If we engage militarily in Syria, I think Kosovo should be the model

[edhopper]

Strategic air strikes without ground forces.

I haven't made up my mind on our involvement yet, see good points on both sides. But i think it is going to happen.

[KittyWampus]

1. Wes Clark already commented on this- Kosovo was a NATO operation from the start & he acknowledged

that there was no definite timetable for withdrawal possible to be successful.


Wes Clark Talks About Syria & Compares To Clinton Bombing Iraqi Intelligence Service (NPR-Today)

Wes Clark Talks About Syria & Compares To Clinton Bombing Iraqi Intelligence Service (NPR-Today)

Last edited Tue Aug 27, 2013, 05:06 PM USA/ET - Edit history (5)

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/27/216155784/retired-gen-wesley-clark-talks-about-precedents-and-syria

snip
Clark told NPR's Melissa Block that the only similarity between what's going on in Syria, today, and what happened during the Allied intervention in Kosovo, is Russia's unwillingness to support a United Nations resolution supporting a strike.

"The Kosovo campaign, first of all, it wasn't just the bombing that drove the Serbs out. It was the fact that they were engaged with NATO that the Serbs knew that if they didn't accede to pull their forces out and let the Albanians return home that NATO had the capability and was starting to do the planning to put a ground invasion in," Clark said.

The Obama administration has said that regime change would not be the point of any mission in Syria.

snip

Instead Clark points to attacks directed by President Clinton against the headquarters of the Iraqi Intelligence Service on June 27, 1993.

As Clinton explained at the time, the attack was a "firm and commensurate" response to an Iraqi plot to assassinate President George H.W. Bush. The attacks were swift. For about an hour, U.S. Navy ships launched 23 Tomahawk missiles.

Clark said if the mission in Syria is to prevent the Assad regime from using chemical weapons there are two ways to do it: One is destroying the weapons, which is risky because an explosion can spread toxic elements. The other is to punish the Assad regime by "taking something valuable" by hitting communications infrastructure, intelligence, air defenses or radars.

snip
"When you start something like this you have to be prepared for an indeterminate length if you have a political objective," Clark said.

However, if the objective is punishment, it can be over quickly with a few missile strikes.
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[edhopper]

6. Thanks for that info.

[dawg]

2. The Kosovo action was virtually guaranteed not to ...

leave Serbia in the hands of religious fundamentalists who hate the U.S. and will also commit atrocities against the people.

[Arctic Dave]

3. Ground forces were used.

They have been stationed there ever since.

Are you OK with that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War

[cali]

4. why it should not be

read this and read the Spinney article it links to.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/08/before-you-conclude-that-precision-bombing-makes-sense-with-syria/279086/

[4Q2u2]

5. No Way

"Then, the following day -- July 11 -- some 1700 men, disproportionately the elderly and infirm, were separated from women and children. The peacekeepers "stood inches away from the Serb soldiers who were separating the Muslim men, one by one, from their families" (Sudetic, Blood and Vengeance, p. 306). At Serb command, the Dutch drew up a registry of 242 Bosnian men remaining in the camp, again mostly elderly and infirm. Then they handed the men over to the Serbs. Not one of the 242 men is known to have survived. The children and women were bused, with isolated exceptions, to safety in Tuzla. Men, almost without exception, were carted away to their deaths. (Note: Other sources cite 239 as the total number of men named on the list; for an account of how the 242 total was eventually arrived at, see the letter from Hasan Nuhanovic posted to the Women of Srebrenica website. The letter also gives a harrowingly detailed account of the separation of men and boys from the remainder of the population at the U.N. base, and the blatant Dutch complicity in the process"

http://www.gendercide.org/case_srebrenica.html