panzersaurkrautwerfer

I swear to god simply burning every dollar, ounce of construction material, all military equipment given to the Iraqis in a giant pit would be a less wasteful use than what the Iraqis have done with it. 

I swear to god simply burning every dollar, ounce of construction material, all military equipment given to the Iraqis in a giant pit would be a less wasteful use than what the Iraqis have done with it. 

Re: National Interest
 
But we can discuss which national interest is less malevolent quite handily.  Which is getting back to Orwell.  Throwing your hands up and declaring they're all evil is sort of a cheap cop-out.  Effectively some national interests are less helpful, and others more.  So looking at say, the Cold War, we can compare the actions of the two competing super powers:
 
The US broadly wants you to buy their stuff, not be communist or too socialist, and to not mess with their ability to do business in your country.
 
The USSR wants more or less complete political and military control of your country, and a strict adherence to political doctrine.
 
That's really the loose version of it.  But the sort of freedom enjoyed by much of the west despite being firmly within the US sphere of influence vs the treatment of Soviet dominated Eastern Europe is worth noting and discussing (as is the occasionally "better dead than Red" policies of the US relative to the "sorry, you're not Soviet enough Hungary, hope you like our new tanks!" policies).  As in the relative virtues of Chinese investment in Africa's infrastructure vs the balance of trade and often willingness to work totally within corrupt systems in corrupt ways.
 
It's really easy to simply declare all parties are equally evil and walk away because that removes the importance of an educated, involved population in a country, and ultimately works against the accountability that we all as citizens should demand of those who nominally rule in our interest.  The blind acceptance of either total good, or total evil is just as inexcusable.  And worse when simply declaring everyone equally evil, it actually favors countries that do the least good (of which I'm comfortable saying the USSR/Russia historically has been one of those).
 
Which is really tragic in that the Russian people deserve better leadership than they've...uh, perhaps ever had?  Some of the Czars were about par for the course of the era, none of the various communist leaders were really worth a damn in retrospect (Lenin's actual accomplishments as a ruler are pretty lame, especially in light of the human suffering of the various people of the USSR, Stalin is at best Hitler Jr, Khrushchev was divisive, but likely some of the better leadership, but after that it was all "how many senile angry old men can we put in power?" until the whole mess burned down.  Gorbachev was pretty good in recognizing the world had changed, but really was the pilot of a crashing plane at that point, Yeltsin eeeeeeeh, and Putin is simply a well disguised robber-baron vs a "good" leader).

Re: National Interest
 
But we can discuss which national interest is less malevolent quite handily.  Which is getting back to Orwell.  Throwing your hands up and declaring they're all evil is sort of a cheap cop-out.  Effectively some national interests are less helpful, and others more.  So looking at say, the Cold War, we can compare the actions of the two competing super powers:
 
The US broadly wants you to buy their stuff, not be communist or too socialist, and to not mess with their ability to do business in your country.
 
The USSR wants more or less complete political and military control of your country, and a strict adherence to political doctrine.
 
That's really the loose version of it.  But the sort of freedom enjoyed by much of the west despite being firmly within the US sphere of influence vs the treatment of Soviet dominated Eastern Europe is worth noting and discussing (as is the occasionally "better dead than Red" policies of the US relative to the "sorry, you're not Soviet enough Hungary, hope you like our new tanks!" policies).  As in the relative virtues of Chinese investment in Africa's infrastructure vs the balance of trade and often willingness to work totally within corrupt systems in corrupt ways.
 
It's really easy to simply declare all parties are equally evil and walk away because that removes the importance of an educated, involved population in a country, and ultimately works against the accountability that we all as citizens should demand of those who nominally rule in our interest.  The blind acceptance of either total good, or total evil is just as inexcusable.  And worse when simply declaring everyone equally evil, it actually favors countries that do the least good (of which I'm comfortable saying the USSR/Russia historically has been one of those).
 
Which is really tragic in that the Russian people deserve better leadership than they've...uh, perhaps ever had?  Some of the Czars were about par for the course of the era, none of the various communist leaders were really worth a damn in retrospect (Lenin's actual accomplishments as a ruler are pretty lame, especially in light of the human suffering of the various people of the USSR, Stalin is at best Hitler Jr, Khrushchev was divisive, but likely some of the better leadership, but after that it was all "how many senile angry old men can we put in power?" until the whole mess burned down.  Gorbachev was pretty good in recognizing the world had changed, but really was the pilot of a crashing plane at that point, Yeltsin eeeeeeeh, and Putin is simply a well disguised robber-baron vs a "good" leader).

Re: National Interest
 
But we can discuss which national interest is less malevolent quite handily.  Which is getting back to Orwell.  Throwing your hands up and declaring they're all evil is sort of a cheap cop-out.  Effectively some national interests are less helpful, and others more.  So looking at say, the Cold War, we can compare the actions of the two competing super powers:
 
The US broadly wants you to buy their stuff, not be communist or too socialist, and to not mess with their ability to do business in your country.
 
The USSR wants more or less complete political and military control of your country, and a strict adherence to political doctrine.
 
That's really the loose version of it.  But the sort of freedom enjoyed by much of the west despite being firmly within the US sphere of influence vs the treatment of Soviet dominated Eastern Europe is worth noting and discussing (as is the occasionally "better dead than Red" policies of the US relative to the "sorry, you're not Soviet enough Hungary, hope you like our new tanks!" policies).  As in the relative virtues of Chinese investment in Africa's infrastructure vs the balance of trade and often willingness to work totally within corrupt systems in corrupt ways.
 
It's really easy to simply declare all parties are equally evil and walk away because that removes the importance of an educated, involved population in a country, and ultimately works against the accountability that we all as citizens should demand of those who nominally rule in our interest.  The blind acceptance of either total good, or total evil is just as inexcusable.  And worse when simply declaring everyone equally evil, it actually favors countries that do the least good (of which I'm comfortable saying the USSR/Russia historically has been one of those).
 
Which is really tragic in that the Russian people deserve better leadership than they've...uh, perhaps ever had?  Some of the Czars were about par for the course of the era, none of the various communist leaders were really worth a damn in retrospect (Lenin's actual accomplishments as a ruler are pretty lame, especially in light of the human suffering of the various people of the USSR, Stalin is at best Hitler Jr, Khrushchev was divisive, but likely some of the better leadership, but after that it was all "how many senile angry old men can we put in power?" until the whole mess burned down.  Gorbachev was pretty good in recognizing the world had changed, but really was the pilot of a crashing plane at that point, Yeltsin eeeeeeeh, and Putin is simply a well disguised robber-baron vs a "good" leader).

I think you need to study the foreign policy of the USSR and US a little closer before you can make straight up one is the same as the other claims.  

Why is it absurd Sburke? If we are going to call Russia fascist, because of cynical actions of its state, and then dismiss that your state makes some pretty serious cynical decisions themselves, is that reasonable? So, the thousand posts here http://www.911truth.orgas well as hundreds of other sites, means all these people talk absurd nonsense?

Arguably, the difference is the FSB guys got caught doing what they were doing, while your guys didnt get caught doing what they were doing. Thats the difference. The end result is the same.

And the talk about the excuse machine, dude, noone is making excuses for what the Rus. Government is or is not doing. Im saying dont be sitting on your high chair calling them fascists, and then pretending that there are no similarities in US's actions of the past, that could just as easily apply that terminology to themownselves.

On the other hand, NATO doesn't have a history of setting up concentration camps, or going into UN safe areas and shooting every male and burying them in ditches.  Even if you handwave Serbian operations in Kosovo as merely causing collateral damage (and by most accounts they'd gone well beyond collateral damage), the Serbian military was still led by the same folks who'd killed a boatload of innocent folks, were unrepentant about same, and were by most observations about to do the same thing all over again.
 
There's a practical limit to just how permissive the world at large was going to be, and the Serbian military strode over that line handily.
 
 
Dunno.  Maybe you shouldn't have shot so many ethnic Albanians.  Perhaps then they'd remember you more fondly.  There's certainly a backlash, and certainly less Serbians in Kosovo today, but I have not seen proof of this mass killing outside of Serbian apologist sources, and frankly sounds like your problem should be with how Kosovo acts as an independent country vs the NATO campaign which was to keep Serbians from having another go at ethnic cleansing.  
 
 
And Hitler's actions are simply Germany going through what the Mongols went through.  We just have to let this all play out.
 
Like I've said, I have a strong distaste for:
 
1. The Russian government.
2. The unapologetic view of the USSR (which is not to be confused with "the USSR is pure satan and should be hated by all" but the crimes and misdeeds need to be recognized)
3. Russian military actions in Eastern Europe.
 
