This will start some

[fscrig75]

Strategic materials I have no idea.
But also with that was the whole concern about the domino effect again. Countries start to fall allies come in to help out bigger allies come in and then it all goes to hell. Plus everyone was still worried about Russia's loose nukes floating around out there.
I don't really lay any blame on NATO, its more of a combat operations group. The UN I do blame. This is what they are supposed to be stopping. If the UN would allow its peace keepers to defend the people they are supposed to be protecting then their units might work. But if I'm not mistaken the UN is only allowed to us it weapons to defend themselves, they are not allowed to intervene in a domestic matter, they have to wait for the local police, who are usually worthless.

 

[8Mud]

Strategic materials I have no idea.
But also with that was the whole concern about the domino effect again. Countries start to fall allies come in to help out bigger allies come in and then it all goes to hell. Plus everyone was still worried about Russia's loose nukes floating around out there.
I don't really lay any blame on NATO, its more of a combat operations group. The UN I do blame. This is what they are supposed to be stopping. If the UN would allow its peace keepers to defend the people they are supposed to be protecting then their units might work. But if I'm not mistaken the UN is only allowed to us it weapons to defend themselves, they are not allowed to intervene in a domestic matter, they have to wait for the local police, who are usually worthless.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/trep-j28.shtml Kind of a slanted view, but some is likely valid.
http://rrojasdatabank.info/agfrank/nato_kosovo/msg00011.html

 

[Ecomike]

From everything I have read it seems like our pull out from Vietnam was in the long run a strategic victory that ended up pitting the mainland Chinese and the Soviets against each other in a surrogate battle against each other in Indochina (Cambodia against Vietnam) that moved the Mainland Chinese towards friendly relations with the USA which hurt the Soviets and further aiIded the final collapse of the USSR. I think the people in Indochina would have suffered just as much if we had stayed, and if we had stayed it might have been the USA that collapsed instead of the USSR.

Another point, is we need to make sure we never fall into our own Afghanistan trap like the Soviets did. Iraq and Afghanistan both have the potential to bring us down just like it did the Soviets. Only the Soviets were not strung out between the two, fighting on 2 fronts. Were not even fighting two fronts, were split up in two different countries that are not even connected, with their own civil wars going on internally.

Like 8Mud said below, you get in the middle of a civil war, your gonna get shot at by both sides!
What did 8Mud just post earlier, something about "those who fail to learn from History, are doomed to repeat it".

eace:

 

[RichP]

My take on Croatia and Bosnia is both sides of the conflict were arming ten years before it ever happened. It was pretty much ignored, until way past too late. Getting in the middle of a civil war often gets you shot at by both sides.
Kosovo, was Clintons plan to curry favor with the Saudis, show Europe that we were willing to act unilaterally in Europe (no matter how many coalition noises they made) to force Europe to deal with there own problems, to avoid destabilization in Austria and other countries, and the mines in the North Kosovo mountains, another information black hole. I'm guessing some kind of strategic materials and a port to ship them from in Albania. Another side note that I found interesting, a large part of the cruise missile inventory was at the end of it's shelf life, at just about this time.
I'm going to have to figure out exactly what the Austrians roll is in this whole arena some day. They are and have been kind of the third rail of European politics for a very long time. There is almost an information black hole as far as their political influence is concerned, but they often seem to be very influential.
Strategic materials often play a larger roll in conflicts than people let on, either procuring them for yourself or denying them to others.
The politicians tend to stress the humanitarian part of the whole thing and play down the strategic parts.
NATO/UN had hill top outposts scattered all over the old Yugoslavia way before actual serious hostilities started. They did limited patrolling.

Ever wonder why the north south korea thing ended up where it did ? south of that parallel were and are tungsten mines, at that time we needed that tungsten for jet engines. There were also some rumors floating around when I was in vietnam that the oil companies suspected very large oil reserves off the coast of south vietnam coupled with the US not wanting the soviets to get a deep water ice free port in the pacific, cam rahn bay.
All strategic stuff reasons, the domino theory was for civilian consumption. The US government learned alot from both the Nazi's and Japan in WWII, mainly that it is OK to lie to your citizens and it's getting worse as time goes on.

 

[RichP]

Strategic materials I have no idea.
But also with that was the whole concern about the domino effect again. Countries start to fall allies come in to help out bigger allies come in and then it all goes to hell. Plus everyone was still worried about Russia's loose nukes floating around out there.
I don't really lay any blame on NATO, its more of a combat operations group. The UN I do blame. This is what they are supposed to be stopping. If the UN would allow its peace keepers to defend the people they are supposed to be protecting then their units might work. But if I'm not mistaken the UN is only allowed to us it weapons to defend themselves, they are not allowed to intervene in a domestic matter, they have to wait for the local police, who are usually worthless.

UN troops are armed, only the officers have live ammo and that was the case in Bosnia. The French had a 'safety zone' camp, it had several thousand refugees, when it came to an armed confrontation they walked away and left those people to their own devices, most of the men and older children were killed or vanished only to turn up in mass graves later on.

 

[RichP]

From everything I have read it seems like our pull out from Vietnam was in the long run a strategic victory that ended up pitting the mainland Chinese and the Soviets against each other in a surrogate battle against each other in Indochina (Cambodia against Vietnam) that moved the Mainland Chinese towards friendly relations with the USA which hurt the Soviets and further aiIded the final collapse of the USSR. I think the people in Indochina would have suffered just as much if we had stayed, and if we had stayed it might have been the USA that collapsed instead of the USSR.

Another point, is we need to make sure we never fall into our own Afghanistan trap like the Soviets did. Iraq and Afghanistan both have the potential to bring us down just like it did the Soviets. Only the Soviets were not strung out between the two, fighting on 2 fronts. Were not even fighting two fronts, were split up in two different countries that are not even connected, with their own civil wars going on internally.

