LONDON -- In the late 1960s two ultra-bright boys from Little Rock went to Oxford as Rhodes scholars. One was a straight arrow who worked hard, took his degree, and left early in order to serve in Vietnam.

The other, famously, didn't inhale, didn't get a degree and didn't get drafted and is now President of the United States.That first Arkansan is called Wesley Clark. At 54, he is two years older than Bill Clinton, his commander-in-chief. More to the point, he is a four-star general in the U.S. Army and as NATO's top uniformed officer, the man who right now is giving the orders for the bombing of Yugoslavia.

Wes Clark, "The Boss" to his deferring aides, is that uniquely American creature, the political soldier.

A British general will have as little as possible to do with the "political wallahs." But since that stint in Vietnam, where he was wounded and awarded the Silver Star, Clark's subsequent rise owes as much to his skills at dealing with the politics of defense as his ability as a soldier and military organizer.

On his return from Vietnam, he went to work in the White House under Alexander Haig, Nixon's chief of Staff, and future NATO Supreme Commander and Secretary of State -- another in the line of modern politician-soldiers who include Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell.

Clark and Clinton have white-grey hair in common, but very little else. Where Clinton tends to sloppiness and verbosity, Clark is disciplined and weighs every word.

The President is a Southern Baptist through and through, while Clark converted to Catholicism. And his private life truly is private.

Until the Balkans brought them together, the two Arkansans' paths had barely crossed. But as Bosnia became an increasing U.S. diplomatic priority, Clark emerged as a key presidential adviser on the subject.

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Later, along with Chris Hill, he was Richard Holbrooke's closest aide during the 1995 Dayton conference.

Thanks to those talks, and several recent missions to Belgrade to try and sort out the Kosovo crisis, he knows his foe Slobodan Milosevic uncommonly well. But like everyone else, he has failed to sway the Yugoslav president with words.

He must now do it by war -- and in the process remember enough of the tragedy of Vietnam to keep NATO out of a similarly disastrous entanglement in the Balkans.

If he does, the ladder may stretch higher still for Wes Clark.

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