Of those, the first two are things that honestly I agree with you that years and years from now, maybe Russia will get over.  And I support the Russian ability to choose its own leadership, even if that leadership is Putin.  But that right to choose their own path ends where other countries begin.  If Russia wants to behave like it does, then it needs to accept that it won't win it friends and allies.  It cannot "make" allies out of its neighbors at bayonet point, or carve off pieces of its neighbors to make "buffers" against invasions that frankly will never happen. 
 
 
Like I said earlier about Iraq, the government needs to grow organically by the people its ruling.  A strong Russian leader isn't bad for the Russian people...I just object to when he defines his Russian people to include other country's citizens, in places that Russia by treaty gave up the rights to.
 
Re: 4th of July
 
It actually celebrates the day in which the rebelling colonial government folks got together and agreed that we were not simply rebelling in protest against British actions, but were in fact rebelling to become and independent nation.  The conflict to settle that matter would go on for some years after.  So we celebrate the birth of our country, and honestly some pretty cool founding ideals (especially given the era in which the nation was founded!) on the 4th of July.   There's no day set aside to represent the final victory at Yorktown.
 
Additionally in terms of pillaging you'll find that the American text books are quite clear these days on who's the "bad guys" in western expansion, and it's not the natives.  That's really my objection to the way Russia does history, it ignores the massive suffering Russia has caused historically in favor of this "everyone is out to get Russia!" narrative that does a disservice to history on a whole.  And leads to confusing situations like when Russia makes references to Ukrainians as "brother" while ethnic Ukrainians likely would rather be called "brother" by some forms of sea slugs.
 
If in future Victory Day parades took place in a greater understanding of the USSR's role in World War Two (the complete role, from the high point of taking Berlin, to the low point of invading Poland hand in hand with the Nazis), I wouldn't object so strongly.  But I imagine many Russians would be deeply concerned if the US had a Victory over Japan parade without owning up to what the nuclear bombs actually did to tens of thousands of civilians.
 
 
Eeeeeeh, I think you're biting off a bit more than you can chew.  The US racial issues are to put it mildly very complex and vary widely from place to place. The issue at hand has virtually nothing to do with "slavery" and a lot to do with economics. Not to mention you're overstating the role of slavery and its relevance to the wealth of the United States.  The US economy owes more to the anti-slavery North and it's industrial output than it did to the cotton grown in the south.  Which is not to deny that it was an important part of the US economy prior to the Civil War, but it was an increasingly less important part of the economy and the South's attempts to leverage Cotton as a weapon simply hastened its irrelevance in the greater world.
 
That said about 24.2% of African Americans live in poverty.  This is a problem, but it can also be tied into some of the regional issues of areas that are largely African American (the South especially is struggling as an economic area which remains where a significant number of African Americans live) but this is not "half" and of that half making statements of their quality of life vs Russian quality of life really should be supported more than simply saying its a thing.
 
 
And that's fine, and not even "bad" in terms of being proud, it's just a false pride without understanding the entire picture.  I'm very proud of being an American and my country.  This does not prevent me from recognizing the terrible sin of slavery (although it does mean I'm a huge William T Sherman fan), the appalling treatment of the Native Americans, the whole Spanish-American war fracas, the Philippine Insurrection, ongoing racial and economic tensions, etc, etc etc.  You don't really love your wife until you know her well enough to find she's secretly the biggest fan of "Twilight" series, or was into Vampire LARPing as a teenager.*  And to that end I wish Russians would love their country like I love mine, with eyes wide open and willing to question the "official" version of events.
 
 
 
In terms of "polite" war, a lot of it for the US draws at least from nominally high societal ideals, and historically a past of going to war to "help" (IF YOU WANT IT OR NOT/roads to hell are paved with good intentions etc) people.  Either way I think the Russians are smart enough to learn without needing "Good" examples.  And honestly might go a long way to helping their military be viewed a bit more positively.
 
 
1. British on French on native violence was pretty much mutual.  Everyone raided everyone else's villages.  Also Americans...like the French and Indian war is important because some of our super-old National Guard units trace their lineage back to it, and it's where a lot of the very important Colonial officers get their start....but it's not a popular conflict in the US.  The feeling was basically here we are, enjoying our colonies more or less doing our thing unmolested, and then the British roll in and start a war next door, and now there's French and Indians burning down our villages and kidnapping our family members.
 
So it's not really celebrated.
 
2. The treatment of Native Americans is extensively taught at all levels of schooling.  No punches are pulled.
 
3. Same deal with slavery
 
4. You need to be a lot more specific on raids into Mexico.  If you're talking about the Mexican American war, that's pretty much two mutually flawed groups thinking they could exploit the other's weakness.  If you're talking about the cross border anti-Indian raids, that's it's own bag of worms (largely done with Mexican approval).  If you're discussing the Pancho Villa pursuit, then that's a story into its own.
 
5. The Chinese showed up as contract laborers for the railroad.  It was expected they'd leave at the end of railway construction.  They did not.  And their story is not at all much different than any numbers of large immigrant groups from there.  Calling it slavery is pretty much not understanding what you're talking about though (or you should also be talking about Irish, Italian and Polish slavery in the same breath).
 
6. You're mistaking western movies for the American west man.  Or you're talking about the US-Native fighting which was discussed in point 2.
 
7. Gangs of New York was a terrible movie.
 
Your point is to indicate both histories are bloody.  Okay.  That's not what we're debating though.  We're debating that the Russians stand up to their chin in blood, and deny they're standing in it (and if you did the last 300 years side by side Russia has killed way more people anyway).  The US has largely owned its sins to the degree of ensuring their taught in schools, erected monuments to same and you can discuss those topics without skinheads on motorcycles stomping you for insulting the motherland.
 
 
On several occasions actually!  They're less uncommon than you'd think.  My "partner" (they paired you with someone to do gunnery with, so we did all the simulators and firing together) at Armor school was of either Latvian or Lithuanian origin.  Funnily enough he once commented his dad had been a Colonel, but when they read off all the senior officers attending our graduation, his dad wasn't on the list.  I asked him what was up, and it was because his dad had been a Colonel in the Soviet Army.  My last unit had a pair of Russian born officers too.  They acted pretty much as American as American can be, you wouldn't have known they weren't from LA or something except the accents (one had a mild accent, but the other had one that was frankly outrageous).
 
None of them had much nice to say about the motherland (to be fair, the one with the crazy accent was from Vladivostok which I hear is pretty terrible by most accounts).
 
 
Again, missing the point.  Firstly if it comes time to weigh dirty laundry...nah I think the French and the British pretty much have that one.  
 
If you're fighting an illness, and it's causing the throat to constrict, you need to clear the airway while addressing the underlying illness.  Drone strikes keep the airway clear.  The problem is addressing the underlying illness is something that's a lot more ethereal and relies on a lot of things outside the control of the US government.  We've just become the folks to blame for all the ills of the middle east, while ignoring a lot more of it has to do with the Syrian/Saudi/etc government behavior (and while we might support those governments to a degree in some cases, this cannot be confused with being at the heart of how they treat their populations).
Re:14 years later
 
Missed the point.  It's not "retaliation" it's "trying to reduce the threat from people who've vowed to kill every American ever" and to a large degree, the organization that did the attacks was pretty well curbstomped.  This ISIS mess has a lot more to do with the Arab Spring and Syrian actions than anything we've done.  Pakistan's Northwest where most of the drones have done their work remains pretty much anti-american as it ever was, but just as largely irrelevant outside of Pakistan-Afghanistan as ever.
 
Okay.  I'm seriously done for the day.  Unless I start getting paid for writing these things I'm going to have to start keeping the replies short.  
*Note, Mrs. Panzersaurkrautwerfer hates twilight from the top to bottom, and is by far too practical to have ever gone at it with foam rubber swords.  She is from Roswell though so I do sometimes wonder if she's "native" if you get my drift.

Also just beyond hardware you have a wide variety of troop quality on each side.  There's some American units that by this point are hardened veteran, kraut killing machines (2nd, 3rd, 4th Armored all stand out for tank units, 1st, and 2nd ID to a similar extent for dismounts) while others are absolutely new to the idea of two way rifle ranges (11th Armored, 106th ID etc).  The same goes with German units, some composed of hardened veterans, others could at best be represented by the "conscript" troop quality in CM.  
 
It's really an excellent, and historically correct blank slate for building a scenario, lots of equipment and formations all colliding in sharp nasty fights pretty much tailor made for Combat Mission.  

Times infinity.  The HMMWV will remain in service until there's a replacement vehicle in the form of the JLTV.  In no unit, organization, or location is the MRAP anything but a theater issued piece of equipment.  
 
 
I watched one tip over while parked, and we had a whole platoon of them get mobility killed crossing a field that supported literally every other wheeled vehicle we owned.  It's not an assumption.  They're mobile as long as there's a road. 
 
 
Because using the MRAP to do what the HMMWV does in conventional organizations during conventional full spectrum operations would be moronic.  I think of if I'd had MRAPs in lieu of my HQ HMMWVs, and I'd simply have not taken them out of the motorpool, and opted to purchase a Daewoo on the economy. 
 
