Martin wrote:
> It certainly does break down the military, and eliminating the air
> threat is the standard first step.  Ground forces cannot go in until
> the air force is eliminated as a threat.

What ground forces?  My understanding is that the US Congress is not
going to allow US troops to fight.  I don't know of any other countries
that want to send ground troops in there.

I agree with alister in that the air strikes cannot prevent Milosovic
from continuing with the atrocities.  The atrocities seem to be
committed by Serb soldiers with small arms, not by Serb tanks and other
military hardware.

We can rip apart Milosovic's large scale war machine, but as long as he
has soldiers who will fight for him the atrocities will continue.  In
order to force the soldiers to stop killing ethnic Albanians, you need
to send in ground troops and kick out the Serbs--but so far NATO is only
committed to airstrikes.

The strikes can possibly weaken their moral to the point where they
capitulate, but that is not a tangible miliary goal, it is a
pyschological goal.  No one knows how far Milosovic will go and how many
will die until he caves.

Meantime, the airstrikes seem to be provoking even greater atrocities on
the part of Milosovic.  There are now reports of genocide.

These bombings seem like another bad decision on the part of Clinton. He
continues his "bomb first, ask questions later" policy.  The strikes
lack clear, attainable objectives and don't seem to have any limit. Thus
the situation could very well become worse.