Military Quagmires
Published February 24, 2005
A news item in today's local paper took me by surprise. When talk about military quagmire occurs, the topic is Iraq. I had no idea we still had troops in Kosovo. From the Indianapolis Star:
Barbara Walls spent hours at the international arrivals terminal of Indianapolis International Airport on Wednesday, waiting for her Indiana National Guard husband to come home.
"We're just out here hoping to get a quick hug," the Indianapolis resident said as she waited outside the terminal for Staff Sgt. Michael Walls. He was one of nearly 250 soldiers returning from Kosovo on a cold Wednesday night after nine months of peacekeeping duty — the first of nine groups of Guard members returning to Indiana through mid-March.
When the first soldiers started coming out of the terminal around 9 p.m., Walls watched each one closely. Finally, as the last soldiers left, there was her husband — toting a box of records toward the buses.
For the next two weeks, there will be several more arrivals as Indiana Guard members return from Europe. Most Guard members have returned from duty in Bosnia-Herzegovina; about 200 are left to come home. An additional 1,600 have yet to return from Kosovo, a province of Serbia, said Col. Brian Copes, chief of staff of the 38th Infantry Division, noting: "Kosovo is a dangerous environment, more dangerous than Bosnia."
The simple fact is, there are American soldiers positioned all over the globe, the result of every US President's foreign policy since FDR. While left and right haggle over degree, the reality is that each since World War 2 has accepted as writ that the correct American role is military interventionism.
Check out this and other provocation in my blog: Kole Hard Facts of Life
- Military Quagmires
- Published: February 24, 2005
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- Section: Politics
- Writer: Mike Kole
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that is the price of responsibility, which much of the globe seems only to eager to abdicate
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As Pat Buchanan would say, that is the price of "empire"...