 
Oddly enough we got fielded brand new uparmored ones to replace our unarmored ones at my last unit.  Clearly someone is putting a lot of effort into giving us new HMMWVs for twenty four months or so by your guess, especially after shipping all the MRAPs they tried to foist on us out of country.  

Sadly there's folks who still believe violence is a means to an end.  War is always universally terrible.  Just sometimes it's marginally less so than the consequences.  
 
I always took George Orwell's essay looking back on the Spanish Civil War (I forget the title, it's not Homage to Catalonia, it's just a little essay reflecting on conflict, war, and propaganda) to heart in that once the struggle has started you're effectively supporting one side, or the other.  Even refusal to become involved becomes defacto support for one side or the other.
 
While I'm not advocating conflict as the first and primary means, and having scooped up my fair share of body parts, I hold intervention to conclude a conflict, or prevent further loss of civilian life to be moral.  It will never be perfect/easy/straight forward, but the stacks of skulls in Rwanda, the ditches of Srebrenica, and the drifting ashes of the Jewish population of Eastern Europe all tell a story of what happens when we declare war too terrible to ponder.
 
War is terrible.  War is hell.  Having merely been a passing visitor to it I will say if I never saw it again I would be quite content.  But too often we've looked at the price of intervention and asked "what have we done?" while ignoring the question of "what if we did not?"
 
And looking at Kosovo, and looking at the men who led Serbia and their prior contributions to the butcher's bill, and looking at numbers not made up by apologists, it's clear it was not going to end especially well unless you were Serbian and liked ear necklaces.  Was it perfect?  Hell no.  Was the fate of thousands of Serbs in Kosovo justified?  No a thousand times over.  But they're lesser evils compared to the last time the world sat back and let it rain artillery on children, or watched folks herded off like cattle to fill ditches in Bosnia.  

Looks like this thread is rapidly swirling down the drain.  Perhaps best to shove a plug in.
 
Looks, gents, war is hell.  There is nothing glamorous about it.  There is nothing moral about it.  And it is nothing to celebrate. 
 
It is really easy to point fingers at the other side and decry them as murderous bastards, fascists, commie pinkos, the great satan... pick you favorite slur.   It changes nothing in the long run.  It doesn't bring back the dead. It doesn't comfort or heal the wounded, whether those wounds are physical or psychological.
 
It just leads to another cycle of violence.  Like the saying in Star Wars - anger leads to the dark side.
 
When I was in Bosnia in '93 as a Canadian peacekeeper, two Bosnia Serb soldiers came up to me at a checkpoint.  They were two brothers from Toronto, Canada.   I asked them why they were here in Serbian military uniforms.  I then heard a story about as they were growing up, they heard from their grandparents and their parents over and over about what the Croats did to the family in WW2 and stuff post war.  They were here to defend the motherland and to settle accounts with the Croatians for something that happened to the family nearly 50 years ago.  I don't get that - they were born in Canada (their family came to Canada post war) yet they felt that this was THEIR war to fight.
 
Anger and hatred lead them here.  Instilled by the anger and hatred of their parents, perpetrated by anger and hatred from their parents.  Fighting in a war not of their making, for a cause not their own, for a homeland they have never seen.  A cycle of violence nearly 50 years in the making.
 
I have seen some of that anger expressed here and I am reminded of that time talking with the two brothers.  And I am seeing the seeds of that tragedy here.
 
I was in a very dark place for a long time after my peacekeeping tour in '93.  Some would call it PTSD.  You can only see so much of genocide up close and in your face and a part of me inside died.  There was no moral high ground for either side,  All sides did stuff terrible things that are war crimes - the Bosnians, the Croatians and the Serbs.  Yes, the bulk of the ethnic cleansing was done by the Serbs but is no excuse for the Bosnians and the Croatians to do what they did.  I saw a beautiful country in ruins, shattered lifes, mounds of civilian dead, and a land with seeming madmen running around with guns seeming to want to re-fight WW2 or address the wrongs they suffered in that conflict..
 
Chains of the past.  So many people in the world are bound by those chains.  I see the ghosts of the past conflicts playing out in the conflicts of today.  There is the real tragedy.  We seemingly can't escape our past and we poison the well for our children so they are doomed to repeat our mistakes.
 
Anger leads to the dark side.  That is true.  I lived it grappling with my PTSD and the nightmares of seeing a country gone mad in Bosnia.  I wanted to kill every ethnic cleansing son of bitch with a gun.   It took a long time but I came to accept certain things.
 
I saved lots of civilians, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian but not enough for me.  I wanted to save all of them.  I couldn't and felt guilty for decades as a result.   War lesson 1:  In war people die, soldier and civilian alike,  War lesson 2:  You can't do anything to change lesson 1.  It took a long time for me to embrace that and that saved my sanity ultimately.
 
There is real evil in the world and real monsters.  The monsters look like us and talk to us but make no mistake, there are real monsters out there.  You only see them for what they are by what they do.  I want to Kill All The Monsters but the reality is, strike one down and another rises to take his place.  Nothing changes and we learn nothing from our history.  Hitler was struck down and Rwanda and Bosnia happened.  Deal with those and then it is Sudan. Or Cambodia.  Or Syria.  Or ISIS.  Or who ever the next Hilter wannabe is.   People who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.  
 
Chains of our past.  Everyone has this issue.   Do you allow the past to bind you and deny you a better future or do you let it go.
 
The chains of the experiences in Bosnia bound me and put me on a self destructive path to most likely a grim future.  Only by embracing what happened and learning to rise above it, to not allow the past to control my present so I can forge a new future did I finally find peace for my soul.  It was hard because the chains are thick and strong - memories, recollections and seeing stuff like the genocide in Bosnia playing out elsewhere in the world brings it all back.  But I broke free finally and the memories are not emotionally charged as they were in the past as a result.  No, the memories never go away.  But you can make peace with them and find a way to a sort of 'wholeness' again.
 
I have rambled on.  Partly to acknowledge my past and the role I played in it.   A affirmation that something in life tried to beat me down and I rose above it.
 
Partly to my brothers in arms from any side of the conflicts who are dealing the the imprint of what total war does to their soul and well being, that there is a way ahead.  Memories can become less emotionally charged and less painful. Memories do fade somewhat through time, working hard toward wholeness, and throwing off the shackles of the past and living for the future.  It is not a easy road or a fast road and not everyone can break their chains of the past but it can be done.
 
And finally, to the Croatian, Bosnian and Serb posters.  I see anger and pain in your words.  War is terrible and it will write things on your soul that will deny you a bright, happy future.  I know.  I was there.  I have lived it.   Acknowledge the past, regardless of how ugly or hurtful it is.  Realize the past is the past and is not your future unless you allow it.  Do not do what a Serb family that moved to Toronto did and poison their two sons with what happened long ago in a land now far away that resulted in them involving themselves in killing other people, perhaps being killed themselves and exposing themselves to the horrors of war, for a cause not that shouldn't been theirs to fight and a war they shouldn't have been involved in, all over something that happened nearly 50 years ago.   Don't deny the future of your children or grandchildren by binding them in YOUR chains of the past and dooming them to fight in some future war because the last war had a negative impact on your family.
 
War is death, destruction, shattered lives and futures denied.  Don't glorify it and not rationalize it.  Your a damn fool otherwise.

And I'm old enough to remember the Kosovar refugees we had at our high school.  
 
War is terrible.  No side of a conflict is really "pure" evil (unless you want to argue infants burned up in Dresden or Tokyo have some sort of original sin that makes them worthy of such a fate).  Good people will die, bad people will make it off to write a book justifying why they're not bad people etc, etc.  When approaching conflict the best you can hope for is some sort of Faustian take on utilitarianism in which you do the least evil for the most people.
 
So the tragedy of the Serbian civilians is worth noting and morning for, the ability of the Serbian government to go door to door raping and murdering using both regular military and paramilitaries was something worth inflicting suffering to stop.  And when assessing and weighing who was most culpable, and most at fault, it's hard to make the argument it's anyone but the Serbs.
 
So to that end the suffering of the civilian Serbs is worth recognizing and acknowledging, but is only of marginal relevance in the wider picture of stopping the various conflicts the Serbs started in the name of greater Serbia.
 
Re: SGT Joch
 
I'm just going to disregard you until you come with sources, agencies, and reports.  The UNHCR alone counted over 12,000 Kosovar refugees returning....from Turkey.  Over 21,000 from regions outside the conflict area, and estimated around 700,000 returning from in-region.  
 
http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/kosovo-war-victims-list-published
 
Address this.  It's a joint-Serbian/Kosovar accounting of the dead and missing by name.  Have sources that show how wrong the American lap-dog Human Rights Watch is in counting 527 total Serbs killed by NATO bombing (separate from the 1000 or so Serbian military personnel killed by the raids).  But until you do I'm just going to answer you with numbers I'm making up showing that Serbs actually are the reason we cannot have nice things, and that all Serbs are 25% Hitler according to this weird new trick the authorities don't want you to hear about.
 
