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I don't think the Americans shouldn't be there, I think they should have got off their arses 5 years ago instead of waiting until they had no other choice. It was the same in World War Two, the same in the Gulf, stay out of the shit as long as possible until they are forced to do something, and then go on about the heroics of doing what's they had to. Mind you they're not the only ones.
I do however despise the way these wars are waged. Remember Kosovo anyone? Several hundred thousand people are raped, tortured and killed while the alliance refused to commit any ground troops to the conflict.
And then Afghanistan, where once again it was the bombers, but where are the soldiers? They're Northern alliance squaddies, sent to die in a blaze of glory for which the alliance took credit. Many dead on both sides, and a new era of tension which will be difficult to contain.
In Kosovo, the US air contingent was the biggest by far, the same in Afghanistan. Yet the ground troops committed afterwards to pick up the pieces and do a little bit of nation-building were mostly foreign. Both times the largest contingent was British, with an army a tenth of the size and vastly ill-equipped.
The US is not the sole bearer of responsibility, but it must stop shirking it's peacekeeping responsibilies. I think some of the so called 'realists' need to get real and accept that the US, like the rest of the alliance, needs to get on the ground and sort the problem out first-hand before we have another disaster like Kosovo. You can't exact a 'regime change' from the air. Some Western troops will have to die if we are to get anywhere.
This is war and in war soldiers die.
Last edited by evil_bastard on Jul-01-2002 at 20:02
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