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Fighting the Techno-War
Americans are among the world's best engineers and machine-builders, and their faith in the power of their technological creations to alter history is nearly a national religion. That faith is being tested and challenged in Yugoslavia.
Ever since Vietnam, the idea of the Techno-War has grown as a political and foreign policy tool for enforcing American and Western -- nobody else yet has nearly so much technology-- values and solutions on a dubious and diverse world.
The Techno-War, on display in Serbia and Yugoslavia nightly on cable and the evening news, (this column isn't about whether we should or shouldn't be there) is a powerful reminder of just how complex the mixing of technology and global politics is, especially as the rapid growth of digital technics advances the idea that we really can do and accomplish almost anything, and bend almost anyone or anything to our will.
The Techno-War is a godsend for politicians. Increasingly, it's characterized by these traits:
l. The notion of the painless war. Techno-wars are supposed to be clean, efficient wars, in that they are primarily waged by hi-tech weaponry and machines, rather than by our neighbors, sons, daughters and friends. And their targets, we are told, are buildings and defense mechanisms, not civilian populations.
2. Technology and public relations. Techno-wars are all TV wars, in that they feature lots of digital art showing missiles and bombs - all computer programmed and controlled -- hurtling towards grainy targets, then obliterating them. "Let me show you what our amazing new technology can do," enthused a British General on CNN last Saturday, as he urged reporters at a press briefing to pick up their personal video copies of smart bombs landing on target and demolishing buildings. Public relations are an essential part of Techno-Wars - sometimes it almost seems as if they're the point.
Next to pictures of lawyers screaming and buildings burning, TV loves nothing better in all the world than the picture of a bomb zeroing in on some evil building. The Pentagon loves this even more, since that's how they get money from Congress to buy and build more things.
So beginning with the Gulf War, the unholy marriage between these two -- satellite-fed screen journalism and the military -- has characterized the presentation of the Techno-War. If we have no idea quite what we're blowing up or why, we are amazed and delighted by the process with which we do it. 3. Techno-wars obscure cultural conflicts, in that Techno-War is predicated on the notion that our vastly superior technology will prevail over even the most ancient, bitter and entrenched rivalries and hostilities. For all of this country's history, Americans have seen technology work for them in terms not only of prosperity but of projecting political power.
Yet this faith sometimes obscures understanding of different cultures and ethnicities and the different ways in which they think. >From Vietnam to Iraq to the Serbs, we seem to fall into this trap again and again, thinking that our vastly superior technology will cause determined peoples to crumble and succumb. The thing is, they often don't.
How much do we really know about this particular ancient struggle, the one in Kosovo, elements of which date back hundreds of years and have defied solution, negotiation, or mediation? 4. The techno-gamble. Techno-wars are politically expedient kind of wars, in which political leaders essentially bet they can use technology to change political outcomes quickly. This, they wager, will happen because the public is both enchanted by the technology and placated by the fact that it's machines, not people, doing the fighting. Techno-Wars are declared abruptly, almost always without national or political referendum, and within minutes, accompanied by dazzling satellite-transmitted pictures of tracer bullets, bomb flashes and sounds of wailing sirens. The belief - also hubris, perhaps - is that they will be over before resistance or skepticism can develop.
Almost everyone involved in the latest Techno-War openly acknowledges that public support would vanish instantly if large numbers of American soldiers were being injured or killed, or if the conflict drags on too long.
Since Vietnam, Americans have had little stomach for sending soldiers off to war. Casualties during military actions and terrorist attacks in Beirut and Somalia prompted the abrupt withdrawal of American troops. Military actions in Haiti, Grenada, and Panama saw massive troops committed to overpowering small and impoverished countries for short periods of time with limited goals. All three resulted in minor American casualties and were over in days or weeks. But they were more traditional military operations, involving the deployment of many ground troops. In Kosova, as in recent military actions against Iraq, the Techno-war is advanced as a means to an end, the primary way in which a conflict or problem is resolved.
The idea that technology is power goes back a long time in America. In "The Rise of American Technology," (Iowa State University Press), Friedrich Klemm writes that modern technology - at the heart of American global power and expansion -- took root in the United States more than anywhere else in the world.
The minute the colonies won independence from England, Klemm, writes, they began the process of technical development and industrialization, especially the steam-ship, the railway and the telegraph, all of which played key roles in the expansion westward.
Americans went on to become the premier inventors, engineers, builders and technologists in the world, from mills to cars and telephones. It was precisely this passion for building technology, writes Klemm, that made America so powerful and prosperous a country.
The computer may yet top all of these creations. Computers are changing the world, and computing, especially networked computing technology is at the heart of the Techno-War. The Internet perhaps reinforces the idea that because we are technologically advanced, we are more powerful than people who aren't. In this Techno-war, digital technology is used to study weather, pinpoint targets, assess damage, launch weapons, rescue downed pilots, knock-out defenses, and otherwise wage a "clean," relatively bloodless war, if you're on our end of it.
But the problem with Techno-Wars is that they don't seem to work, or when they do work, it's in limited ways. The massive bombing of Germany didn't shorten the war or force the Germans to end it. Israel and Great Britain have for years had the technological means to destroy their political adversaries in the Middle East and Ireland, but their superior technology haven't worked.
Techno-wars may be metaphors for hubris about the limits of technology, no matter how dazzling. It is stunning to watch all those Pentagon-arranged pictures of computer-programmed Tomahawk missiles lifting off from B-52's and sailing as much as 500 miles to fly through the doorways and windows of buildings. But they don't seem to be effective at stopping, or even slowing, the conflict and killing taking place hundreds of miles away.
Saddam Hussein has survived several Techno-Wars, emerging even stronger and more enrenched than he was before. He was pushed out of Kuwait not by a Techno-war, but by a pretty conventional one, in which troops and tanks lined up in the desert to push him back to Iraq.
Satellites and computers are able to find terrorists, but can't bring them to justice. Haiti is still an impoverished and repressive mess. (Grenada wasn't big enough to qualify as a Techno-war, more as a police action).
The world seems shocked when even the heads of tiny countries like Serbia defy technology. Watching these hi-tech tapes on TV night after night, there's the eerie but recurring sense that the only way NATO's goals will ever be achieved is if somebody like John Wayne takes a couple of thousand Marines into Belgrade and hauls somebody off to jail. But this solution would involve humans as much as machines. It wouldn't be a "clean" or "painless" Techno-war.
"Increasingly dejected by the inability of their dazzling weapons to bring Slobodan Milosevic to heel and stop the ethnic purge of Kosovo, NATO leaders are struggling to figure out what to do next if the bombing does not work," reported the New York Times on Wednesday.
The answer? More bombing, and bombing closer to urban centers. That means more casualties, and probably, even more resistance.
Techno-wars are powerful metaphors for the limits of and unpredictable nature of technology. - If technology is becoming more precise all the time, the human nature it's supposed to alter is inherently unpredictable. We have what we believe are rational reasons for deploying technology for political or humanitarian purposes. For the targets, the very machinery itself is a rationale for resistance. - Techno-wars are almost never bloodless. Since machines behave in unpredictable and erratic ways, people get killed on both sides. Clouds obscure satellites, planes malfunction and fall. A bomb's control system fails, or a missile goes awry and the same TV that transmits all those hi-tech pictures of precision bombs is suddenly showing dead civilian bodies. The political equation can change in an instant. - Even the most powerful technologies can be evaded by determined and resourceful opponents (the Viet Cong, Saddam Hussein, the Afghan resistance). Different cultures may resist technologically-imposed political solutions imposed from without, no matter how overpowering the technology is.
Technology can't in itself work quickly enough to compensate for poorly defined goals with little public support, unless it is employed so destructively - as in nuclear weapons - that the cure would be worse than the disease.
Put another way, Techno-Wars don't work unless the technology is unleashed to its devastating limits - as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- an unthinkable political option in any scenario short of Armageddon. So the irony of technology is that we have enough to destroy Saddam Hussein a million times over, but not without taking a chunk of Baghdad with him, something that the world would reject and no politician wants to do. In an odd sense, the reality is that the more powerful our technology, the less likely we are to use it.
Finally, as the Internet and World Wide Web and related computing technologies spread and grow beyond anyone's expectations, Techno-Wars remind us that technology isn't necessarily as powerful as we like to think it is. There are even bigger forces at work, and they don't care what we think or expect.
"Power is ultimately nature itself," writes technology historian and political scientist Langdon Winner, "released by the inquiries of science and made available by the inventive, organizing capacity of technics. All other sources of political power - wealth, pubic support, personal charisma, social standing, organized interest - are weak by comparison."
Or, put more bluntly in one of the corollaries to Murphy's Laws about technology (No. 5: Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad worse) first put forth in l949, "Mother nature is a bitch." jonkatz@slashdot.org
I agree, because from there perspective, it is duck cover and pray. There must be ground troops there for the laser not so "smart" bombs to work... and that is the only force that they under stand is that of having a few thousand troops pointing 30 cal. and 50 cal. barrels at them
The word from The Emperor:
"Wiped them out. All of them."
-- The Phantom Menace
Indeed, optical image processing is used for Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) systems and kicks the ass of any digital computation system.
You must be brain dead. Serbia is trying to kill or throw out 2 million people, and you don't find just cause in NATO intervening? Christ, even Hitler only wanted to "ethnically cleanse" his population...
I can't believe you just admitted to buying into Milosevic's amazing PR machine. People like you make me sick.
Is Milosovic really irrational?
If Serbia were allowed to become a peaceful, democratic country he would end up in the same place as the leaders of most other peaceful democratic countries: the unemployment line. Crisis keeps him in power.
material. Read some books on history, inventions, military strategy, tactics, and politics. I think I could argue all his points, but heres some...
1. Americans are not the ONLY inventors. They also just love to tinker with stuff. Quote from a WW2 observer: "The American Army did not go anywhere without a veritable used car lot of vehicles."
2. Personal charisma is a weak political force compared to "nature". What kind of 'green' gobbledegook is that? Both Hitler and Melonovic got where they are by ol fashioned personal 'politiking'.
3. Use Battle Droids'
4. The successful strategy ALWAYS uses the 'indirect approach'. B.H.Liddell Hart 'Strategy'. I suggest you read it.
5. "Let them hate so long as they fear", Acius 136bc. Melosovic will not stop until we find something he fears.
Probably a statement that we will fund the Croats to fight come winter. Melosovic HATES to fight in the winter, he ALWAYS goes to the peace table in the fall, and starts fighting inthe spring. Geez, somebody pay attention.
6. Stealth aircraft are NOT invisible to human eyeballs.
7. We shoulda impeached the guy when we had the chance. Note to Europeans, see it does affect you doesn't it? The guys' gonna drag NATO into a war it doesn't want.
8. Why didn't we try the economic embargo and all that stuff first? You mean to tell me Serbia doesn't import ANYTHING? Surely he needs oil, gas, bullets.
jmr
Joe Robertson
jmrober1@ingr.com
Hmmm.. I wonder how much development has gone into the whole *Mech* idea..?
I especially like the part about lawyers running for public office. I have been saying that for years (though, I say no one who has EVER passed the bar should be allowed to run).
Add hyperlinked footnotes listing examples of each violation, the article of the Constitution it applies to and maybe an article by a Constitutional scholar backing up each statement.
Remember, evidence leads credence. People who, for lack of knowledge, consider some (or most) of this document to be "looney" will start to come around when presented with proof.
TK
Here is my take on the cituation in Balkans.
/. anymore. Nostradamus was right afterall.
The stubbornness of both sides doesn't provide the prospect of gracefull exit for either of them. NATO commanders and western leaders can not back up and admit inability to muscle underpowered little country. Population of Serbia is united with their leaders in the cause of defending their homeland as they've never been.
So, now we have two walls and neither of them will back down. The options for NATO is to escalate bombing and start targeting civilian targets since military once are elusive. That will most definitely cause Russia to counter act. Another option is to get on with the ground war, but the prospect of it is bleak since there is very little public support for that in the west.
The following scenario is the most likely way events will follow, unless one of the sides bows down in front of the other:
1. Russian naval group is in Mediterranean. (7 ships are underway as we speek)
2. NATO escalating bombing, hits civilian targers, power is out in Belgrade, many civilian casualties.
3. Russia unilaterally lifts weapons embargo from Yugos and starts supplying them with modern weapons.
4. NATO and west are agrivated with Russia, Belorussia and Ukraine. The fighting words are flying. NATO starts overflying Russian ship in the sea.
5. By the accident or not NATO plain/s is/are shot over the sea. Fireworks started in Mediterranean, ship are hit with missilies on both sides.
6. Russian naval group under the threat of being extinguished. Outraged Eltzin gives an order to deploy tactical nuclear warhead against NATO vessels.
7. NATO respondes, real fireworks begin!
As for us, slashdot readers, there will be no
How do you use RTFM anyway?
:-)
check out his books. Indirect approach and such. He was the one to give the germans the idea for the Blitzkrieg.
Thanks for the info. I never heard of this book but now I'm going to order it.
Wow.
The only buzzword I recognize is "BEE"
:-)
..
As usual, the readers of Slashdot is more well informed than Katz. Air campaigns do not win wars, but Techno wars do. Just because the weapon is on the ground doesn't imply that it isn't technologically advance. Put up an Abrahms tank against any other tank in the Iraqi or Serbian army, and I can assure you victory for the Abrahms.
If you want to talk techno wars, why not have Mitnick hack into command central of the Serbs and send a virus to disable all their Command and Control centers? Now THAT is technology.
Also, it is ironic that Katz of all people would complain about the digital computers used in the army. I had thought a tech savvy person so involved in cutting edge computing would be glad to see the military finally getting away from analogue systems.
Only in the past couple of decades (1980s) have digitization of military equipment become widely used. Before that, you've never heard of "fly-by-wire". There may be a lot of upgrades in process to convert old aircrafts into fly-by-wire, but that also implies how old some of the stuff we use are that they NEED to be upgraded.
Back to air campaigns: the reason why they won't win a war is that they were never meant to. Going in the air allows you an advantage to cut off supply lines and communication centers so the opposing force cannot operate as efficiently. However, even with the best conventional bombs, you will never destroy an entire army with just aircrafts.
Ever try to destroy an entire colony of ants by stomping on them? A few will invariably survive.
The one point that Katz did get is that technology is used as a political tool. Building technology brings federal funding to the politician's district as well as tax revenue. It also has the effect of "scaring" other nations from commiting acts that the U.S. does not approve of.
But listening to Katz, and you would have us fighting with sticks and stones. What is his point? If techno wars don't work, don't have them at all?
Wars have always been about who have the bigger stick and who have the bigger stone to throw. But wars are also subject to Stupid Dumb Luck. The F-117 might have been shot down by anti-aircraft fire, but that is not because it doesn't work. Line up 100 SAM firing blindly but continuously, and even a bee will get shot down.
People are not losing faith in technology, they are losing faith in politicians KNOWING how to use them. Don't put down on the high tech military hardware just because they aren't producing the results the politicians spin out. After all, if it weren'tfor DARPAnet, where would YOU be?
considering the amount of computer tech that
comes directly from the wet dreams of
warmongers... and the behind the lines - dont get our hands dirty in actual combat NSA/DOD types... most computer geekish environments are filled with propaganda and pro war hype.
its always nice to see a sane viewpoint in a computer geek context.
In every military act that the U.S. commited (that I remember) the U.S. has been standing up for people who could not stand for themselves.
We are not directly defending ourselves but we are protecting others and our economic interests. Remember Saddam attacking Kuwait (a major oil producer). And now we are simply trying to stop another "hitler" from eliminating people because of their ethic background.
The U.S. delima is if we allow other countries to destroy each other, we lose our dominance in the world.
I don't agree that the Germans ended their Airwar a little too soon. They just got beat. Whether or not you believe it was a matter of what pilots were the best, a more accurate asessment of the skirmish looks at the aircraft that were being used.
Now the Germans had no intention of winning that war in the air alone. The Air raids where step one. The Germans needed to destroy British Air Power before they could hope to get shipping (and therefore troops) anywhere near the Isle. They made two big mistakes in this area. They didn't believe that the English actually did have radar and they tried to spearhead the attack using Stuka dive bombers. The German Stukas got ripped apart. When they decided to use fighter escorts, the fighters had a big problem with range and often times couldn't afford the price in fuel of covering for the Stuka's and still tangling with Spitfires and Hurricanes over the Channel. You would be suprised at how many fell into the Channel on the flight back.
They also tried using some of thier larger twin engine fighters, which were slower and less manuverable. They got beat up. They lacked the tactics and were two impressed with themselves at that time to successfully pull off what they had planned. Even after all of that, the V1 and V2 strikes were just a campaign in terror, and the British even had an answer for the V1's with the Gloester Meteor. Germany was nowhere near winning that fight.
Your local neighborhood Aviation enthusiast,
Big Din K.R.
Good article; bad formating. I've complained about a lot of the crap that Katz has posted here, but maintained that we should be patient and give Katz a chance. Lately, he has demonstrated that that faith in him was well warranted.
The history of U.S. interventionism is that almost always the "Law of Unintended Consequences" (see Why Things Bite Back: New Technology and the Revenge Effect by Edward Tenner) kicks in. In other words, intervention almost always causes greater problems then the ones we set out to solve with our "We're Yanks, we can do anything" attitude. It looks like Kosovo is definately following this pattern. I feel for the plight of the ethnic Albanians, and I think we should do something to help them. But I think bombing Serbia into submission is going to work about as well as bombing Iraq into submission to our will has -- i.e. not at all.
Worse, the irony that this man who adamantly opposed the Vietnam war has now single-handedly involved us in the moral equivalent of another Vietnam seems to be lost on the American people (can you say hypocrite?). I love my country, but I fear my government. Pray for America, and for those innocents killed or injured by the technology you and I have worked so hard to develop. I know, the techology itself is neutral, neither good nor evil. But we have apparently given the wrong people control over this technology (and I don't think developing Open Souce smart bombs will help things any).
I was there too, and the only crap I put aside was the line about liberating Kuwait. In fact, I felt much better about fighting for my country (is an economic boom possible without a stable oil supply?) than somebody elses. Fighting for a cause other than one's own country has a certain mercenary ring to it, not patriotic at all. I was there for my country first, everybody elses second. That is why I don't want anything to do with this new war.
Eh. I'm not convinced that Yeltsin and Primakov would dare risk irritating NATO to that degree, given their economic crisis and the fact that such action might jeopardize their IMF funding.
On the other hand, there are some interesting possible events... (no particular order)
a) The KLA renounces Rambouillet (sp?), leaving NATO without a leg to stand on. This bolsters the official Serbian position of fighting terrorists. Rugova (sp?) is disavowed, as allegedly a prisoner of the Serbs and under coercion. Both sides become much more hard-line.
b) A cross-border incident happens, perhaps in the same general area as the capture of the 3 US GIs. If the incident happens to allegedly involve armed members/supporters of the KLA, that could provide an excuse for widening of the war.
c) Albania gets involved, which would also widen the war. This could be merely arms-smuggling.
d) Milosevic's court convicts the GIs, but he commutes their sentences and unilaterally releases them, to demonstrate his lack of ill-will towards NATO. Note that he has yet to move against the contingent in Macedonia; if he makes no overt attempt to counterattack, his claim that this is merely a counterterrorist in which NATO has no jurisidiction is MUCH stronger, particularly with his own people.
e) Parts of the Stealth aircraft make their way to Moscow or Beijing.
f) The KLA disperses into tiny cells, and commences far more intense terrorist/insurgency operations throughout Serbia, not just Kosovo. Disruption of military logistics, limited assassinations, targetting of isolated victims, perhaps destruction of civillian infrastructure all become viable targets, and not just in Pristina/Kosovo.
Since its methodological infancy straddling the middle of the century, public opinion research matched the
proliferation of public media that broadcast the blissful honeymoon of the post-war while the " warrior would tell
the research technician the elements of content, audience, medium, and effect desired" (Simpson, 94). The French
scholar Paul Virilo more tersely points to the cohesion of power in _The Art of the Motor_ presenting his argument
that... The intensity and history of the public opinion research industry, dressed up in a number of shady guises as
marketing, polling, and public relations, suggests the organs of an international economic ideology subservient to the
mausoleum of Adam Smith and his cohorts modelled on similar adoration for Lenin's corpse. The success of public
opinion research and media technologies--coupled with and funded by military budgets much like the net in its
archaic form as the Arpanet--remains their ability to manufacture as well as identify markets of dissatisfaction,
malaise, and discontent and remedy them with the necessary corrective good, modulating and dispersing discontent
with gimmickry.
http://tao.ca/fire/nettime/old/2/0076.html
I wouldn't presume to tell Americans what to do with their armed forces, but this is how it looks in Europe...
Well, yeah: but the fact is, NATO bombing actually worked in Bosnia. When Nato finally dropped the hammer, it was instrumental in getting the Serbs, Croats and Bosnians around the table and hammering out the Dayton accord. All the years of attempts at UN meditaion did nothing until it was clear that unless bombs backed it up, it had no credibility. Which goes some way to explaining why it has been sidelined now.
That was then. This is now. I think the bombing is being tried on the "It worked before" basis.
The trouble with this is that this time Milesovic has nothing to lose: he is going to lose Kosovo anyway - autonomy will lead to independence. It's better for him to lose it in a fight. Wars really hurt democratic leaders but they really help despotic ones tighten their grip. In this way NATO is helping him.
Unfortunately no there is no easy solution. Most likely NATO will end up backing down and establishing a protectorate in Macedonia or (at absolute best)southern Kosovo.
Meanwhile Milesovic will be doing evertything he can to escalate this and involve neighboring states and the other Slavs (Russians/Urkranians/Beylorussians).
No wonder Italy and Greece are so twitchy, but he Albainians themselves want NATO to keep on bombing..it's their only hope.
At least NATO's 50th Birthday will go with a bang.
Annonymous European Coward.
I agree with you bmetz. Thier SAM equipment is dated, but I suspect that it's a little younger than 30 years. However, I have no real way of proving that suspiscion.
As far what brought down that plane, if it wasn't pilot error (which I seriously doubt), or mechanil failure, then a lot of people need to remember that an infrared guided SAM (possibly shoulder launched) could easily take out a Stealth fighter.
You've got to remember that a lot of pilots taken out by SAM's during Namm never even saw them coming. If this guy was at a low to moderate altitude, he may not have ever known that a
shoulder launched SAM was fired meaning there was no chance for dropping flares or evasive manuevering.
Big Din K.R.
Mitnick? *Pah*. He was a social engineer, if I recall correctly. "Hi, this is Ken. What's the root password?" And he was using a bloody traceable cell phone, methinks. Your average BUQTRAQ reader might have more clue.
/etc/passwd offsite.
If one wanted to do some damage, less traceably, rigging up a script on a cheap machine, one could have made a MS-W*rd M*cro worm with *minimal* intrusiveness (read: does NOT disable menus. does NOT insert quotes. does NOT mass-mail; maybe 2 messages a month) and DOES activate a year or more in the future. Alternately, break into an FTP server and similarly subtlely trojan a binary distribution that is not protected with MD5 hashes or their ilk; do NOT have it so blatant as to mail
Hitler was fanatical about the destruction of the Soviet people.
Actually, I don't think he was fanatical about destroying russian people. His ego was so huge that he let the 'conquest' of russia (the largest single country in the world) rule over all his descision making in the war. He diverted troops, yes,...but he wasn't trying to elimate the russian people (yet.) he simply wanted them under his control, like the rest of the world. He was after world wide conquest, and the only people I can think of that he wanted to eliminate were the Jews.
Course in the winter he didn't stand a chance in hell against the Russians, who had lived in the environment all their lives and knew how to live under the conditions. He lost as many troops to surrender as he did to actual deaths, many of which were probably due to the cold.
