No, just as long as we stayed in Bosnia ... but you scumsuckers can't wait, can you? You only have patience when it is your war ... a Democratic's war that involves the entire USA...
Posted by tadowe at 2007-09-07 09:10 AM | Reply | Flag
Is it really fair to compare our Balkan policy to that of Iraq? If anything, Iraq is a case-in-point that we learned nothing from our reconstruction/reconciliation in the former Yugoslavia. If you have an opportunity, I'd suggest visiting Croatia, Slovenia, or Bosnia, it's incredible how much has changed in less than a decade.
Yes, we were in Bosnia for several years longer than we are presently in Iraq (IRC, the US contribution to SFOR presently consists only of skeleton bases occupied by KBR contractors only) but for most of those years, we had less than 2,000 troops.
You might as well compare Iraq to Kosovo too. On my second rotation in KFOR, the MNB(E) consisted of only 1,600 US troops and around 500 Polish, Ukranian, Romanian, and Hungarian troops. I may be wrong, but I believe we only have one base left in the entire Balkans (Camp Bondsteel), the rest are occupied KBR and/or are in the process of being dismantled.
I think most of us would be more than happy if we could secure Iraq with < 2,000 US troops.
Hell, if you're going to compare apples-to-oranges, you might as well use our 50+ years in Japan and Germany, and 25+ years in the Sinai, to justify a perpetual occupation of Iraq.
Come September, we should throw out the status quo. Either we decide Iraq is important to our national security, send in 500,000 troops, initiate the draft, and transform into a wartime economy, or we begin to pull out.