 
If you can accomplish most good for the most people, then you can claim some manner of moral ground.  I'm sorry your government was so terrible.  It really was.  It was so bad as to still cause much hand wringing in international affairs circles in why we did not act sooner the first time they took the field in Bosnia  This does not make up for the human suffering of the individual Serbs just showing up to work every day and trying to have families.
 
But when push came to shove, the Serbian government was in the wrong, and action had to be taken.  The Bosnians and Croats were also in the wrong, but certainly not to the degree the Serbs were.  

Alderaan simply exploded in a massive industrial accident at the moment the Death Star arrived. Rebel claims to the contrary have no basis in reality.    The Rebel attack on the Death Star though killed anywhere between two and four hundred thousand innocent civilian contractors. 
 
Now who's the real monsters? 
 

Fast and furious this time:
 
 
It's why I made the earlier comment about picking your Hitlers.  None of the factions were lily white.  The Serbian forces however were the ones that opted to continue the war however, and the ones that vastly killed more civilians (at a rate of about 1 dead Serb civilian for evey 8 dead Bosnian).  Tallest nail gets the most hammering.  That doesn't preclude bad acts from Bosnian or Croat forces, simply frames the picture of picking the lesser of evils, and the Serbs made that choice fairly easy.
 
Which gets to the heart of my earlier comments about America being George Reeves vs being Superman.  Bosnia/Kosovo were both messy, messy terrible situations.  Our interest isn't to make the perfect resolution to have Serbs and Kosovars living arms linked and sharing little love nuzzles, it's to end the fighting that's killing thousands of civilians, causing a massive refugee crisis, all for no real effective ends.  The Serbs in the Bosnian War, and in the Kosovo conflict presented the biggest, most dangerous, least good party, and they caught some bombs as a result.
It looks like it takes about 8,000 judging from the lowball estimates of how many Kosovars were killed by Serbians, and then the 1.5 million or so refugees.
 
You might want to mind throwing rocks in your house.
 
 
Because CM used to be about historical military affairs, and Syria doesn't have that big of a fan club.  You make a game about NATO vs Russia, you invite in a lot of this sort of topic.  You could always go back to the historical end of the forums if that is what you miss, as I have some pretty significant reservations about your understanding of time if you're seeking military history on a thread about a future conflict.
 
 
Lawl.  

On the other hand, NATO doesn't have a history of setting up concentration camps, or going into UN safe areas and shooting every male and burying them in ditches.  Even if you handwave Serbian operations in Kosovo as merely causing collateral damage (and by most accounts they'd gone well beyond collateral damage), the Serbian military was still led by the same folks who'd killed a boatload of innocent folks, were unrepentant about same, and were by most observations about to do the same thing all over again.
 
There's a practical limit to just how permissive the world at large was going to be, and the Serbian military strode over that line handily.
 
 
Dunno.  Maybe you shouldn't have shot so many ethnic Albanians.  Perhaps then they'd remember you more fondly.  There's certainly a backlash, and certainly less Serbians in Kosovo today, but I have not seen proof of this mass killing outside of Serbian apologist sources, and frankly sounds like your problem should be with how Kosovo acts as an independent country vs the NATO campaign which was to keep Serbians from having another go at ethnic cleansing.  
 
 
And Hitler's actions are simply Germany going through what the Mongols went through.  We just have to let this all play out.
 
Like I've said, I have a strong distaste for:
 
1. The Russian government.
2. The unapologetic view of the USSR (which is not to be confused with "the USSR is pure satan and should be hated by all" but the crimes and misdeeds need to be recognized)
3. Russian military actions in Eastern Europe.
 
Of those, the first two are things that honestly I agree with you that years and years from now, maybe Russia will get over.  And I support the Russian ability to choose its own leadership, even if that leadership is Putin.  But that right to choose their own path ends where other countries begin.  If Russia wants to behave like it does, then it needs to accept that it won't win it friends and allies.  It cannot "make" allies out of its neighbors at bayonet point, or carve off pieces of its neighbors to make "buffers" against invasions that frankly will never happen. 
 
 
Like I said earlier about Iraq, the government needs to grow organically by the people its ruling.  A strong Russian leader isn't bad for the Russian people...I just object to when he defines his Russian people to include other country's citizens, in places that Russia by treaty gave up the rights to.
 
Re: 4th of July
 
It actually celebrates the day in which the rebelling colonial government folks got together and agreed that we were not simply rebelling in protest against British actions, but were in fact rebelling to become and independent nation.  The conflict to settle that matter would go on for some years after.  So we celebrate the birth of our country, and honestly some pretty cool founding ideals (especially given the era in which the nation was founded!) on the 4th of July.   There's no day set aside to represent the final victory at Yorktown.
 
Additionally in terms of pillaging you'll find that the American text books are quite clear these days on who's the "bad guys" in western expansion, and it's not the natives.  That's really my objection to the way Russia does history, it ignores the massive suffering Russia has caused historically in favor of this "everyone is out to get Russia!" narrative that does a disservice to history on a whole.  And leads to confusing situations like when Russia makes references to Ukrainians as "brother" while ethnic Ukrainians likely would rather be called "brother" by some forms of sea slugs.
 
If in future Victory Day parades took place in a greater understanding of the USSR's role in World War Two (the complete role, from the high point of taking Berlin, to the low point of invading Poland hand in hand with the Nazis), I wouldn't object so strongly.  But I imagine many Russians would be deeply concerned if the US had a Victory over Japan parade without owning up to what the nuclear bombs actually did to tens of thousands of civilians.
 
 
Eeeeeeh, I think you're biting off a bit more than you can chew.  The US racial issues are to put it mildly very complex and vary widely from place to place. The issue at hand has virtually nothing to do with "slavery" and a lot to do with economics. Not to mention you're overstating the role of slavery and its relevance to the wealth of the United States.  The US economy owes more to the anti-slavery North and it's industrial output than it did to the cotton grown in the south.  Which is not to deny that it was an important part of the US economy prior to the Civil War, but it was an increasingly less important part of the economy and the South's attempts to leverage Cotton as a weapon simply hastened its irrelevance in the greater world.
 
That said about 24.2% of African Americans live in poverty.  This is a problem, but it can also be tied into some of the regional issues of areas that are largely African American (the South especially is struggling as an economic area which remains where a significant number of African Americans live) but this is not "half" and of that half making statements of their quality of life vs Russian quality of life really should be supported more than simply saying its a thing.
 
 
And that's fine, and not even "bad" in terms of being proud, it's just a false pride without understanding the entire picture.  I'm very proud of being an American and my country.  This does not prevent me from recognizing the terrible sin of slavery (although it does mean I'm a huge William T Sherman fan), the appalling treatment of the Native Americans, the whole Spanish-American war fracas, the Philippine Insurrection, ongoing racial and economic tensions, etc, etc etc.  You don't really love your wife until you know her well enough to find she's secretly the biggest fan of "Twilight" series, or was into Vampire LARPing as a teenager.*  And to that end I wish Russians would love their country like I love mine, with eyes wide open and willing to question the "official" version of events.
 
 
 
In terms of "polite" war, a lot of it for the US draws at least from nominally high societal ideals, and historically a past of going to war to "help" (IF YOU WANT IT OR NOT/roads to hell are paved with good intentions etc) people.  Either way I think the Russians are smart enough to learn without needing "Good" examples.  And honestly might go a long way to helping their military be viewed a bit more positively.
 
 
1. British on French on native violence was pretty much mutual.  Everyone raided everyone else's villages.  Also Americans...like the French and Indian war is important because some of our super-old National Guard units trace their lineage back to it, and it's where a lot of the very important Colonial officers get their start....but it's not a popular conflict in the US.  The feeling was basically here we are, enjoying our colonies more or less doing our thing unmolested, and then the British roll in and start a war next door, and now there's French and Indians burning down our villages and kidnapping our family members.
 
So it's not really celebrated.
 
2. The treatment of Native Americans is extensively taught at all levels of schooling.  No punches are pulled.
 
3. Same deal with slavery
 
4. You need to be a lot more specific on raids into Mexico.  If you're talking about the Mexican American war, that's pretty much two mutually flawed groups thinking they could exploit the other's weakness.  If you're talking about the cross border anti-Indian raids, that's it's own bag of worms (largely done with Mexican approval).  If you're discussing the Pancho Villa pursuit, then that's a story into its own.
 
5. The Chinese showed up as contract laborers for the railroad.  It was expected they'd leave at the end of railway construction.  They did not.  And their story is not at all much different than any numbers of large immigrant groups from there.  Calling it slavery is pretty much not understanding what you're talking about though (or you should also be talking about Irish, Italian and Polish slavery in the same breath).
 