I 'believe' that he also had gained so much ground, before the winter hit, in Russia,...that he probably thought he had them (which he almost did...something like 200 miles from Moscow) and then him not getting there probably frustrated the hell out of him.....
He was also a terrible Naval stategist, and he didn't really listen well to his advisers (once again his ego trip). The man was an incredible idiot with the ego to match.
Course, this is all from memory when I read part of the autobiography, and from discussions with people I had when I was a kid. Its been a while, but I do know that his invasion into Russia was not about elimination, it was about conquest.
What happened was this: the Germans had a strategy of bombing British airfields, airplane factories, and radar installations. They were blowing them up faster than the British to rebuild them, and were on the verge of completely wiping out the British airforce. Then the British made a desperate bombing raid on Germany, and one of them "accidentally" dropped bombs on a civilian neighborhood of Berlin. At this point, the Germans, acting our of irrational anger, made a fatal mistake: they changed their strategy. They stopped bombing military targets, they started bombing London! This allowed the British to build their airforce back up, and combined with improved radar, gave them the upper hand in the air war.
The point is, German technology and military strategy came very close to winning that war. In the end, they were defeated not due to any deficiency of their technology, but because of the sheer stupidity of thier leadership. Fight a war on two fronts at the same time? Invade Russia in winter? What idiots!
If I stomp on the Queen Ant, the colony will wither and die.
If I stomp on the colony to obliterate all its access to food or other vital resources (ok, for ants, pretty much food...), it will wither and die.
If I stomp enough on its infrastructure, the colony will collapse and die.
We could probably embargo Yugoslavia, destroy their railroads, hit their agriculture, and seriously damage their roads. We could hit their power plants, resource convoys, and so forth, which would have similar if probably less brutal results.
I'm inclined to suspect that most members of NATO countries do not regard the Serbian people, however supportive of their leader and the military (and they *are* -- these are not an innocent people largely dominated by their leader) as ants.
The Serbs are only committing genocide so they can have some nice white sand beaches on which to lay on beach towels, drink margaritas, and ogle babes in bikinis... makes sense to me! Sounds like Milosevic needs a Club Med vacation...
The American people do not currently have the resolve to fight a war. There are several reasons for this:
1. The President (any President) does not have the guts to ask Congress to declare war before sending in the troops. This goes for all Presidents since Roosevelt. We have not fought a declared war since 1945. Korea, Vietnam, and Kuwait were not "legally" wars. They were "Police Actions" and "Conflicts." Sorry, but anytime soldiers get killed in battle, it's war.
2. We let the politicians run the wars now instead of the Generals. Big mistake. That is what sunk us in Korea and Vietnam. George Bush let his Generals draw up the war plans in Kuwait. Although the US President is the Commander-in-Chief, he is (usually) not a ex-military man. In fact, he is required to be a civillian (retired military is OK, such as Eisenhower). We lost Vietnam because Presidents Johnson and Nixon ran the war directly and didn't have the guts to go into Hanoi and do whatever it took to topple Ho Chi Minh and his bunch.
3. The American people generally do not want to fight unless we are attacked directly, such as Pearl Harbor. We were extremely isolationist during the first 2 years of WW2 (1939-41), when we were not directly involved.
4. The military is also at fault here. For the last 25 years since the end of the draft, it's been "Be all you can be" (the US Army ad slogan) instead of remembering what an army (any army) is supposed to do: kill people and break things.
Personally, I think that we are headed for either another Vietnam (if Clinton stays the course that he's currently taking) or World War III (which is what will happen if we do what is probably necessary). Neither is a pleasant option. We (NATO) either have to go in and get Milosevic out (and I do mean kill him), or just get out of there.
If we do stay, we have to do the following:
1. Reinstitute the draft immediately. The US military is having problems getting recruits since the end of the Gulf "War."
2. Clinton must ask Congress to declare war. Anything else is meaningless. He must also be ready to use limited nuclear weapons (not H-bombs. That's unneccesary) if needed.
I know that I sound like a raving war-monger, but if you are not going to fight to win, don't fight at all. We should have learned that from Vietnam.
Kosovo is bordered by Serbia, Albania, and Macedonia. All the refugees are walking into Albania, and Macedonia
Check the map. There is one off CNN.
I have only seen the trailers (as has everyone AFAIK), but it seemed to me that the Emporor was ordering someone to "Wipe them out,...all of them"
Erm. NATO really does not want to legitimize assassination of heads-of-state as a tactic, despite the fact that such are often wartime CICs, as well, and thus perhaps legitimate military targets. And the CIA is expressly prohibited via executive order...
Plus, it's a lot harder to off somebody who doesn't make that many public appearances, is far more tolerant of governmental infiltration of society, is in a country that very largely supports him, has a populace that does not normally bear arms in sight of the leader.
Think: Castro. The CIA tried to kill him, with poisons, explosives, and yes, good old-fashioned rifles and bullets. The Mafia probably tried, after he cut back on their interests. The Cuban exiles have tried. Funny thing is, he's still around...
There is no requirement in the US for a President to have served in the military. Clinton is the first president to have not served since Franklin Delano Roosevelt (remember him? The guy that got us into WW2).
There is also no requirement that a president be required to pass a top-secret security clearance, because Clinton certainly could not get one if he were to apply for a job in a defense plant. He has access anyway because he is the president.
All you have to be is an American-born US citizen over the age of 35 and not have been convicted of a felony. That's the only requirement. Even a cowardly draft-dodging philanderer like Clinton is eligible.
Speaking of propaganda. Iraq did have casualties, but now where near that many.
Points a and c are already fulfilled, and e being a reality is very probable.
As for Russians still dreaming about getting that five billion loan from the IFM, well, they can always dream on. It seems that US policymakers forgot just how useful bribery can be in foreign relations somewhere around the last installment last August. The problem is, Russians are finally awakening to the reality of the IMF's not being any more forthcoming with additional funding. Once this perception finally sets in -- perhaps another year or so -- some funny tensions are going to start appearing in this brave new world of our.
No longer do we fight honorable wars like WWII - where we actually had a reason to fight (and even give our lives) to protect ourselves
Not so much ourselves, as other people....which is why the American people DID NOT want to join in the war. Not until Japan had the ordasity to actually bomb us did the people want to be in that war. It was non of our affair, why should we send our troops to protect other people?? This is a true historical fact, Franklin Roosavelt wanted to help England and the others right off, but the people and congress would not support him.
That is what makes me laugh when people talk about how we "have to eliminate and destroy these horrible tyrants". I have to highly question wether this is the person thinking or the media thinking for them. I have seen many times whole groups of people rushing blindly into the fold, following something they don't even have the slightest clue about. I saw people boo 'whatthefuckshisnamefootballstarmurderer' as he was led from his conviction, taking picktures and clapping and chearing like this was all some fun event. Makes you wonder who is doing the thinking here,....if any thought is even taking place.
I don't know if we should be in Kosova, I don't know the whole story. I know that you cannot believe what you see on TV, you cannot believe the public opinion because its worthless,...and war means death, be it ours or someone on the complete other side of the world. There are people dying over there right now....
I have always kind of thought that war should be fought like it used to, with swords and bats in battlefeilds soaked in blood. It showed its face blatantly for what it was. No watching some bomb explode on a TV screen, wondering how many or how few people were in that building...wether who was in it is who I am told was in it (Some "real evil person you don't want around, trust me")
Is this a Clean war? I guess it must be, I haven't seen anything. Course I doubt the Kosovonians feel that way. Reasons being what they may, we should never forget that this is an absolutely terrible thing which is happening.
Forget all this "cyber warfare"; just send both sides lots of
copies of Quake, and let them duke it out on the net.
A paper tiger that has 11000 nuclear warheads pointed to every other NATO country... sure it's not a superpower anymore, but they still have what it takes to remove all forms of life from this planet.
Katz also can't tell the difference between:
1. Atomic bombs based upon nuclear fission.
2. Propaganda spread by US forces over CNN.
3. Combat aircraft.
4. Computer simulations of attacks.
5. Computer guided weapons.
Very few wars are "bloodless". Someone dies. There is blood. The US has gotten VERY good at making sure the majority of blood is spilt by the enemy.
That is the goal of the US military.
Dead soldiers don't win wars.
The airstrikes against Germany DID shorten the war. People died and production capabilities were destroyed. If no one dies and they don't lose their production capability, how long can someone fight? Until they die of old age?
The atomic bomb didn't end the war with Japan (directly). We vaporized one city. Japan didn't negotiate. We might only have had ONE bomb. We vaporized another city. Japan negotiated. Logically, if they have TWO bombs, they probably have more (or the capability to make more).
But without the island hopping campaigns leading up to that, Japan would have no reason to surrender. Their forces would still be deployed and attacking ours.
Now, can technology solve ALL the problems of war?
Katz still doesn't get it. The MOST effective military operations are the ones with CLEARLY DEFINED GOALS and methods of achieving those goals.
Vietnam had no clear goals. The same with Korea. The same with ANY of the "peace keeper" missions we get into.
Kuwait HAD clear goals. This was accomplished.
Since it is obvious that Katz has never spent any time in the military (but read a book on the subject) I will explain how to win a war.
First, achieve supremecy in ALL combat arenas (air, land, sea, space). If the enemy has ANY avenue of attack, he will exploit it.
Second, bomb your enemy's command and control sites. No communication means a disorganized enemy.
Third, bomb your enemy's supply lines. A hungry enemy is not an effective enemy.
Forth, move the troops in and occupy the land.
This is exactly what we saw in Kuwait.
But none of this REQUIRES "Techno War" (whatever that is). All of this can be accomplished with EXACTLY the same tech level as the enemy has. But with better trained TROOPS.
The US has a higher tech level than most everyone else in the world. That makes the job easier. But it doesn't change the job.
The US had a higher tech level than the VC but still couldn't win because the VC had spent GENERATIONS fighting foreign invaders. They were better trained and would exploit any weaknesses the enemy presented.
If Katz' apparent conclusions are correct, we would have whomped Charlie's butt within 6 months.
Once again, Jon skips basic research and just goes with a single book he's read.
It's not only the climate. Russians were very determined people, and when one studies the WWII history, it's hard not to feel a lot of respect for the resistance they gave.
On the other side, WWII Italians troops were a joke. Maybe a lack of motivation or discipline.
The main reason why Russians still use "outdated" analogue equipment like lamps in their missiles is to prevent some "smart-asses" from exploiting weaknesses of the digital edge.
Analogue stuff is straightforward, you just _can't_ do much against it. It works until physicly destructed.
Would you bet your Abrahms against 20 older tanks?
Technology gives you an advantage in one on one combat.
I was NBC in the army. The US maintains the first strike (nuclear) option. This was to counter the Russian threat of massive tank columns sweeping across Europe during the cold war. There was no way we could stop them with the NUMBER of tanks we had. But we could destroy the countryside. Remember, we developed the neutron bomb.
One man with kevlar armour and an M16A2 is still no match for 20 people with M-1's and steel pots.
Reid G. Ormseth, Esq.
4qk9ormsethr@marquette.edu
Oh give me a break. While there is a civil war going on, denying genocide is worse propoganda than denying the civil war in place. Milsovich is systematically killing off and displacing Albanians. We've seen this guy do it before in Bosnia and Coratia. Now we are hearing the same thing from Kosovo.
By your reasoning then, Israel would be justified in attacking France because during German occupation they turned over Jews to Hitler?
lots of big words and obscure references, no information content whatsoever.
An eye for an eye and we'll go one making the world blind - Ghandi
You can always find reasons to hate someone, its the opposite which is hard. Do you see were you logic leads? Is that were you want to go?
True - but this has given Smiley Miley the chance to shut down all media that even slightly devitate from the government line and it has solidified the support for him in Serbia and Montegreno. In the short term he is definitely getting gains from this..
Note the Serbs have a long history of fighting against overwhelming odds. This is something Milesovic can use to unify Serb opinion further.
..In the longer term however - a lot depends on NATO's willingness to sustain a long campaign.
In my opinion, there's no such thing as too much Clinton bashing.
I'd wager that some extremist militias have more technology than your average infantry unit. You can get gear that's just as good from ads in Soldier of Fortune.
You can track a Nighthawk if...
a) a bad profile is present (say, it's turning)
b) bay doors are open (MUCH worse radar profile)
c) you've got good optical tracking
d) you're infrared sensors beat the engine
shielding
e) you track their unguided, unstealthy ordnance
and do the math
f) atmospheric conditions favor you (e.g. temp,
precipitation)
I just read Code Breakers: The Inside Story of Blechley Park. It's a book about the English effort that regularly decoded German Enigma ciphers and others during WWII.
The introduction is a particularly frank evaluation of the codebreaking effort on the outcome of the war. To sum it up, code breaking, air forces, naval warfare, and ground troops all played a part. None of these by itself could have won, but the sum of the efforts won the war.
Technology is there to organize the forces deployed -- communications, supply, etc. (Without the communication, you have fibrilation.)
It's easy to sit at a PC and construct an OK program, but the most you have to worry about is wiping a hard drive. When it comes to controlling machines, you have to worry about programs that go awry and smash someone's head with an electric or hydraulic motor.
Now take the computer out of your house. Industrial or automotive rated components just don't have a very wide temperature range. Heat dissapation is an issue. You can add heat sinks, but dust makes them less effective. In cold climates, they need to be warmed.
In the jungle, you have fungi that grow on glass and produce acids that eat camera lenses. The humidity combined with thermal expansion allows water to permeate hermetically sealed hard drives. Chip carriers have ratings for water absorption.
During Korea, it was common for Chinese soldiers to take out airplanes with bolt-action rifles. A mass of men would lie down and fire away. They might not get the pilot or a bomb, but a single bullet in the radiator would lead to engine failure and crashes.
During the Gulf war, AK's lobotomized cruise missles so they went astray.
(I'm not sure if I would recommend the Code book. Overall, it's rather dry. Typical British egotism -- hardly mentions the inital work by the Poles that led to the English efforts. (to be fair, the book documents the British effort.) One story rips up American telephone technology -- the Americans installed a machine to help decode, but it ran only a short time. The author decided that American telephone switches of the time were unreliable. Fat chance! The American phone network was much larger and required more reliability. Evidently, neither the author nor the American installers realized that connecting 110v 60hz relays to 220v 50hz will cause them to draw more current and the contacts will wear out much quicker.)
How about "A Man Named INTREPID"? Decent look at
a part of the war not often taught...
That one decision, IMHO, is what cost Germany the war.
I think there wasnt any chance for Germany winning the war anyway. There was no way to fight against all the countries in the long run, regardless what the Luftwaffe would have done. Maybe the war would have gone for a couple of months longer. And, considering that the US had the nuclear bomb just a couple of months after Germanys surrender (and being German), Im quite glad that it went this way. The thought of Germany winning WWII is really frightening, even for most Germans.
Hummm... don't underestimate the fanatisme of humans ! Once people firmly believe that their race/god/group must prevail, they can come to all extremities, including nuke. There are a lot of weird nationalist in Russia, and over 96% of the Russians are against the NATO operation. Add to this poverty, and you got a very explosive and unstable situation.
After all, you only need one person to press the red button, and I'm sure there are a lot of them that would like to do so...
I honestly don't know why he wants Kosovo - the amount of resources he's spending and losing because of his present course of action are surely not as great as the resources he'd gain from keeping the region. It would have been much smarter for him to cede the area to Albania or give it independence or whatever and let the people there consider themselves to be indebted to him.
Kosovo has an almost mystical (sp?) meaning for the Serbs. In the the 14th century they had a battle there against the Turks (actually, AFAIK, fighting together with several other ethnic groups, eg the Albanians). They lost, but this battle is - in the eyes of the Serbian nationalists - the foundation of the Serbian nation. The nationalists see themselves as the defenders of the Christian Europe. So for the Serbs, the Kosovo is the birthplace of their nation. And they dont want to let it go, even if today 90% are ethnic Albanians - or used to be, until a couple of weeks ago.
There are only 14 roads into Kosovo, all through rugged terrain. Perfect for the guerilla warfare the local people excel at. Land mines have been deployed in abundance along these routes.
Kosovo is about 6400 sq. miles. Easy to control access, with just a handful of men.
Russia isn't happy with the air strikes, and would be even less pleased by NATO ground forces in the area.
Remind me again, how many major wars have started in the Balkans? Is sending in the infantry really a good idea?
People like Exxon or Texaco ? Those company that destroy the environement to please their investors ? Yeah, nice cause...
And I don't think the Vietnamese really enjoyed the "great support" of the US army either. The US army has no problem killing civilians or using them for experiments, they are here to keep Exxon shareholders profits.
I still believe the operations in Kosovo is necessary, but don't believe the Rambo III films : the US army is not made of nice guys trying to save poor civilians from evil bad guys.
The only humanitarian conflict in vietnam prior to US involvement was the French tyranny over the nation. Ho Chi Minh repeatedly appealed to Truman for diplomatic help in freeing the Vietnamese from the French. Since Truman never even responded, he turned to China (I guess Communism is better than slavery.)
I guess Clinton has his own definition of what "taking care of" means. I take this statement to mean that Clinton has identified every person who can concretely implicate him in the compromise of missile and nuclear technology to China, and is about to "take care" of them during this red herring war.
Isn't it interesting how Clinton's military timing always coincides with his political emergencies.
Big problem is that they did turn stand and fight when it involved the "elite" units like tha Takwlana Guards - my regiment fought the only major armored engagement of the was- look up the history of the 2ACR and the "battle of 73 Easting". They stood and fought hard, much like the German troops at the Falaise gap in WW2. Our better training, better equipment and better soldiers and tactical leadership carried the morning. Its not something I would want to go though again unless its for a very solid reason. Kosovo is ansty, but Im not sure that application of ground troops would achieve victory - and when unsure, I say don't send them.
I agree, just like how the US underestimated the North Vietmanese in the Vietnam War and lost.
>Desert Storm: A "victory," but hardly because of the competency of ground forces.
Oh BULLSHIT. The ability of the ground troops to execute a flanking manuver at high speed and then fight hard in meeting engagements along the front was a key component to winning the ground war. The 2ACR (where I was) engaged and destroyed over 72 AFV's in direct comabt with 2 DIVISIONS of Saddam's guard (elite) units that stood and fought at 73 easting. The fact that we did it whil taking only 17 casualties and 7 fatals is a tribute to the elan, professionalism, hard training, good equipment and tactical leadership of our troops. When push comes to shove, the infantry goes in - and before they get there the Cavalry will have swept in and scouted.
As for your experience in the 18th Corp or 82nd, you sound like a typical REMF. The rangers in Somalia were bound by ROE that prevented them from opening up and exercising all tactical options. Politicians were using the military in the wrong place and the wrong way - with predictable results: you go into a potential combat area with only 2 magazines and the orders not to fire unless you have a specific order to do so - it just gets you captured or killed. They were more worried about collateral casualties than those of their own troops.
As for that supposed soldier who dropped his clip rather than shoot, Im glad he wasnt in my sqaud - Id have buttstroked his busted head to mabye shake some sense into it, then been damned sure to see him prosecuted under the UCMJ for his cowardice. He volunteered to be there, and as such incurred responsibilities that he failed to carry. In dropping his lip and failing to fight, he not only endangered himself, but all the others in his squad, and possibly the entiere position. Inexcusable. Civilian mores have no place on the battlefield, and the sooner people realize this, the better. Overcoming the shock of initial combat (being shot at and actually trying to kill another huamn changes you in ways you never expect) is the hardest point that you can never train for. Getting moving and doing your job under combat is the job of the soldier - and his NCO. When those fail, the army will fail - as will the nation. The nation is better off without soldiers of that type.
If the army has changed that much since 92, then we are in a world of hurt - because we no longer hav soldiers, just whiners like you apparently are. These attitudes are OK for civilians, but have no place in the combat soldier - its a brutal bloody business; understand that first and foremost - when your job (you volunteered!) is to engage and kill your enemy, niceties will inevitably fall by the wayside.
The average american conveneintly forgets that - and must apparently be periodically reminded that war is a vicious bloody business even if done right, and thus it always will be. Wars mean people die - point of winning is to make sure lots more of the other guys die so they will give up and stop fighting. Anything else is just gloss.
The effectiveness, and the morality, of bombing other countries to try and influence their politics is more problematical.
If South Africa still had aparteid, would it be bombed today? Why not bomb Northern Ireland?
The comparison with Ireland highlights a part of the problem: who are you trying to bomb? The problem is not the governments - Britain is willing to give up the colony when a majority wants it. Rather it is elements of the civilian population: Republican (pro Irish) and more recently Unionist (pro British) paramilitaries who are perpetuating the trouble. Ironically in recent years the press and public opinion on the mainland have often been more sympathetic to the republican IRA than to Unionist paramilitaries.
In Bosnia, if Milosevic is deposed, will Serbs stop hating Albanians? If not, then democratic elections will likely return yet worse leaders. And bombing the civilian population will only reinforce their views, as WWII has shown.
I tend to think that if you don't care enough to send in troops to die on the ground, you don't care enough to be at war. On the other hand, doing nothing is hardly a better alternative.
I doubt that our Commander in Grief would think twice about such a ploy after all of the deaths that he has caused covering up his various illegal activities. IMHO, William Jefferson Clinton would throw a dozen women and children from a capsizing lifeboat to save his own hide.
I fully agree. Since WWII, we really haven't waged a war that we needed to be in.
Are there people dying at the hands of an oppressor? Yes.
Does this suck? Yes.
Is it any of our buisiness? No, its not. Only, and ONLY, when we fix all the BS that's wrong with US, and become a perfect community, do we have any buisiness correcting others. Something about stones and glass houses comes to mind.
That is, if you like using the word "correcting" to describe bombing the shit out of another nation because they told us to buzz off and mind our own buisiness (like we should be doing in the first place).
I haven't gotten rude yet, but this next statement will be rude, so if you don't like the way this missive is going, then you're REALLY going to be upset with the following few sentences:
The U.S. of A. is having yet another prick-waving contest with a much smaller and easily conquerable nation. Their attempts to cover this up with propaganda designed to make them smell like roses only work on the weak and gullible; as for the rest of us, it's as transparant as air. Hot air, at that.
I'm an american. I'm not proud of this, and I don't think I have been for quite some time. Why I should be proud that my parents copulated here, I don't know. I really had no choice in the matter, and with national interventions like this, I'm really glad I can at least claim this as an excuse.
--WorLord ("Great nations built from the bones of the dead/with mud and straw, blood and sweat/you know your worth, when your enemies/praise your architecture of aggression." -Megadeth)
" ... the Administration must redefine its objectives. NATO cannot survive if it now abandons the campaign without achieving its objective of ending the massacres. The Rambouillet agreement should therefore be stripped of its more esoteric components. The terms for ending the air war should be: an immediate ceasefire; the withdrawal of Serbian forces introduced after the beginning of the negotiations at Rambouillet, and the immediate opening of negotiations over autonomy for Kosovo. These negotiations are likely to be prolonged and bitter. But, at their end, Kosovar independence in some form is inevitable unless NATO insists by force on the kind of Serbian suzerainty which the President has promised--a course neither the alliance nor the American public will support.
If a ceasefire on such terms is rejected by Milosevic, there will be no alternative to continuing and intensifying the war, if necessary introducing NATO combat ground forces--a solution which I have heretofore passionately rejected but which will have to be considered to maintain NATO credibility. Whatever the outcome, stationing of some NATO ground forces in either Macedonia or Kosovo will be necessary, to serve not so much as peacekeepers as to prevent the Balkan conflict from widening. I have consistently warned against such an outcome. But, as a result of hesitations and confusions, NATO now has little choice if it wants to avoid a larger war."
