"Too bad for those poor boys that gotta go in there. I sure as heck wouldn't want to be in their shoes. This has 'Vietnam' written all over it. -ng- "
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This may have been posted before but don't recall seeing it.
From: F. L., Ret. Gen. US Marine Corp
Date: Sunday, March 28, 1999 10:51 AM
Subject: Fw: The Serbs; One Tough Opponent
Before we engage the Serbs in a limited guerrilla war
over Kosovo, it would be wise to review the experiences
of the 22 German divisions that were committed to
stamping out Serb resistance between 1941 and
1945. Though the Germans also had the help of
200,000 Croatian, Slovenian and Bosnian Moslem
volunteer auxiliaries, they still could not do the job --
and with a combined army of over 700,000 men
willing to commit atrocities that the U.S. and her
allies would never contemplate in this "civilized"
day and age. In the end, and without direct Allied
help, the Serbs succeeded -- through extreme human
sacrifice and one of the bloodiest partisan wars ever
fought in history -- in recapturing over half their country
by the time the war had ended on all the other fronts.
Army Group E surrendered to the Serbs and was
subsequently force-marched the length and width of
Serbia without food until every German soldier had
dropped dead by the wayside.
The fate of the Croatian Slovenians and Moslems who
had helped the Germans was mass murder; all prisoners
were taken shot and clubbed or tortured to death and
dumped in mass graves. Over 1/2 million soldiers and
their families were thus exterminated by the Serbs -- over
1 million murdered if one counts the victims of the German
Army Group E.
After the war the Serbs under Marshal Tito were
determined that no outside aggressor would ever
enjoy an advantage in occupying any part of Serbia
ever again. Thereafter, for the next 40 years, a massive
system of underground defenses were constructed deep
under the mountains -- atomic bomb-proof and capable of
maintaining a million-man army underground for several
years while guerrilla warfare would rage against any future
aggressors. These underground facilities contain massive
quantities of munitions, field hospitals, food-stocks, fuel and
consist of thousands of miles of tunnels which can enable a
guerrilla force to strike and vanish to safety during bombings
and artillery strikes.
Believe me, if the Germans who utilized the most brutal
tactics could not subdue the Serbs in five years when they
did not possess such a defensive infrastructure, how much
harder is it going to be now that they have spent 50 years
preparing for the next invaders? What Clinton is doing is
totally insane; a limited war against Serbia cannot be won,
period -- any more than one could effectively subdue the
Viet Cong with 10 years of bombing and 50,000 American
dead. So long as we did not invade the northern Vietnamese
sanctuary, we ultimately failed.
Likewise, so long as we think we can dislodge the Serbs
from their ancestral homeland and the sites of their most
sacred shrines and monuments and merely contain them
outside the confines of Kosovo, we shall fail again. The
lives of Americans will have been lost in vain ... again.
The Serb is a patriot and will fight endlessly and as fiercely
as would any American whose land was threatened.
And of course there is much more to this historical analogy.
Actually, there were Italians helping the Germans, too. After
his own invasion got bogged down in the face of Serb
resistance, Hitler went in to save Mussolini's skin, and lost
his own in the end. Mussolini's army was never worth
anything to begin with. It cost him the war.
You could say it is easier for a camel to pass through
the eye of a needle than for anyone to take out Serbia.
There are not enough cruise missiles to get them all.
They can't even get Eric Rudolph -- the abortion bomber
hiding in the woods in North Carolina -- with half the FBI.
And so it's just expensive fireworks for now. Eventually
some poor blokes will have to walk in there on the ground
if they think they really want to own it. Then we'll be equal.
The land will belong to the man in the forest with the
sniper scope.
Ultimately, this is not about democracy vs. totalitarianism.
It's about attacking the root soul of a people.
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