The Proper Role of the American Military
The terrorist attacks upon New York City and Washington, D.C., this past September have united Americans behind a war on terrorism (?Under? 10, Simon 11). The first target in this war has been Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, but officials at the Pentagon have said the war could expand to encompass assaults on other nations, such as Iran and Iraq (?Under? 10). Such a war would greatly stretch American military forces that are already feeling the strain of far-flung deployments all across the globe (Inman 69-70, Langewiesche 54).
The most controversial of these deployments involve peacekeeping missions (Krull 55). According to William Langewiesche, the American military presently has peacekeepers assigned to the Sinai Peninsula, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and East Timor (54). The missions of these peacekeepers differ from traditional military campaigns of the past in that the peacekeepers have no predetermined enemy to fight (80). Instead, the peacekeepers? orders are to prevent fighting from occurring (80). Beyond that, the peacekeepers have no set goals; they have no objectives to take, cities to seize, or lines to breach (80).
A negative aspect of peacekeeping missions is that they can last for extended periods of time. For example, Langewiesche says the operation in Bosnia has lasted for six years, and no end is in sight (52). During these extended peacekeeping deployments, military units can lose some of their fighting edge. The experience of the Second Brigade of the Third Infantry Division of the U.S. Army, which contributes most of the American forces involved in Bosnia (54), aptly demonstrates this deterioration. Soldiers from this Brigade have difficulty maintaining even their skills with tank guns, because the soldiers? ordinary peacekeeping duties of patrolling and driving do not provide outlets to practice traditional military skills (56).
A logical assumption, then, would be that if the military were to cease peacekeeping operations, the overall readiness of the military to execute war would increase. Also, as Langewiesche maintains, the morale of the troops who now must serve in what they interpret as ?police actions? would improve (66, 80). Soldiers do not like murky missions with ambiguous objectives (66); they prefer campaigns with distinct foes and clear goals (80).
The Gulf War of 1991 was an example of such a traditional campaign. Don Nardo explains that the specific objective of that campaign?Operation Desert Storm?was to force out of Kuwait the Iraqi Army (70), which had conquered Kuwait on August 2, 1990 (2). To achieve this, a coalition the Americans organized began to bomb Iraq on January 16, 1991 (56). Coalition warplanes, conducting the most massive aerial attack in history, launched raids against Iraqi positions thousands of times per day (56). After this air campaign, the Iraqis still remained in Kuwait (69), so on February 23, 1991, the American coalition launched a ground assault against the Iraqi military in order to expel the Iraqis from Kuwait (70). During this endeavor, coalition soldiers used massive force and advanced technology to defeat absolutely the Iraqi Army (Barry 22) and to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation within 100 hours (Powell 73). With the achievement of Operation Desert Storm?s objectives, President George H. W. Bush ordered the ground campaign to stop on February 27, 1991 (72).
Another example of the clear campaign American soldiers tend to prefer is World War II. This war started on September 1, 1939, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and the United States entered the war on December 7, 1941, after the Japanese conducted a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. With its allies Great Britain and Soviet Russia, the United States fought to defeat the Axis Powers of Germany, Japan, and Italy, three nations that intended to conquer the world and divide it amongst themselves. The journalist William Shirer expounds that to defeat Germany and Italy, the Americans and the British seized Axis holdings in North Africa (925, 933), took the Italian Peninsula (995), then invaded and liberated Nazi-occupied Europe through initial landing zones in France (1,037-1,039), while the Russians advanced from the East (1,085). Meanwhile, to defeat Japan, the Americans employed a strategy of island hopping, where the Americans took islands from the Japanese to establish a line of American bases in the Pacific leading to Japan that would facilitate an invasion. But the Americans never had to invade Japan because it surrendered after the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
These traditional campaigns have clarity of goals and foes that soldiers prefer, but such missions are not the sole purpose of the modern American military. In order to promote global stability, the military has for a long time engaged in operations to ?extinguish small fires? across the globe (Langewiesche 56). Peacekeeping deployments are part of that American agenda to reinforce global stability.