6. You're mistaking western movies for the American west man.  Or you're talking about the US-Native fighting which was discussed in point 2.
 
7. Gangs of New York was a terrible movie.
 
Your point is to indicate both histories are bloody.  Okay.  That's not what we're debating though.  We're debating that the Russians stand up to their chin in blood, and deny they're standing in it (and if you did the last 300 years side by side Russia has killed way more people anyway).  The US has largely owned its sins to the degree of ensuring their taught in schools, erected monuments to same and you can discuss those topics without skinheads on motorcycles stomping you for insulting the motherland.
 
 
On several occasions actually!  They're less uncommon than you'd think.  My "partner" (they paired you with someone to do gunnery with, so we did all the simulators and firing together) at Armor school was of either Latvian or Lithuanian origin.  Funnily enough he once commented his dad had been a Colonel, but when they read off all the senior officers attending our graduation, his dad wasn't on the list.  I asked him what was up, and it was because his dad had been a Colonel in the Soviet Army.  My last unit had a pair of Russian born officers too.  They acted pretty much as American as American can be, you wouldn't have known they weren't from LA or something except the accents (one had a mild accent, but the other had one that was frankly outrageous).
 
None of them had much nice to say about the motherland (to be fair, the one with the crazy accent was from Vladivostok which I hear is pretty terrible by most accounts).
 
 
Again, missing the point.  Firstly if it comes time to weigh dirty laundry...nah I think the French and the British pretty much have that one.  
 
If you're fighting an illness, and it's causing the throat to constrict, you need to clear the airway while addressing the underlying illness.  Drone strikes keep the airway clear.  The problem is addressing the underlying illness is something that's a lot more ethereal and relies on a lot of things outside the control of the US government.  We've just become the folks to blame for all the ills of the middle east, while ignoring a lot more of it has to do with the Syrian/Saudi/etc government behavior (and while we might support those governments to a degree in some cases, this cannot be confused with being at the heart of how they treat their populations).
Re:14 years later
 
Missed the point.  It's not "retaliation" it's "trying to reduce the threat from people who've vowed to kill every American ever" and to a large degree, the organization that did the attacks was pretty well curbstomped.  This ISIS mess has a lot more to do with the Arab Spring and Syrian actions than anything we've done.  Pakistan's Northwest where most of the drones have done their work remains pretty much anti-american as it ever was, but just as largely irrelevant outside of Pakistan-Afghanistan as ever.
 
Okay.  I'm seriously done for the day.  Unless I start getting paid for writing these things I'm going to have to start keeping the replies short.  
*Note, Mrs. Panzersaurkrautwerfer hates twilight from the top to bottom, and is by far too practical to have ever gone at it with foam rubber swords.  She is from Roswell though so I do sometimes wonder if she's "native" if you get my drift.

On the other hand, NATO doesn't have a history of setting up concentration camps, or going into UN safe areas and shooting every male and burying them in ditches.  Even if you handwave Serbian operations in Kosovo as merely causing collateral damage (and by most accounts they'd gone well beyond collateral damage), the Serbian military was still led by the same folks who'd killed a boatload of innocent folks, were unrepentant about same, and were by most observations about to do the same thing all over again.
 
There's a practical limit to just how permissive the world at large was going to be, and the Serbian military strode over that line handily.
 
 
Dunno.  Maybe you shouldn't have shot so many ethnic Albanians.  Perhaps then they'd remember you more fondly.  There's certainly a backlash, and certainly less Serbians in Kosovo today, but I have not seen proof of this mass killing outside of Serbian apologist sources, and frankly sounds like your problem should be with how Kosovo acts as an independent country vs the NATO campaign which was to keep Serbians from having another go at ethnic cleansing.  
 
 
And Hitler's actions are simply Germany going through what the Mongols went through.  We just have to let this all play out.
 
Like I've said, I have a strong distaste for:
 
1. The Russian government.
2. The unapologetic view of the USSR (which is not to be confused with "the USSR is pure satan and should be hated by all" but the crimes and misdeeds need to be recognized)
3. Russian military actions in Eastern Europe.
 
Of those, the first two are things that honestly I agree with you that years and years from now, maybe Russia will get over.  And I support the Russian ability to choose its own leadership, even if that leadership is Putin.  But that right to choose their own path ends where other countries begin.  If Russia wants to behave like it does, then it needs to accept that it won't win it friends and allies.  It cannot "make" allies out of its neighbors at bayonet point, or carve off pieces of its neighbors to make "buffers" against invasions that frankly will never happen. 
 
 
Like I said earlier about Iraq, the government needs to grow organically by the people its ruling.  A strong Russian leader isn't bad for the Russian people...I just object to when he defines his Russian people to include other country's citizens, in places that Russia by treaty gave up the rights to.
 
Re: 4th of July
 
It actually celebrates the day in which the rebelling colonial government folks got together and agreed that we were not simply rebelling in protest against British actions, but were in fact rebelling to become and independent nation.  The conflict to settle that matter would go on for some years after.  So we celebrate the birth of our country, and honestly some pretty cool founding ideals (especially given the era in which the nation was founded!) on the 4th of July.   There's no day set aside to represent the final victory at Yorktown.
 
Additionally in terms of pillaging you'll find that the American text books are quite clear these days on who's the "bad guys" in western expansion, and it's not the natives.  That's really my objection to the way Russia does history, it ignores the massive suffering Russia has caused historically in favor of this "everyone is out to get Russia!" narrative that does a disservice to history on a whole.  And leads to confusing situations like when Russia makes references to Ukrainians as "brother" while ethnic Ukrainians likely would rather be called "brother" by some forms of sea slugs.
 
If in future Victory Day parades took place in a greater understanding of the USSR's role in World War Two (the complete role, from the high point of taking Berlin, to the low point of invading Poland hand in hand with the Nazis), I wouldn't object so strongly.  But I imagine many Russians would be deeply concerned if the US had a Victory over Japan parade without owning up to what the nuclear bombs actually did to tens of thousands of civilians.
 
 
Eeeeeeh, I think you're biting off a bit more than you can chew.  The US racial issues are to put it mildly very complex and vary widely from place to place. The issue at hand has virtually nothing to do with "slavery" and a lot to do with economics. Not to mention you're overstating the role of slavery and its relevance to the wealth of the United States.  The US economy owes more to the anti-slavery North and it's industrial output than it did to the cotton grown in the south.  Which is not to deny that it was an important part of the US economy prior to the Civil War, but it was an increasingly less important part of the economy and the South's attempts to leverage Cotton as a weapon simply hastened its irrelevance in the greater world.
 
That said about 24.2% of African Americans live in poverty.  This is a problem, but it can also be tied into some of the regional issues of areas that are largely African American (the South especially is struggling as an economic area which remains where a significant number of African Americans live) but this is not "half" and of that half making statements of their quality of life vs Russian quality of life really should be supported more than simply saying its a thing.
 
 
And that's fine, and not even "bad" in terms of being proud, it's just a false pride without understanding the entire picture.  I'm very proud of being an American and my country.  This does not prevent me from recognizing the terrible sin of slavery (although it does mean I'm a huge William T Sherman fan), the appalling treatment of the Native Americans, the whole Spanish-American war fracas, the Philippine Insurrection, ongoing racial and economic tensions, etc, etc etc.  You don't really love your wife until you know her well enough to find she's secretly the biggest fan of "Twilight" series, or was into Vampire LARPing as a teenager.*  And to that end I wish Russians would love their country like I love mine, with eyes wide open and willing to question the "official" version of events.
 
 
 
In terms of "polite" war, a lot of it for the US draws at least from nominally high societal ideals, and historically a past of going to war to "help" (IF YOU WANT IT OR NOT/roads to hell are paved with good intentions etc) people.  Either way I think the Russians are smart enough to learn without needing "Good" examples.  And honestly might go a long way to helping their military be viewed a bit more positively.
 
 
1. British on French on native violence was pretty much mutual.  Everyone raided everyone else's villages.  Also Americans...like the French and Indian war is important because some of our super-old National Guard units trace their lineage back to it, and it's where a lot of the very important Colonial officers get their start....but it's not a popular conflict in the US.  The feeling was basically here we are, enjoying our colonies more or less doing our thing unmolested, and then the British roll in and start a war next door, and now there's French and Indians burning down our villages and kidnapping our family members.
 
So it's not really celebrated.
 
2. The treatment of Native Americans is extensively taught at all levels of schooling.  No punches are pulled.
 
3. Same deal with slavery
 
4. You need to be a lot more specific on raids into Mexico.  If you're talking about the Mexican American war, that's pretty much two mutually flawed groups thinking they could exploit the other's weakness.  If you're talking about the cross border anti-Indian raids, that's it's own bag of worms (largely done with Mexican approval).  If you're discussing the Pancho Villa pursuit, then that's a story into its own.
 
