Visit our website: HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------------------------- [While air strikes might have U.S. popular backing, Bush has acknowledged that it doesn't make sense to fire a "$2 million missile into a $10 dollar tent to hit a camel in the butt." ] Yugoslavia worrying precedent for U.S. air power By Douglas Hamilton MANAMA, Sept 21 (Reuters) - If the 1999 war with Yugoslavia is anything to go by, the United States may launch 1,000 warplanes against Osama Bin Laden's Afghan hideouts without destroying or even crippling his shadowy forces. Ultimately, troops on the ground backed by a credible threat of invasion might be required for a successful assault. America and its NATO allies had some 900 aircraft flying at the height of Operation Allied Force, completing some 35,000 sorties on Yugoslav targets over 78 days, for a remarkably thin haul in enemy casualties and military destruction. Following last week's devastating suicide attacks in the United States, for which Washington says bin Laden is a prime suspect, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said on Thursday U.S. military forces were being deployed to help fight a new "war on terrorism." He gave no details, but three aircraft carriers and air deployment announced by defence officials could place up to 500 U.S. warplanes in the Mediterranean, Gulf and Indian Ocean areas for what Washington suggested could be a strike against Afghanistan. In that war-ravaged, impoverished country, military targets for U.S. pilots would be far fewer than in Yugoslavia. In the 1999 bombing campaign launched over President Slobodan Milosevic's brutal crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, NATO said it destroyed 93 Serb tanks. The Serbs said they lost only 13 and military experts said there was very little sign of a shattered army in Kosovo. In the end, Milosevic's Yugoslavia yielded only when Washington and NATO got serious about a land invasion, setting a mid-September 1999 date for an offensive by some 210,000 troops, according to diplomatic sources. NOTHING RULED OUT THIS TIME In one of the acknowledged strategic errors of the Kosovo campaign, a ground offensive against Yugoslavia had originally been ruled out by then-President Bill Clinton. President George W. Bush has ruled nothing out in his "war against terrorism" in the wake of the September 11 attacks with hijacked airliners on New York's World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington. Rumsfeld has declined to say if elite Special Operations troops might move towards the Afghanistan region, but said army elements were part of his deployment order. While estimates of the Taliban's antiquated arsenal vary widely, military experts say their fighters could spend years punishing an occupied force from the rugged hills and valleys of the countryside. While air strikes might have U.S. popular backing, Bush has acknowledged that it doesn't make sense to fire a "$2 million missile into a $10 dollar tent to hit a camel in the butt." It would most probably be a futile waste of expensive precision-guided munitions, as well as a public failure to strike a decisive blow at the perpetrators. MEETING EXPECTATIONS This reflects the dilemma faced by the United States and allies in Kosovo, when Western public opinion rapidly ran out of patience with NATO's inability to stop, and punish, the so-called "fielded forces" of the Yugoslav Army. Western media demanded to know why bombs were being rained on refineries far away from the scene of suspected genocide. But air force generals "don't like plinking tanks and they don't like bombing mud," said a frustrated former NATO Supreme Commander Europe, General Wesley Clark, at the time. Clark fought an uphill battle with his Pentagon bosses to deploy a symbolic ground force of 5,000 troops plus Apache attack helicopters and Army tactical missiles in neighbouring Albania, as a token of NATO's readiness to invade. It came late and was never thrown into battle and it was unclear how decisive the move was in bringing about the Yugoslav surrender. Not a single U.S. or NATO soldier was killed in combat in the Western alliance's first "hot" war, but Clark warned this must not be seen as the ideal model for modern conflict. "If there's nothing worth fighting for and maybe dying for, then maybe there's nothing worth living for," he said. 07:32 09-21-01 ------------------------------------------------- This Discussion List is the follow-up for the old stopnato @listbot.com that has been shut down ==^================================================================ EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9spWA Or send an email To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This email was sent to: archive@jab.org T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
