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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Machaon who wrote (2066)	4/6/1999 2:38:00 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 17770

What would you do? Ah, finally you ask a sensible question. I've posted most of it here before. Here's what we should do: 1. Declare the three troops now being held in Yugoslavia to be a peacekeeping ground force on site in Yugoslavia. 2. Declare that since there is now a ceasefire and we have troops on the ground in Yugoslavia the publicly announced goals of our bombing campaign have been met. 3. Declare victory. 4. Stop all bombing. Withdraw all troops. Have the U.N. (not the U.S., not NATO, but the U.N., whose job it is) start negotiating with Milosovic about the future of Yugoslavia and Kosovo. 5. Commit the same amount we spent bombing Yugoslavia (somewhere well north of $250 million, since we lost a plane at $117 million and used in excess of 100 cruise missiles alone at about $1 mil a pop [for which we get five houses destroyed and three people killed, yeah, that's cost effective for sure] to say nothing of all the other bombs, fuel, manpower costs, etc.) as an incentive (bribe if your prefer) to Yugoslavia to help the U.N. find out a way to resolve the mess and help the refugees. What the answer is isn't my job to figure out -- the U.N., for all its ineptness, does have some competent people, and there are other countries outside NATO which have the ability to help negotiate a reasonable settlement here. With a peace chest of over $250 million there's a mighty big incentive either for Milosovic to come to terms (which his pride will allow as long as it isn't NATO dictating the terms) or inspire opponents of Milosovic to overthrow his government and come to terms. If the people of Yugoslavia no longer have NATO to hate, but realize that they have a chance at a real peace they will either make Milosovic take it or will get rid of him themselves. There's a program that has a whale of a lot better chance of bringing true peace to Yugoslavia than dropping any more bombs on the civilian population and stirring up even more support for Milosovic and hatred for NATO to make it even harder to find peace in the future.