There are going to be more... Milosevic got nothing to loose. And NATO can't back out either. My only hope is that US wont use a-bomb, like they did with Japan in 1945.
blib@dli.net
And to a large extent profit driven, and imperialistic and petty. However, let's not overlook the fact that:
1) The last 50 years of relative peace is largely due, IMHO, to large superpowers interfering in local events, either directly or indirectly. We have had peace, too. There have been some minor wars but nothing on the scale of the world wars.
2) Our current technology, including the internet and computing, is largely due to defense spending. This is also the reason that America has many very good science universities (MIT, Caltech, etc) These institutions derive much of their funding from defense spending.
So if the price of all this (as well as a steady gas supply for someone's car) is a little bullying every now and then, it doesn't bother me.
It's a nice idea. Unfortunately, damaging their computers, etc, won't make a difference. They are not America: they don't depend so much on computers and not everything computerized is networked. (Smartships and NT, anyone? ;)
/need/ to track their opponents, if you get what I mean. Their enemies are hiding out in general areas, anyway. They just need to go hunting.
And Serbs having satelites? Uh... whatever.
It might work, one in a million times. But I doubt you fully understand the conditions of combat there right now. This isn't conventional warfare... this is beginning to come nastily close to guerillia warfare. I doubt they
If you were to do something like this to a country as dependent on technology as the U.S of A, you might see results. But Serbia? No way. Of course, if conventional warfare were to start, then perhaps shutting down their computers and phone systems might have some effect.
>The last 50 years of relative peace
Peace, or the postponing of racial violence?
S'funny, but for all the killing we do in the name of peace, it never seems to arrive.
--WorLord (America-peace, through superior firepower)
Racial violence? How is this related to our peacekeeping role? I was talking about the kind of nation-state rivalries that occured before WWII.
We _have_ had relative peace. Sure there have been wars, some very bloody, such as vietnam, but nothing like WWI,II
Er, isn't that exactly what I said? You must have watched the same PBS program as I...
The guy's got nothing to say--as is rather typical of him, but that don't stop him from farting out another voluminous one. Anyone paid for this "Katz on War" ?
Sounds like a winner .
You're right, it's ethnic cleansing and probably a lot of murders. Feel better now? And btw, fuck Chomsky.
The Germans initial strategy was aimed at destroying Britain's air power and they nearly succeeded. It was only when they shifted to bombing civilian targets instead of airfields and radar installations that the tide tilted in favor of the British.
The British did indeed have superb pilots and machinery but they could not sustain the losses suffered in the early phases of the battle before the shift in German their target priorities.
WWII History
Well,
German planes are once again bombing a country...
Bad omen for the nato effort?
But the air war can win a war,
If they would actually also aim for industrial targets and would not have a media sitting there EVERYDAY wanting a final result for something which is going to be of a pro-longed period of time..*cough wwIII cough* then they could win with a pure air victory since nothing of serbia to oppose them would be left.
Face it if they wanted to do it Air power alone could win a war and if it is soley due to nukes.
It's not going to happen.
Quit doomsaying.
Proof: Meet me here in a year and I'll let you know:-)
" Nagasaki was certainly a war crime, as was the "finale" (the massive conventional bombing raid against Japan after they surrendered) "
Wait here, I'm going over to the U.N. to tell them that the verdict is in!
Before I arrived in this particular thread I noticed how poor a speller you were!
Now here you are defending your spelling and you still couldn't post a message with correct spelling! (to -> too)
I don't intend to be derogatory here, but thanks for the laughs man!
I don't think that is what he meant or what is happening now. They were working on a piecefull diplomatic agreement that involved placing soldiers to keep the peice in Kosovo, Milosevic walked away and his troops were sent to Kosovo to take it over. There is way more to it then what we are seeing today, but its supposed to be the Serbs turn to take over, and they feel its their right to take over Kosovo as a sort of revenge for past problems between serbs and albanians, I think the fudal war needs to end, or they will keep fighting each other till the very end.
You make it sound they are bombing for no reason or cheap reasons, I would think the US would have loved it if someone interveined in the USs civil war, as a matter of a fact both sides were asking for help from the British as I recall reading, the US is too mixed now to have another one of those and we are trying to teach tolerance to other races and cultures, the US is so diverse that they even have serbs protesting against the US intervention, and Albanians protesting againt the protesters to show their support.
It depends on how you look at it. I'm sure when it comes to his own power he will make the rational choice to stay in power, but its the cost of that power that can be thought of irrational.
Your memory is very short. My ancestors on my mother's
side were force marched 1600 miles through the dead of
winter from North Carolina to Oklahoma along "the
trail of tears", by a contingent of the U.S Army
commanded by General Alexander Scott.
Your memory is very short. Lookup the subject of
the massacre at Wonded Knee.
Your memory is very short. The U.S. Marines went into
Nicaragua to kill Sandino and pull the U.S. Fruit
Company's fat outta the fire. One month after they
killed Sandino, the U.S. Ambassador to Nicaraga, who
had asked for them, resigned from the Diplomatic
Corps and took a position on the Board of Directors
of (TA DAH) the U.S. Fruit Company.
Your memory is very short. So just to bring you up
to date. Reagan sold arms to Iran so he could send
Arms to our puppet pseudo-Guerrilla insurrection
in Nicaraga which was designed to overthrow the
lawfully constituted Sandinista regime. Just so
you won't miss the obvious--- the Sandinista's took
their name from the national hero and martyr (TA
DAH) Sandino.
There are countless other examples in American
history. But don't feel too bad, even historians
forget. The famous English military historian John
Keegan wrote in "Fields of Battle"
"There is, I have said, an American mystery, the
nature of which I only begin to perceive. If I were
obliged to define it, I would say it is the ethos
-- masculine, pervasive, unrelenting -- of work as an
end in itself. War is a form of work, and America
makes war, however reluctantly, however unwillingly,
in a particularly workmanlike way. I do not love
war; but I love America."
I wish he were right. I remember far too many times
in which we were not relutant to go to war, and then
did it poorly. At least I can agree wholeheartly with
his last sentence.
3.What will the effect of our actions there have on the region? Russia is getting pissed off, but Clinton assumes they are bluffing.
Russia (the govt) doesn't even want to get involved, its the Serbians in Russia that are pushing the Russian government to do something.
The worse thing Russia can reasonably do (reasonably meaning no nukes), is arm the Yogoslav army with more modern day weaponry.
But still no matter how you look at it, its all about race, its the Serbs and Albanians dragging everyone else down with their petty racial diffrences.
Just look at two recent examples of how the world deals with dictators:
1. Pinochet - Steps down as dictator. A year later, he's on trial in Britain for "crimes against humanity"
2. Saddam Hussein - Tells the U.S. (and much of the world, for that matter) to go f**k itself, gets his country bombed back to the stone age. 8 years later, he's still in power and still telling the U.S. to go f**k itself.
Personally, I say if Milosovic is really so evil, rather than using our multi-million dollar toys to kill people in his country, just repeal the executive order banning assassination and send a cia team over to put a bullet in his head.
>bumbling in Panama and the tripping in Grenada.
Thats a given - Grenada was a severe cluster fuck, and Panama not much better. All the guys I knew that went there learned a lot of what *not* to do from that.
Perhaps thats what the missing ingredient is - hardship is a brutal but effective teacher, and the easiness of the victory in DS may have had us learn the wrong lessons - the public certainly never did get the reinforcement of the lesson that wars kill people in ugly ways.
Seems none of the nightmare stuff made it to TV here - things like Iraqi soldiers in multiple pieces (usually torsos in the main area, limbs and or heads go with the turret), roasted from the fires of their tanks, or dead bodies bleeding out into the sand from our machinegun fire. And things a non-combatant would never get - the tighness in your stomach when the chem alarms go off, the wondering if you are going to make it back in one piece or at all to your wife and kid (whom you hadnt seen in over half a year), gritting you teeth every time the Brad "clunks" over someting hoping it isnt a mine, the dings and thuds of M-16 and co-ax 7.62 against the sides of your vehicle from your own guys just to keep those crazy Iraqi infantry from trying to close and drop grenades on your vehicle, the smell of cordite from firing your M16 at almost anything that moved out in bad-guy land. I still get those nightmares from time to time - even the smells come back. But you get on with it (as every generation that saw combat has done), and the dreams are fewer and farther between except after seeing Saving Private Ryan (the first 20 minutes of that movie ripped my guts - I could hardly breathe), and the recent stuff on TV about Kosovo tends to bring up things Id rather forget. Makes me grouchy as hell for a day or two, and a real pain in the ass to anyone crossing me (hence my ad hominenm REMF, for which I apologize, it was unwarranted).
So I guess even though some of us had to fight hard in spots, Ill admit that for most it was a thankfully fast and uneventful ride. But from that, people got the idea that war had become: send in the planes, and push buttons and it will all look good on CNN. But they forget that the ease was also a result of a well trained, well led, well supplied *professional* ground force with more experience and high quality small unit leaders than probably any fielded since the second world war (exceptng Israel). Pushbutton is what was shown, but not what really got the job done.
As a veteran, you and I know this "easy war through technology" is not so - and if the Army leadership has bought into that lie, and let the training and leadership that was forged during the cold war slip, then the current armed forces will be unable to win a ground engagement in Yugoslavia. Maybe its true some gripes I heard from my lifer buddies (NCOs and Warrant officers) in the 2ACR - that they're too concerned with being cops, and not working hard enough on being soldiers. If this really is the case then they had best not get our troops even near the border.
The incident with the 3 captured scouts drives home this point to me - they had gotten sloppy. You never patrol out of sight, you never let your buddies in the other squads get seperation, and you damned sure dont get into a place where you cant get out or get help. An active scout patrol in a war zone should have never violated bounding overwatch and gotten isolated like that. It points to tactical leaders that have gone soft playing "cops" rather than combat. And if its an indication of the slippage in skill of the Captains (who plan the recon) and the NCOs (who execute the recon), we are in a world of shit as far as the combat capabilities of our armed forces go.
Well I really should go back to bed - Im rambling, and need the rest. I have a younger brother in the 101st thats headed over that way, and Ive been trying to give him every tip I could squeeze from my mind to make damned sure he gets back here to us in one piece, and not too messed up in the head. Hopefully, things will be resolved, Milosovich will somehow come to his senses (or we will blow him to bits and find someone else more reasonble), and Clinton will realize what a tar-baby the Balkans are, and get us out before we get further mired.
Too tired - good night.
One thing I learned from 27 months in Viet Nam was to filter out the rhetoric about how evil the other side is and to ignore, to the maximum extent possible, anyone who uses it. They're not in touch with reality, and they will get you killed if you let them lead.
pem@televar.com
former Sp5, Co. A, 8th Psychological Operations Battalion, RVN 1967-1970.
"When was the last time the US bombed any white people. The Germans! Why? They wanted to dominate the world! Bullshit! That's our fucking job. They wanted to cut in on our action....."
Carlin was right. We may cloak the motives for our bombing with high minded humanitarianism but we mainly just like to play with our destructive toys. The Nintendo Pilots are riding high again.....
there will be your turn to see other side of your own bombs
Where do you get your information?
The CIA tried seven times to assasinate Fidel Castro. All attempts failed.
This is WWIII fool! This parrellels what the NAZI party did in WWII. We are fighting with the underdog, the Albanians, who are slaughtered in mass (unarmed) by the Serb forces. People like you discust me. You love your freedom but it is obvious to me you wouldn't fight for it. What we do now we do because we owe our forefathers for our freedom. The only way to repay this debt to mankind is to come to his aid when his basic human rights are violated.
Every Serb in Yugoslavia signed their death warrents when they backed a madman. This is war my fellow geeks! Pray we do not lose this endeavor for when we do mankind has lost.
I got it out of a book on US-Arab relations in the Utah State University library about 3 years after the war.
If you want a good body count (including of the 500,000 Iraqi dead under the age of 10 as a result of sanctions) read the Iraq section of Z Magazine. www.znet.org
Squeeze Truck using a new browser
i'd love to see some NATO assess getting kicked
out of kosovo,you mean nato boys who are
accustomed to drink cold coka cola in the middle
of the gulf desert are superior to serbs who
fight for over 9 years?
you are kidding!
serbs will kick some serious ass.
all they want is some us and nato troops to go in
then the party begins....
USA Uber Alles...fuck off!
Your comment about Hartmann (and yes, I read the book, too) is totally invalid. He was flying on the Eastern Front against woefully unprepared pilots flying in for the most part antiquated equipment. If the German pilots were so good against the Brits, how come the British kill ratio was so high?
Actually, as Liddel-Hart admits, the Blitzkrieg is
the combination of tactics Germany employed at the
end of WWI combined with the caterpillar treaded
armored warfare doctrine of combined arms which the
Brits developed between the wars.
These doctrines of mobile combined warfare are based
on studies the Brits and Germans did of the campaigns
of Genghis Khan and his great stategist Subedei
in the 13th century.
The tactical and strategic doctrines taught at the
Mongol war college (also the Imperial Guard - the Keishik)
bear so many similarities to Sun Tzu that it is
possible that they came down to the Mongols from
China.
The point is, German technology and military strategy came very close to winning that war. In the end, they were defeated not due to any deficiency of their technology, but because of the sheer stupidity of thier leadership. Fight a war on two fronts at the same time? Invade Russia in winter? What idiots!
Hmm, Operation Barbarossa (the attack of the Soviet Union) started on June 22nd 1941. Not exactly what you call winter in Europe. It just took longer than the German leadership expected. It was supposed to be a blitz like the attacks on Poland and other countries before. The stupidity was the thought that it should go one like this.
With all those techno-wars and the rhethoric against the individual "evil" leaders, I always wonder why people don't simply send in some secret service to assassinate the "evil" leaders of those "evil" states. Even techno-war does incredible collateral damage while possibly even strengthening the "evil" leaders. Assassination of those leaders would be a much cleaner and more effective way of ending these conflicts; but I fear that wouldn't televise so impressively....
There is another way, Mormons!
Send them in on their bicycles, wearing their purity pants, bibles in hand.
Let's see how Milosevic feels when he gets woken up early on a Sunday morning by a knock on his door...
And let's see him try to get rid of 'em!
"....what's that Slobodan - you surrender?"
:-)
I'm glad to see that at least one other Slashdot reader is 'up' on Balkan history. The strange alchemy by which Yugoslavia has been transformed from a model of multiculturalism to a country torn by 'ancient ethnic hatreds' by the press is profoundly disturbing because it offers such an easy excuse for us to back out.
But to keep vaguely on topic, the technology of modern warfare is not so much the smart bombs we're dropping on Kosovo as the communications satellites and plain old newspapers that repeat that grainy video footage and still photos around the world.
This is because all war is, ultimately, about mindshare. You can 'win' a battle by standing on a piece of land, but you win the war by convincing your enemies that you should be standing on that piece of ground. Conversely, your enemy wins by convincing you that you shouldn't be.
And as the information age strenghtens its hold, the struggle over the representation of reality becomes increasingly important. Our enemies have understood this -- all it took to get us out of Somalia was a dead soldier being dragged through the street. The Somalis staged a photo-op when they invited the press to come see a 'demonstration' of Somali hatred for US intervention. And we bought it. The death of one soldier brought the most powerful military in the world to its knees by altering our perception of the war we were engaged in.
The smart bombs and stealth fighters that people seem to believe make up modern warfare have all the emotional involvement of a video game. Bleep, bleep, bang. Watch the space invaders on the screen.
So when that 'sanitary' emotional detachment is turned on its head by a clever adversary who uses the supposedly inferior technology of radio, television, and the printing press, our sense of dislocation leads to a desire to withdraw as quickly as possible to regain that detachment and distance from the suffering of others.
I think John's piece is really trying to get at the fact that war is becoming more of a mediated event between perception and reality more than between two hostile parties. I don't agree with his dichotomy between nature/tribalism and created/technology, but I do think technology is having a profound effect on what war is becoming. It's more than how tanks, planes, and networks stack up against crazed dictators and guerillas fighters. It's about how technology creates a new battleground in the public sphere between perception and reality, which is especially suited for the guerillas, dictators, and evil captain kirks trying to control something as equally important as tangible goals like land or freedom from tyranny: technologically mediated global hegemony. Check out the French Philosopher, Paul Virilo, for more on the technologically mediated war.
Midway between favored NATO friend Turkey, and the unfinished Caspian Sea oil pipeline that we don't want to go through not-so-favored friend Russia.
Care to provide more information? Aren't you confusing Kosovo and Chechenya?
I have to say that I agree wholeheartedly with Katz, and with your premise. But there is a bigger issue that you're missing. Something that Katz alluded (spelling?) to is that international politics is dealing with _people_, and just as importantly, people from other cultures and belief systems. We humans aren't 100% rational, none of us, no matter how much you may try otherwise. The trouble of a clean bombing war is that it takes the human aspect out of it. We all have our own unique feelings and perceptions. Machines don't. The people we are dealing with don't think like we do; and this techno-war, as Katz calls it, only obscures that.
One thing that i hate about the current political situation is the absolute demonizing of the person of Milosovic. He isn't solely to blame (like Hitler was) for the *ethnic-cleansing.* The hate for Albanians is pervasive throughout all Serbs in the area. We need to deal with the perceptions and beliefs of an entire culture, not just a single leader. This is the travesty of the current war. Both sides of the conflict are guilty of ethnic hatred, thousands of PEOPLE, not just one man.
To rebut your point, we _are_ dealing with rational people. But the simple logic of a material society (like ours) doesn't translate to a religious, ethnic region like Yugoslavia.
There's something else that Katz hinted at, is that these are not bloodless wars. How many people died during the Gulf War? not 90 some, but 20,000 PEOPLE DIED. Same thing here is Yugoslavia. The death toll is in the thousands. But this clean technological TV cable view we have of the war hides this.
One final comment. I'm somebody who is entering the (U.S.) Air Force. I'm prepared to give my life if need be. But I don't like this perception that these wars are bloodless. Wars are sometimes necessary, but people must remember what wars are: fighting for something that is right, not simply using violence to force them to do what we want them to. The Clinton foreign policy has continuously tried to do this, forgetting how other people think, what they believe in, and try to force our Western ideas on them (using violence if necessary).
Let's suppose that Open Source would be outlawed. Let's suppose that a bunch of nerds start a militia and decide to fight. They're rational.
And the Diplomacy of Violence wouldn't work, since they are idealists.
Wars are never bloodless - anyone who thinks they can make it a useful tool without both intentional and inadvertent killing is deluding themself. I find this article amusing, because it points out most people's ignorance on the purpose and function of airstrikes, as well as the amazing lack of tenacity in the American public to accomplish a goal.
Intensive strategic airstrikes are supposed to hit at the centers of command, control, and supply - relatively big, immobile targets - and in that sense, the NATO bombings in Yugoslavia are turning out to be a textbook example. Deprived of intelligence and logistic support, an opposing ground force can then annihilate them. Examples of this, not pointed out in the article, are the Croatian and Muslim armies in the recent Balkan conflicts, and the US army in the Gulf War, 1991, which were both greatly assisted by US airstrikes. In the latter, the US walked away from routing the world's fifth largest army with barely over a hundred casualties.
While airstrikes can destroy targets of opportunity (small convoys of vehicles, etc) it is virtually impossible to inflict serious damage to a ground force from the air, unless they are dug in as a static defense, such as the Iraqi army in Kuwait. It's the ignorant politicians, knowing nothing about fighting, who make the incredible claims of "bloodless war" and "no civilian casualties".
Something implicitly stated in the article is that somehow the airstrikes "aren't working" and are "a failure". Hello!...it's been little over a week, and we're already judging its effects? The Serbs have been planning and executing their campaign of ethnic cleansing for months, do you want NATO to give up simply because they don't roll over dead for us? Their ground forces are beginning to run short of food and supply, and eventually enough of the Yugoslav Army will be chipped away by airstrikes to make sending a ground force (or even arming the KLA) a viable option. I find it sickening in this something-for-nothing world that someone can plan for the murder and removal of over 2 million people, and bet that the American public doesn't have the stomach or the attention span to stop him. Even worse is that Milosevic is right.
There's only one way to get ground troops fighting in a "painless" war. Mech droids.
Does Pres. Clinton remind anyone else of the evil, Klingonish Captain Kirk from the parallel universe who had the cool viewer/zapper installed in his quarters so he could remotely observe his crew members and/or zap them into oblivion with a push of a button (he even has the concubine, 'cept the one in the STTFG episode was much better looking)?
slashdot broke my sig
I thought perhaps at least someone would catch the irony. (Almost) unlimited power, wielded remotely without consequence or risk of personal harm is a very dangerous thing. Got a problem? Fire a cruise missle. Bad headlines? Blow up an aspirin factory.
Ok, maybe I was being a bit of a smartass, but it's a valid point.
slashdot broke my sig
* An embargo will make Serbia poorer, but won't by itself remove Milosevic. You can be a dictator in a poor country as well; in fact, it's easier.
Exactly. Look at the effect of trade restrictions against Cuba. Cubans have suffered terrible economic decline since the 60s. Castro owns the media, so he plays this up as evil U.S. imperialism and makes himself the hero. No matter what a Cuban thinks of Castro, how could he not resent the U.S. to some degree for making him, his family and friends suffer? As the old saying goes, "The devil ya' know is better than the devil ya' don't know."
slashdot broke my sig
Given a choice between using high-tech weapons and not, I'll take 'em. Any good soldier recognizes the value of the tools layed out in front of him.
As with all tools, their value is in how you use them.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
There are, after all, more than one way to skin a cat or, in this case, shoot down an airplane. Even the most slealthy airplane (and those things are very nearly impossible to spot on even the best radar sets) gives off a lot of heat. Fling a heat-seeker in its direction, and all you've got it a subsonic airplane and some flares.
It's about that time you start wishing you'd signed up to fly an A-10...
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Actually, most of the tail end of that on the
various news sites was saying it had to have been
a mechanical malfunction (perhaps they got a pot
shot off on it) - I and most of the experts quoted
on CNN and ABC News think their 30 year old
SAM technology didn't have a chance of shooting
them down.
What did you eat today? http://www.atetoday.com/
How else do you explain the fact that a $45 million "stealth" fighter gets shot down (most lilkely by an alert SAM operator)? Never underestimate the skill of your opponent.
...or missile, as the case may be.
If it *was* a mechanical malfunction, then the plane should have been grounded. Discounting pilot error (and I'm sure that they don't send newbie pilots up in stealth planes), theonly logical conclusion is that they were shot down (although I'm willing to concede it was a lucky hit..send up enough anti-aircraft rounds and you're bound to hit *something*).
The main reason most of the bombings during WWII were against civilian targets was because of the policy of night air raids. Until the German air defenses were destroyed or at least significantly impaired, losses were too heavy during day raids for extended day bombing campaigns.
The technology of that day did not allow hitting individual targets during night raids. For that matter, day raids were no piece of cake either -- even with the famed Norden bombsight in broad daylight, American B-17's missed more often than they hit.
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Unfortunately, I have to agree.
Sherman's march and Lee's surrender ended the American Civil War, for example. But the rights of the blacks in the Southern United States could only be guaranteed by Federal troops. After ten years of occupation, the North had lost its stomach for that. The moment federal troops were withdrawn, the black population were back to being virtual slaves again.
Force of arms can win a war, but cannot change the hearts and minds of the losers of that war.
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
Yugoslavia is to the WEST of Turkey.
The Caspian Sea is to the EAST of Turkey.
Go look at a map, fool. There's no way for a Caspian Sea pipeline to go through Yugoslavia to get to Turkey. The Caspian Sea is on the wrong side of Turkey for that to happen.
See http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cabs/caspian.html for more info on the geography of the Caspian sea oilfields area.
