Xref: utzoo talk.politics.misc:7619 alt.flame:1721 Path: utzoo!hoptoad!ptsfa!ames!hc!ut-sally!husc6!bbn!rochester!udel!princeton!phoenix!pucc!Q2816 From: Q2816@pucc.Princeton.EDU (Creative Business Decisions) Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,alt.flame Subject: Re: Bullet-proof passports? Message-ID: <4581@pucc.Princeton.EDU> Date: 25 Feb 88 03:55:26 GMT References: <3184@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <3096@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU> <792@athos.rutgers.edu> <9612@steinmetz.steinmetz.UUCP> <4568@pucc.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: Q2816@pucc.Princeton.EDU Organization: Princeton University, NJ Lines: 180 Disclaimer: Author bears full responsibility for contents of this article In article <3184@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, lazarus@athena.mit.edu (Michael Friedman) writes: >In article <4568@pucc.Princeton.EDU> Q2816@pucc.Princeton.EDU writes: >>In article <3096@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU>, lazarus@athena.mit.edu (Michael Friedman) writes: >>>Here I disagree. They are Americans and there should not be any place >>>on Earth that an American cannot go to in reasonable safety. >>Is that because Americans have some special rights on earth, or because >>EVERYBODY should have those rights? >Everybody should have that right. It is only the US government's >obligation to provide that right for Americans. According to whom? To what extent is the US obliged to make the world safe for US tourists? What percentage of the GNP should we spend on this? >US troops are meant to protect the country and the citizens. Up to a point. >Perhaps >you have heard of the war we had with the Barbary pirates? That's the >origin of the slogan "Millions for defense, but not one cent for >tribute.". The European nations paid off the Barbary pirates. We >didn't. They kidnapped American citizens and attacked American ships. >We went to war and kicked their butts. So? What has this to do with Lebanon or the rights of Americans abroad? It was in our economic interest to fight the Barbary pirates. We didn't do it because of a slogan. >The purpose of a travel advisory should be to alert people to danger. >It shouldn't mean "On your own head be it." Sometimes, however, it DOES mean that. And the State Dept. makes no bones about that fact, and never has. We do what we can to make the world safe. But getting into a mess the size of the one in the Near East is not the knd of price we like to pay for the few people who feel they HAVE to be in Lebanon. >>Your protection abroad is our diplomatic relations with other govts. >>Since Lebanon bsically has no govt., it's a dicey proposition being >>over there. >Yes. That is why the US government should protect Americans in Lebanon >but not in Italy, say. OK. Let's accept that proposition for a moment. Now consider that any substantial US military presence thee make the place into a war zone, with any number of factions considering us as an enemy. What do we do in a war zone? Evacuate the citizens, of course. Make sure they CAN'T go in. Make sure that the casualties to come are military ones. >>They died because they were on a mission they were unprepared for. >>The CinC sent them there against the wishes of the Commandant and the >>heads of other services. They were untrained as peacekeepers. >There is no great trick to being a peacekeeper. All you do is put >yourself between the warring factions and tell them "If you fight you >die." It takes no special skills. Then you get into a war with the people you're trying to stop from warring. Nice going, Michael. You've just descibed something called "occupation." It's NOT the same as peacekeeping. As I pointed out in a previous posting, US occupation of Lebanon is a)geopolitically idiotic, b) probably impossible, c) prohibitively expensive, d) endless. >>Ignorant, ignorant, ignorant. They were doing a standard peacekeeping >>job; but without the proper preparation or training. The person who >>sent them there and gave them their orders was their Commander in Chief. >It doesn't take proper training. And who ever heard of doing a >peacekeeping job with unloaded weapons? Peacekeeping most certainly DOES take training. Ask the Commandant of the Corps. You must know who the warring parties are, command some respect, understand what to do and not to do in order to keep from antagonizing the warring parties into doing something that endangers you, them and the populace, etc. There have been peacekeeping forces in the Middle East since 1949. They are highly trained soldiers from around the world who do difficult everyday tasks of keeping peace (as opposed to the Neanderthal "methods" you suggest above, which have nothing to do with peace, and everything to do with terror), generally with much success. Thousands of incidents have been defused or nipped in the bud by these forces. Lt. Col. Higgins, the most recent hostage, is one of these men. To suggest that the job he did was worthless or not requiring any skill beyond military training is to betray an ignorance a thousand times worse than the kind I accused you of in my last posting. You simply haven't a clue. b) Peacekeeping forces have specific rules regarding weaponry. If you march in somewhere fully armed, you are not a peacekeeper. You are a combatant. Even Reagan saw the folly of sending a combat force to Lebanon. Alas, he did not consider the effect of the one he DID send. c) The guards at the compound gate should have been better armed. More to the point, they should have been aware of the possibility of just such an attack; after all the Embassy had been devastated by a similar one only months before. They were not trained for that eventuality, certainly not as they should have been. Somebody was asleep at the wheel. Nobody was listening to the fantasy public/ congressional opinion you suggest there was. >When peacekeeping troops come under attack they fight. The navy >shelled artillery positions that were being used to bombard the Marines. And also many other things. The Shuf mountains were being shelled. This made the Druse (who consider the Shuf theirs and nobody else's) very angry. Many Lebanese saw it as an act of war. Why we did it was one thing (I believe you're only partly right about the stated reason, by the way); how it was perceived was another. We did not pay attention to that, and paid for our blindness. >Perhaps it was too complicated for you to understand. The idea was to >prevent Lebanon from going over to the Soviets by stopping the Syrians >from taking control. How do you do that? Well, a few hundred marines >make a good start. They can protect the Christians, who are the >closest things to allies we've got in Lebanon. After we'd let Lebanon go to pot for years, our involvement changed little. The Marines hardly protected the Christians (and were not there to do so); and an offshore presence, coupled with the Israeli one (their bungling having destabilized the joint in the first place, alas), would have kept the Soviets out of Lebanon. And besides, a few hundred Marines didn't have much effect at all. As you yourself have said, you must do this sort of thing thoroughly or not at all. A "good start" implies either a continuation or a step on the road paved with good intentions. >I understood that the Joint Chiefs of Staff objected to method. I >agree that the method used was stupid. We should have sent in enough >people to defend themselves. They should have dug in. And when people >started shooting at them they should have shot back. In other words, an occupation force. In other words, another Vietnam, with nobody really wanting us there. (Ever found any Maronites who were really thrilled with the Marine presence? Me neither.) >>Shameful is that we trust a President who hasn't the foggiest idea of >>what foreign policy is, who thinks that Marines can keep peace while the >>Navy shells places 20 miles away. >I. You don't reply to the argument. Do you agree that it is shameful >that we didn't retaliate? We should retaliate if our commitment to the area involves fighting a war based on that retaliation. By retaliating, we lose our status as pecekeepers, such as it was. >>And by the way, the job of the Marines is amphibious landings. Not >>peacekeeping. >Wrong. The Marines are an elite force. You use them when you have a >tough job. Wrong. They are not trained to do the tough day-after-day job of peacekeeping. The troops themselves said they felt out of place, unable to get a handle on the job they were there to do. >They are also a 'light' force. They don't carry arround >heavy weapons. Therefore you use them when you don't want to be bogged >down by artillery etc. Since we had the navy for artillery the Marines >were probably the best choice for the job. Perhaps. I doubt it. But we agree it was a dumb job, so the argument that they were the best for it is a little like saying you'd rather drown in hot water than in cold water. Roger Lustig (Q2816@PUCC.BITNET Q2816@pucc.princeton.edu) Die Gedanken sind frei! Wer kann sie erraten?