5. The Chinese showed up as contract laborers for the railroad.  It was expected they'd leave at the end of railway construction.  They did not.  And their story is not at all much different than any numbers of large immigrant groups from there.  Calling it slavery is pretty much not understanding what you're talking about though (or you should also be talking about Irish, Italian and Polish slavery in the same breath).
 
6. You're mistaking western movies for the American west man.  Or you're talking about the US-Native fighting which was discussed in point 2.
 
7. Gangs of New York was a terrible movie.
 
Your point is to indicate both histories are bloody.  Okay.  That's not what we're debating though.  We're debating that the Russians stand up to their chin in blood, and deny they're standing in it (and if you did the last 300 years side by side Russia has killed way more people anyway).  The US has largely owned its sins to the degree of ensuring their taught in schools, erected monuments to same and you can discuss those topics without skinheads on motorcycles stomping you for insulting the motherland.
 
 
On several occasions actually!  They're less uncommon than you'd think.  My "partner" (they paired you with someone to do gunnery with, so we did all the simulators and firing together) at Armor school was of either Latvian or Lithuanian origin.  Funnily enough he once commented his dad had been a Colonel, but when they read off all the senior officers attending our graduation, his dad wasn't on the list.  I asked him what was up, and it was because his dad had been a Colonel in the Soviet Army.  My last unit had a pair of Russian born officers too.  They acted pretty much as American as American can be, you wouldn't have known they weren't from LA or something except the accents (one had a mild accent, but the other had one that was frankly outrageous).
 
None of them had much nice to say about the motherland (to be fair, the one with the crazy accent was from Vladivostok which I hear is pretty terrible by most accounts).
 
 
Again, missing the point.  Firstly if it comes time to weigh dirty laundry...nah I think the French and the British pretty much have that one.  
 
If you're fighting an illness, and it's causing the throat to constrict, you need to clear the airway while addressing the underlying illness.  Drone strikes keep the airway clear.  The problem is addressing the underlying illness is something that's a lot more ethereal and relies on a lot of things outside the control of the US government.  We've just become the folks to blame for all the ills of the middle east, while ignoring a lot more of it has to do with the Syrian/Saudi/etc government behavior (and while we might support those governments to a degree in some cases, this cannot be confused with being at the heart of how they treat their populations).
Re:14 years later
 
Missed the point.  It's not "retaliation" it's "trying to reduce the threat from people who've vowed to kill every American ever" and to a large degree, the organization that did the attacks was pretty well curbstomped.  This ISIS mess has a lot more to do with the Arab Spring and Syrian actions than anything we've done.  Pakistan's Northwest where most of the drones have done their work remains pretty much anti-american as it ever was, but just as largely irrelevant outside of Pakistan-Afghanistan as ever.
 
Okay.  I'm seriously done for the day.  Unless I start getting paid for writing these things I'm going to have to start keeping the replies short.  
*Note, Mrs. Panzersaurkrautwerfer hates twilight from the top to bottom, and is by far too practical to have ever gone at it with foam rubber swords.  She is from Roswell though so I do sometimes wonder if she's "native" if you get my drift.

Dunno man.  The Israelis also blew through Jordanian M48s and the like with equal ease using Shermans and such.  The Israeli-Arab wars were a good conduit for Soviet equipment for technical exploitation, but not always the best source for how the piece of equipment might actually be employed.  T-64 would have been problems, T-80 maybe too when it comes tank to tank (of course, they'd only made up a small portion of the Soviet tank fleet anyway).  
 
Of course it's game over by the time the Challenger, Leo 2, and M1A1 (even perhaps the M1 and M1IP with some of the very late 105 MM DU rounds) roll out.

Eeeeeh.  Picking a side in the Bosnian conflict is much like picking which person with Hitler as one of their multiple personalities you like best.  To classify the Bosnians or the Croats as "islamists and nazis" is to show a pretty severe bias to say the least.  The historical alignment of the Croats with the Nazis is no worse than the Vichy French policemen, the various Hungarian/Romanian/etc German allies or the Germans themselves.  The Croats had their own reasons to want to leave Yugoslavia, and to dismiss them out of hand by historical association says a lot about your position.  Doubly so on the "islamist" position given the fairly small role of the wahhabist type fighters vs nationalists who just happen to be Muslim.
 
As the case was, the Serbs made themselves "the tallest nail" when it came time for hammers to drop given their belligerence towards UN forces, the actual Serb run concentration camps, and the bloody mess of Sarajevo.  The other factions might not have been clean, but they're sort of a dark charcoal dirty vs the pitch black the Serbs managed to pull off.  
 
I won't even dignify the organ trade thing with a comment.  However the abuses of the Serbian forces in Kosovo are fairly well documented, and while the acts of the Kosovar forces are not exactly stellar examples of human rights and moral pillars of the community, they fought with the advantage of being less able to do damage to Serbian civilians, being aligned with the historical US support of self determination in government (when it does not strongly affect US foreign policy for the negative of course), and the stigma the Serbs still had after the early 90's fighting.  
 
True.  But please note how much control the US has exerted over Kosovo.  You'll find it was generally limited to peace keeping operations (which at least tried to equally protect remaining Serbs). Kosovo could hold an election to rejoin Serbia, or join Russia or New Zealand for that matter and the US would be limited generally to disapproval (and much confusion needless to say in the case of Russia or New Zealand).
 
 
I have to say, having read up on Milosevic, his secret support of the ethnic Serbs was about as subtle as a sledgehammer falling through a skylight.  
 
In terms of the actual conflict, I'll grant it's entirely possible BOTH sides were pretty wrong, but the Serbian ability to do harm greatly outweighed the Kosovar ability to resist.  And this inevitably lead to a lopsided view of affairs.  As the case was the Serbs could have simply toned down the campaign a bit, but the resulting refugee crisis, combined with imminently believable accusations of Serbian atrocities (which certainly did not happen to the extent claimed, but in the context of Serbian actions circa 1993 were not out of line to believe) then paired with the concerns of a re-ignition of the wider former Yugoslavia fighting led to a fairly strong anti-Serbian response.
 
Looking back on it in 2015, there's a lot apparent that 1999 couldn't see or anticipate.  However in refering to the NATO involvement:
 
1. There was verifiable "bad" things being done to the civilians in Kosovo by the Serbian military.
2. There was a strong case even worse things were being done.
3. The conflict was occurring in an area that was widely viewed as a powder keg, and that continued fighting might spread throughout the region.   
 
All the reasons for getting involved in Kosovo, minus the "wag the dog" allegations stemming from Clinton's sexscapades revolved around reacting to a humanitarian crisis, with at least some verifiable crimes against humanity.  This is a strong difference from something like, say the Russians swooping into the Crimea to save Russians from a total lack of actual actions taken against ethnic Russians, before adding a major port to Russia proper through a fake election thank you very much.
 
 
Rather famously, a French dude I actually respect somewhat said "France has no friends, only interests."  The inconsistencies are only inconsistencies if you forget that.  That said, the US is a strongly idealistic nation that's heavily paired with often very pragmatic decision making.  So while we extol freedom justice and the usual, there's a practical limit to how much we can do to bolster those things in many countries.  And often we have to work through governments or groups of people we genuinely do not like, but represent the only point of leverage we have in a region (see the Saudis).  
 
So to that end, I'm actually quite sure Clinton did care, and quite possibly does care deeply about the Serbs and Albainians.  But he's the leader of a country, and having led stuff (on a much smaller scale!) you're frequently asked to pick the best of the worst set of choices.  And given the historical portion of the Clinton administration in which the US missed the chance to head off several mass killings (and indeed, one of the few recognized genocides!) reacting strongly to what appeared to be another set of mass killings in the same damn region that just got done with the last round of mass killings must have been setting of some alarm bells.
 
When it comes to no good or bad guys, I disagree strongly.  We all fall broadly on some scale of morality, with the overwhelming population falling somewhere in the middle.  All humans for the most part broadly chose to make the most moral choice available given the circumstances (and when they do evil , it's frequently justified in a moral context).  This whole "only the alive and dead" mentality to me is a cheap copout from having to recognize the results of one's actions and the consequences of choices.  I strive, and will continue to strive to have been a positive influence to the world at large, because that is what's "right" and I will refuse to accept the world simply falls into dead/not dead.
 
 
The US is George Reeves.  The rest of the world at large sees us as Superman, and expects Superman level performance and capabilities, while totally ignoring its still just George Reeves in a suit trying very hard to be Superman.  When Russian troops steal parts of Ukraine?  Eh.  That's what Russia does.  France kills a bunch of Africans while meddling?  France has always done that.  Etc, etc, etc.  But there's this expectation America is "better" than those things, and by virtue of being the one remaining super-power level nation in the world, is capable of accomplishing anything if it tried, that is often the first step on the road to massive disappointment because, again at the end of the day we're just George Reeves (if George Reeves helped end both World Wars, was the number one provider of international aid, a strong supporter of free elections, and in general a  deeply flawed person with a mess of skeletons in the closet, but often decent enough man most of the time).
 