Like 8Mud said below, you get in the middle of a civil war, your gonna get shot at by both sides!
What did 8Mud just post earlier, something about "those who fail to learn from History, are doomed to repeat it".

eace:

Georgia should be interesting, we transported what 3,000 combat hardened urban combat Georgian soldiers in from Iraq, they have been there since the beginning when we invaded. I got a feeling the Russians are about to realize they started something thats going to get nasty. We'll see how the soviets deal with IED's I'm thinking and that 3,000+ core training 50,000+ civilians in urban resistance methods. The Russians are good with tank warefare, we'll see how good their conscripted ground forces are where you have infantry companies and battalions that don't even speak a common language.

 

[Ecomike]

Interesting recent and moden history in Georgia.

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0107564.html

Seems not too long ago Russia had military bases there, and Georgia was threatening to force the Russians out if they did get the muslim terrorist problem under control.

"With little progress in resolving the Abkhazia situation, however, parliament in April 1997 voted overwhelmingly to threaten Russia with loss of its military bases, should it fail to extend Russian military control over the separatist region. In 1998, the U.S. and Britain began an operation to remove nuclear material from Georgia, dangerous remains from its Soviet years. A darling of the West since his days as the Soviet Union's foreign minister, Shevardnadze was viewed far less favorably by his own people, who were frustrated by unemployment, poverty, cronyism, and rampant corruption. In the 2000 presidential elections, Shevardnadze was reelected with 80% of the vote, though international observers determined the election was marred by irregularities. In 2002, U.S. troops trained Georgia's military in antiterrorism measures in the hopes that Georgian troops would subdue Muslim rebels fighting in the country. Tensions between Georgia and Russia were strained over the Pankisi Gorge, a lawless region of Georgia that Russia said had become a haven for Islamic militants and Chechen rebels.
In May 2003, work began on the Georgian section of the enormously ambitious Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which runs from Azerbaijan through Georgia to Turkey. The pipeline opened in July 2006."



Interesting indeed!

 

[fscrig75]

What should be even more interesting is if the other former Soviet states decide to join up with Georgia and start attacking Russia on multiple fronts. Add to that, that some of the states are now NATO allies. Should Russia strike against a NATO ally then where will that leave the rest of the EU and us since we have vocal said that we support Georgia.

 

[fscrig75]

UN troops are armed, only the officers have live ammo and that was the case in Bosnia. The French had a 'safety zone' camp, it had several thousand refugees, when it came to an armed confrontation they walked away and left those people to their own devices, most of the men and older children were killed or vanished only to turn up in mass graves later on.

Yes you are correct they are armed, but as I saw first hand in Kosovo they will not use their weapons unless they are directly threatened. Where ever the UN is sent, no one respects them. They have no real authority and everyone knows that they won't do sh*t. So what good are they?

 

[red91]

Yes you are correct they are armed, but as I saw first hand in Kosovo they will not use their weapons unless they are directly threatened. Where ever the UN is sent, no one respects them. They have no real authority and everyone knows that they won't do sh*t. So what good are they?

Those are the old actors that had their SAG cards rescinded.

I'm pretty sure most of them are old, washed up child tv stars that are working for a heroin fix.

 

[8Mud]

Ever wonder why the north south korea thing ended up where it did ? south of that parallel were and are tungsten mines, at that time we needed that tungsten for jet engines. There were also some rumors floating around when I was in vietnam that the oil companies suspected very large oil reserves off the coast of south vietnam coupled with the US not wanting the soviets to get a deep water ice free port in the pacific, cam rahn bay.
All strategic stuff reasons, the domino theory was for civilian consumption. The US government learned alot from both the Nazi's and Japan in WWII, mainly that it is OK to lie to your citizens and it's getting worse as time goes on.

There was a quote by a Newspaper reporter that stuck with me.
"We Americans are the ultimate optimists, we are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."
But just because they are lying to us doesn't make them wrong, it just makes them manipulators. And most everybody resents being manipulated.
Strategic materials are often a larger part of any conflict than the government lets on. It's not only acquiring strategic materials for ourselves, it's denying them to our competition (enemies).
Georgia is something like %97 Greek or Russian Orthodox, so the Muslim insurgent stronghold argument for invasion really doesn't seem plausible. Or the excuse of protecting there citizens, sorry to say the Russians sure don't have much of a history of protecting their citizens.
It's more likely the Georgian pipelines and Russia increasing control of the Caspian oil fields. Much like the gas pipelines thriugh the Ukrain to europe.
Turkey has been putting pressure on northern Iraq, there excuse is they are attacking Kurdish strongholds and insurgents. A whole lot more Kurds in Turkey and Iran than Iraq. The Kurdish insurgency in Turkey is decades, if not centuries old (the center of the insurgency is in Turkey). And don't forget that Turkey turned around a whole American armored Division at there port and screwed up years of planning during the Iraqi invasion. Payback is a futher mucker.
It's rarely just one reason, it's often much more Machiavellian. Just something to think about, Russia is threatening Turkey in the north, which is likely to take the pressure off of northern Iraq.
Georgia is likely just a pawn in a much larger game. Turkey may just be much of the object to the whole operation.
Russias timing is sure enough beneficial to American goals.
Just an opinion, but look to see if the Georgians show up with Tow's and Stingers, if not, we are likely in cahoots with Russians.
The Russians get the Georgian pipelines and we get a nervous Turkey and get some of the pressure taken off of northern Iraq.
And the whole time the Americans and Russian's will be screaming about the poor people of Georgia and how they both have the best interests of the Georgian people at heart.

 

[fscrig75]

Also this little push of Russia also gives them a clear easy shot into Iran, should they need to protect their only Arab ally.