Oh -- Noam Chomsky is going senile. Brilliant linguist, nice person, but he keeps thinking up bizarre things like oil pipelines that somehow skip over Turkey to get to Yugoslavia, then turn around and go back into Turkey. (huh? doesn't make sense? Now you get it!). Or else he's just doing like Ed Muth, and making it all up as he goes along. Either way, his web site is NOT providing facts, but, rather, is providing bizarre conspiracy theories similar to the right wing sites with their black helicopters baloney. Except that Noam is a left-wing conspiracy freak. Same difference.
-- Eric
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
These cultures have not "been killing each other for centuries" -- the ethnic cleansing conducted by Serbian nationlists first in Bosnia and now in Kosovo is the product of a deliberate and callous fabrication of history as a means of attainting and maintaining political power.
For reference:
If nothing else, at least read Survival Guide -- probably the most poignant and clever book I've ever read. Basically, it's a tour-guide to a besieged Sarajevo covering the blacked-out nightly hotspots, corners to avoid because of constant sniper fire, and where to find water (the local creek), firewood (the city's parks), and food (grow it or scavenge in the fields under cover of night).
But for a really good history and background on the current conflict, you have to read Yugoslavia: Death of a Nation.
An excellent point, but the fact is that all three 'ethnic' groups were coexisting peacefully in Bosnia before the intervention of a revived Serbian nationalism. In the early days of the war in Yugoslavia, many of the Serbs living in Sarajevo fought on the side of the so-called Muslisms and Croats. A constant refrain of the writing of the time is disbelief that a secular Western state could be undergoing such a bloody civil war based on nothing more than a fictional past of a Greater Serbia. In fact, intermarriage amongst the three 'distinct' groups was so great that often the only way to tell them apart was by surname... and we all know how much that means.
Yes, there was a residual fear (which, as you pointed out, is not without a certain degree of legitimacy) amongst the rural Serbian 'peasantry' that a Croatian-dominated government might attempt to resume a policy of exclusion, even annihilation. But this fear was deliberately roused by Serbian nationalists such as Milosevic in the pursuit of political power. None of the sides in this series of wars comes out smelling like roses -- the partitioning of post-war Bosnia reveals the cynical manipulation carried out by political leaders on all sides, but when you look at Sarajevo before the war you see a functioning multi-cultural city within a functioning multi-cultural state.
The problem is that "ancient ethnic hatreds" is an easy out for the West. We simply throw up our hands and walk away saying "there's nothing we can do." But the truth is that there was something we could have done then (we could have defended Sarajevo and Bosnia against both Serb and Croat partitioning and held it up to the rest of Yugoslavia as the only thing worth fighting for and not over) and there's something we can do now (we can uphold the principle of self-determination upon which Western culture is supposedly founded and show that democracies can and will stand up to genocidal nationlists -- basically, we can make amends for WWII).
As a kind of aside: Rwanda was another country that we abandonned to 'ancient hatreds' until much of the killing was over as we could step in and try to look good. What most newspapers never bothered to say/discover was that this ethnic hatred was rooted in the policies of the Belgian colonial administration. Belgian administrators resurrected the myth of two founding peoples in Rwanda and allocated senior positions in the colonial government to those lumped under the term "Tutsi." Hutus were denied these positions on the basis of 'race.' How did the Belgians distinguish between these two 'races?' By the number of cows an individual owned. More than, as I remember, four cows and you were a wealthy Tutsi. Fewer and you must be Hutu. I think you'll agree that ownership is a pretty inaccurate way to determine 'racial' membership. But somehow, this became the reason to kill 500,000 of you neighbours.
Identity is malleable and constantly in a process of fabrication and reconstruction. There is a Yugoslavia in which people have been killing each other for millenia. But there is another Yugoslavia that was a tolerant, multi-ethnic state. By waiting so long to intervene in Bosnia, we allowed the ascendance of one identity over another (in this case, I believe, the 'bad' over the 'good') and the consequence was a cultural, if not fully physical, genocide -- a thousand years of largely peaceful coexistence were wiped out and replaced by a bloody, nationalist vision of history. We have an opportunity now to prevent a repeat in Kosovo.
I actually agree that "The air war will change nothing" in the sense that it will not solve the essential problem of Serbian/Kosovar identity (which hinges, thanks to nationalist rhetoric, upon the occupation of Kosovo), but I think that's also because we're going about it the wrong way. We believe that a santized air war will somehow save us from the very dirty, lengthy, and complicated process of establishing an environment in which moderates have a 'fighting' chance of creating a Serbian identity that is not contingent upon the posession of a battlefield upon which the Serbs lost over six hundred years ago to the Ottoman Empire, and a Kosovar identity that does not hinge upon the denial of Serbian rights within a primarily Albanian state. It might be messy. It will be complicated. But we should not walk away -- we have the capability and we have the ethical obligation.
Posted by ostbahn:
The Germans very well could have won the war in the air, if they had not been so stupid as to stop targeting the RAF, and start bombing civilian centers. The RAF was very close to complete destruction, when the Germans suddenly started targeting urban London, in retaliation to the RAF bombing of German cities.
Posted by LOTHAR, of the Hill People:
Unfortunately WAR does work. If you're willing to fight a war on an "Old Testament" scale, like the Romans rolling into Carthage, you can win your war.
There are two kinds of War
War between governments and War between people.
The Falkland Islands war is a good example of a war between governments. A war between government is fought until one side surrenders. Reparations are then made, and life goes on.
A war between people are always more brutal. These wars aren't fought until one side surrendures, but are fought until one side decides they have won. Genocide is often the result. It does not take supertechnology to acheive this end, just lots of hate and a strong stomach. "Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Israel" These are not examples of the kind of conflict that is occurring within Serbia/Kosovo. Slobedan has no interest in the occupants of Kosovo, and it's quite obvious that he prefers Kosovo unoccupied.
Posted by LOTHAR, of the Hill People:
The Falkland Island War was Fought in the late 70's between Argentina and the UK over the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. It was mostly a Naval/Air war. When Argentina lost all its ships and planes, they surrendured and gave up their claim to the Falkland Islands. It was a short war. It'sthe only war between two NATO countries that I am aware of. The UK was a little peeved about the fact that Argentina was a very good customer for American weapons. The UK lost a prize destroyer to a US made cruise missile.
Posted by LOTHAR, of the Hill People:
I stand corrected.
I wasn't sure about its NATO status. I just knew it was fought with NATO weapons on both sides, making for interesting military history.
The details of the war are a little foggy, I havent thought of it in many years. and is not a particularly relevant thread, but thanks for the correction
I think the guy from West Philly was talking about the difference between statistics and real life. I didn't read the article linked to the top of the thread, but since Greenspan was the impetus for this part of the thread, I'll mention this: Greenspan likes to speak of job insecurity as a Good Thing. It keeps wage demands down in general, which helps keep inflation down. While the numbers bear him out, I'm not happy with his cold-blooded logic. There is no discussion about why this particular low level of inflation is needed; its desirability is taken as a given.
I won't try to draw a line from "Good Economic Numbers" to "Urban Decay" - I'm sure economists like Ken Galbraith and Doug Henwood (et mucho alia, including non-economists like Chomsky, I suppose) have written volumes that would better explain it. To ask someone to do it here is a sucker's bet - and it's sort of a time-wasting wiseass question. (Though I will point out that Perot's famed "Giant Sucking Sound" -- which contributes to Greenspan's beloved "job insecurity" -- refers, in part, to jobs that, in the past, brought some degree of prosperity to the inner city). As someone who has spent time in some horrid parts of the Bronx, Manhattan, Newark, Baltimore, and the rural South during the stock market booms of the 60's and 80's, I can testify to the well-fed's willful disconnect between good numbers and real life.
I see an increasingly brittle economy. I'd love to just bask in Dow 10,000, a healthy portfolio, and Labor Department figures and not intuit the brittleness that I do. Look at Japan, Australia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Brazil... it is, after all, a global economy, right? There's a lot of bad numbers out there.
I guess the acid test will be the inevitable downturn. Congress had to coerce Bush into signing supplemental bills to provide unemployment benefits for people during the last recession -- the result of tightening eligibility rules. I think much more extensive activity will occur next time. It won't be pretty. I'd love to be proven wrong. We'll see.
--
--
=8^
I was in Desert Storm. Putting all the crap about oil a side. We were there to release Kuwait from the control of Iraq. I can remember the month of bombings. It was very very effective at removing the fight from Iraq ground troops.
Don't forget that Iraq would have been alot longer if we did not "soften" them up with Air attacks.
Still in the end it took Ground troops. Until the ground troops went in Kuwait was still being looted. No matter how many bombs fell. I can remeber being at the Kuwait international airport. The Marines were still running into small pockets of resistance.
War has changed alot since WW2. Still the basic's have not changed.
1. You have to degrade there supply's.
2. Remove there ablity to move supply's to there troops.
3. Remove there ablity to communicate with there own troops.
4. Control the sky's over the conflict.
5. Ground troops must take and hold the land.
I really don't like to see Current conflicts compared to Vetnam. I see the biggest difference being that fact that we have a all volenter army. These soldiers are professinals at what they do. They are trained and equiped to carry out the will of our nation. The also KNOW THE REAL DEAL. They know that they will have to fight. They know that they may have to die. The accepted that when they joined. They have been reminded ever since they first showed up for Basic Training. The american public may want to believe in a new world where our toys will do the fighting. but the Military stills knows that People will have to sacrifice there lives. The Infantry knows that they are the final word when it comes to winning a armed conflict.
Kuwait was not free till Coalition troops could hold the land. In a way it is sick to kill with out having to get your hands dirty. Getting your hands dirty is the only way to understand the sacrifice.
Independance for Kosovo now!
Last one in jail is a fascist.
A paper tiger that has 11000 nuclear warheads pointed to every other NATO country... sure it's not a superpower anymore, but they still have what it takes to remove all forms of life from this planet.
Russia will not go to war with NATO over Serbia. They want to pretend like they are still a significant world power, so they oppose everything the US does. They won't back it up.
As for nukes? Jesus, do you really think Russia would launch ICBMs over this?
Well at least learn to spell cannibal.
The handling of Castro was a giant CF from day one. Castro did make public appearances, CIA just screwed up. There seemed to be a real trend for that at the time (Bay of Pigs, Vietnam etc).
I agree that NATO doesn't want to get into the assasination business, that's why it would be one man. Nothing's illegal if you don't get caught.
The problem with cyberwarfare is that it isn't intended to win a war.
If the US had really wanted Saddam dead, a single gunman could have pulled it off. If we wanted Milosovec dead, once again, a single gunman could do the job.
The reason killing those men isn't an objective is because they are more symptom than cause. Kill Saddam, and someone will step up to take his place. The same for Milosovec. It's the cultures themselves that are the cause of the problem, and you can't change that with any sort of warfare or force.
For example, Isrial vs. PLO. You'll notice that once the leaders were nearly brought together for a peace agreement, we saw an asassination and a new hard line leader elected. The culture as a whole did not WANT peace. Kill the 'bad guy' and the culture will find a new one.
In other cases, it's not so much that the culture wants conflict, but that the society has an innate weakness that allows such leaders to come into power. Get rid of the leader, and as often as not, another will surface.
Those are HARD problems, and most polititions like to stay away from hard problems.
The reason we're suddenly seeing these problems is that the Soviet Union was supressing all of this by force before. As soon as the force was removed, the fundamental problem reemerged with a vengance.
Cyberwarfare IS good for the first 80% of winning a war. That last 20% is the problem. The last 20% is the part where tanks and infantry must go door to door supressing the enemy. It isn't flashy, or soundbite friendly. It is dangerous for the troops. That's probably why we keep skipping that part and wondering why nothing fundamental changed.
Indeed, there are many faces to propaganda/facts. See here for a different perspective.
You compare the bombings in Serbia with the bombings of Germany during WWII. There is an important difference in that most of the bombings during WWII were against civilian targets (cities), hoping to demoralize the population. That turned out not to work. Late in the war, they started concentrating on the factories and oil depots, which gave a much larger bang for the buck (pun intended).
Another interesting difference between WWII bombings and these hi-tech weapons is that in this case the weapons used to destroy a target may be many times more expensive than the target itself. Granted, the US has a lot of money, but will it really pump that much into a war?
-Lars
The 117 was never meant to be "invisible," just
somewhat "less visible."
If the air defenses shot down the plane because
of luck instead of skill, they'd have also been
able to shoot down the rescue helicopter, which
is a much larger target, in both visible and
radar wavelengths.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
Since when? It could go any number of routes
bypassing either... if it can go through Yugo-
slavia, it can come down the other side of the
Balkans through Romania to Greece, or just stop
at the Black Sea somewhere in Ukraine...
If the terminus actually had to be in Yugoslavia,
I hate to break the news to you, but controlling
the terminus isn't of very much strategic value
when the rest of the pipeline's thousands of
miles of length isn't in your control.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
In which case it could go through Greece, up through Romania/Bulgaria/whatever, thence northward around Yugoslavia... I have to admit, from what I know of pipelines, that this particular conspiracy theory doesn't make sense. Pipelines are too vulnerable. Hard to make, easy to break, and difficult to guard.
Tankers would be easier.
Phil Fraering "Humans. Go Fig." - Rita
(currently testing something about signatures here)
I also agree that this is a very good article. I'd suggest reading if your interested in the political side of this war.
Oh no, a Hitler reference already. Did this thread really need to die this quickly? Godwin's law rules though.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Because there is no such thing as a 'declariation of war'. It's a political myth. The US never declared war against Northern Vietnam, NATO never declared war against Iraq, the UK never declared war against Argentina.
Nick
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
The Armed Forces do not and should not have any relationship to the "honor" of the United States. They are explicitly under civilian control. I'd much rather have president with no military service than one who believes it is the army's job to protect the country from the excesses of democracy.
Let us also rememeber that JFK, LBJ, and Nixon all had military backgrounds-- yet the Vietnam Conflict was a bit of a disaster.
AFAIK, the position of the United States is that POWs can result from a general class of armed conflicts that include, but are not limited to wars. The Vietnam "War" was never a declared war, yet captured soldiers were considered POWs.
Of course, it was also the position of the US that the Montenegro operation was a seperate conflict, and that their capture was "kidnapping." Either the Serbs are bound by the Geneva Convention, or they're international terrorists.
Mistreatment of the prisoners is either an act of terrorism, or a war crime.
If technology is used to obfuscate the reality of war, is writing about technology in war used for the same reason? Put another way, if you duck talking about the rights or wrongs of the mission, or the interests/purposes it serves, is the rest of this piece a red herring?
What you're saying then, is 'if you get bombed, do as you're told.' That's rational, I presume -- though I'm less sure if that if the US was getting bombed by someone with the declared intention of protecting a minority within our borders, we would respond as 'rational actors'. Just a thought. (Apologies for the we=USA language)
FYI: the region of serbia known as Kosovo is entirely landlocked. It borders with Macedonia, Albania, Serbia and Monetnegro. Montenegro is the costal portion of Yugoslavia. However, it should be noted, due to the political structure of Yugoslavia, Montenegro has managed to declare neutrality in this situation. In fact, their leader (I forget his name) officially broke with Milosivic.
As for requiring costal access, this is not necessairly true. Switzerland and Austria seem to do fine. As do many other land locked nations.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Recently the United States has been really big on using the Diplomacy of Violence. Essentially, this amounts as violence from afar to acheive political goals. Usually this is done with planes or missiles and no men on the ground. Components of Katz's techo-war.
But there is a problem with such a situation. Diplomacy of Violence only works if dealing with a rational actor on the other end. If the person with whom they are trying to "negotiate" with is able to weigh the costs and benefits of a situation, then it will work.
But the problem lies in the fact that Milosovic and Hussein are not rational actors. Both of them suffer to a degree from the same problem Hitler did. Hitler was fanatical about the destruction of the Soviet people. So much so that he overlooked many common military procedures and diverted troops to what ended up as a disastrous operation (the whole thing about not bringing winter clothes when going to Moscow was a bad idea to).
Milosovic suffers from the same problem. He is a fanatical nationalist determined to see an ethnically pure Serbian state, and is willing to stop at no cost in order to acheive this. That is why the current Diplomacy of Violence will not work. All it has done since bombing began was speed up the clensing process and increase the Serbian resolve to continue.
I'm not trying to say one way or another what I think about the hurrent conflict, as that is irrevelent to the message of this post. What I'm trying to say is that the techno-war will inevitably fail against non-rational actors.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
In Vietnam, the reporting was at least in part impartial, with (admittedly inflated) body counts showing in the corner of the screen. The fighting being shown was real too.
In the gulf and now in Serbia, actual numbers are hidden, and the "conflicts" are staged. Serbia is blowing up it's own houses for the benifit of TV crews, and NATO is doing the same. In the Bosnia affair, we had Croats shell their own buildings and beaches for the benefit of Western TV crews.
In the gulf, the viewing public was treated only to grainy images of the miraculous accuracy of our "smart bombs". No mention of the 750,000 Iraqi casualties.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
A brief rundown of the US bombing world tour:
China 1945-46
Korea 1950-53
China again 1950-53
Guatemala 1954
Indonesia 1958
Cuba 1959-60
Guatemala 1960
Congo 1964
Peru 1965
Laos 1964-73
Vietnam 1961-73
Cambodia 1969-70
Guatemala 1967-69
Grenada 1983
Libya 1986
El Salvador 1980s
Nicaragua 1980s
Panama 1989
Iraq 1991-99
Sudan 1998
Afghanistan 1998
Yugoslavia 1999
If only the rest of the world would simply accept that the US is always right, they wouldn't have any trouble!
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Kossovo used to be nearly 50% Serbian. Since the 1980's, that Serbian population has been uh, dealt with by ethnic Albanians.
The KLA is also nearly 100% an American creation. Those are US-supplied arms they're using, and there have been artocities on BOTH sides, not just Milosevic.
Oh, and the "genocide" is 2000 dead Kossovars, nearly all KLA and combatants, not helpless civilians like CNN tells you they are.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Wars are very convenient for boosting profits and keeping the public in check. If no other country is willing to stand up and be the big aggressive asshole, then it will just have to be the US.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
General Electric
Lockheed
Boeing
Exxon/Mobil
Just off the top of my head.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Hiroshima is questionable, Nagasaki was certainly a war crime, as was the "finale" (the massive conventional bombing raid against Japan after they surrendered).
As I have gone a bit off-topic, this post is sure to be moderated.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
If the Warsaw Pact nationa demanded that Russian soldiers be stationed in LA to prevent another riot, what do you think the US's response would be?
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
This intervention, like all US interventions, is about money and power and nothing else. All the noise about humanitarianism/anticommunism/antiterrorism is just that. Noise.
Judging from the ammount of support on /. here, the propaganda seems to be pretty effective.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
I don't know the circumstances, I'm merely quoting Chomsky (again). I got it from www.zmag.org
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The state dept. likes to use strong words like genocide because it sounds more serious than murder or war.
Oh, and I am getting news, I just run it through my bullshit filter before I repeat it.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
It was really hard to find those numbers too. They don't print them in the paper.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
If I were Clinton, and I knew I had to get ground troops in there at all costs, I'd want to make it look like I was forced to do it as much as possible.
They carefully selected the men by state too. From TX, CA, and MI. 3 large, important, populous and yet diverse states.
Why were they in harms way? Where was the rest of their unit? Did the Serbs just climb out of the sewer? Very fishy.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The overland Caspian Sea pipeline either has to go through Yugoslavia, or through Russia. Neither zone is under US or NATO control. Since NATO troops in Russia is out of the question, they have to go into Yugoslavia. NATO demanded Milosevic allow troops on the ground and would not back down on that point. Neither will Milosevic, so NATO will insert itself forcably.
Don't just believe me though. If you believe what the TV says, this will be a limited war and ground troops will not be considered. I predict however that there *will* be troops on the ground no matter what happens in Yugoslavia.
I give it a couple weeks.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
We overthrow central american governments so that United Fruit (and others) could move in. We installed the Shah in Iran to secure 50% of the British oil concessions. We supported Saddam, because he gave us oil too. When he tried to take the Kuwaiti oil fields, our favored friend turned into the Butcher of Baghdad. We supported and financed the Indonesian takeover of East Timor in exchange for yet more oil drilling rights. The list goes on.
But hey, the price of oil stays just low enough, and we all get to drive around our SUV's.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The pipeline goes through Turkey and has to get to Western Europe. I couldn't tell you where the eastern end goes exactly, but around the Black Sea would route you through Russia.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
The following is a translation of last night's
speech by the Prime Minister of Japan, explaining
why the Japanese air force bombed military bases
and command-and-control installations in the
American Southwest:
"My fellow citizens:
Today our armed forces joined our allies
in the Pacific Rim Organization for National
Treaty Observance in air strikes against American
forces responsible for the brutality in New
Mexico. We have acted with resolve for several reasons.
We act to protect thousands of innocent
people in New Mexico from a mounting military
offensive by the `border patrol.' We act to defuse
a powder keg at the heart of North America that
has exploded twice before in the last century and
a half with catastrophic results, when the US
invaded Mexico in 1846 and 1916. We act to stand
united with our allies for peace. By acting now,
we are upholding our values, protecting our
interests, and advancing the cause of peace.
Tonight I want to speak with you about the
tragedy in New Mexico and why it matters to Japan
that we work with our allies to end it.
First, let me explain what it is we are
responding to. New Mexico is a state of the
United States, in the middle of southwestern North
America, about 1500 miles west of Cuba -- that's
less than the distance from Hokkaido to Okinawa --
and only about 1000 miles north of Mexico City.
Its people are mostly ethnic Latino and mostly
Catholic.
In recent years America's leader, Bill
Clinton, the same leader who started the wars in
Iraq and Colombia and attacked Sudan and
Afghanistan in the last decade, increased the
authority of the federal
secret police, the `INS'; Mexicans are denied
their right to speak their language, run their
schools, shape their daily lives. For years,
Latinos struggled peacefully to get their rights
back. When President Clinton
sent his troops and police to crush them, the
struggle grew violent.
The American leaders refuse even to
discuss key elements of the Japanese peace
proposal. America has stationed Marines along the
border in preparation for a major offensive.
We've seen innocent people taken from their homes,
forced to kneel in the dirt and sprayed with
bullets; Mexican men dragged from their families,
fathers and sons together lined up and shot in
cold blood. This is not war in the traditional
sense. It is an attack by armored vehicles and
high-tech weapons on a largely defenseless people
whose leaders speak only of peace.
Ending this tragedy is a moral
imperative. It is also important to Japan's
national interests. Take a look at the map. New
Mexico is a small place, but it sits on a major
fault line between North America,
Latin America, and the Pacific, at the meeting
place of Catholicism and both the liberal and
evangelical branches of Protestantism. To the
South are our allies, Peru (whose president is of
Japanese descent) and Venezuela (which produces oil); to the north our
increasingly important trading partner, Canada.
And all around New Mexico there are other
states struggling with their own economic and
political challenges, states that could be
overwhelmed by a large new wave of refugees from
New Mexico -- California, Texas, Arizona. All the
ingredients for a major war are there: Ancient
grievances, struggling democracies, and in the
center of it all, a president in America of highly
questionable personal character who has done
nothing since the Cold War ended but start new
wars and pour gasoline on the flames of ethnic and
religious division.
In neighboring Guatemala President Clinton
recently acknowledged that American support for
torture and murder cost 200,000 lives. Earlier,
World War II engulfed the Pacific. In both wars,
the world was slow to recognize the dangers, and
Japan held back from entering these conflicts.
Just imagine if leaders back then had acted wisely
and early enough. How many lives could have been
saved? How many Japanese would not have had to
die?
We learned some of the same lessons in
Nicaragua and El Salvador a decade ago. The
world did not act early enough to stop those wars,
either. And let's not forget what happened:
Innocent people herded into concentration camps;
children gunned down by snipers on their way to
school; soccer fields and parks turned into
cemeteries; a quarter of a million people killed
not because of anything they had done but because
of who they were. Two million Central Americans
became refugees.
