a bombing strategy, which can produce only a phony settlement that sells out the victims of Milosevic's genocide.

The actual intervention of NATO is not morally justified, but another intervention that focuses not on punishing the people of Serbia but on freeing Kosovo on the ground would be. Let's either stop the bombing now and admit that we are not willing to risk our lives to avert genocide, or invade now and show that we take genocide so seriously that we are willing to risk American lives to stop it. No matter how long that may take, no matter how risky it may be, it gives the world a message of hope: Those who could have avoided the conflict and saved their own skins are willing to stand up to the world's bullies. And that message, in place of the halfhearted intervention that Clinton has pursued, would give people confidence in each other and begin to make a more serious reconstruction of the world possible. The message that is actually being given by the halfhearted intervention of NATO is the opposite: The world will stand up to bullies only if it doesn't carry any real risks, and the way we will stand up is by bombing innocent bystanders. That message doesn't reassure anyone, doesn't make the world safer, and is not worth sending. A similar policy of punishing people with sanctions in Iraq didn't work, and it's not working in Kosovo either.

Of course, such military intervention is not enough. We also need to forge new directions which embody our highest vision more positively. Hence the importance of our powerful involvement with the fate of the refugees-giving the whole world a chance to show, as it has so far done in a beautiful way, how many millions of people really do care and would love to respond with their most loving and idealistic side if given the chance.

Thus, we are advocating compassion with teeth, a compassion that isn't just mushy sentiment. Yet it takes sentiment seriously -- and does not allow it to be lost in the emotionally deadening legalese of rights and international law. Keeping alive a language of love and caring, affirming the humanity of the other including the humanity of those whom we must reluctantly fight, is central to the gradual thawing of cynicism that we seek. A politics of meaning approach to foreign policy is one that seeks to make concrete judgments about what actions in a given situation will produce the greatest amount of realizable hopefulness, and how to open the largest numbers of people to the possibility of a very different kind of world.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture & Society and author of “The Politics of Meaning: Restoring Hope and Possibility in an Age of Cynicism”, and, with Cornell West, of “Jews and Blacks”.