From: luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno)
Subject: Re: Meggy and Yugoslavia
Followup-To: soc.culture.turkish,soc.culture.europe
Reply-To: luciano@athos.Berkeley.EDU (Luciano Lavagno)
Organization: UC Berkeley IC CAD Group
Date: Thu, 13 Aug 1992 20:59:47 GMT

(I added soc.culture.europe to the distribution and the followup, because this
is a european problem, in my opinion; if you don't agree, please kill the
subject and keep reading other topics).

In article <Aug.11.04.57.27.1992.6867@pilot.njin.net>, hubey@pilot.njin.net
(Hubey) writes:
>Well, the first American soldiers have arrived in Yugoslavia. That's
>about time--very late actually.
>
>Hoping for peace while one side is poorly armed and starving to death
>while the other side is continuously pounding them with artillery
>is not my view of the New International Order. If the UN cannot
>act as the world's police force, then maybe the old world order
>was better. 
>
>Comparisons to Vietnam are silly. There's no triple cover jungle
>canopy in Yugoslavia. Serbia won't be able to keep fighting 
>against Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia without its tanks, and airplanes
>and they'll be sitting (and flying) ducks for American fighter
>planes. After that attacking will mean suffering heavy losses.

There may not be triple jungle canopies, but there are hills, houses and woods.
Again, remember that partisans in WWII were active all over Europe. I recall
somebody pointing out that 30 German divisions and support from the local
fascist puppet government were not able to get rid of those partisans in
Yugoslavia.

>WW1 already taught that. Frontal assaults against machine guns
>is suicide. It used to work before WW1 when rifles were inaccurate
>and not easy to fire rapidly. 

Partisans have never worked that way. Sniping and random mining is a more
common way of dealing with somebody from abroad invading your country. And, as
the recent (at least as unfortunate, but nobody seems to worry too much) events
in Afghanistan have shown, everybody rallies together when there is a foreign
invader. But they start fighting again as soon as the invader withdraws.

>Determined suicidal fighting is usually reserved in defense of a
>homeland. Soldiers occupying enemy territory are more prone to
>suffer loss of morale when they start to suffer heavy losses :-)..

Indeed. I am afraid American soldiers will leave (no smiley here) before the
coming elections.

>And finally, negative feedback, as is known very well in Control
>Theory, is necessary and sufficient to control situations.

If and only if the system is controllable and observable. 

>PS. A couple of thousand fighting missions should be enough to
>get the message across that from then on there'll be no
>more cheap victories.

I do hope so, as I am as eager as you are to see an end to the violence.
But I don't believe it. The only wrong comparison here is with Iraq.
Comparing it (in MILITARY terms, I am not speaking about other aspects of the
matter, such as international law and so on) to Ireland, or Viet Nam or
Afghanistan is, in my opinion, much more appropriate.

Ciao !
Luciano
-- 
Luciano Lavagno            luciano@ic.Berkeley.EDU            +1-510-642-5012
Dept. of EECS, 207-69 Cory Hall, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA