Peacekeeping is Meals On Wheels NOT Combat!

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aebrain RE:Peacekeeping is Meals On Wheels NOT Combat! 5/14/2002 9:16:38 PM

Peacekeeping worked in East Timor. The key seems to be: 1. Go in with good ROEs - ones that permit no-nonsense violent and disproportionate retaliation to any threat. Basically, allow fire not just when fired upon, but when threatened with fire. Reply to one guy waving a pistol at you with a charge by APCs, guns blazing and with mortar support. Reply to a single sniper with a full brigade attack. Make sure that any attack on peacekeeping forces is a game of Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol not a revolver. 2.Make sure that your not-so-friendly friends criticise you for being too aggressive and "shoot first, ask questions later" *before you go in*. 3.Go in there fully prepared for all-out war. 4. Then win the "hearts and minds" of the local populace. Not by threats, but by Meals on Wheels, guarded by automatic weapons with people not afraid to use them. You'll be able to do this because the enemy is more comfortable shooting babies than facing an opponent that sends out aggressive night patrols with Claymores, Willy Peter and knives. Basically "Si vis Pacem, para Bellum". Against suicide bombers, or warring clans who use kids as human shields, it might not work. But the Aussies did well in Somalia, so it might work even there.

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jastayme3 RE:Peacekeeping is Meals On Wheels NOT Combat! 3/16/2005 1:06:45 PM

That line of thought is kind of like being only half on a galloping horse. If you are riding you are safe and if you are not you are safe but being half on will break your neck. So with peacekeeping; you should do the job activly or not do it. If you are only there to be an escort for food supplies etc that may be different but not too different. You should still be the biggest, machoest, meanest, armed escort you can be and make sure that the grandchildren of todays bandits scare their kids into being good with stories about your armed escorts. Deterance is only good if it deters. If you are not willing to do that you should stay home. Squeemishness and false pity are not the same as compassion. One way or another someone will suffer and it is a statesmans job to choose the least bad and take responsibility for it.

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