No, it's not quite new. Colin Powell was even more blunt, and even more public in making clear his opposition to using the military for peacekeeping and nation-building under Clinton. He even wrote a NYT op ed to that effect in 1993, which was widely seen as directly undercutting the Clinton admin's efforts in Bosnia. There's also evidence that Powell pushed for the Somalia intervention in December 1992 (i.e., after the election but before Clinton was inaugurated), not because he was so thrilled about Somalia but as a way of heading off intervention in Bosnia -- i.e., get us committed somewhere else first, to slow down what he expected to be Clinton's rush into Bosnia. Much more a challenge to civilian authorities than what Mullen has done in public at least.

One side note: some people say the fact that our intervention in Nov 1995 went so well is proof that we should have intervened in Bosnia in 1992-1993. Hardly. By late 1995 two things had happened: 1) enough ethnic cleansing had gone on that populations were far less mixed than they had been, and so you had some relatively simple areas to partiton off and patrol; 2) the Croats, with much US help, had become strong enough to beat the Serbs in areas near Croatia at least, meaning the Serbs now had little to gain from continued fighting. Had we tried to enforce the Vance-Owen plan in early 1993, it would have been a far more confused situation (something like a dozen "cantons" vs the 3 areas of Dayton), far more linear miles of enclave borders to protect, and Serbs who still saw potential battlefield gains. I was with Powell on being unenthused, but I think he pushed real close if not over the line on how he fought it.

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