 
Thing is, we've wandered into this weird realm where terrorism is now bigger than simple law enforcement.  If we were at war with Cuba or something, and flew drones all over blotting out Cuban soldiers left and right, no one would bat an eye.  However because the fighters we're facing, no matter how deadly their intent or desires are, are not uniformed, somehow that's different.
 
We're effectively at war with their organizations, if they're nation states or not.  We've been directly attacked by the folks we're meatsaucing all over the landscape.  I don't feel the lack of nation-state makes them somehow more deserving of due process than someone wearing a uniform for Cuba.  
 
 
It's again, not a "new" concept, just new tools.  Looking at the French and Brits during the Cold War in their colonies (or recently former colonies) there's still a pattern of targeted killing vs arrest and apprehension.  Same deal with nearly every COIN campaign in history.  The only difference this time is technology allows for a wider more distributed insurgent network, and allows for a more active "kill" network from the other end.
 
Same game, difference pieces if you will.
 
 
That's fine, but how is international affairs a reasonable justification for flying planes into the World Trade Center?  Does European hypocrisy justify American terrorists shooting up cheese factories because we're not allowed to sell "Parmesan" cheese now?  
 
The west is a handy thing to blame for internal problems.  You listen to many of the anti-American, anti-Western speakers, and it's well beyond objections to current events, and well into the realm of fantasy and make believe levels of US/Western crimes.
 
 
That is not at all what I said, or believe.  I said the anti-western folks will be anti-western regardless of what we do or not do.  There's a significant population that might sway one direction or the other, but my experience in Iraq amounted to while they might hate the US for being in Iraq, they equally hated the insurgents who were planting the bombs.  We rarely dealt with the "I was cool with America, but then you came and destroyed everything!" terrorist that seems to keep showing up on TV and in the media.  The majority hated us before 2003, or even 1991, and were going to hate us if we gave them reason to hate us or not (we were accused of importing "special insect" to eat all of Iraq's crops.  I really cannot make up the distinct detachment from reality we dealt with).
 
And it did not change based on how kinnectic we were.  My first deployment we were ripping doors of hinges, and still dropping bombs in places.  If you cut into our convoy during our road movements, you were going to be staring down the barrel of a .50 cal in short order (we did not open up on anyone, most folks got the message).  Second deployment?  We couldn't enter a building without being invited in,* nothing had fallen off a plane and exploded in well over a year.  We let the traffic just flow in and around our movements, no big deal.
 
And the hate and hostility was there regardless of how nice we were, or rough we were.  We were the infidel invader of terrible to that population of people.
 
So to that end the folks we actually worry about, the actual "going to try to kill people" folks are largely, and almost entirely the sort of folks who'd hate us and try out the whole terrorism thing anyway.  It happened before drones, it'll keep happening after drones, with the overwhelming majority having an opinion on same, but the number of "new" anti-American folks is negligible.  
 
 
*Unless it was self defense, like we'd been shot at from the building, or needed cover

Some irony people talking about 'ethnic self-determination' and Putin's Russia in the same breath. I suppose Cossack underworld bar flies deserve to have their own independent fascistic state... in eastern Ukraine.

But it's never been addressed or looked at in a serious light.  There's been much written on the damage the Allies did (from bombing to the sheer number of French civilians killed in the fighting to liberate France herself), and the like, but the Russian narrative remains this action movie mockery of what actually occurred.  The Soviet Army sat and watched Warsaw burn because it was the wrong sort of Poles that stood up.  Countless innocents found themselves outbound to the gulags for reasons only known to political officers and god.  These monstrous acts and all the others have been, and continue to be airbrushed out of the Russian narrative in favor of the "Great Patriotic War."  This in turn does a greater dishonor to history and the sacrifice of the men who served because it turns the nightmare of 1940-1945 into a simple tale of brave stalwart men saving the motherland at great cost! instead of the much more complicated, much more meaningful reality contained within.
 
So to that, the parade is an affirmation of this whitewashed and glamorized history, and it remains a nationalistic celebration of same.  

To steal a Leonard Cohen line, it's better than being blinded by the beauty of our weapons.
 
 
On the other hand in all but Somalia (which is really a question of "what government?" and above table Pakistan (basically they've opted to on the government-military side condone the strikes, while still doing public outrage) US drone operations are sanctioned by the legal governments of said states.  
 
I'm....not going to be insulting but the "bringing in front of a judge" aspect is about as reasonable as "simply waltzing in and arresting Hitler."  A raid isn't just a few guys hop on a helicopter, swoop in with search warrants in hand on a moment's notice.  The sort of raids I described earlier were largely possible because of how the urban operation restricted terrorist movements (the various checkpoints meant the terrorists had to live fairly close to their operational areas, heavy security simply meant that it was blatantly obvious where they lived etc etc).  In dealing with many of these targets:
 
1. Local government is complicit/too weak to effectively deal with the target
2. The window to do something about this guy is very narrow
3. The target is in a place much too risky to send in conventional forces without significant loss (or basically asking the question of if it's worth the risk to lose the lives of several soldiers, a few million dollars of hardware so we can go through the legal procedure to show that this guy who we have a small mountain of evidence showing what a bad, bad man he is is in fact a bad bad man that we want to put in jail).
 
Even beyond that looking at historical counter-insurgencies or counter terrorism operations, bringing someone to trial has rarely been the historical case outside of domestic situations, or cases in which the targeted individual either survived the raid somehow, or was apprehended in a way that prevented them from being able to fight back.  The difference now is drones have the endurance and sensor fidelity to loiter over possible target locations, and the sensor fidelity to do the sort of "kill" it used to take big burly men with lots of guns to do.
 
 
The French, Israelis, the UK and countless other countries have all practiced the same exact tactic of international assassinations against various threats.  We're not talking about something "new" we've just hit that point where targeting and shooter technology has combined to allow for the sort of operations that used to exist purely in fevered dreams.  
 
However in terms of "what I have done" uh, yeah sort of missing the point to a large degree.  As:
 
1. The targets are folks who belong to organizations that have historically targeted the west because allah said its righteous.
2. Folks who support an unstable Afghanistan were stoning remains the legitimate means of judicial punishment
3. Folks who believe jihad is the one true path and if they explode enough people allah will smile on their dreams
 
That's sort of making it a bit glib, but these folks are opposed to us not for yesterday's acts, but for a long lasting historical grievances and perceived slights (US TROOPS NEAR MECCA HARRAM!!!!!).  If it was not the US, then it'd be the oh wait they did the UK.  Well if it wasn't the US and the UK it'd be Franc...oh crap.  Okay they did them too.  Well if it wasn't the US, the UK, France, it'd be the Spani...well damnit.  Even in the event of total US departure from the middle east, they'd still be blowing up Americans because of our cultural assault on Islam, or because we did not pay the ransom to not blow us up because allah commands it.  It's not as simple as it seems.
 
It's also not something we can kill our way out of, but the blowing up folks who are dead set on killing Americans is sort of symptoms management for the disease.  We've however mistaken it for the cure which is really more than a small problem.  
 
 
Again, Steve addressed this pretty well.  You can hold the US accountable for:
 
1. The post invasion chaos.  There really wasn't a good plan for that.
2. Disbanding the Iraqi Army.  That created a lot of the low-level trigger puller type insurgents for the Sunni population.
 
The dead Iraqis bloating in the Tigris, the exploding Mosques, the "mentally handicapped children as bomb transportation" tactic, and the VBIEDs in markets is something the Iraqis can take the lion's share of blame for.  It's my fault if I fire you for no good reason.  Your fault if your anger causes you to rape and murder a few people.
 
 
And it's very arrogant to assume we break everything too though.  In a lot of ways it's handy to blame things on "The West" but the troubles of the middle east reach all the way back well past colonialism.  We give ourselves a lot of credit for the power to do both good and bad, and frankly, too much credit for either.  
 
That's really the powerless moment you feel in Iraq.  No matter what you say, what you do, how many times you point out that Shia are people too, there's Sunnis that believe they're pretty much satan worshippers and allah will only smile when all of them are dead.  The looting anything worth money regardless of community benefit is something no amount of "west" could fix, nor the corruption.  No amount of attempt to foster small business with loads or grants would help as long as it was simply seen as a way to scam the Americans (which made it darkly funny in a way, the small grants we gave were totally enough to set up a good shop, or make your current shop much bigger, but nooooo, we're going to buy expensive stuff that's going to get stolen by our jealous neighbor, and then cry to the Americans for more money).
 