This was genocide in the heart of the
Americas, not in 1945 but in 1985, not in some
grainy newsreel from our parents' and
grandparents' time, but in our own time, testing
our humanity and our resolve.
At the time, many people believed nothing
could be done to end the bloodshed in Central
America, They said, `Well, that's just the way
those people in the Americas are.' But when we and
our allies in the UN joined with courageous
Central Americans to stand up to the aggressors,
we helped end the wars. We learned that in the
Americas inaction in the face of brutality simply
invites more brutality, but firmness can stop
armies and save lives. We must apply that lesson
in New Mexico, before what happened in Central
America happens there too.
Today we and our PRONTO allies agreed to
do what we must do to restore the peace. Our
mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness
of PRONTO's purpose so that the American leaders
understand the imperative of reversing course; to
deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent
civilians in New Mexico; and if necessary, to
seriously damage the American military's capacity
to harm the people of New Mexico. In short, if
President Clinton will not make peace, we will
limit his ability to make war.
Now, I want to be clear with you, there
are risks in this military action -- risk to our
pilots and the people on the ground. America's
air defenses are strong. It could decide to
intensify its assault on New
Mexico or to seek to harm us or our allies
elsewhere. If it does, we will deliver a forceful
response. Hopefully Mr. Clinton will realize his
present course is self-destructive and
unsustainable.
If he decides to accept our peace proposal
and demilitarize New Mexico, PRONTO has agreed to
help to implement it with a peacekeeping force.
If PRONTO is invited to do so, our troops should
take part in that mission to keep the peace. But
I do not intend to put our troops in New Mexico to
fight a war.
Do our interests in New Mexico justify the
dangers to our armed forces? I thought long and
hard about that question. I am convinced that the
dangers of acting are far outweighed by the
dangers of not acting --
dangers to defenseless people and to our national
interests. If we and our allies were to allow
this war to continue with no response, President
Clinton would read our hesitation as a license to
kill. There would be many more massacres -- tens of thousands more
refugees, more victims crying out for revenge.
Right now our firmness is the only hope the people
of New Mexico have to be able to live in their own
country without having to fear for their own
lives.
Imagine what would happen if we and our
allies decided just to look the other way as these
people were massacred on PRONTO's doorstep. That
would discredit PRONTO, the cornerstone on which
our Pacific security rests.
We must also remember that this is a
conflict with no natural national boundaries. Let
me ask you to look again at a map. The arrows
show the movement of refugees -- north, east, and
west. Already this
movement is threatening the unstable democracy in
Texas, which has its own Mexican minority and an
Indian minority. Already American forces have
made forays into Mexico, from which New Mexicans
have drawn support. Mexico has a Mayan minority.
Let a fire burn here in this area, and the flames
will spread. Eventually key Japanese allies could
be drawn into a wider conflict, which we would be
forced to confront later only at far greater risk
and greater cost.
I have a responsibility as Prime Minister
to deal with problems such as this before they do
permanent harm to out national interests. Japan
has a responsibility to stand with our allies when
they are trying to save innocent lives and
preserve peace, freedom, and stability in North
America. That is what we are doing in New Mexico.
If we have learned anything form the
century drawing to a close, it is that if Japan is
going to be prosperous and secure we need a North
America that is prosperous, secure, united, and
free. We need a North America that is coming
together, not falling apart, a North America that
shares our values and shares the burdens of
leadership. That is the foundation on which the
security or our children will depend. That is why
I have supported NAFTA and the economic
unification of North America.
Now, what are the challenges to that
vision of a peaceful, secure, united, stable North
America? The challenge of strengthening a
three-way partnership with the EU, that despite
our disagreements is a constructive partner in the
work of building peace. The challenge of
resolving the tension between Latin and indigenous
peoples, and building bridges with the Christian
world. And finally the challenge of ending
instability in the United States so that these
bitter ethnic problems are resolved by the force
of argument, not the force of arms, so that future
generations of Japanese do not have to cross the
Pacific to fight another terrible war. It is this
challenge that we and our allies are facing in New
Mexico. That is why we have acted now, because we
care about saving innocent lives, because we have
an interest in avoiding an even crueler and
costlier war, and because our children need and
deserve a peaceful, stable, free North America.
Our thoughts and prayers tonight must be
with the men and women of our armed forces who are
undertaking this mission for the sake of our
values and our children's future. May God bless
them, and may God bless Japan."
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Pretty obvious why NATO troops need to be on the ground there. I give it 2 weeks tops.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Chechnya is way way East.
--
As long as each individual is facing the TV tube alone, formal freedom poses no threat to privilege.
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Oh yes. When I think "Albania", I think "money and power". Not. Please explain to me how money and power are the driving forces in NATO's war. I don't think you can. I think Clinton was worried about becoming the president who stood by while Kosovo "happened".
And yes, there are other regions of the world which are as bad as Kosovo. So what! NATO is having enough trouble handling *one* of them, I hpe you're not suggesting we jaunt off to Sierra Leone now too!
Just because Clinton has clumsy foreign policy practices doesn't mean he's engaged in some sinister geo-political powerplay in Serbia and Albania.
Does that count as a "real American city"?
Finally someone who knows what he's talking about.
Unfortunately this discussion has basically been spammed and slammed by a bunch of individuals who don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's oh so trendy these days to snipe at the US for basically trying to use their power to help improve the world. (Clinton's bumblimgs aside).
We need to listen to this guy. He knows what the score is. He's keeping it real.
"Isn't it always about oil?"
Yes, of course Somalia, Grenada, Beruit, Panama, they were all about oil.
And I'd like to know what TV you're refering to. Mine won't SHUT UP about the possibility of ground troops. I think the only one who DOESN'T see it coming is Clinton. Typical.
Jeez, aren't we being a little dramatic here? And do you really believe Greenspan is responsible for urban decay? I don't see the logic, I'm sorry...
Low inflation + low unemployment != urban decay
Actually, yes it is ;)
Yeah, we are bullying Serbia. What do we want from them? To stop persecuting the Kosovar Albanians. So we're bullying a bully, because force is the only thing he'll understand.
I don't care for the way Clinton and the other NATO leaders are executing the war either. I guess that's the price you pay for living in a society where civilians, not the military, call the shots. But I think the ideas behind our actions are well meaning, at least.
I'm not really sure why you are opposed. I'm not saying there *aren't* legit reasons to be opposed, but you just seem to be saying that it's too easy or something.
You made a couple...interesting remarks there.
;)
"I do wish Greenspan worried less about inflation and more about jobs."
Last I check, enemployment was at a 29-year low in the States.
"what's so great about the constitution?"
Uhh, besides being the basis for most other western governments for the last 200 years, nothing, I guess.
i don't know if you read the salon article on the history of the yugoslav republics, but it's even worse. historically, the serbs celebrate a huge military loss as most ppl do a victory. they're not afraid to just fight until they're dead.
poor albanians. the serbs have been fucking with them for years in kosovo. why do ppl insist on running governments with the overtly abusive aspects of culture in mind rather than with an eye to suppress those abusive tendencies? damn megalomaniacs.
grumbling,
-l
Help cure AIDS, cancer, and more. Donate your unused computer time to worldcommunitygrid.org. Join Team Slashdot!
Only one area where I really disagree with you...
"The trouble with this is that this time Milesovic has nothing to lose: he is going to lose Kosovo anyway - autonomy will lead to independence. It's better for him to lose it in a fight. Wars really hurt democratic leaders but they really help despotic ones tighten their grip. In this way NATO is helping him."
If Milosovic is going to lose anyway, I think it'd be better for him if he were to lose with his military intact than for him to lose with his military hurt by weeks of air bombardment. A despot does not need an excuse to tighten his grip; if his military were to be seriously hurt, it would decrease his power, not increase it.
I honestly don't know why he wants Kosovo - the amount of resources he's spending and losing because of his present course of action are surely not as great as the resources he'd gain from keeping the region. It would have been much smarter for him to cede the area to Albania or give it independence or whatever and let the people there consider themselves to be indebted to him.
Our future is closely entwined in that of Western Europe. We will always act in ways that we hope will encourage long-term stability in that area. Whether our chosen actions are appropriate or not remains to be seen.
**>>BELCH
A riot is a spontaneous, unplanned outburst or confrontation, whearas the activity in Kosovo is carefully planned, directed and urged to continue by governing power of that country.
If the US government suddenly decided that all Mormons currently living in the state of Utah should be systematically killed and/or driven on foot to the Canadian boarder in the middle of winter, and outside countries expressed outrage and demanded intervention, I would think their reactions very civilized and appropriate.
**>>BELCH
... except that it might be one of the rare case where mentioning Hitler might be appropriate ...
The quote here is from PJ O'Rourke's book "All the Trouble in the World" (1994), which I strongly recommend. His politics are not my cup of tea but PJ, when he writes on things political, can make things astonishingly clear and funny, too. His new book, "Eat the Rich" is very funny, too.
....War doesn't work anymore. Rape and slaughter may get Serbia on the evening news, but, from the point of view of becoming major players upon the international stage, Serbs would be better off selling Yugos."
"The way Tito kept Yugoslavs from killing each other was he did it for them. This is the same technique used by the Romans, Byzantines, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians, Nazi Germans, and everyone else who's had the misfortune to rule the Balkans. The locals have to be provided
with an ample supply of new grievances, otherwise old grievances come to the fore. In Tito's case, one of the old grievances was Tito.
Although Tito himself was of mixed Croat/Slovene/son-of-a-bitch background, his World War II Partisan troops were mostly Serbs. In 1946, 100,000 anti-Tito Croat refugees were handed over to Tito by the ever-admirable British. Tito's partisans then killed something between 40,000 and all of them, with the usual number of women, children, and old people included. Of course, the Partisans didn't do this for a lark. The Croats, under raving nationalist Ante Pavelic, had established a Nazi puppet state in 1941 and killed as many as 350,000 Serbs.........
Who Hates Who, and Why...
The Christians hate the Muslims because Cristians were peons under the Ottomans. The Muslims hate the Christians because Muslims were pissants under the Communists. The Croats hate the Serbs for collaborating with the Communists the same way the Serbs hate the Croats for collaborating with the Nazis, and now the Bosnians hate the Montnegrins for collaborating with the Serbs. The Serbs hate the Albanians for going to Yugoslavia. Everybody hates the Serbs because there are more of them than anybody else to hate and because when Yugoslavia was created in 1918 (with the help of know-it-all American President Woodrow Wilson), the Serbs grabbed control of the govenment and army and haven't let go yet...
It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song. Even those of us who are savagely opposed to pacifism are tempted to grab the Yugoslavs by their fashionably padded shoulders and give them nonviolent what-for: "Even if you win, you ASSHOLES, all you've got is YUGOSLAVIA ! It's not like you're invading France or something."
(For promoting nationalism)
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Yes, but while Croats and Serbs may speak to each other they may not write to each other (serbs use cyrillic alphabet and croats use the latin). So yes, you're right, but I didn't feel /. was the place to get very technical about it.
support gun control: take guns from cops
?? ... and the Croats (ustachi) were slaughtering the serbs - whole villages of them - during WW2, and before that, etc. etc. Yes, they do hate each other, and yes they do have a long history of killing each other.
support gun control: take guns from cops
The only thing that has even kept peace in the Balkans has been occupation, plain and simple. The Ottomans kept an iron-fisted peace, as did the Austrians after them, albeit a bit more gently. Probably the US occupying the Balkans would be a bad idea; and as soon as our military presence disappears, they will go back to slaughtering each other.
The real problem is that these cultures simply hate each other. They are the same ethnicity; most people do not realize this. The bosnians, serbs and croats are all the same people, separated by culture - religeon, language ...
The way to fix this is not with bombs, but with televisions. We need to put a TV in every Balkan home and pipe in M-TV. This will eradicate their cultures, religeon and everything else along with it, turn their populations in drooling, babbling idiots, and hence fix the problem. Talk about techno-war. Hmphhh!
support gun control: take guns from cops
No matter which way you view it, fighting itself is the ultimate proof of idiocy.
From the texts of Sun Tze and Baltasar Gracian we know that the _BEST_ way to defeat your opponent is to make them defeat themselves.
Ah, well.... Clinton is not famous for his wits anyway, so what else can we expect from that "Cigar Man", eh?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
IANAL. In a nutshell, treason can be defined as providing aid or comfort to the enemy. In this particular case, If you are a citizen of one of the belligerents (a NATO member or Yugoslavia), and you compromise or attempt to compromise your country's or its allies' ability to wage the war, then that could be considered aiding or comforting the enemy. OTOH, if you conduct your IW attack against the enemy, and if you are not a member of your country's armed forces, then under the Geneva Conventions, the enemy can consider you to be a criminal and try you under their laws (assuming they can get their hands on you).
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
The real problem is not a technological one. It is a case of the politicians using the wrong tool for the job. The refugees are being run out of the country by ground troops using small arms and face-to-face confrontations. Using a multi-million dollar fighter/bomber flying at 20,000 ft and at hundreds of miles an hour is not the appropriate way to stop the guy on the ground with a pistol in his hand; only sending in ground troops will do that.
The politicians want to "do something" and not get hurt. It is much easier to blow up empty buildings with jets and expect no casualties than sending in ground troops to die. Air power should only be used to prepare the way for ground troops, not as an end unto itself.
I don't think this situation can be halted unless the country is occupied by foreign forces on a permanent basis and police state is created. Since I don't support that, I don't think we should be doing a half-ass job by bombing them because the politicians wanted to "do something".
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I believe this is a much better analysis and quality of writing than the above attempt by Katz:
War's own peculiar logic
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What they didn't consider to be important are issues like:
A corollary is what will we do when we finally realize that air power is not enough?
The main point is that this war is being fought for political reasons. Our country is not being threatened, so military reasons are not the motivation.
The politicians are covering their collective asses so they can get re-elected and look good on TV. They are walking a tightrope between "doing something" and not paying any political price for it. If they were concerned for the safety of the ethnic-Albanians above all, they would have gone in with everything and been convinced that American (and NATO) lives were worth losing on their behalf.
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I as well am completely ready to fight and even to die to protect my country. However, these current actions seem a bit odd and have nothing to do with protecting our constitution unless you follow this weird path of odd rhetoric about how this little Kosovo country could possibly destabilize Europe and then the world.
Sure, something similar happened earlier this century, but that was before instantaneous worldwide communication and the Internet.
If you want the real news: Try the kosovo Usenet newsgroups. (I forget the exact newsgroup name, just search for Kosovo or Yugoslavia) There is REAL news from real people there getting out. Unfiltered by the media machine. Angry people, scared people, not people trying to make a living or win a prize for writing.
Good point to include the lyrics from "Architecture of Aggression"!! (Especially as Russia has referred to this as the beginning of World War III)
-------------------------
Megadeth: Architecture of Aggression
Born from the dark,
In the back cloak of night.
To envelope its prey below,
Deliver to the light.
To eliminate your enemy,
Hit them in their sleep,
And when all is won and lost,
The spoils of war are yours to keep.
Great nations built from the bone of the dead
With mud and straw, blood and sweat.
You know your worth when your enemies
Praise your architecture of aggression.
Ensuing power vacuum,
A toppled leader dies
His body fuels the power fire,
And the flames rise to the sky.
One side of his face a kiss,
The other GENOCIDE.
Time to pay, with your ass,
A worldwide suicide.
Great nations built from the bone of the dead
With mud and straw, blood and sweat.
You know your worth when your enemies
Praise your architecture of aggression.
Born from the dark,
In the back cloak of night.
To envelope its prey below,
Deliver to the light.
To eliminate your enemy,
Hit them in their sleep,
And when all is won and lost,
The spoils of war are yours to keep.
Great nations built from the bone of the dead
With mud and straw, blood and sweat.
You know your worth when your enemies
Praise your architecture of aggression.
I have seen nothing from the US during my life except these "beat up the little guy and tell him what to do" skirmishes my whole life. No longer do we fight honorable wars like WWII - where we actually had a reason to fight (and even give our lives) to protect ourselves. Instead we behave like the mean kid on the block chasing little kids around with an electric cattle prod stolen from daddy. And laughing because they can't do anything to us. I don't like it. I don't like this whole NATO/Big Brother thing either. Read this for more info (The SmallBrain "mammals" will say it is anti-government. LargeBrained people will realize that it is pro-constitution)
I'm sure I'll get power-flamed for a lot of this. I love my country, but I fear my government. I'm just not really understanding the need for all these wimp-wars of the last 20 years. Why don't we just live our lives. If someone wants to be stupid enough to come mess with the US, then we can wallop them, but until then we should just be nice. This is more like walking around saying "I bet you can't kick MY ass!" - That's all fun until someone comes along that CAN. Every large empire (which is pretty much what the US has become) has behaved the same way. Now there is no Greek, Roman, English, empires. Someone finally kicked the arrogance out of them. We need to use our magic for good, not evil.
That is all I've got to say about that for now.
However, just looking at empirical evidence from the F-117's own history, there are many occasions where Nighthawks have gone down over the US deserts due to both pilot error and mechanical malfunction.
And who here remembers the tape from the east-coast airshow on CNN? The camera was following the 117 through a series of aerobatic maneuvers, when what appears to be one of the *control* *surfaces* departs the rest of the plane. Once again, the pilot ejected, and the plane became a smoking pile of ruins in someone's backyard.
I'd have to agree; if the plane was shot down, it was because the SAM operator just happened to catch it at a vulnerable point: either with its flat bottom pointed directly at the radar, weapons bay doors open, or some funky wavelength resonance of the craft itself being so close to a radar station. That, or a heat-seeker got a lucky, unadulterated view of the exaust end of it during a turn or something.
I used to think printing on on Unix sucked. Then I figured it out. Printing on Unix *does* suck. Like a Kirby.
"If Milosovic is going to lose anyway, I think it'd be better for him if he were to lose with his military intact than for him to lose with his military hurt by weeks of air bombardment. A despot does not need an excuse to tighten his grip; if his military were to be seriously hurt, it would decrease his power, not increase it."
It's not on Milosevic to decide anymore; Kosovo is not another colony, like the Falkland Islands or Hawaii - it's the basis of the Serbian national being. Any Serb leader who would sell Kosovo to its invaders cannot count to last (both politically and physically) more than a few days!
Panzer, the Serb
"Well,
German planes are once again bombing a country...
Bad omen for the nato effort?
But the air war can win a war,
If they would actually also aim for industrial targets and would not have a media sitting there EVERYDAY wanting a final result for something which is going to be of a pro-longed period of time..*cough wwIII cough* then they could win with a pure air victory since nothing of serbia to
oppose them would be left. "
...except for the 3+ million angry Serbian men! Germany underestimated that fact twice in this century!
Panzer, the Serb that gets more angry as days go by
Actually:
FOR SALE: F-117A Stealth Fighter/Bomber
Made in the USA! Needs work. $50 OBO
Airplane dump,
Budjenovci village,
23050 Ruma
Yugoslavia
"I don't think that is what he meant or what is happening now. They were working on a piecefull diplomatic agreement that involved placing soldiers to keep the peice in Kosovo, Milosevic walked away and his troops were sent to Kosovo to take it over."
Well, another, very important part of the Techno-war was totally underestimated by John Katz, and that is propaganda war, and that war start much before the bombs begin to drop on their targets. Same is in this NATO agression on Yugoslavia: the main goal of US and its allies is to install a base for its troops on the Balkans. The main target here is Russia, Kosovo is incidental. In its last meeting with Milosevic, prior to NATO bombing, Richard Hallbrook told journalists that his mission is to enforce Milosevic to accept NATO troops in Kosovo, not to settle down the humanitarian crisis (which was nonexistent at the time), nor to enforce Serbian side to accept Ramboulliet agreement. In fact, during Ramboulliet talks, US and UK mediators have told Serbian delegation that the Serbian proposal for the agreement is fair and very good - they just have to agree to let armed NATO troops "supervise" the agreement. Not UN troops, not OSCE troops - NATO troops.
Of course, it is difficult (if not impossible) to animate the public oppinion for military intervention if there is no human crisis, and NATO strategists knew that. The solution: create the crisis, manipulate the media to exploit that crisis (remember, there is no entity in Kosovo these days that can give the OBJECTIVE view on what is happening down there), and blur the real objectives.
Panzer, the truth seeker
"Anyway, the point was that the native Chinese people within China were actually United States allies, and the bombing must have been to aid them."
US and allies bombed many Serbian and Montenegrin towns in 1944. The bombing of Belgrade was right at the Orthodox Easter day. Result: about 2000 civilians and only 10 German soldiers dead, many civilians wounded, less than 20 German soldiers wounded. The bombing of Nis: about 1500 civilians and 1 (letters: one!) German soldier died. Same was with the other bombings. No substantial (if any!) damage on German military power. No bombardments on Croatian and Bosnian towns. Up to now, historians and military strategists cannot determine the reason for this bombardments.
Just to remind: Serbs were on the side of allies, and Serbia was under German occupation, Croatia and Bosnia were united in the Independent State of Croatia under Croatian Nazi government, an ally of Germany.
Conclusion: with such allies, who needs enemies!
Panzer, who remembers history
Can you explain the 1.2 million refugees in Serbia then? When Croatians expelled more than 200.000 Serbs from their homes in Krajina, gunning down the 400 km long colons of refugees, nobody in US raised a finger! Sorry, my mistake, thay DID provide intelligence data and planning to the Croatian army. These Croatian generals are now under investigation of the Hague court for those crimes.
Panzer, on shooting the "Wag the Dog II" movie
One historical example come to mind: WW1: In what was probably the greatest demonstration of skill-at-arms ever, Sgt. Alvin York, US Army, captured an entire German machinegun battalion. He did this alone, armed with a five-shot rifle and a seven-shot pistol.
At the time, the machinegun was the "ultimate weapon". It commanded the terrain for 500 yards, killing all in its path. The machinegun was the primary reason that WW1 was reduced to "trench warfare"--everyone was scared of 'em!
Today's "wonder weapons" are no different. A smart bomb still isn't smart enough to kill one rifleman. And it's the still the rifleman that carries the day.
--------------------
Earth first? Oooh, and I was thinking of paying the rent.
I agree with Patrick (this is Katz). The technology is logical, but what if the person on the receiving end isn't. This perhaps is the big flaw of the techno-war?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
What about technology and the common soldier? It's a great question..isn't the infantry hi-tech as well?
jonkatz@slashdot.org
...who wrote perhaps the best summation of the matter, in a wonderfully readable book called "Jihad vs.McWorld.".
\
I was obviously being polemical.
I just think sometimes people put too much faith in their forebears, and in abstract symbols like the U.S. Constitution.
What I was saying is that people should think critically about EVERYTHING, including the constitution that dictates how they are governed.
I actually agree with you that the Constitution is a symbol of a lot of important things about this country. But you have to admit that it falls short in certain very important areas. For example, it was written before the joint-stock corporation had been invented.
Constitutional lawyers have since argued successfully that corporations are more or less "people" as the constitution defines people. As such they are entitled to many of the same protections we are.
That has caused a lot of the problems that plague our country and in fact the planet as a whole.
As far as the Army is concerned, I think it's a damned good thing that people in the Army believe in the Constitution. Because that has undoubtedly been one of the reasons our democratic government has lasted longer than any other one. i.e. no military coups de'etat yet...
Also keep in mind that I was reacting to a rather strange, but interesting document pointed out by the originator of this thread.
\
Okay bud, I don't know where you live, but get out of your 'Burbclave and check out a real American city, and then come back and talk to me about the unemployment situation.
The unemployment levels among the American poor are horrific. Their standard of living has fallen through the floor since the 70s and 80s, and all these so-called jobs the Feds use to fake the unemployment statistics are low-pay-no-security-no-health-benefits horrors.
