September 17, 1997
THE IMPOTENT GIANT!
The United States maintains a huge and very expensive military force. How expensive, both to taxpayers and human life, has been demonstrated this past week, as there have been five separate military air crashes in the last week. One of these crashes involved the loss of a $46 million Stealth fighter, while others have caused death and destruction from Oman to Namibia to North Carolina.
While U.S. military planes have been crashing around the globe, the Air Force announced it was calling off the search for more remains of a previous crash of an A-10 in the Colorado Rockies. The abandoned search means that the four 500 pound bombs that the plane was carrying will never be recovered — or at least not by the military.
Why does the U.S. population support such a huge, expensive, and dangerous military force? An imminent invasion by Canadians streaming across the northern border seems unlikely. Mexicans are streaming across the southern border, but their motivation is economic, not geo-political.
We suppose the purpose of vast U.S. military might is to bring peace and democracy to the farthest corners of the globe, to places such as Bosnia. U.S. led NATO forces now have about 36,000 troops in Bosnia.
With 36,000 troops on the ground, and planes flying and crashing all over the globe, you would think protection would be available for those Americans who are in Bosnia to oversee that country’s elections. But U.S. diplomat Robert Frowick thinks differently.
Bowing to the pressures of the mob, Frowick has reversed the decision of a Norwegian judge. The judge had ruled that 50 Serbian Democratic Party politicians should be disqualified for office due to their ties to Radovan Karadzic. Karadzic has been indicted for genocide and crimes against humanity, but still operates freely from his stronghold in Pale.
Frowick was afraid that the decision against the Serb hard-liners could spark mob violence and endanger some of the 850 Western observers in the Serb Republic. He was particularly concerned about 17 American observers staying together at the same hotel in Pale.
Think about it. 36,000 troops in Bosnia; the biggest, most expensive, and most sophisticated military force in the world, by far. Yet America bows to the pressure of stone-throwing mobs, can’t protect 17 American observers, and leaves an indicted war criminal free.
They say it’s not the size of dog in the fight, but the amount of fight in the dog that matters. If so, the American military in Bosnia is a poodle in the body of a Doberman.
(Source: Washington Post .)
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