 
If I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, doesn't mean I can't call you a murderer for shooting down Nancy Sinatra.  Further I'd like to think my experience on the ground sets a nice contrast.  I have yet to shoot anyone.  I did however open several schools, briefly restore power to a neighborhood before the generator was looted, provide key tracking of displaced persons, and while I was at it release some prisoners back to their families.  As much as the American way of war can bring devastation, we're very conscious of doing "good" even if it's the kind of "good" I mentioned that can turn out "terrible" once it's actually implemented.
 
Contrast this to the Russian army which can give locusts a run for it's money, if locusts could rape and install puppet governments.  That's actually rather another reason I strongly dislike the Russian military, it's like having another company that does what you do, only sans morality, decency, and gloats about how it gets away with a lack of either.  Which almost loops back onto the topic, it's why I hate the Russian "victory" day parades.  They're in effect celebrating the nightmare they brought through Eastern Europe, the Stalinist oppression of thousands of innocent people, and the systematic rape and looting of anything with a correctly sized set of holes, or that could fit on a train back to Moscow.  It's like if the US Army had a "Wounded Knee Victory Parade" or the Brits held a festival to celebrate the first use of the maxim gun on indigenous people.  Then pair it with being a celebration of a return to Russian militarism and it just honestly gets sort of sick in that regard.  

But it's never been addressed or looked at in a serious light.  There's been much written on the damage the Allies did (from bombing to the sheer number of French civilians killed in the fighting to liberate France herself), and the like, but the Russian narrative remains this action movie mockery of what actually occurred.  The Soviet Army sat and watched Warsaw burn because it was the wrong sort of Poles that stood up.  Countless innocents found themselves outbound to the gulags for reasons only known to political officers and god.  These monstrous acts and all the others have been, and continue to be airbrushed out of the Russian narrative in favor of the "Great Patriotic War."  This in turn does a greater dishonor to history and the sacrifice of the men who served because it turns the nightmare of 1940-1945 into a simple tale of brave stalwart men saving the motherland at great cost! instead of the much more complicated, much more meaningful reality contained within.
 
So to that, the parade is an affirmation of this whitewashed and glamorized history, and it remains a nationalistic celebration of same.  

To steal a Leonard Cohen line, it's better than being blinded by the beauty of our weapons.
 
 
On the other hand in all but Somalia (which is really a question of "what government?" and above table Pakistan (basically they've opted to on the government-military side condone the strikes, while still doing public outrage) US drone operations are sanctioned by the legal governments of said states.  
 
I'm....not going to be insulting but the "bringing in front of a judge" aspect is about as reasonable as "simply waltzing in and arresting Hitler."  A raid isn't just a few guys hop on a helicopter, swoop in with search warrants in hand on a moment's notice.  The sort of raids I described earlier were largely possible because of how the urban operation restricted terrorist movements (the various checkpoints meant the terrorists had to live fairly close to their operational areas, heavy security simply meant that it was blatantly obvious where they lived etc etc).  In dealing with many of these targets:
 
1. Local government is complicit/too weak to effectively deal with the target
2. The window to do something about this guy is very narrow
3. The target is in a place much too risky to send in conventional forces without significant loss (or basically asking the question of if it's worth the risk to lose the lives of several soldiers, a few million dollars of hardware so we can go through the legal procedure to show that this guy who we have a small mountain of evidence showing what a bad, bad man he is is in fact a bad bad man that we want to put in jail).
 
Even beyond that looking at historical counter-insurgencies or counter terrorism operations, bringing someone to trial has rarely been the historical case outside of domestic situations, or cases in which the targeted individual either survived the raid somehow, or was apprehended in a way that prevented them from being able to fight back.  The difference now is drones have the endurance and sensor fidelity to loiter over possible target locations, and the sensor fidelity to do the sort of "kill" it used to take big burly men with lots of guns to do.
 
 
The French, Israelis, the UK and countless other countries have all practiced the same exact tactic of international assassinations against various threats.  We're not talking about something "new" we've just hit that point where targeting and shooter technology has combined to allow for the sort of operations that used to exist purely in fevered dreams.  
 
However in terms of "what I have done" uh, yeah sort of missing the point to a large degree.  As:
 
1. The targets are folks who belong to organizations that have historically targeted the west because allah said its righteous.
2. Folks who support an unstable Afghanistan were stoning remains the legitimate means of judicial punishment
3. Folks who believe jihad is the one true path and if they explode enough people allah will smile on their dreams
 
That's sort of making it a bit glib, but these folks are opposed to us not for yesterday's acts, but for a long lasting historical grievances and perceived slights (US TROOPS NEAR MECCA HARRAM!!!!!).  If it was not the US, then it'd be the oh wait they did the UK.  Well if it wasn't the US and the UK it'd be Franc...oh crap.  Okay they did them too.  Well if it wasn't the US, the UK, France, it'd be the Spani...well damnit.  Even in the event of total US departure from the middle east, they'd still be blowing up Americans because of our cultural assault on Islam, or because we did not pay the ransom to not blow us up because allah commands it.  It's not as simple as it seems.
 
It's also not something we can kill our way out of, but the blowing up folks who are dead set on killing Americans is sort of symptoms management for the disease.  We've however mistaken it for the cure which is really more than a small problem.  
 
 
Again, Steve addressed this pretty well.  You can hold the US accountable for:
 
1. The post invasion chaos.  There really wasn't a good plan for that.
2. Disbanding the Iraqi Army.  That created a lot of the low-level trigger puller type insurgents for the Sunni population.
 
The dead Iraqis bloating in the Tigris, the exploding Mosques, the "mentally handicapped children as bomb transportation" tactic, and the VBIEDs in markets is something the Iraqis can take the lion's share of blame for.  It's my fault if I fire you for no good reason.  Your fault if your anger causes you to rape and murder a few people.
 
 
And it's very arrogant to assume we break everything too though.  In a lot of ways it's handy to blame things on "The West" but the troubles of the middle east reach all the way back well past colonialism.  We give ourselves a lot of credit for the power to do both good and bad, and frankly, too much credit for either.  
 
That's really the powerless moment you feel in Iraq.  No matter what you say, what you do, how many times you point out that Shia are people too, there's Sunnis that believe they're pretty much satan worshippers and allah will only smile when all of them are dead.  The looting anything worth money regardless of community benefit is something no amount of "west" could fix, nor the corruption.  No amount of attempt to foster small business with loads or grants would help as long as it was simply seen as a way to scam the Americans (which made it darkly funny in a way, the small grants we gave were totally enough to set up a good shop, or make your current shop much bigger, but nooooo, we're going to buy expensive stuff that's going to get stolen by our jealous neighbor, and then cry to the Americans for more money).
 
 
If I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die, doesn't mean I can't call you a murderer for shooting down Nancy Sinatra.  Further I'd like to think my experience on the ground sets a nice contrast.  I have yet to shoot anyone.  I did however open several schools, briefly restore power to a neighborhood before the generator was looted, provide key tracking of displaced persons, and while I was at it release some prisoners back to their families.  As much as the American way of war can bring devastation, we're very conscious of doing "good" even if it's the kind of "good" I mentioned that can turn out "terrible" once it's actually implemented.
 
Contrast this to the Russian army which can give locusts a run for it's money, if locusts could rape and install puppet governments.  That's actually rather another reason I strongly dislike the Russian military, it's like having another company that does what you do, only sans morality, decency, and gloats about how it gets away with a lack of either.  Which almost loops back onto the topic, it's why I hate the Russian "victory" day parades.  They're in effect celebrating the nightmare they brought through Eastern Europe, the Stalinist oppression of thousands of innocent people, and the systematic rape and looting of anything with a correctly sized set of holes, or that could fit on a train back to Moscow.  It's like if the US Army had a "Wounded Knee Victory Parade" or the Brits held a festival to celebrate the first use of the maxim gun on indigenous people.  Then pair it with being a celebration of a return to Russian militarism and it just honestly gets sort of sick in that regard.  

But it's never been addressed or looked at in a serious light.  There's been much written on the damage the Allies did (from bombing to the sheer number of French civilians killed in the fighting to liberate France herself), and the like, but the Russian narrative remains this action movie mockery of what actually occurred.  The Soviet Army sat and watched Warsaw burn because it was the wrong sort of Poles that stood up.  Countless innocents found themselves outbound to the gulags for reasons only known to political officers and god.  These monstrous acts and all the others have been, and continue to be airbrushed out of the Russian narrative in favor of the "Great Patriotic War."  This in turn does a greater dishonor to history and the sacrifice of the men who served because it turns the nightmare of 1940-1945 into a simple tale of brave stalwart men saving the motherland at great cost! instead of the much more complicated, much more meaningful reality contained within.
 
So to that, the parade is an affirmation of this whitewashed and glamorized history, and it remains a nationalistic celebration of same.