Nineteen years ago, on April 25, 1982, the Americans sent troops to the Sinai Peninsula to help launch a peacekeeping operation (?American? 9). The peacekeepers in Sinai?the Multinational Force and Observers, or MFO (?What? 41)??patrol a buffer zone between Israel and Egypt? and ?underwrite the Camp David accords between? them (?Now? 26). Israel and Egypt both agreed to allow the establishment of the MFO (Maestrone B9). For the length of its existence, the MFO has successfully helped to keep the peace between Egypt and Israel (Ya?ari 30).
Six years ago, the United States deployed peacekeepers to Bosnia (Thompson 54). This followed three years of futile diplomatic efforts on the part of President William J. Clinton to end a war characterized by ?concentration camps, mass executions, ethnic cleansing, and the use of rape as calculated terror? (Morganthau 28). The plan for peacekeeping in Bosnia was to stop the fighting; to seize the weapons of the Bosnian Serbs as per agreements in Dayton, Ohio; and to institute a policy of ?nation-building? and ?free elections? (30). The first wave of peacekeepers included 20,000 American soldiers, as well as other NATO troops, who deployed all over Bosnia as part of the peacekeeping operation (28, 31). This operation, in which only 4,000 American soldiers now participate, has resulted in the end of the ethnic conflict within Bosnia (Langewiesche 54, 52, 80).
As the examples of Sinai and Bosnia show, peacekeeping missions can have the desirable effects of stopping conflict and preventing death. An example of the horrible circumstances that can develop when the United States decides not to send peacekeepers is the genocide in Rwanda. Tom Masland writes that the genocide began when Rwandan President Juv?nal Hobyarimana died in a plane crash on April 6, 1994 (33). Rwandan officials who witnessed the crash said a rocket hit the plane to bring it down, and some Hutus believed the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel Tutsi group, was responsible (33). This precipitated genocide (33) that, from April 1994 until July 1994 (Herbst 123), took the lives of 800,000 people (?Rwanda?). The killing rate in the Rwandan genocide was five times the death rate in the Nazi concentration camps (?Other?). Hutus, both military troops and common citizens (Herbst 123), hunted and slaughtered Tutsis with everything from sticks to machetes to grenades (?Genocide? 45). Scenes of death repeated themselves all over Rwanda. Corpses lay everywhere in forsaken towns and empty farms (?Killing? 47). In Rwanda?s east, the decaying bodies of dead Tutsis filled the road to Tanzania (?Genocide? 45). Down Rwanda?s Kagera River floated as many as 25 corpses per hour (Roberts 10).
By the time the genocide was over, the Hutus had eliminated half the Tutsi population (?Genocide? 45). American military forces could have stopped the genocide in Rwanda with ease (Des Forges 141), but the United States delayed sending peacekeepers to Rwanda because it feared embroiling itself in such an open-ended mission (Hammer 46). Also, the American experience in Somalia, where locals had ?dragged [American soldiers] through the streets? (Roberts 11), made the United States wary of deploying peacekeepers to Rwanda (?Killing? 47). The Clinton administration opposed a peacekeeping mission in Rwanda so much that it resisted labeling the killing in Rwanda as genocide because that would have required the United States to intervene as per the terms of the 1949 convention on genocide (?Other?).
For the United States to have stood aside in the face of such brutality was unethical. As the world?s only superpower, the United States has the responsibility to safeguard innocent lives and to halt destructive conflicts when other nations might not have the capability to do so. Therefore, the American military should zealously pursue peacekeeping missions around the world.
Had America?s military never pursued peacekeeping missions, the consequences for people on many other parts of the globe might have been tragic. Without the MFO in the Sinai, Israel and Egypt might have once again gone to war. If the United States and its NATO allies had not intervened in Bosnia, ethnic conflict could be devastating that region right now, or else the Serbs might have almost completely eliminated their opposing ethnic groups. On an occasion when the United States decided not to send peacekeepers, genocide consumed Rwanda.
Even though the United States has now dedicated itself to a war against terrorism, it should not abandon its peacekeeping agenda. Despite the fact that the American military currently has thousands of troops engaged in peacekeeping operations around the world, America and its allies have managed to topple swiftly and painlessly Taliban control over Afghanistan. Obviously, regardless of its vast overseas deployments, the United States can still accomplish its military objectives with ease. Restricting the American military to the defense of the United States might increase the morale of American troops and their readiness to go to war, but such increases are not essential to America?s ability to win military conflicts.
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