Things have gotten worse under the Greenspan regime for those who are the worst off; there is really no denying that.
Meanwhile, his inflation obsession has certainly helped the richest 10 percent pretty significantly. (Note: I am a member of the richest 10 percent)
Why else do 25 percent of American black males end up in jail at some point, do you suppose?
Personally, I would be willing to lose some value on my stock portfolio if everyone at the bottom was a little better off.
Re: constitution, see below
\
>standing up for people who could
>not stand for themselves
Hmm, like Reagan in Grenada, huh?
or Bush in Panama, huh?
or those poor deluded Cubans, we sure helped them in 1960, right?
Or I particularly liked how we helped out the Cambodians by bombing the shit out of them until the whole country went insane and basically committed suicide (cf:Khmer Rouge)
\
You live in Cleveland.
Then perhaps you have seen what I am talking about. The talking heads on CNN jabber away about what a nice, high-employment economy we've got, but I somehow fail to appreciate it walking around in West Philadelphia...
People who live in the 'burbs seem to just rest comfortably in the televised illusion of what a great economy they are floating on, unaware of the drowned corpses in the water underneath.
\
"14 - They have made instruments not backed by gold or silver legal tender for the payment of debts, and illegally allowed the Federal Reserve, a privately owned corporation, to control the money and credit system of the country without being properly owned or controlled by the People."
Okay, so some of it is a little wacky, Klom. You've got to admit that it would be a little tough to run our economy on a gold standard. Besides, gold's objective value is nearly as much an illusion as that of paper.
As for the Federal Reserve, I don't know if I'd go so far as to say they are a #private# bank...more like an independent one--albeit a perhaps-too-powerful-one. I do wish Greenspan worried less about inflation and more about jobs.
As for the "it's pro-constitution" part, what's so great about the constitution? It's a 200-year-old document primarily obsessed with preventing us from crowning a king in the George III style. I'm not sure why the militia crowd (and I'm NOT throwing you in there with them) are always so fanatical about the constitution; it's almost a religious symbol to them.
Fascintating stuff nonetheless. It's got something for everyone--a mix of Libertarian, Leftist, and even right-wing-black-helicopters-style griping about the feds. Most interesting, of course, is the stuff about corporations...Thanks for posting it.
\
1. Stealth technology is rendered useless when :
Bomb bay doors are opened
Missiles are fired.
This plane was probably visible to radar for a split second, and a lucky shot got off.
2. If there were anything useful left of that plane, the next dozen or so cruise missiles launched would have been targeted at the wreckage.
-- Minds are like parachutes... they work best when open.
On "MarketPlace" last night, Robert Reich had a very similar commentary. He delineated the two great forces at work in the world as Technology and Tribalism. And made the same point, that Tribalism almost always can overpower or outlast Technology. It's even true in our own history. The American Revolution was won by our 'tribe' despite the British having better technology.
Jim Wildman jim@rossberry.com
[NOTE: Despite what I may seem to imply, I reserve my opinion on the ethical and moral issues of all real conflicts. The following post applies equally well to any technologically imbalanced conflict. I mean no disrespect or offense in the use of my collective pronouns.]
A techwar is geared towards destroying things like buildings and vehicles. As these things go away, or if they were never there, the techwar becomes moot. Take a hundred men, put them in a building, they are now targets for smart weapons. Put them loosely in a forest or jungle, or desert, or village, and they become effectively immune to smart weapons. Is it, therefore irrational for someone, who has already challenged someone several orders of magnitude larger, to fail to cower and surrender when our mighty air power destroys what little technology he had?
View everything to date as a test of our resolve. In order to do the job right, we will need lots of troops, or lots of time. What we blow up with video-guided bombs is just a diversion. Make everyone feel a sense of progress, until, suddenly it will hit... We are barely better off than we were before we started. Will we be willing to commit once that becomes obvious? Or will we congratulate ourselves for the job well done, and move on?
See that "Preview" button?
Sir, I have never been a soldier, and I salute your service and what you have done, but I must say that your view that we were there to liberate Kuwait is a bit naive. Perhaps that was your personal motivation on the battlefield, but bringing democracy and liberation to the people of Kuwait was not forefront in the minds of Allied strategic planners. Sure, they paid plenty of lip service to that idea, but that's all it was.
It was about oil. It was about containing Hussein. The people of Kuwait then and now live under an authoritarian regime. Sure, it is relatively "free" when compared to Iraq, but that's not saying much.
If the US is so noble in its intentions, why didn't we send in the Marines to Rwanda? Cambodia? Chechnya? East Timor? There is no appreciable amount of oil or other major resources in any of those places. yes, the invasion of Kuwait was blatantly illegal and wrong, but the reason we chose to become involved is because our national interests were at stake, not because we are the protectors of freedom the world over. We were afraid that it might happen to Saudi Arabia next.
Huh? We bombed China in 1945? I don't remember that one. Citation?
And if I recall, we didn't drop one single bomb north of the Yalu river in 1951-1953 either...
Very good, but the technology is the wrong aspect to focus on - at least, in my opinion. The fact that this is a Clean War, where we attempt to win without spending anything but money (no lives), is why we will lose. Unless the nation leading the assault really wants to win, they'll lose.
Before the bombing started, I read an interesting Zogby poll of voting americans.
We don't, as a population, know where the nation is let alone the political details of the reasons for the coflict.
We wanted to win in the two Great Wars, in Korea, and in the Gulf. We wanted out in Vietnam. And in Kosovo, the war has been so thoroughly cleaned that we don't know why we're there or where we are.
We can't possibly win this. I am almost ashamed to be an American.
Almost.
who's making big bucks building new tech-warfare
machinery!? I wonder if they've been lobbying this new theatre of war?!
What I heard while spending April Fools' Day laid out on the couch sick:
The plane did have a malfunction of some sorts, and went down. The pilot ejected, and the plane destroyed itself. Machines like that have too much secret technology to let any part of them fall to the ground intact and be salvaged. (Although 117's use first-gen stealth tech).
If the plane had gone down and was somewhat intact, some nation would have certainly found a way to buy what was leftover for reverse-engineering purposes.
If something is to be done, let it be done well. We've seen this before. Khaddafi was one of the first that I can recall (then again I'm a young pup). We bombed. He shut up (some) but hey, he's still there. Reagan isn't. Saddam? Still there, because we're not willing, as a country, to accept the basic fact of any war. People die. There is no bloodless victory in war, that I can see. There can be bloodless battles, but never a true victory. Desert (Foo) had very low casualties, but they didn't suceed either, truly. We've bombed Serbia before, it's done drek. All it does is teaches those bombed where the limits are. Milosovic did a marvelous job tapdancing around NATO demands while building up. He got enough troops, and wham, over the border and thanks for playing. The Serbs obviously think that sacrificing men to the war is worth it. We don't. At this point, no technology in the world can help, if the will to victory isn't there. And is isn't, and it's not likely to be. Every time we send troops in, the opponent just has to look to Somalia or Beiruit to see examples of how to kick the Yankee Imperialist Dogs out with minimal effort.
If you want to take a piece of land, you have to occupy it with men on the ground.
The U.S. is learning that air campaigns have limited usefulness, although it is currently the safest way to punish an opponent (if not entirely effective).
Its your experts vs. a hunk of black carbon-fiber tailwing on the ground in Yugoslavia.
I'm going with the empirical evidence that says that invisible fighters aren't so invisible.
As for your experience in the 18th Corp or 82nd, you sound like a typical REMF. Neither, thanks. And no, not a REMF. REMF's wouldn't run battle nets forward of lines. As for the rest of your post:Oh BULLSHIT. The ability of the ground troops to execute a flanking manuver at high speed and then fight hard in meeting engagements along the front was a key component to winning the ground war. I misspoke. The fact that armor and cav were crucial to the way the command chose to secure a win is indisputable. I would be an idiot to deny that. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who outranked me (and probably you, unless you're one of those three star anonymous cowards) who'd argue that there was no need to commit ground forces on that scale to deal with an enemy that had been dealt with from the air. You also have to be well aware that the Republican Guard was hardly a force to be reckoned with. Even the network "spinalysts" were willing to stop the histrionics long enough to admit that the RG was a shadow of itself after a decade of sapping conflict with Iran.Desert Storm was an inflated victory. I understand why you wouldn't want to admit that, but on the other hand, I had plenty of comrades in arms (including some cav scouts, and a couple of chiefs who lost some of the soldiers we did lose) who regularly and openly admitted that by the time it came to the ground, the thing had already been decided. I'd also say that it's disingenuous to argue that an armor battle says much about an infantry soldier's will to fight. My point lies more along the lines of where we are when it comes to fighting those wars where we can't soften them up with air power and pulverize them with arty and armor. You can argue that the ROE they operated under hurt the Rangers in Somalia, and I'll grant that provisionally, too. I won't, however, grant that that had anything to do with the bumbling in Panama and the tripping in Grenada. If the army has changed that much since 92, then we are in a world of hurt - because we no longer hav soldiers, just whiners like you apparently are.I'm sorry you feel the need to resort to ad hominem attacks. I'm not whining. I'm questioning the readiness and capacity of US ground forces. That needs to be questioned, because yes, we are in a world of hurt. Several studies that came out while I was in showed that moral is pretty low, and readiness is very low. As for your reaction to the anecdote I related about the soldier dropping his clip, all I can say is that you'd be buttstroking a whole lot of people. One study by SLA Marshall found that sometimes as few as 25% of soldiers engaged in a firefight discharge their weapons at all. Further, he found that sometimes only a quarter of them bother to aim.Or did you think M16A2's fire burst to curb jamming?
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
That was submitted all nicely formatted and previewed. Sorry, it's an unreadable mess now.
Guess I'll bug report it to Rob.
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
Neither, thanks. And no, not a REMF. REMF's wouldn't run battle nets forward of lines. As for the rest of your post:
Oh BULLSHIT. The ability of the ground troops to execute a flanking manuver at high speed and then fight hard in meeting engagements along the front was a key component to winning the ground war.
I misspoke. The fact that armor and cav were crucial to the way the command chose to secure a win is indisputable. I would be an idiot to deny that. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who outranked me (and probably you, unless you're one of those three star anonymous cowards) who'd argue that there was no need to commit ground forces on that scale to deal with an enemy that had been dealt with from the air. You also have to be well aware that the Republican Guard was hardly a force to be reckoned with. Even the network "spinalysts" were willing to stop the histrionics long enough to admit that the RG was a shadow of itself after a decade of sapping conflict with Iran.
Desert Storm was an inflated victory. I understand why you wouldn't want to admit that, but on the other hand, I had plenty of comrades in arms (including some cav scouts, and a couple of chiefs who lost some of the soldiers we did lose) who regularly and openly admitted that by the time it came to the ground, the thing had already been decided.
I'd also say that it's disingenuous to argue that an armor battle says much about an infantry soldier's will to fight. My point lies more along the lines of where we are when it comes to fighting those wars where we can't soften them up with air power and pulverize them with arty and armor.
You can argue that the ROE they operated under hurt the Rangers in Somalia, and I'll grant that provisionally, too. I won't, however, grant that that had anything to do with the bumbling in Panama and the tripping in Grenada.
If the army has changed that much since 92, then we are in a world of hurt - because we no longer hav soldiers, just whiners like you apparently are.
I'm sorry you feel the need to resort to ad hominem attacks. I'm not whining. I'm questioning the readiness and capacity of US ground forces. That needs to be questioned, because yes, we are in a world of hurt. Several studies that came out while I was in showed that moral is pretty low, and readiness is very low.
As for your reaction to the anecdote I related about the soldier dropping his clip, all I can say is that you'd be buttstroking a whole lot of people. One study by SLA Marshall found that sometimes as few as 25% of soldiers engaged in a firefight discharge their weapons at all. Further, he found that sometimes only a quarter of them bother to aim.
Or did you think M16A2's fire burst to curb jamming?
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
Unfortunately, "techno war" is something we're going to be needing more and more.
I've only recently left the U.S. Army (I was a paratrooper/signal geek). The impression I walk away with having spent my four years either in Korea or Fort Bragg, two assignments where a solider ought to feel most confident that he's surrounded by the best the conventional military can offer, is that the will and competence for a ground war fought between conventional forces simply aren't there.
People within the military will chase their tails about this forever, figuring out whether to blame what they consider less ability on the part of small unit leaders to discipline their troops, or too much civilian oversight, or a lower quality recruit pool.
Whatever the reason, the last twenty years have taught the military lessons that probably ought to be more traumatic than Vietnam was. For instance:
And to get merely anecdotal, numerous tales from fellow soldiers who were involved in several of the conflicts I mentioned above, including one story of a signal troop who, when faced with a possible overrun situation in Somalia, dropped the clip from his weapon and said "f*ck this, I can't."
I don't think we have the will to fight on the ground, and haven't for some time. In fact, we really don't have the will to fight at all.
It's absurd, while we're on this, to claim that these "techno wars" are "bloodless" anyhow. Everyone but the United States has been willing to admit that the "collateral damage" to the Iraqi infrastructure caused horrible devastation, privation, and loss of life among noncombatants. Unfortunately, the prevailing political climate in the United States has rendered discussion of such things nearly treasonous. Why? Because a thoughtful person realizes that discussion about this issue requires admission of some things:
- We've probably been lied to by the people we're "supposed" to trust at some point along the way, and have most likely identified and asserted as "truth" some of the lies we've been told
- We don't possess the means to figure that out for ourselves nearly as easily as we can merely aquiesce and go along with what we're being told, and...
- We're well aware that regardless of our own ability to somehow tease the truth out of a "news" apparatus more concerned with profit and repsectability, there's little chance we can count on our neighbors to be the same way.
Knowledge, in this case, is a losing proposition. Asserting your perception of the truth invites the derision and abuse of anointed experts who have a stake in making sure we all remain content with our perception. Admitting that you've been systematically deceived requires character.In a lot of ways, the other front in a techno war is the civilian population on whose behalf the war is being fought. The enemy has to be mastered on the plane of force, and the home front has to be bombed into submission epistemologically.
Lots of luck to all of us.
----------
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
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mphall@cstone.nospam.net
"A horse laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
Or Battle Droids on STAPs!
This would be true but for the fact that the whole point of a "technowar" is that it should be over in a flash. The purpose of the NATO bombing is to get Milosevic to change his ways in a few days, and he hasn't done that, so the bombing is a failure.
Damn Yugoslavian website is all graphical -- didn't get far with Lynx. Maybe that's enough reason to bomb them into the Stone Age (except they're already there)?
I'm actually of the opinion that we ought to get all the decent folk out of the whole region and give them asylum, allowing the others to kill each other off. My father suggests that a jeep would be enough for this project.
Alan R. Light
Monroe, North Carolina
Re: Jobs
Yes, many of the new jobs are terrible ones. Hope this changes soon, but I'm not sure how the Federal Reserve Bank or any other Government institution can change this without producing worse effects.
Re: Blacks in Prison
Not so much related to high unemployment as our nation's ridiculous "War on Drugs", combined with latent racism (often not even recognized by the perpetrators) at many levels. With the great number of excuses given by this War on America to invade privacy, use excessive police powers, and so forth, it is not too surprising that black males have taken a great deal of heat.
Re: Constitution
What is so remarkable about it is that it is a wonderful system of checks and balances, that has kept the U.S.A. a relatively peaceful and extremely prosperous nation since its adoption over two centuries ago. Compare this with most governments around the world, and you will see how remarkable it is. It should not be messed with lightly, and could use some reinforcement.
Re: Kosovo
Why are we there?
Alan R. Light
Monroe, North Carolina
I'm no John McCain fan, but his statement on Crossfire last night:
I am very skeptical because all three of us,
being students of history, know that the last time, I think, that air power won was when Zeus used to have an unlimited supply of thunderbolts.
..was pretty darn accurate.
There are only two ways to end any conflict:
Annihilation or compromise
Take your pick.
FOR SALE: F-117A Stealth Fighter/Bomber
Made in the USA! Needs work. $50 OBO
Call Yugoslavia, ask for Slobodan.
P.S. Will accept SAMs in trade.
Do you have any proof for that. Nothing aginst you but there is so much crap running around I would like to see someone back up what they are saying.
Alan makes some very good points about Clinton's Motives and the potential of US action in the Balkens. Any one with interest should read this.
-Bill Clinton, 03-31-99
Kinda makes ya nervous, huh? At least, it does me. I don't know about you, but if I was a half-assed military leader currently going about cleansing my country of the unwanted, I'd be a mite nervous about the president of the US saying that in a public speech, especially since I'd just nabbed three of his citizens. Perhaps now we'll see some troop action. I hate to say it, but the threat of losing three servicemen might be the impetus for ground troop movements. They certainly can't afford to just hang out much longer. Even with Gates' 1.5 million dollar contribution to the Red Cross and CARE, those refugees in Macedonia (now 634,000 strong) aren't going to be able to hang around a lot longer. From CNN's reports, the situation is bad and getting worse. Food supplies low, almost no shelter, and the people just keep on coming. (for perspective: 634,000 people is larger than the entire population of Alaska.)
Methinks we need those ground troops, and fast.
Further, with the big M now engaged in Hitler-style identity destruction, the longer that those Albanians have to hang out in Macedonia, the less likely it is that they'll have lives to go back to. Citizenship, jobs, license plates, all available forms of ID are being stripped of the civvies as they're forced from Kosovo. Without decisive action soon, most of those refugees may be non-persons by the time they get "home".
I live near a Air National Guard squadron of A-10's. The Air Force has been working to rid themselves of these close air support beauties for years. The success these planes had in the Gulf War and they still can't see their usefulness. These planes are perfect for the Yugoslavian mission. Alas, the "Air Farce" wants the fill the role with F-16's. Yikes.
Some points about an embargo:
* An embargo will make Serbia poorer, but won't by itself remove Milosevic. You can be a dictator in a poor country as well; in fact, it's easier.
* Victims in Kosovo are not attacked with expensive, high-tech weapons. A pack of angry men armed with submachine guns (even shotguns) is enough to force all the inhabitants of a bunch of houses to flee. Such weapons are likely to be useable for years after the embargo is put into effect; in the meantime, all the victims will have been killed or driven out.
* Embargoes don't work if there's an external sponsor (like the USSR for Cuba - now we have Bosnia).
If Russia wants to send planes and ships to Serbia, you won't be able to prevent them from arriving, short of sinking them. Do you want to start World War III?
* The embargoed country will show pictures of sick children and accuse the embargoers of killing them with the embargo. This won't play well on TV.
[ The fact that the dictator could suppress the real or imaginary problems of those children by leaving is going to be ignored. ]
Actually, even the language is the same. Serbs,
Croats and Bosnians all speak Serbo-Croatian.
Stealh planes are invisible to nacked eye because
they only let them fly at night.
Also stealth can be seen on a meter wave radar.
That makes it not worth it.
Interesting stuff behind that link. Starts out very good, spirals rapidly out of control. Long on fiery rhetoric and short on details. I love paranoid conspiracies as much as the next guy ("Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you"), but... Where's the beef? Oh, and just because you say something twice doesn't remedy the lack of substance.
You're very badly misinformed. Many Kosovo civilians have been systematically eradicated by the Milosevic regime. You admit that there's murder going on; large scale massacre of an ethnic group is genocide.
Let me quote you Article II of the Genocide Convention (which has been ratified by most countries in the world):
Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group
(a), (b) and (c) certainly apply here. Destruction of Kosovar homes, thus forcing their exile alone constitutes inflicting serious mental harm (b) and creation of conditions designed to bring about physical destruction (c) of the ethnic Albanians.
Milosevic's actions may not rise to the level of genocide (although I think they do), but his actions are unquestionably henious and must be stopped.
You're also suggesting that the US govt. is deliberately making this up. That doesn't make sense at all. Taking part in a conflict which the US has little direct interest in hardly does wonders for Clinton's popularity.
In fact, Clinton has repeatedly tried to justify intervention to the American public by making weak arguments to tie it back to (narrowly-defined) American national interest, because he believes that the American public is not right-minded enough to support purely humitarian intervention (which is what it is, and what it should be).
These people have been killing each other for centuries
.). This is an old excuse used to evade responsibility for action when humanitarian disaster occurs.
This is pure rubbish. Ethnic tensions do exist in the region -- as in everywhere else in world where different ethnic groups have to live with each other (e.g. the USA). But the people in the Balkans have had centuries of peaceful coexistence. The current conflict was created by Milosevic who capitalized on the power vacuum created by the death of the former Yugoslav dictator, and exploited existing Serb nationalistic sentiments to create his own brand of destructive ultra-nationalism.
These people have been killing each other for centuries. The same line was used in Rwanda to justify inaction ('Ancient tribal hatred' this time--it was not, it was systematic slaughter organised by the extremist factions in the Rwandan government
It's important to make a point about public support with regard to the so-called techno-war. In World War II, it was pretty easy to convince the American public that going to war in Europe was in the national best interest. The allies had smart leaders, smart politicians and luckily, both sides of the conflict agreed to fight a conventional war. (That is until the Japanese became involved.) We viewed WWII as both a mission of humanitarianism, and of reigning in a dictator bent on "world domination." This is something that the "public" was able to grasp and support.
The war in Korea was the same in that it remained conventional, the war effort had public support (more support than WWII at least at first) and the US goals in Korea were straightforward. The media as we know it today was taking its first baby-steps in war coverage and was able to feed the pentagon what it needed to keep support back home.
Vietnam was the first time that the US was missing the key ingredients for a successful war. Very little public support (at any time during the conflict and less so towards the end, of course.) We had military leaders on our side who, while knowledgeable in conventional war, couldn't keep up with the VC because the VC didn't play by the rules of conventional warfare. Our politicians back home were missing the last key ingredient...salesmanship. They could not sell the war to the American People because what we were fighting for was lost in translation (or was never clear to the US in the first place) and every day on National TV we could see our sons dying in the rice paddies.
With the event of the Gulf War, the leaders in Washington tried to learn from the mistakes of Vietnam and instead of trying to teach us why it was important to stop Saddam Hussein, told us that "We don't need public opinion to start fighting, because we can show the American People that US lives are not at stake." The new weapons capabilities, the bright flashing lights and pretty colors on our TV's convinced the People of that.
But we again suffered from a lack of clear objectives (beyond the liberation of Kuwait and protection of our allies in the region.)
In the balkans, we've got almost the same problems as we did in Vietnam and in the Gulf war. The public doesn't understand the humanitarian conflict (and hasn't been told if this is reason enough to war against the Serbs.) It doesn't know where the conflict is taking place, and the leaders in Washington and Nato can't tell us what are objectives are. It's not like the US and Nato gets involved every time one ethnic group tries to wipe out another one. Just look at Rawanda, the only reason that we don't look pathetic as a result of that conflict was that the American people didn't see the bodies of dead Rawandans on national TV every night.
Nato and the US have relied on the the Air/Techno war as the first action to take in conflict. They almost seem to say "We don't know what we're up against, how long we can expect to fight, or for what outcome we're fighting. But its important to get the ball rolling, (or bomb dropping) just so we appear to be in control."
I wish that it was easier for US citizens to get real information on the conflict before we start dropping bombs on people. Of course that's fanciful thinking... it's way easier to turn on the TV and let someone else tell us what to think.
---
ps. I like Jon Katz.
So what if its digital. Analog works fine, too. In some cases, analog is even better than digital, and its usually cheaper.
For instance, active noise cancellation was achived during World War II using analog electronics and worked quite well. In fact, it was so simple, people refused to belive it would work. Today, active noise cancellation can be done digitally, but it requires A/D conveters, D/A converters, and either a complex controlling circut or a microcontroller (plenty complex, too). But since analog is simpler and works just fine . .
