Newsgroups: alt.activism,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Never again. How soon we forget.
From: kmcvay@oneb.almanac.bc.ca (Ken Mcvay)
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 92 14:44:32 GMT
Organization: The Old Frog's Almanac, Vancouver Island, CANADA

In article <Bsz6z3.L71@news.cso.uiuc.edu> bfrg9732@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Brian F. Redman) writes:

>demon@desire.wright.edu (Stupendous Man) writes:

>>	Which US forces would that be?  I'm unaware of any US forces fighting
>>for Tito after the war.

>Quoting from the NEWSWEEK article (August 17th issue, page 20):

>    On the frontier between Italy and Yugoslavia between 1945 and
>    1953, dozens of American servicemen were killed, wounded
>    or captured when Harry Truman's grunts and airmen [a.k.a. U.S.
>    troops] exchanged shots with Tito's guerrillas.

Ah, they exchanged pot-shots across the border?

>>> wandering around battlefieds, I've never met fiercer fighters. They
>>> could easily suck the United States into a ground war -- hook, line
>>> and body bag." writes Hackworth.

There is an alarming trend here to evaluate the horror and misery on some
sort of Richter-like Scale of Universal Worth - it's not that you don't care
about the folks being killed, you just don't think Americans should put
themselves at risk for them, right?   That's clear enough, and cuts right to
the core of western corruption.

The issue here isn't whether or not stopping the internicene warfare will be
easy, or painless, but whether or not we care to stop it at all. Whether the
job would be a 'pushover' or a dangerous and painful undertaking isn't the
issue, so Hackworth's comments are meaningless. (And yes, since you asked in
a prior post, I would go - I'm an ex-Marine, trained in air delivery, and
yes, I know what it feels like to have family at risk - my son served in the
Gulf with the Marine Corps.)

>>	Why?  Why do anti-interventionists *insist* that it be a US ground war? 
>>The Euros are quite capable of handling it.

>Again, quoting from the NEWSWEEK article (August 17th issue, page 20):

>    ...it's a sure bet that our pilots would see action. And 
>    history also guarantees that when the going on the ground
>    gets rough for U.N. troops, the United States will become
>    a major player down there in the mud and the blood. 

>	[Because] Air-control teams on the ground will be essential
>    [there is the likelihood that] after a few [of the Air-control
>    teams] are knocked off, U.S. grunts will undoubtedly be
>    brought in to protect them. 

Newsweek is now your military intelligence source? Frankly, I think this is
bullshit, not to mention the implied insult to the British and other
Europeans, who, I believe, are quite capable of dealing with this without
Yankee intervention. Even if they were not, the issue (I repeat) isn't how
difficult the job will be, but whether or not it is worth doing in the first
place.

>>> Hackworth writes that "...Yugoslavia is an impossible mission." Drawing
>>> on his lifetime of military experience he warns that military 
>>> involvement in the region is tantamount to getting dragged into
>>> an unwinnable war. 

>>	A strawman.  We wouldn't be fighting Yugoslavia.  We would be allied
>>with Bosnia (and probably Croatia and Slovenia and Macedonia) against Serbia.

Perhaps it would be best if we refused to ally ourselves (i.e. the UN) with
any national faction, more in keeping with the Canadian peacekeeping
mission, but with the muscle to put an end to the shelling of cities and
villages...

>    Still an impossible mission due to the terrain. Isn't it
>    China's turn now to play the part of the hero and go 
>    rushing in there with guns blazing? We just finished saving
>    the world a year and a half ago. It is someone elses turn
>    now.

That's the second time you've brought up the Chinese - your basic humanity
is touching... Bosnian children aren't worth American lives, or Canadian
lives, but it's ok if Chinese die for them? That's clear enough.

>    War is hell, my friend. Our rushing in there would only
>    compound the situation. It is easy to adopt a self-righteous
>    stance (especially since the U.S. Propaganda Ministry has
>    once more launched its parade of crying babies into our
>    living rooms). It is harder to stop, count to ten, and accept
>    our essential powerlessness over the situation. 

Sorry, Jack, no banana. I don't get my news from Yankee TV, although it
would not matter if I did - folks _are_ dying over there, whether you
believe it or not. We are not powerless, just lacking the moral fibre
required to put a stop to the barbarity.

-- 
"Of  course I am a doctor and  want  to preserve life. And  out of respect for
human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew
is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind."          [A Nazi doctor at
Auschwitz,  as reported  by Dr. Ella Lingrens-Reiner,  in "Prisoners of Fear"]
Xref: sparky alt.activism:15121 talk.politics.misc:40731 soc.culture.latin-america:3158