Thursday, May 11, 2006

Stopping Genocide

Rev Sensing, who has a background in the military, has a long discussion about stopping genocide.
Summary:

Not long before the invasion of Iraq someone asked me whether we should also topple the regimes of all the other dictators in the worldorth Korea and this place and that place?”
To which I replied,“Yes, we should. But there is a great gap between what we ought to do and what we are able to do or what would be wise to do. The moral considerations are not the only ones.”
..............
But let that pass for now because what O’Hanlon never mentions is logistics capability of his proposed genocide-prevention units. Will they have their own helicopters? Personnel carriers? Trucks? Landing craft? Will they have their own maintenance and supply units? Command, control and communications specialists?

These are crucial questions; as military officers like to say, “Amateurs talk about tactics. Professionals talk about logistics.” Any intervention such as O’Hanlon envisions will require long-term logistic support. Where will it come from? Who will command it (which is another way of saying who will “own” it)?


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