I've got mixed feelings. Does someone need to step up and try to stop the slaughter in Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, et.al.? Hell yes. But why does it always have to be us? Why? Our military is stretched thinner than sushi parchment, we're broke, and again we're donning our red capes and blue tights, singing, "Here we come to save the day!!"
there are two militaries capable of projecting and maintaining the kind of force we are discussing. that is us, and the Chinese. which one do
you think is more likely to let the people of an oil rich land one day live in freedom and prosperity?
Meanwhile, every other "civilized country" on the planet... we're the uncivilized ones, don'tcha know, because of that pesky death penalty... just shrug off the slaughter in Africa that has been going on for decades with a so-sad, too-bad attitude.
that is correct - one of the problems with having a big state is that you end up with little people. and one of the problems with having a big welfare state is that you end up with little left over for defense.
so don't be so hard on them - they are probably our future. Weak, insipid, dependents on a bloated and inefficient centralized state increasingly unresponsive to the wishes of the populace it claims to represent.
And the minute we get boots on the ground over there, other countries will be making snarky remarks in the UN about America playing cowboy again.
yup. and if we ever tried to do anything
through the UN, China and Russia would
probably veto it.
There's a poll in the Poll forum asking, "Is America Arrogant?" The consensus is hell, yes. I agree. But frankly, how can we not be arrogant when every time there's a crisis, we see refuges with tears streaming down their cheeks holding signs that say "America help us" and the rest of the world kinda sits back with a lifted brow, as if waiting for us to take care of business.
well naturally. America is an evil empire, and her military is an evil war machine that needs to be deeply cut.... until Haiti has an earthquake, Indonesia has a tsunami, Japan has a earthquake
and a tsunami, Somali Pirates threaten to shut down the Gulf of Aden, and so on and so forth. You wonder how many of them acknowledge privately that were the US ever to actually cut back it's forward-leaning military presence, the world would become a lot more bloody and a lot more chaotic, but feel they have to demand a US pull back out of some misplaced sense of the-need-to-appeal-to-pride.
Do I hope a small contingent of American advisors can bring peace to a barbaric tribal region with an illiterate populace and a cultural belief in witch doctors and human sacrifice? Of course I do, but it's not going to happen.
I would suggest you read up on the history of the PMC "Executive Outcomes". You may take some comfort. In a few years (well, maybe a decade or two, dependent) you will be able to read up on some similar mission sets that have been undertaken by the US military, also with happy consequence.
And I take no comfort from this notion of being purely "advisors". That's how we started in Viet Nam, remember?
yup. though I'm not sure I see the problem with that.
Then there's the Balkans, where I was thrilled to see the forced stoppage of genocide and ethnic cleansing, only to realize two decades later than nothing had changed, except that there was yet another piece of the planet being held together by the presence of UN "peacekeepers", many of whom are as vicious and corrupt as the "enemy" that had been vanquished. The moment the UN leaves the Balkans, war will explode again.
that is probably correct - and the reason is that we have tried to fight that populace on the cheap; which is always only cheaper in the short term.
there is an old engineering maxim: You can have it done quickly, You can have it done well, and You can have it done cheaply. Just pick any two. In a very real sense a similar dilemma exists in these types of military missions.
The same goes for Iraq, Afghanistan and yes, Central Africa as well.
Predictions of Iraq descending into Civil War (or claims that it had already) have proven to be a bit ahead of themselves. Afghanistan :shrug: we will have to see if Obama can avoid the pretty picture of 'bringing the troops home' right before election.
When people are determined to slaughter each other for whatever reason... tribal, religious, power vacuum... we can forestall it, but we cannot eliminate it
that is not correct. we can do both those things - but eliminating it is more manpower, time, and resource intensive.
My fervent hope is that the mission will be limited to one thing: Hunting down and eliminating the rebel leaders to temporarily end the massive bloodshed there.
my bet would be that that is what it will be. And as a general matter of policy, I'm fine with us saying "look, if you cross X line of behavior, we'll come kill you"; I just wish we would apply it to Syria.
But I fear it will become another quagmire of American troops standing between two groups of people determined to annihilate each other, and a finger-pointing world saying, "Look, America failed again."
eh, the "jet set" is going to say that anyway - they
need to say it. It justifies them not getting involved.
