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

To: goldsnow who wrote (5753)	4/28/1999 6:26:00 PM
From: nuke44	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 17770

I'm not sure if I understand what you're asking. But the debacle in Somalia, that was not "US blunders" so much as it was a complete meltdown of a UN orchestrated clusterfuck. When the shit hit the fan there, it spread itself evenly over everyone involved, not just the US. The US blunder was to turn US military forces over to the outside control of a geopolitical entity (the UN) whose agenda had nothing to do with US interests or the welfare of the US forces involved. The blunder was also that of a Commander in Chief who was more unfit for that position than any other person who has ever held the office and a Secretary of Defense who refused to commit the resources necessary, the resources that had been urgently requested by military personnel, because he was too busy kissing his bosse's ass. There is some justice that he resigned in disgrace, taking the heat for his boss and then dropped dead with a brain tumor a short while later. As far as your reference to Viet Nam, there are really no relevant comparisons. Any attempt to do so is really more of an exercise in mendacity and misdirection, trying to insinuate military failure in Kosovo by using it in the same sentence as Viet Nam. There have been no significant, irreversible MILITARY blunders in Kosovo. The two most glaring mistakes, both of those politically motivated, was to start with a gradually escalating air offensive, hoping to find the level of "discomfort" that would bring Milosevic to our terms and the public guarantees that we would never use ground forces. That only gave Milosevic more room to maneuver The air campaign should have started at full intensity (It's still not there) and continued until NATO troops could have taken possession of Kosovo with little or no resistance and Serb forces were reduced to a point where a counter offensive was out of the question. As of yet, NATO losses have been at a minimum, so no irreparable damage (at least from our perspective) has been done. What other blunders did you have in mind? The deaths of Serb civilians? While regrettable, it is unavoidable. In truth, the low level of civilian Serb casualties show an almost inconceivable level of constraint on the part of NATO. If it were any other force in the world conducting these operations, the Serbs included, the civilian death rate would be much, much higher, and to tell the truth, of little concern to those forces doing the killing.