Digital stuffs are just tools to solve a problem. Use them where they work well. Do NOT insist digital stuff be used everywhere because digital stuffs are not inherently better at all tasks.
"Luncheon meats make the sawdust in your stomach explode."
Thanx. I try. --WorLord (One day, we'll all get it right... provided we live that long.)
Of COURSE nothing like WWII. If we did that, with the weaponry we have now, all that would be left of this world's inhabitants would be a huge, lifeless, smouldering boulder rotating around the sun. THAT'S why a WWII-like incident has not occured since... not because of our supposed peace-keeping. Basically, all we do as a "peace keeper" is step in and bomb civilizations who don't agree with our sense of moral values. And the pathetic part is, it doesn't even work. How do I know this? Well, to put it bluntly, we've been goofing off in the Middle East since I was in high-school; the only thing we've successfully accomplished is to postpone strained racial/ethnic relations to a later date, at which point we fly in, kill more people, and postpone it again. We don't solve anything, we don't stop hatred, and all we really do is bug a nation or group of people who should have the right to work through their own situations. All this, coming from a nation who's offspring still find it pretty way-cool to strap a queer to a fence and pummel him until he's dead. Or really neat-o drag a black down the road until his limbs fall off. Bottom line: not only are we showing a lack of general respect for other cultures and their problems (which probably aren't at ALL what's really going on... I trust CNN and Clinton about as far as I can throw them), but we, of ALL people, have absolutely NO right to arrange disciplinary action against anyone else. We're being hypocritical. And families of Serbs are paying for it. Just like Desert Storm. Just like Vietnam. If you call this relative peace, than I fear we have an impasse as far as term definition is concerned. --WorLord (WE might have *relative* peace... its the rest of the world we're off bombing that would disagree with you.)
"Next time you watch the CNN, or BBC, open your mind a little wider."
I beg to differ, sir.
When - nay, IF - I'm ever dumb enough to watch televised opinions with such an obvious spin on them, such as the quality entertainment on CNN or BBC, than I take CAREful precautions to make sure my mind is locked up TIGHT.
Otherwise, the crap would filter in, and I'd be just as starstruck as the rest of the nation who believe we're really doing a five star job with this.
--WorLord (Believe me... not ALL of us even ENJOY TV, much less believe a word of it.)
Spot on. Katz obfuscates the political nature
of conflict by making it into a technical matter
of whether grunts or bombers will do the business
best.
Much of what JonKatz says is true. Particularly that you cannot overthrow a government by air strikes alone.
One thing is questionable, the reference to elements of this conflict going back hundreds of years. It's true that the Serbs and Albanians have lived in the space for hundreds of years, but the conflicts are largely modern. 19th and early 20th century saw a few problems, but more recently things were quiet (remember that Kosovo had constitional autonomy).
My main criticism is that this was mostly a sociology of war piece, and not a terribly good one because he kept trying to work technology into it.
Well, it could be argued that Bill Clinton is the first president to sleep his way to the top...
Does it bother anybody else that while Clinton has been in office we have bombed the hell out of all sorts of countries and carried out all sorts of "police actions" in which young men and women WERE sent out to hostile territory, yet Clinton dodged the draft when he was younger? I'm sorry, but I don't think it would be right for him to send so many people out into hostile areas when he's never been in the military. Just my $0.02
The Germans ended their air war a little too soon. If they had pulled through, I wouldn't be responding to your posting. The Germans didn't know how close to victory they had gotten. Another thing that saved Great Britain's ass was that it had much better pilots than the Luftwaffe pilots. A pure air war is not as effective as a blitzkrieg, which combines infantry, armor, and air power. Just look at the Six Day War:Israeli Airstrike 5 June 1967. The Israeli air force hit the surrounding countries' airbases so fast that their enemies didn't know what hit them. And then the Israelis sent in their armor and infantry to clean up the mess. Even though the Israelis did use armor and infantry, it was the Israeli air force which brought Egypt, Syria, etc. to their knees. When the six day war was over, the Israelis had a total victory.
DES Khaddafi KGB genetic jihad Uzi Rule Psix Qaddafi cryptographic Peking Mossad Legion of Doom Albanian Serbian Saddam
So how the heck are we supposed to stop Milosevic's genocidal campaign in Kosovo. The US tried diplomacy, but it turned out to do nothing because Milosevic rejected all of the possible solutions that were enforceable. The only diplomatic solutions Milosevic would accept were ones which were impossible to enforce, and therefore wouldn't end the genocide.
DES Khaddafi KGB genetic jihad Uzi Rule Psix Qaddafi cryptographic Peking Mossad Legion of Doom Albanian Serbian Saddam
Didn't the Albanians turn in the Serbs to Hitler during WWII, when they had most of the power (the Serbs didn't really regain their power until after the Soviet Union faded away, and Yugoslavia broke up)? I can't really say I blame the Serbs for their aggression, based on this perspective.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
The one true answer is to simply kill everyone in the region. A few nicely placed neutron bombs should do the trick. Then, once the radiation has subsided, the whole region should be nicely inhabitable by more reasonable folk.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
How about this:
Let's arm the Albanians that have fled into Macedonia and Albania, you know, all those 640K refugees?
640K should be enough for anyone, right?
Anyway, let's use all our technology to feed, clothe, and equip these people, then send them back in to fight for themselves. We can keep them supplied with no problems, and then _they_ get to shoulder the responsibility for their own lives.
Let's set up a perimeter around Kosovo/Serbia and let them duke it out inside. If anyone, _anyone_ crosses the border, they are killed indiscriminately.
That, to me, sounds like a just and fair solution. Further intervention on our part need not be taken. This is a civil war. Maybe we should supply the Serbs with arms and such, too. Let the winner be decided there, once and for all.
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
One question:
The president has claimed that the three soldiers captured and detained in Kosovo/Serbia/whatever are Prisoners Of War.
Does this, then, mean that this is a war?
If so, why have we not formally declared war on Serbia?
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
I know this. It seems that a bit of sarcasm went undetected here.
The point I'm trying to make is that we have no will to do things the right way once and for all. If we are to be involved in this Yugoslavia mess, we should do it formally.
"Police Action" is a farce. Call a spade a spade. If it is war, then it's war, and we should declare it as such.
If we want a police action, then we should send in the police, right? I don't doubt that the parties involved would like the music, but I don't think it would solve any problems. Instead, we send in the military, an institution whose sole purposes are to kill people and break things, and ask them to keep peace! It's nonsense!
--Corey
Not only will they not deserve liberty or safety, Mr. Franklin, they will be DENIED both!
>X=Y;X^2=XY;X^2-Y^2=XY-Y^2;(X+Y)(X-Y)=Y(X-Y);X+Y=Y ;2Y=Y;2=1
Does the term "Division by Zero" ring a bell?
QuMa
I'm current working on a webpage that will entail an essay about how we should attact the communcation carriers via the net using the dreaded scriptz of the K-Rad kidz and actually breaking in and actaully hacking into the system, meaning that people would have to figure out their networks and how to gain access to every military computer and satalite to make them un accessable by that military force so that they will be un-able to track the opposing forces. The page is here.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
The question is wether or not that would be conciderd treason, becuase you are trying to help the forces attack......
The correct website is
members.xoom.com/ciscokid
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Would it be treason?!?!??!?!?
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Do the laws state that if you are attacking a country this way durring war times be considered treason. The correct web address is members.xoom.com/ciscokid
Hopefullly tonight I shall update this page, becuase I can't do it here at work, to make it into an essay discussing the idea about the meathods and how this would be the first line attack, instead of sending out troops and fighter pilots to risk their live, and possibly the life of innocent people in that country. I was out of my mind when I first made the website, it basically stated that we should start a cyber attack again Yugoslavia, but then after I posted that, the idea of what could happen if this was done, specially since we do have 3 people captured over there. I personally disagree with killing people, beucase it totally goes against what I believe in and what I was taught, btw i'm not religious.This is just what I think should be done before we start sending people out to kill and to be killed.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Well some of us are at work and type about 65 wpm and try to get out what we are thinking before our bosses see us and all that....
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Doh!.. Didn't notice.. I was checking over that.. I type to fast sometimes.
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Why would I sugguest that? Basically this whole idea started from a post about cracking Yugoslavia in a post a couple days ago.. I think i'm just going to type up a nice long essay about why attacking the country via the net first would be the best first attack in pre-war......
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
This isn't about promoting nationalism, this is promoting humanity and stoping the indecencies in this world..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Ok, since I live in the use, and I were to take out there communications of kosovo, I could not be concidered for treason, but they could come get me (haha) based on their laws.. Ok.. That is what i've been trying to say finnally..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
Is is so dishonorble to try and stop the killing of people just because of their religion? You call the US government 'dishonorable bullies,' yet were going out trying to stop the killing of a race. If this is so dishonorable I certainly can't see how.
:) B-52s launch "Air Launched Cruise Missiles (ALCMs)." though they are both cruise missiles they arn't not the same. :)
The reason we are fighting is to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who are being executed or driven from their homes a gun point.
Ethnic cleansing is one of the most dishonorable things I can think of, and that is what is happening in Kosovo. The serbian army is driving ethnic Albanians from their homes to kill them or make them refugees.
I find it quite honorable to be fighting to stop this cleansing. You say that the World Wars were just/honorable wars. Part of what we were fighting for then was to stop the ethnic and racial cleansing of Hitler. The reasons for fighting are the same.
And just as a side note: I'd like to point out that tomahawk missiles are launched from ships. Not B-52s.
- AMW
I would be more than willing to chat with anyone interested in this subject to share knowledge, though I admit it is somewhat limited.
- AMW
The hate isn't universal amoung the people there. Most of the problems come from leaders like Milosivic who are racial/ethnic supremist. Many of the Serbians have said that they don't approve of what M. is doing, they just support their country/religion. If peaceful/sane leaders were in control, attrocities like what is happening in Kosovo wouldn't be happening. But that, unfortunately, is not the case.
- AMW
All other sources of political power - wealth, pubic support, personal charisma, social standing, organized interest - are weak by comparison. Hee-Hee....
:wq
I would strongly suggest reading 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu. Especially the part about "Fire Attacks". It has been claimed that in every war the winning side used the principles set in that text. Corralaries can be drawn to today's technologies and (my understanding of it is that) Fire Attacks generally corrolate most closely to air wars. They could further likened to the techno wars that are spoken of here. A key point that Sun Tzu makes is that if you do not know your enemies limits than you will not be able to win the war. In the case of Kosovo I don't think the US quite understands what the Serbs are willing to do and why they are willing to do it.
Here's a link to the "Art of War". There are others out there if you search for them.
I'd just like to point out the dangers of trusting the media to bring you a fully accurate story, even to those of you who think your country's (US/UK/wherever) media is free and trustworthy.
Firstly the media arent democratically elected public servants with responsiblity to the ideals of 'truth', they are in fact capitalists with their payrises depending on their viewing figures.
Also, they are only human, and for the US media for example, most of the journalists etc have been brought up in the US and are therefore influenced themselves by their culture and by patriotism.
So how can we expect them to bring an accurate picture? How can we expect a Western journalist who has been in Belgrade for a month to understand the true feelings of the people there, and yet we unquestioningly trust them because they are 'on the spot'?
I am from Hong Kong. I got cynical about the western media during the Hong Kong handover, where the BBC depicted the ceremonial marching in of the Chinese army like it was an unforeseen threatening invasion or something. Maybe the facts werent wrong but the slant put on them certainly was.
Looking at the current crisis - lets look at an analogy, namely the Northern Ireland troubles. Nobody threatened to airstrike London for opposing the IRA's terrorism there, and they like the KLA ferverently believe they are doing the right thing for their country.
Now lets imagine the British government went a bit haywire in its retributions against IRA terrorism and crossed the line, the British people would not stand for it. But if somebody started playing world policeman and did airstrike London, the people of Britain are then bound and helpless - how does one go about trying to overthrow a bad government when you have to keep hiding in your basement in case a stray NATO missile takes your house out? No - in such a situation, a people would stand by their government against the outsiders, regardless of the leader.
The point of all this spiel is to say - take your media with a pinch of salt. When they refer to "the Serbs" as villains, remember that includes a lot of innocent and scared people huddled in air-raid shelters, as well as young conscripts in the army who do as they are told because their home is being bombed and they dont know what else they can do.
You may think this is very pro-Serbian. I am actually impartial in the current crisis, I simply want it to end with as little more bloodshed as possible. But I have a friend here in the UK who is Serbian, she is not eating or sleeping properly out of fear for her family. And when she marched against Milosevic a while back, those demonstrating were branded as "Serbian Nationalists" and bad guys in the Western Media because it suited them then to do so. Now they've changed sides, and without telling you.
Next time you watch the CNN, or BBC, open your mind a little wider.
Im so cyber-tired its not funny, been staring at my digital computer too long I guess. Boy, I hope a techno-war doesnt start while im asleep.
Gotta go guys, ive gotta change into my Darth Vader jammies.
Bzzzzzzzzzz... buzz words alert. Lets try and stay away from that next time ok? Its not horrible Jon, just annoying to read it on slashdot when i cant get away from it on CNN.
Good idea, treason is very fashionable this year.
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
As Katz has said, War can't be won by technology alone. Politicians (and sometimes whole populations) forget the things that led to the war. The motivation of the fighters is often underestimated.
There is one thing nobody can BREAK. A person's WILL. A war especially fought in an impersonal manner using machines can destroy houses, supply lines, armaments. But the will of a population to fight and survive in adverse but familiar circumstances can never be predicted by arm-chair politicians and strategists as americans found out in vietnam.
From reading initial comments, it seems as if people are getting a little bit more out of this than the average Katz piece. That's good. However, I'm not getting more out of it, because I gave up after the second time I saw a number embedded in the middle of a paragraph.
A public plea to Mr. Katz: You're posting hypertext here. You should take advantage of the things this medium lets you do, like make automagically numbered lists (<ol type="1">), and embed links into your text (for example, why wasn't the book title from ISU Press linked to Amazon.com, or ISU press? Why isn't your email address at the bottom of the article a link?)
Please try to understand: For myself and many others, your facility with this medium has a direct and substantial impact on your credibility. This is directly analogous to how people react to a poorly editted essay in Old Media.
I understand that you're quite busy with family and career, and that picking up HTML might not be a priority. I understand, and I'd like to offer my services. Send me a draft of your forthcoming posts, and I'll mark it up. No charge. I think you've got some interesting things to say, but I (and others) aren't getting to see them, because you're doing the New Media equivalent of printing first drafts on low quality paper, with cheap ink, in a cruddy font, with no copy-editting.
john.
GeneHack {--(bioinfo*linux*opinion)
I agree with the statement that neither the bombings nor ground troops will work. This isn't like the Jews in Hitler's Germany in one way: these two peoples have been in conflict for centuries. I don't think that either bombs or troops will stop their hatred.
Not to say that I think we should sit by and allow genocide to take place; just that I don't see a course of action that will be effective.
Argentina is not and never was a NATO country.
The only non-european countries in NATO are USA and Canada.
And the Sheffield was lost to a french-made Exocet ASM, who btw didn't explode, its fuel just started to burn.
It was easy to convince the American public that going to war in Europe in World War II was in the national best interest?
Give me a break.
As a younger and wiser nation, we stayed out of wars as long as we could. We should do the same now.
In World War Two, Japan made the decision for us.
A few points here:
1) America can't take casualties, Serbia can. We cry like babies because three soldiers get captured. In World War One, between war casualties and disease, Serbia lost two thirds of the adult male population (The Serbs, Tim Judah, Yale University Press, 1997). In World War Two they lost millions more, somewhere between 100,000 and a million of them killed in concentration camps by Bosnians and Croats.
Life went on.
2) Many of those Serbs who died in World War Two had their heads chopped off by Kosovan Albanians (Same source as above pp. 100-01). Paybacks suck.
3) By comparing Milosevic to Hitler you ignore the fact that the only people in Yugoslavia to stand up to Hitler in WW2 were the Serbs. The Bosnians didn't. The Croats didn't. The Albanians didn't.
4) True, bombing won't work. Troops on the ground won't work either, unless you're willing to send in millions of them and leave them there until the sun explodes or until all the Bosnians, Serbs, Croats, and Albanians are dead.
Let's just wish them luck, sell them guns, and may the best man win.
I disagree, Milosovic is nothing if not rational. Here's the equation:
Choice 1: Give up Kosovo peacefully, the only alternative the U.S. will accept.
Choice 2: Fight, and maybe keep Kosovo, or at least part of it, and even if you lose you kill some ethnic Albanians and gain the support of your people who even if they do not particularly like you, like being bombed even less.
Now, keeping in mind that Kosovo happens to contain some sites that are as holy to Serbs as the Alamo is to Texans (and for the same reasons) what do you, as a rational leader, do?
You fight. It's a no-lose proposition.
There was an excellent article on the BBC news site before the bombing started that spelled out what was going to happen, and so far it has been 100% right.
Don't take this post as an endorsement in any way of the Serbian atrocities, but over the last 100 years, all sides in Yugoslavia have been guilty of the same things. Definitely not worth my bombing money.
I am in the Army, and yes, the Constitution IS a holy symbol to me. It represent everything that makes this country great. FREEDOM.
I am totally willing to fight, and perhaps die, to defend that. I can't believe what I just read.
Calling what happened in China bombing is a little misleading.
US Forces fought on Chinese land for about 8 months - intensely for about 2 weeks in Oct, then sporadically until the end of May. This was all a part of the US involvement in the Chinese Civil War.
No serious bombing campaigns was undertaken, but there was the presence of aircraft for close-air support of the troops on the front line.
"We don't, as a population, know where the nation is let alone the political details of the reasons for the coflict."
Where is the nation of Kosovo? Er, that's rather the point isn't it? There is no 'nation' in the geographic sense, is there? The ethnic Albanians (at least the KLA?) want to create a seperate state from the Yugo's, Kosovo is a 'province' or something of Yugoslavia.
I know this is somewhat off-topic, but I think it lends credence to your argument that most of the US population doesn't know what the conflict is about, or where it is, or what the US/NATO goal(s) is(are) in the conflict.
But then most US citizens are only dimly aware of anything that happens outside of the US anyway, unless there is a really good sound-bite on the news about a couple hundred americans being blown up by a car-bomb.
No one understands or cares, that's why we go in with push-button warfare. I'm not saying its right or wrong (I'll keep that opinion to myself), its just sad that the average American has so little knowledge or interest in world affairs. (as in, "screw the news, what time is 'the simpsons' on?")
I mean, sheesh!
Now why didn't *I* think of that. You are entirely correct, no amount of military attack or occupation has been able to overcome the ethnic hatred between these groups for hundreds of years.
;-) Turn them into vacant, morally bankrupt, selfish, materialistic [sp?] MTV-drones (read: Americans), they will no longer have any motivation to do anything, much less go on genocidal expeditions.
Sabotage their culture! What an elegant and simple solution!
Great idea! (grrr....)
Which is why a checker is needed. I didn't say a spellchecker is needed because /.ers can't spell (although that seems to be the general inference, not intentionally implied).
This post would be in German.
Ask the British about the effectiveness
of air war alone.
The Air Farce HATES the A10 (all but the guys who fly it--they tend to be in love with the beast.)
The common name Warthog was not assigned out of affection, although the ones who use it now use it that way, a lot like most of us see geek and nerd.
A lot of that goes back to what Katz is talking about. Curtis LeMay, arguing for establishment of the Air Farce as a separate service, promised Congress and the United States that air war could win in clean, painless ways--and we're now seeing (again) that that just ain't so.
What the Air Farce wants is
Here we go, into the wild blue yonder
Rising high, into the sun
Contrails white, rising to meet our thunder...
That is, white scarf and shiny metal, clean sparks in a cerulean heaven.
The A10 is absolutely the antithesis of this. It's ugly, it's slow, it doesn't fly very high, and it's meant to get down into the mud and support the troops. Asking an Air Farce troop to get mud on his boots is like asking one of Jane Austen's heroes to go into 'trade.' So they've tried to kill it any number of times.
Bullshit.
Sorry, Panzer, I understand from the above that you're a Serb and therefore emotionally involved. But don't listen too hard to that kind of stuff. The United States simply doesn't have that kind of forward-looking planning--we can't put it together, because we're always running in circles about something else.
When we start seeing pictures of Milosovic, or Saddam Hussein, killing people because they don't believe the same, or because they're in the way, it makes our blood boil. And yes, some of us are aware that Kosovo is vitally important to the Serb mythos of existence. Don't overrate that understanding. This is a country where evangelistics can preach hellfire and damnation from the pulpit for nonbelievers, but if the mosque across the street catches fire, the preacher and congregation will both be helping folks out of the building--and are pretty likely to offer the use of the building for services until the Moslems can rebuild.
The real root of this--besides what Jon has aptly pointed out, the attractions of Techno-War--go back to the fact that institutionally, the US feels guilty about not doing enough for the Jews during WWII, which in turn goes back to the multiethnic ideals of the US. True, we don't live up to those ideals, but at least the intellectual part of the US feels guilty about it and tries to do something, witness Civil Rights, et cetera.
And there's plenty to feel guilty about. Pol Pot, the various idiots in South and Central America, Idi Amin, and on and on. Offer Americans the chance to blow the crap out of one of those jackasses and watch the volunteers pour in.
America may have bombed China in '45 in order to fight against the Japanese (who occupied China at that point-- look up the Rape of Nanking). Since we were still in WW2 by that point, we were supporting the Communist as well as Nationalist forces within China, who fought it out afterwards. Anyway, the point was that the native Chinese people within China were actually United States allies, and the bombing must have been to aid them.
Mr. Katz:
That was a very eloquent essay on the limitations of "technowar". You are correct about many of your assumptions. However, there are many others where you are far off the mark and those would be to state that there has been a substitution where 'machines' wage war in the place of humans. The fact that the modern day military uses machines in it's conduct of war, that they use electronic means to gather intelligence, acquire target information and direct munitions is not what is being debated in your piece. We know that all of these events are occuring.
I don't think you are suggesting that once we develop these tools, that we not use them. I also don't think you are suggesting that your neighbor or friend be denied tools which could spare his life, that you wish the technology is not available to him. I think your main point here is that a primitive and determined culture, using nationalism as a tool to motivate it's citizens, make a formidable and entrenched force, not easily defeated through the dedicated use of technology. I am arguing that this is not a techno-war as you call it. It is the media who promotes the idea of a technowar, not necessarily the military.
I don't presume to know everything about technology, but I do know a few things about the military and the mindset of those who make the decisions to direct it. I would ask you to consider the difference between military commanders, ie; US and NATO Commanders, and Politicians, ie; the President of the United States.
I have not heard a former military commander of any stature, argue against the use of ground forces in this conflict. In fact, all have been advocates for their use. These are men who have spent 30+ years in the military and have led units ranging in size from only 30 up to 1 million personnel (the entire military as in the commander of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These are men who have studied strategies of ancient leaders such as Sun Tzu, and studied it for it's direct and intended application, not some pseudo-business application to learn how to motivate a corporation.
On the other hand, the President has never spent a single day in the military and does not understand how to apply it to achieve a goal. He even remarked today that he thought NATO could enforce a peace agreement from the air. My question to you is: Have you heard any military commanders make such remarks?
You can bet the military commanders directing the military are fairly pissed off at the present time, both because Bill Clinton is the one in the office right now, but more importantly, because he does not have the resolve to take the decisive action that needs to be taken, and will eventually be taken, to resolve this conflict and restore the Ethnic Albanians to rebuild their homes in Kosovo, which is the introduction of ground forces. (I don't assume to know everything about Kosovo and the roots of the conflict either)
I would like to ask you who is flying all those aircraft over there? Machines? Who recovered the F117 pilot whose plane was probably shot down? Was it a machine? Or where they dedicated professionals who would do everything in their power to not let their comrades be taken captive?
