Kosovo Honors Bill Clinton With Statue

[Truth Teller]

The nation of Kosovo is honoring Bill Clinton with a statue for saving their country from genocide[something you won't see the Iraquis do with G.W. Bush].

Link : http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...16200920070523.

[KruSader]

How about honoring the troops that actually made it happen, I think Bill was probally getting BJ's in the oval at the time.

[86Dude]

Let them enjoy their moment. God knows they've earned it.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by KruSader

How about honoring the troops that actually made it happen, I think Bill was probally getting BJ's in the oval at the time.

Amazing. Simply amazing.

[KanuckiStang]

Originally Posted by TGRR

Amazing. Simply amazing.

...but not surprising.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by KanuckiStang

...but not surprising.

Blind partisanship is an ugly thing.

I wonder if he feels the same way about Reagan and the Poles?

Har har! Never mind.

[Snouter]

This is a sad reminder of Slick Willie's support of radical Islam in that region.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by Snouter

This is a sad reminder of Slick Willie's support of radical Islam in that region.

Hey...what's yet ANOTHER illegal use of troops between buddies?

But which radical Islamics are you talking about? Or are you suggesting that all Islamics are radical?

[Kaliayev]

I suspect he means the KLA, whose ex-members allegedly tried to attack Fort Dix recently (though that charge is looking dodgy as hell, since the guy most up for it was an FBI informant).

Strangely enough, part of the rationale for the 1999 bombing campaign was to win Arab support in order to broker a Middle East peace deal. I'd say it was for humanitarian reasons, but since we (NATO) backed Georgian attacks on South Ossetia in 2004, and they have exactly the same claim as Kosovo to independence, its kind of hard to believe that anymore.

[oki]

Originally Posted by Snouter

This is a sad reminder of Slick Willie's support of radical Islam in that region.

thats a really stupid thing to say, it has nothing to do with it.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by Kaliayev

I suspect he means the KLA, whose ex-members allegedly tried to attack Fort Dix recently (though that charge is looking dodgy as hell, since the guy most up for it was an FBI informant).

Strangely enough, part of the rationale for the 1999 bombing campaign was to win Arab support in order to broker a Middle East peace deal. I'd say it was for humanitarian reasons, but since we (NATO) backed Georgian attacks on South Ossetia in 2004, and they have exactly the same claim as Kosovo to independence, its kind of hard to believe that anymore.

Now, now...you're beginning to sound cynical.

[Feenix566]

So why is Kosovo good and Iraq bad?

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by Feenix566

So why is Kosovo good and Iraq bad?

War-wise, Kosovo was bad and Iraq is worse.

Both wars were bullshit, but one has turned out to be much costlier bullshit.

[hadit]

Originally Posted by Feenix566

So why is Kosovo good and Iraq bad?

Partisan reasons only. Kosovo represents everything the anti's find evil about Iraq. It represented no threat to the US, there was no national security interest in it, and there was no world backing when we went in.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by hadit

Partisan reasons only. Kosovo represents everything the anti's find evil about Iraq. It represented no threat to the US, there was no national security interest in it, and there was no world backing when we went in.

Absolutely.

We were never intended to be the world's cop.

[Snouter]

The Serbs were the good guys and Slick Willie had us bomb 'em. This was back when we did stuff for a public access channel, back when a Mac was actually better than a PC, long before Flash made it possible for average humanoids to do cartoons.

[TGRR]

Originally Posted by Snouter

The Serbs were the good guys and Slick Willie had us bomb 'em.

1. The Serbs have never been good guys. They're pretty much the worst people on Earth, along with the Croats and Bosnians.

2. There are no good guys in the former Yugoslavia. Period.

[grimrebuke]

There's a lot of differences. In Kosovo the UN brokered the ground forces, while we used mostly air-power. We didn't invade, we didn't occupy for several years, and in about 15 years the people of the nation are thanking us and are running a relatively stable nation. Plus we turned over Milosovich to the world court instead of having him assassinated while in custody by a kangaroo court completely under our control. In other words, we were restrained, measured, and worked with international organizations towards a very specific goal that was attainable through armed force combined with other efforts.
In contrast, Iraq is over 25% of the way to that 15 year mark. We used all out invasion in lieu of measured strikes. We allowed Saddam to be killed by an unestablished court of Iraqi's surrounded by US armed forces. We continue to occupy the nation. And it looks pretty unlikely that in 11 years they will be happy that we came to their "aid."
I will fully admit that I was wrong about Kosovo. I thought that it was stupid that we were sending a few advisors and air strikes to deal with a major flare-up in the region of the world that has started not one, but two world wars. That desire to get in there and stir things up was a combination of lack of forethought and inexperience. With hindsight and a much broader understanding of what can and can not be accomplished with armed forces, particularly deployed ground forces, I have come to respect why a Rhodes Scholar makes a better decision-maker in these situations than a young Lance-Corporal. If we used the same tactic in Kosovo that we used in Iraq, we would still be there with thousands of troops, an angry world, sectarian violence, and civil revolt. How you do a thing is at least as important as what you do.

[Feenix566]

Do you think that removing Saddam Hussein from power could have been accomplished with a few advisers and air strikes?

Was Milosovich was a bigger threat to the US than Hussein?

[Monster]

One of the other key differences is that the Iraq war never had global support. The U.S. leaned on our allies (Britain, Australia) to support us after we began the invasion. With Kosovo, there was a much broader support base going into the conflict, which is why we used NATO troops instead of U.S. troops exclusively.