From: poser@vxdsyc.desy.de (Till Poser)
Subject: Stoopendous Strategies
Reply-To: Poser@vxdsyc.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Wed, 12 Aug 1992 23:51:29 GMT

After three enjoyably restrained postings in a row, I'll claim the privilege
to rant a wee bit, if the fit so takes me. I know that this isn't exactly
a subject for s.c.usa, but then bear with me.

In article <1992Aug11.174559.3376@desire.wright.edu>, 
demon@desire.wright.edu (Stupendous Man) writes:
|>In article <1992Aug11.160435.2142@dscomsf.desy.de>, 
|>poser@vxdsyc.desy.de (Till Poser) writes:
|>> Stupendous Man writes:

|>> |>	How about using force to stop Holocaust II?
|>> 
|>> I think I already remarked on my opinion of Your strategic capabilities
|>> in not all that uncertain terms. Come back when You've managed to draft
|>> up a proposal for a military intervention which contains a list of long
|>> range goals and their attainability, time scales, manpower assessments, 
|>> political implications and expected lossess in both local population and 
|>> occupying force. Such as it is, the above statement is so much bridling
|>> borborygmi.  
|>
|>	How about:
|>
|>	Securing internationally recognized borders.

Which are so much pish and tush. For instance, while only 16% (note: any
number I'll give in this posting will haven an implicit error bar of 10%
of the value quoted. Don't get on my case with nitty-gritties!) of the 
total population in Croatia are Serbs, this number climbs to >60% in the 
eastern parts of the Kraina.

The point I want to make is that ex-Yugoslavia is a ethnic patchwork-quilt.
This is partially due to the Habsburg politics to establish villages of
soldier-peasants along the Austrian-Ottoman lands of Military Croatia along 
the Save into the Voivodina. There, in these areas, the Serbs are a flinking
_majority_.

Once upon a time the boders of Yogoslavia were also internationally 
recognised. Due to considerations such as "the right to selfdetermination 
of a nation" these were sundered. Now Serb and Croatian warlords claim
these selfsame rights to secede from political bodies like Bosnia or Croatia
with about the same justification. Where do the rights to selfdetermination
stop?

|>	Preventing neighboring states from aiding one side or the other in
|>armed conflicts.

Which means that whoever does the enforcement will step _very_ hard on the 
toes of our _dear_ Greek cousins. Word is out that >40% of the Serbian supply
comes through Greece on the strength of their Macedonian preoccupation. 

But I concur. This road promises the most reward.

|>	Dismantling the detention camps.

So? Commendable idea. How do You accomplish that? Military occupation? First
You have to reach them and take them. This requires a military engagement.
What do You suggest? A couple of divisions of airborne troops? To get them
in should be a snap. To get them out is a damn sight more difficault, 

|>	Helping the new states to set up their political/social institutions.

What are the states? It is becoming clearer and clearer that Croatia is
still dreaming of the Great Croatia of '42, demanding territory within 
Bosnia and Serbia itself? What are You going to do with the "independed 
Serbian Republic of Craina"? You'll have to conquer it before You do 
anything else.

|>	Encouraging ethnic diversity within the new states.

How? After up to 18 months of mutual butchery, these ethnicities are at
each other's throats. But again You're dividing the skin of the bear before
You've bagged him. Before that, all of the above is so much starry-eyed
nonsense!

|>	Stomping the hell out of aggressors.

Oh, q00l! So, who is the aggressor? How do You accomplish it? Just drop in
Your neato-keeno laser-guided bombs on infantry mortars, or what? I've 
asked You for a list of goals and their attainability, and You've answered
with so much naive rodomontade.

For someone who has professed to have focussed on the '30s and '40s for
his studies, historian, You show a remarkable lack of knowledge as to
what makes this conflict tick, and, what is even worse, how other military
undertakings of this sort fared in nearly the same circumstances and exactly
the same localities.

It should be noted, that Yugoslavia served admirably to bind a whole German
army group, a bit more than an Italian army and a couple of Romanian divisions
between '41 and '44. That is >500.000 soldiers. And, as You hopefully know,
they just about managed to hold the main population centers, and that only
by imposing a horrendous terror regime. The Wehrmacht, just combatting the
partisans, managed to kill ~1 M people all by itself. It was a horrible, a
bloody, a no-quarters-given conflict on both sides. And the Germans didn't 
manage to contain the partisan menace.

