Quote:

Originally posted by Dave:
How does this dovetail in with repeated Palestinian calls for interntaional peace-keepers? Israel rejects these calls, saying that it's an internal issue which does not necessitate peacekeepers.





I fully understand Israel's reluctance to trust any U.N. force when it comes to Israel's peace and security.
There were U.N. peacekeepers on Israel's borders from 1956 until the 1967 Six Day War, and when Israel's Arab neighbors massed for a new attack, the U.N. forces just stepped aside and left Israel to its fate. It was a surprise to everyone that Israel survived that war, certainly no thanks to U.N. peacekeepers.

And as I pointed out on another topic, I mentioned a news story about Dutch U.N. peacekeeping forces, sent in to protect a Bosnian Muslim town, and far from protecting them, left the town to the Serbs, who slaughtered the people there. I saw several soldiers, officers and witnessing human relief workers interviewed on BBC a few days ago, and witnesses say that the Dutch forces knew these people were about to be slaughtered, and actually purposefully did not tell the Bosnians about the danger they were in, so they would remain calm and be peacefully led off to their deaths, without any uncomfortable fuss for the Dutch unit.

U.N. protection does not inspire a great sense of security.

Quote:

Originally posted by Dave:

Also, the US pulled out of Somalia because the corpse of an army ranger was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu and this was broadcast to the US public. The US public lacks the stomach to see its troops killed in foreign theatres (understandably, in one sense). The US military was opposed to it, because it wasn't fighting, it was nation-building. And so the US pulled out. I don't think it was cowardice: it was more lack of commitment.



That's what I despised about President Clinton's administration.
Never before was a president so motivated by popular polls and the perception of what the public wanted.
Clinton had no loyalty to anything except what would get him re-elected.
When an American soldier's corpse was dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Clinton immediately pre-emptively acted to immediately end the military police action in Somalia before it had a chance to become unpopular. It was not because of any outcry from the public.
I think it was the wrong policy. Clinton should have simply sent in adequate backup forces for our troops on the ground.

Ad those soldiers in Mogadishu never would have been killed to begin with, if Clinton had deployed adequate helicopters and armored tanks to back up U.S. forces in the area. Again, for politically correct reasons, Clinton had a minimum of U.S. forces, instead of the forces necessary to adequately defend themselves if they ran into a firefight. I read about this in TIME, a week or two after the incident, that expressed this view.