One topic not on the list of African Americans, including their leaders, is the U.S. action in Kosovo -- a striking contrast to that community's opposition to recent U.S.military ventures. PNS commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson explores some of the many reasons for this silence, and finds them wanting. Hutchinson is the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black."

LOS ANGELES -- The conversation among the small group of African-Americans gathered at a local cafe gets heated and intense on the police shootings of blacks in New York and California, school vouchers, Mike Tyson, and the conviction of Reverend Henry Lyons.

When pictures of a refugee column in Kosovo flashed on the TV screen near the counter, one young man in the group casually shook his head and muttered something about how terrible it was. The others nodded silently, then quickly started talking about the day's baseball scores.

If their reticence was noticeable, the silence of black leaders has been downright deafening. The black newspapers have carried almost no editorials or articles about the hypocrisy of the United States in relentlessly bombing and demonizing Saddam Hussein while turning a blind eye to Serb atrocities against Muslims and ethnic Albanians, not lifting a finger to stop the genocidal violence in Rwanda or to prevent torture and murder in other Third World countries.

African-American web sites have carried little or no mention of the glaring similarity between Serb "ethnic cleansing" and racist assaults against blacks in the U.S. The NAACP, the Urban League, and Congressional Black Caucus have not even offered perfunctory expressions of outrage about the massacres in Kosovo.

This silence stands in stark contrast to the often frenzied opposition of many blacks to U.S. military forays in the past. While the majority of white Americans enthusiastically backed U.S. military intervention in Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and the Gulf, a majority of African-Americans condemned these actions. They rightly branded these actions as assaults on people of color and as gross violations of international law aimed at installing or propping up pro-American regimes. Even though most African-Americans have little good to say about Saddam Hussein they do not hesitate to denounce the continued U.S. air war and the U.N. embargo on food and critical medical supplies that has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

To many African-Americans, Kosovo seems much different. The air war is removed, and does not directly touch their lives. Television images of ragged, beaten, frightened women, children and old people aimlessly trudging down highways, reports of rapes and mass killings of civilians, make it easy to buy Clinton's explanation that the U.S. is driven by the noble aim of halting an evil, bloodthirsty regime. This reinforces the comfortable feeling that the U.S. is finally on the side of the angels in trying to help a Muslim group instead of trying to obliterate them.

The only arguable exception to African Americans' backing of Clinton's war is the Nation of Islam. Their newspaper, The Final Call, has mildly questioned U.S. aims -- but only mildly. As Muslims, they are prepared to go along with anything seen as helping Muslims, even if that something comes from the "white devil" U.S. government.

Close to home are bruising battles over affirmative action, the killings of Amadou Diallo and Tyisha Miller by white police officers in New York and Riverside, police harassment of black motorists, and the campaign for justice for Mumia Abu Jamal. These have commanded the full attention -- and sapped the energies -- of many black leaders and activists.

Perhaps the biggest reason for African-American silence about Kosovo is that the U.S. attacks were not initiated by conservative Republican Presidents Bush or Reagan. The Kosovo air war is Clinton's and since blacks remain his staunchest defenders, they will take great care -- just as they did during the impeachment -- to avoid doing or saying anything they think will aid his conservative Republican enemies.

This knee jerk attachment guarantees Clinton a free ride on U.S. actions no matter how questionable.

Yet the silence could change instantly if the United States sends in ground troops, many of whom would be African-Americans. This would almost certainly raise concern, and spark criticism of U.S. policy. The capture of three servicemen by Serb forces -- two of them Latino -- ignited an outpouring of passion and patriotism among many Latinos, but it also prompted many to ask what the U.S. hopes to accomplish with the war and how many more American lives it will put in jeopardy.

Clinton has parlayed the blind faith of many African-Americans into the firm belief that his Kosovo policy should be above criticism. But even if Kosovo is the right policy, blacks still must remember that for most of this century U.S. military intervention has been used not to protect but to oppress and exploit Muslims and people of color. And that's not something to keep silent about.