Who guided all those bombs into targets in Iraq? Was it machines? Or where there people on the ground guiding them in? I imagine you don't recall an AC130 Spectre Gunship going down in Iraq during the Gulf War? I guess then that you didn't know that they stayed on station a bit too long, protecting several Special Forces soldiers who were surrounded by Tanks. The surrounded soldiers were one of many teams that were guiding aircraft deep into Iraqi rear areas. And you say it is just machines?
When President Clinton said "We take care of our own", he was exactly correct. Although he doesn't have a clue how deep that runs in the military, or that he will make no personal sacrifice to ensure that we will "take care of our own", he was correct.
I would urge you to consider what I have written here. Perhaps you can take the time to learn what it is our military really does. Perhaps you will realize that the "technowar" is a media event, having very little in common with the reality of people, using the machines as tools, to protect their life, that of their fellow soldier and that lives are at risk. Or perhaps you can just sit in the security of your living room watching it on TV, thinking about it, and enjoying the fruits of freedom created and maintained by the efforts of others. Perhaps you don't care(?)
I am not an advocate of war. I am, however, realistic enough to know that when the time comes to take terrain, that men in airplanes alone are not suited to the task. I would guess that the military commanders representing our interests at NATO are of a similar mind. There is no such thing as a 'clean war', very often men will die in the attempt to defeat a motivated enemy. They know this. The President, however, is either ignorant or in denial. It seems from what you have written, that you believe he represents the military mindset.
I can't think of a single good reason to not use every tool we can develop to make the job easier for the soldiers who must risk their lives, to see that the will of our nation(or at least its politicians) is done. They are the ones who are the most exposed to injury and death here. If you asked a single one if they approved of 'softening up the Serbs' prior to their having to go in and do the dirty part of the job, I don't think you'd get a single response in the negative. And to be quite honest, they really don't give a sh*t how it is done, so long as they don't come home in a body bag.
On the other hand, some of the 'techno-tools' they have been using that you don't mention:
A Tomahawk missle which emmits massive EMP on detonation. Our pilots have to be clear of the area when this goes off. They then enter to do their work when the ionization subsides. This tends to disable a power grid for a while, and fries the circuit boards on the Serbs AA batteries. Would you rather have them not have this tool and fly into a greater threat?
The ability to deploy a missle or have an airplane project a signal representing the signature of a squadron of aircraft. This is the use of technology to cause a deception. The enemy then illuminates their ground radar systems attached to their anti-aircraft batteries. Other planes quickly follow with missles which hone in on radar to remove the threat. Would you rather they not use this tool?
I hope you re-evaluate your position that the military is convinced it is possible to win a war from the air agaist a determined enemy. You should give them a little more credit than that.
Please let us know what the visitation hours are in the federal penitentiary. :)
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Sorry, I guess I misunderstood your post. I thought you were suggesting attacking US military computers.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
>repeal the executive order banning assassination >and send a cia team over to put a bullet in his >head.
A rather fascinating concept. You (the US) take a dislike to somebody for whatever reason, and all of a sudden, you declare that murder/assassination is acceptable.
So what was your view then when President Kennedy was killed? (assuming there was a 'communist' connection, one could argue that the Russians, following your rationale, took out a US president they didn't like. You seem to think that this is OK?)
Please understand that I am not trying to provoke a flame war or any heated exchanges of anything. It's just that I, along with a big chunk of the rest of the world outside the USA, tend to think that the Yanks should either be honest about their reasons for involvement or just mind their own business.
In Kuwait, the reason was OIL and not anything else. After all, the US paid Egypt 14 billion (not million, billion!) dollars, one third of Egypt's then deficit, in order to get Egypt, a 'moderate _Arab_ nation', to come on side. I understand that Japan paid to the 'UN' (use ironic tone when reading 'UN') 15 billion dollars. I ask myself why does Japan care that much for Kuwait? Maybe Japan simply paid the heavies a bit of protection money that would guarantee it access to oil in the years to come.
I'd like to think that everybody knows why the Kuwait war took place.
Ask yourself, why did the UN allow Malaysia and Indonesia to send weaponry to Bosnia. Why where there 10,000 Iranian fighetrs who didn't even speak the local language, fighting in Bosnia on behalf of the Bosnians? Why did Egypt ship weaponry to Bosnia? (Was the Muslim card being played here????)
The thing to remember is that the US went in to Bosnia, told everybody that the American public simply couldn't stand to watch such messy affairs; they wanted a simpler plot line, one where there was a bad guy, Slobodan Milocevic, and good guys, the poor old Bosnians, and later on those great chaps, the Croats.
Sadly for those who live in the Balkans, when the Yanks packed up their gear and went home, Bosnia didn't suddenly become a paradise of peace and neighbourly love. The Serbs, Croats and Bosnians still live along ethnic lines; the Bosnians now have better heavy armour than the Serbs, even before the bombing started; they are also better trained thanks to the Yanks. Add all of the above, stir well, wait another 5 years (if not less!!) and then the Bosnians may just take it upon themselves to get even. When that happens, there will be an awfull lot of people dying.
And all this because, evidently, the Yanks need to feel good about something, they fancy themselves as the 'cops' of the planet, so they decided to redraw Yugoslavia's map.
Now suddenly, Slobodan Milocevic is a bad guy. A terrible chap, really.
He has a bunch of armed terrorists within the internationally recognised borders of his country. His country is part of the UN. It is a sovereign state.
Said terrorists kill a few Serbian policemen.
Other Serbian policemen look at this and say, 'steady on ol' boy, you can't do that', and then they go and get into a fight with a few terrorists and kill a few.
(repeat above paragraph a number of times).
Said terrorists 'suddenly' aquire more sophisticated weapons and start blowing up police stations. Serbian police say, 'pluck this, we are going to get the heavies into this; this is too heavy for us' and, voila, the Serbian army comes and blasts a few terrorists.
So far so good. Just transpose the above to the UK/IRA and something tells me you aren't going to suggest that the NATO should attack England.
Transpose the above to any other nation that has a bad terrorist problem and you'd be hard pressed to convince anyone that NATO should go in and attack the goverment.
But, since this _is_ the Balkans, and Yugoslavia _was/is_ a friend of the Russians and NATO wants to 'clean up' the leftovers of the old Iron Curtain and this is the 50th anniversary of NATO and...... it sounded like a good idea to repeat the Gulf trick.
- pick a bad guy, anyone will do
- say the magic word: genocide
- say 'We can't sit here and let those poor people suffer'
- Tell the bad guy to keel over and die.
- wait 5 seconds
- tell the bad guy, too bad, he was too slow in capitulating
- send in the 'allied', 'UN' (any pretence will do) troops
- use lots of clever footage of clever weapons
- show lots of graphs
- claim high success rates (Gulf war, Tomahawk- Bush claimed over 85% hit rate; I understand US Goverment Audit (something or other) reduced that to something over 25%(!)) (I do not have exact figures)
- time goes by...people die, oops, collateral damage
- More time goes by... more people die, oops, collateral damage
- shit! one american soldier is dead. Lets get out of here, these people actually shoot back.
----
End of litany.
I can put up with just about any snake-oil salesman trying to tell me that his product will cure all diseases known to man; make hair grow on bald men; make short, fat people look tall and slim etc etc etc.
At the end of the day, his only crime is wasting my time.
But I cannot put up with crappy excuses by the Yanks, who in their
a) lust for power
b) need to divert attention
c) outright stupidity
d) goto a)
cause the death of thousands of people.
It amazes me that the UN/US is so concerned about the implementation of xyz, re Iraq, but doesn't give a flying fluck about Isreal/Palestine, Cyprus/Turkey, Indonesia/East Timor etc etc
---
---
Enough, I am afraid passion got the better of me.
At the end of the day, we, that is I, you and any others participating in this forum don't count.
The best we can do, is try to make sure that the next lot of politicians are more aware of that fact that _we_ are more aware and less likely to put up with their flipant disregard for human life.
I surely hope so.
(My apologies for the length of the post. But how could I keep it short, when every word counts in conveying a message as comlex and passionate as this?)
You're absolutely incorrect about pilot quality.
Witness: Erich Hartmann, the blond knight of Germany. Average number of bullets he needed to down a russian fighter: 5. Yes, Five. He used to paint his prop spinner with a tulip pattern but had to take it off because the russian pilots would flee at the sight of it.
Adolf Galland, nuff said, a truly great pilot and person.
The German pilots were superior to their british counterparts, but they were utilizing inferior equipment much of the time, with poor leadership at high levels.
I just dont get it.
Why doesnt anybody mention that kosovo would take about 80% of coastal land form servia.
(which by the way they dont have a lot).
I wouldn't want to give it up either.
I dont excuse all the killing, and i do question milosevic means to achieve his goals.
But americans are hardly always right as they want us to think (do they want us to think?).
I said i dont agree with his means.
and his other ideas about a 100% serb state.
but if you dont have access to sea trade, then you are as good as dead.
Comparing Saddam Hussein to the VietCong and the Afghan resistance movement is rather insulting, at least to the Afghans and the VC. Katz has lumped a third-rate military leader who happens to have nine lives, a brilliant political mind, and one hell of a PR machine together with the masters of modern guerilla warfare. The only basis for comparison between either of these guerilla fighters and Saddam is that all of them go into hiding when the missles start flying. It's just that the VC and the Afghans tend to come out shooting...
We defeated (I don't know if that's quite the right word to use, since "defeated" nations don't tend to come back posing and posturing about how they're going to kick your ass if you come back) Iraq in ground combat without any trouble, and with very few casualties. We did not have the same luck with the Germans, and I don't think anyone wants to get involved with Vietnam again. Heck, ask the Russians how they like dealing with Afghanistan, and see how it stacks up to anyone's experience in Iraq.
The article is an interesting read, but as soon as JK starts trying to make historical or cultural analogies, he starts sounding like an idiot. My advice: stick to what you know!
"Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?" -- Obi-Wan Kenobi
But the question is, how long can they still do that. One house of the parliament has already approved arms deliveries, and the other one would most likely follow suit if asked.
Pretty soon there will be elections for parliament and I do not believe that the "moderate" forces will have any gains in these.
If, as pointed out, the civilian casualties in Yugoslavia rise, I don't think this Russian suck-up stance will last much longer.
(I least I hope it won't.)
As an ex-pro (I used to work for the National Defense Research Establishment, Guided Weapons Division here in Sweden) I would like to comment some of the things Jon says.
The massive bombing of Germany didn't shorten the war or force the Germans to end it.
The above statement isn't simply unproved by Jon, it is also unprovable. We do know that the Germans had a very severe fuel shortage (one of the reasons the Ardennes offensive stopped) because of the bombing of German fuel factories.
The shooting-up of the German rail network almost stopped production in the Ruhr area. The Ruhr needed something on the order of several thousand rail cars of coal each day. Denied them it just couldn't produce warmaterial. I would say that it is upon Jon to show that the bombing of Germany had no effect. I grant him that the massbombing of the cities had no effect beyond (possibly) strengthening morale.
Israel and
Great Britain have for years had the technological means to destroy their political
adversaries in the Middle East and Ireland, but their superior technology haven't worked.
Um, exactly how can the Britts destroy the IRA through technology? By nuking North Ireland?
The israelis don't want to pay the political price.
Saddam Hussein has survived several Techno-Wars, emerging even stronger and more enrenched
than he was before. He was pushed out of Kuwait not by a Techno-war, but by a pretty
conventional one, in which troops and tanks lined up in the desert to push him back to Iraq.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Yes, the war against was a conventional one, but you don't seem to grasp that the difference is not clear cut. Without the air attacks the ground troops would have had a much tougher job.
You also fail to see that the ground troops got some pretty good techno-wizardry on their own. Without GPS the ground campaign would have been radically different. Night-vision equipment on the tanks meant that the Iraqies were engaged in combat before they even knew anybody was out there. Artillery was deployed to firing positions from marching and back again in 10 minutes. There are countless other examples and they all demand advanced technology to work (and extensive training).
Put another way, Techno-Wars don't work unless the technology is unleashed to its devastating
limits
I would say that you're wrong. Techno-wars work if the thechnology is applied to what it was designed for. The war against Iraq, I submit, was a successful techno war. The hi-tech equipment used was designed to be used against Soviet armoured forces on the german plain. It worked just as well in the desert. The problem lies not with the technology. The technology works, barring accidents, I agree there. There is no such thing as a bloodless war. The missiles hit their targets, the bombs theirs and so on. That's what they are designed for. The problem is, we have no idea what we should do once the bombing stops.
(Elegance is not an option)
The F-117 is designed to minimize IR signature as well as radar. Subsonic means that skin temperature aren't all that much above ambient. The exhaust itself is very wide, mixing in cold air with the hot, lowering the exhaust signature.
However, open bay doors will show up very well on radar. Also, when you get close enough to the radar transmitter you get a kind of resonance in the aircraft structure that you can't hide.
(Elegance is not an option)
Your point is correct, though. As my dad, a Navy Commander, once said, "Navies and air forces cannot win wars. They can only lose them."
_ ___
_______________________________________________
I think it highly unlikely that Russia will
intervene in the Balkans. They'll probably show the flag, have their fleet float around, and supply intel and other support to the Serbs, but a
direct intervention is unlikely.
That having been said, taking on the Serbs by
themselves will be no picnic, given all the other committments the US military has-Iraq, North
Korea, anti-drug ops, etc-things which the politicians insist we have to do, no matter what.
Frederick the Great's remark that "He who defends
everything defends nothing" is not something
that any of our current politicos seem to understand. (And that is true of Republicans and
Democrats.)
In addition to the road problem with Kossovo, there are other factors to consider. How would
you supply those troops? Albania's ports
are almost certainly not up to that task, and
Greece is unlikely to allow us to supply troops
through Salonika. (The route for supply in
that case would be from Salonika through
Macedonia-another headache.) We could probably
get the us of Bulgaria's ports-but they would
almost certainly ask for a large chunk of Macedonia. (And we'd still be shipping supplies
through Macedonia.)
All this is before you think about another issue-if we send in ground troops into Kossovo
alone, to defend that province against the Serbs in the rest of Serbia, while maintaining an air
campaign against Serbia, many people should start
having flashbacks to the Vietnam war, where we
followed a similar strategy against North Vietnam.
If we're talking about sending in ground troops,
we're really talking about going to war against
Yugoslavia proper. This will be far less of a
challenge, from a logistic point of view, than holding Kossovo, as we almost certainly have
help from the Croats and Bosnians. Casualty
wise, I'd expect that US forces would have in excess of 20,000 deaths (to say nothing of wounded), and that the Serbs would suffer a much larger number-probably close to the million mark. There would also be massive property destruction-not just in Serbia, but probably also in Albania,Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Greece, and Bulgaria.(It would be very hard for those countries to stay out of such a conflict.) And this would not be a short campaign-it would take years.
I feel for the Kossovars, and what is being done to them is wrong, but the measures we'd have to
take to correct it would cause worse suffering
than the current crisis, and over a much broader
area of Europe. What we should be doing is
helping to settle as many of them as possible in
Albania, and letting more of them into the United
Staes-if we only admit Kossovars for the next year
or so, we'll do more to help them than this ill
concieved intervention ever will do.
Like it or not, humanitarian concerns should not
motivate out foreign policy. Every time
we've let them do so, it's led us into disaster.
In the last part of this centuary the press brought hone to people images of the bad side of war (blown apart bodies, not at all what you see in the movies). This produced a emotional reaction among people who saw the horror, but not the excitement of war. Technowar allows the horror to be filtered out while maintaining the excitement. This is much more satisfactery to everyone, except the people who have been volintered to serve as targets.
Milosovic is completely rational, he is just using a differedt value system than we do. In his terms the peace terms ammounted to "commit sucide or we will kill you". If he accepts he will be out of power, and possibly dead, very quickly. If he rejects the peace offer his army will be attacked, damaged, but probably not destroyed. By being openly against NATO he is out from under a number of restrictions and can possibly emirge much better off. Given this kind of decision table it is a no brainer. The fact his country gets trashed in the process is acceptable overhead.
"The Germans ended their air war a little too soon. If they had pulled through, I wouldn't be responding to your
posting. The Germans didn't know how close to victory they had gotten. Another thing that saved Great Britain's ass
was that it had much better pilots than the Luftwaffe pilots."
I have to disagree slightly. The reason why the Luftwaffe lost may have had to do with superior pilot quality(I do not mean to insult any pilots on either side). But, the number one reason is that Hitler, in retaliation for an RAF raid on Berlin, directed Goering to start bombing cities and stop bombing military targets. By RAF records, it would have taken two to three more raids for the Luftwaffe to have completely and totally destroyed Britian's air force. Had that happened, operation Sea Lion would have gone as planned, and we *would* all be speaking German. That one decision, IMHO, is what cost Germany the war.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Meanwhile Milesovic will be doing evertything he can to escalate this and involve neighboring states and the other Slavs (Russians/Urkranians/Beylorussians).
The Russians will _not_ repeat _NOT_ be dragged into a shooting war. Why? The risk of economic sanctions is too great. If they get into a shooting war, then half of their population will starve. Russia is a paper tiger in this sense...
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Stalingrad.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Still there, because we're not willing, as a country, to accept the basic fact of any war. People die. There is no bloodless victory in war, that I can see.
Damned yuppie mindset. Everything is clean and shiny, no senseless sensibilities offended, everything is like a storybook. Hey, I still play in the rain and roll in the mud. I'm not afraid to see the logic (however sick and twisted it may be) that violence is really the only alternative for a person who will not listen to anything else. Case in point: Corporal punishment for children(bear with me here). If a child will not listen to the parent, you do time out. But what do most parents do if the child just walks away? The put the kid back. The kid walks away again. Eventually, the child learns that the parent won't do anything to stop them. So you end up with an eleven-year-old taking an AK to school and blowing the shit out of his classmates, because no one ever set a boundry and enforced it. Same thing with the US and the rest of the world. The world knows that it can get away with murder; and does so with pride, every day.
Think about it...
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
Agreed in theory, incorrect in context. Neither of these absolutly awesome pilots were in this particular campaign. At any rate, I wasn't trying to make a quality point.
censorship is a form of noise, which actively seeks to drown out content with silence - Crash Culligan
I must quite disagree with your article, beginning from the quotings of Klemm to the end. ..." can not be left without comment. Declaration of Independance was 1776, the war won 1783, industrialization began 1840 ... now that are fifty years and not a symbolic "minute". California was "discovered" 1849 and the driving power behind the new states found in the west were the desire for freedom and independancy of treckers, the struggle between North and South and of course gold ... so technology's "keyrole" was quite minor in the beginning in my opinion. ... until 1900 America was definately lacking behind in terms of industrialization against countries like England and Germany. That explains partly the Isolationism and the War of Segregation, which was fought not for the slaves but because of the struggle over taxes on imports and exports ... ...) to the "allies".
...) and their roots made them accepting the struggle for superiority ... (not constantly, there was a hole from 1910 to 1955 ... but, you understand, two world wars can easily shake history ...)
... (Wait a second, what country had this trouble with slavery late until 1864 again ... hmmm ?)
"The minute the colonies won independance
"America went on to become premier blahblah" (easily guessable it's written by an American)
Due to the mercantile support of the USA in World War I, they began to become today's superpower by gaining wealth through selling war materials (armament, ships, weaponry,
USA's "techno affection" I explain differently:
The industrialized North won the war 1864.
The belief, that had brought the pilgrim fathers to the new shores, made them formidable workers (your status in afterlife is determined by your wealth in real life).
The USA was constantly lacking behind in terms of industrialization and then in technology (Russians brought the first satellite into space
You continue with "Technology fails, thus has to do the Techno war". It is never the technology that fails, but the humans behind it. The engineer that forgets a nail, the architect that has not given enough thought to statics, the programmer that overlooked a bug.
Your example of the massive bombing of german cities not stopping the war is ludicrous. There was a GeStaPo arresting everyone opposing Hitler and the loss of relatives in accord with mass propaganda brought forth only sorrow and "hatred against the allies".
Say, there is a child on the beach, building a nice sand castle. It has just finished it, is seeking for some stones or mussels, and there your are and go destroying the castle. The kid returns and starts crying utterly. Now what have you been expecting ? The kid won't say: Hey, your proved that you are stronger than me, so I will never again build a sand castle ! ???? It will build another one, and another, and another one, maybe when you're looking away or briefly elsewhere. People have their own will, and they will act according to their own will. And destroying a person's will makes him dead or a slave
Technology is no god and no sanitor, that suddenly heals all the wounds of the world. Just as the computer it simply enhances the capabilities of humans, it furthers our natural borders, but it does not change what we are: Humans.
Now on to my final note. The problem is not that "techno war does not work", but that "war does not work". Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Israel. Wherever people were determined to keep their home, no war could change their free will. Not only must the means of war of one's enemy be destroyed and his country later conquered by physical means (=troops), but also it must be held afterwards ! Or all inhabitants be killed, e.g. by a supertechnology like the a thermonuclear bomb.
Take a look at Ireland ! Sniping, guerilla tactics: It simply does not work ! Take Germany as another example (before your are using it against me). Germans were ashamed of themselves, Hitler was dead and all they had been believing in since 1933 had suddenly become ridiculous. They had lost their will by sorrow, terror of war and shame.
End Of Message "Shouldn't have taken the blue pill
Well, you could say that war worked for the Romans back then (but, it was a different time with slaves as normal thing of everday-life !). Yet, war has changed its face over the time, I forgot to write that. Let's begin with the Romans, where people fought against people. And people were subdued, because most tribes were "honourful" warriors, that were ashamed if conquered (Take Vercingetorix as an example, surrendering before Caesar). Then I leave the steel-plated knights aside. The war in 16th and 17th century were fought in a wholly ridicolous way from a today's point of view. Armees marched up in nice squares, opposed each other on battle field and began shooting. It was a clean (for only soldiers took part in it), nearly mathematical way of fighting, very often used as a mean of politics. Already when the armees were marching up, you could tell who would win, for no solider would take cover, they just stood there and shot. The french revolution then changed wholly the face of war, because suddenly people were fighting it, and not politicians moving their armees around on a board. People took cover, stormed, ran. War became emotional. And the rest is history ;) (sorry, I like that phrase a lot.)
... pardon the off-topic). And "Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Israel" were not intended as an example for the war in Yugoslavia (just for war not working in general). That war in Yugoslavia has imho not even begun yet. NATO won't win without ground troops. However, they will never ever send in soldiers, beside the costs, they would suffer terrific casulties (today's key word is: Mines) and such a war cannot be sold to the people at home, not even with nice, shiny pictures on CNN. Furthermore, you mentioned genocide, which is imho just the attempt to stop the other race from resisting in a ... terminal way.
One could say that NATO is fighting the war mathematically, while the federal republic of yugoslavia is doing it emotionally, but all that nationalism and folks fighting each other appeared first 19th and 20th century.
I agree with you on war between people are always brutal. With my state about the supertechnology I meant that this is the only way of absolutely cleaning the other "race" (take Hitler and the Jews, he could not kill all of them, not even in Germany !) (It reminds me a little of the Borg, El Aurial and Guinan, resistance is _not_ futile
Unforunately, I cannot comment on the Falkland War because I have no clue what that was. Yet, the example with the Romans is disputable, as I explained above.
End Of Message "Shouldn't have taken the blue pill
FYI - this book is by T.R. Fehrenbach, about the War in Korea First published in 1964, is a must read for anyone who wants to understand our armed forces in this situation.
1 2/qid=923085370/sr=1-4/002-8674727-3939433
It's an excellent history of the U.S. forces forced to fight a 'fringe conflict', which the Balkans mess is. Recomended is the final section of the book, titled 'Proud Legions' - an essay of it's own and worth the price of the book.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/15748816