The words that comes to mind is Mujahiddin, Afghanistan. The situation of
Sarajevo is Dien-Bien-Phu in spades.

You have to invest enormous manpower to secure Your lines of communications.
You have to invest enormous manpower to attain any rational military goals.
And You can never be sure who is going to shoot at You, since You are bound
to step on the toes of the Bosnia and Croatian partisans, as well as on the
Serbian's. Remember, You have to protect the Serbian population from the 
wrath and retribution visited upon them by, understandably but intolerably,
irate other ethnicities, as well as keep Croatian ambitions in check.

How do You target Your neato-keano airborne weapons in highly mountainous
territory without Forward Air Controllers? Are You going to send a mission
for any piffling 81 mm infantry mortar that sets up business somewhere,
lobs a few rounds onto a target, be it a population center or a military
target, and vanishes into the blue? Or are You going to accept the losses 
You incur by having them circle often enough to acquire a target, but 
falling prey to the no doubt multitudinous SAM-7s that are in the Serbian
arsenals?

What are the Dicks, Toms and Harrys You send in going to do when they find
one of their brothers in arms bestially butchered by one side or the other?
You are inviting that they are venting their wrath the same way, and, them
being on the front lines, I could not really fault them for their anger.
But _You_ are greasing their trigger fingers.

What in the name of Satan have You been thinking when You typed these lines?

|>> As to Your choice of descriptives, let it suffice to say that You are 
|>> adding monstrously bad taste to historical myopia. I surmise they go 
|>> well together. But while we're at it, in Somalia there is a good chance
|>> that they'll accrue more than 1 megadeaths in the coming 2 weeks. That
|>> is a sight more gastly than this comparatively minor tribal warfare in
|>> Europe. Any comments, Sooper-Dooper Humanitarian?
|>
|>	I see no reason to let the Serbs continue to genocide Muslims and
|>Croats simply because it's not as bad as Germany circa 1942.  (Yet.)

Very well. But then You have to offer a viable strategy and a viable
military perspective. If You go in now, You'll still be there in ten years.
You will invite a unification of the Serbian cause and the obliteration
of the Serbian opposition, which still is Your best bet to check the
supplies to the partisans and the army. You invite a totally hazy imbroglio.
You invite getting into the crossfire of different groups loyal to different
warlords.

This is _not_ Germany of '45. This is Afghanistan a l'Europeenne. Or Lebanon,
if that is more of a reference to You. There are no clear borders. There are
very few clearly defined military objectives. No side has very much of a
morally defensible position, so Your focus on Serbia is highly erroneous.

As to the choice of terms, You are belitteling and cheapening the fate of
the people who died in the Holocaust by spending this coin so freely, just
to wring emotional effect from the issue. And as to the number II, well, 
the first time concentration camps were used in this century, historian, 
was during the Boer war for exactly the same purposes as those now extant 
in Yugoslavia. Since then, this device was used mutitudinously all through 
this century. You are off by at least a factor of magnitude.

Don't use the word Holocaust!

|>	Somalia?  Have they asked for our help yet?  Send them help, but 
|>better to move them to where the food is.  Or help them grow their own.  

Oh, yes, indeed, they did. But You see, that conflict and that misery isn't
as assidously televised as the Yugoslavian civil war. That aside, since when
did a USAian humanitarian need any invitation to offer help, hmmm?

And it would tax even the incredible USAian resourcefulness to grow food for 
a couple of a million people in a span of two weeks. And moving them where
there is food, what do You have in mind? Kansas? Whyoming?

|>I don't know enough about the military situation to comment on that.

It's a dirty little civil war nearly wihout any heavy equipment, which by now 
is mainly fueled by the growing hunger. A regiment or two to guard the food 
distribution lines would be entirely enough, if the food were distributed 
equivocally and there was enough food.

There won't be.

As of now, the relief organisations have to hire their guards from local 
warlords, paying them 10% of the food as tribute.

|>Brett                                                      

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