quote:
Originally posted by GEEK:
Also the US has a terrible problem with finishing the job when they start something involving the military. We left every single war unfinished starting in Korea.
Not to rush in and defend the US (which IMO has made more peactime foreign policy mistakes than could be chronicled in an encyclopedia), but this isn't quite accurate. We entered Korea under a UN mandate, not as a war, and we achieved the UN-desired objective of halting the planned invasion of South Korea by the North. That was the goal, and that was achieved, as I recall.
Vietnam was a big mistake in every fashion. It was finished, and would have been finished sooner, with our withdrawal, if Nixon and Kissinger hadn't decided to stall negotiations in order to give Tricky Dick another platform for his try at a second term in office. All this is documented on the White House tapes, too. (IMO, Kissinger should be tried for war crimes. A lot of boys from around the world died thanks to those two.)
We invaded Granada and Panama after American citizens were threatened, finished our operations there, and got out. The question of whether such actions were justified is moot, under your question.
Where Kuwait is concerned, the nation requested military assistance at the UN. We went in at the head of a group of nations, and did the job as requested. Note, we did finish things, again, according to UN mandate. Whether this was enough, here as in Korea, is not the fault of the US, but should perhaps be considered in regarding the effectiveness of the UN as it is currently structured.
I hope with this new effort we can finish, because if we don't there will be more terrorist attacks.
Don't hold your breath for a finishline, because there won't be one. Terrorist attacks have been occuring for thousands of years, and gone under all sorts of names--revolutionaries used them on British troops and Hessian mercenaries (bad idea, that, hiring out to deal with the Colonies) during the US War of Independence. They were used on a broad scale and with a viciousness that matches anything moderns might have done (given their limited funds and the weapons available) during the American Civil War, particularly in Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.
I'm getting far afield, here; but my point is that terrorism is endemic to human society, and will occur whenever an underprivileged group feels that all its other methods of recourse have been exhausted, and that injustices are immense. Terrorism is not an act of joy; it is an act proclaiming outrage at presumed crimes, whether objectively accurate, or not. And I question that simply killing terrorists will deal with terrorism. Oh, it needs to be done, definitely, and will complete regret. But the root causes of terrorism are not being addressed, because that gets into the messy area of looking into how foreign governments we support are handling problems of poverty, ignorance, sickness, and basically empowerment.
[ 03-09-2002: Message edited by: fable ]