Information on the deployment was kept under wraps until now because of the mission’s sensitivity. Posted on 06/22/2008 10:32:30 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — Soldiers from 1st Battalion, 4th Infantry Regiment deployed to the Balkans earlier this year to provide Kosovo Forces with armored capabilities during Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, according to Army officials.
Information on the deployment was kept under wraps until now because of the mission’s sensitivity.
In the days following Kosovo’s declaration of independence, protesters marched in the northern city of Kosovska Mitrovica. Kosovo Force troops and U.N. police closed the border with Serbia after hearing that protesters were being bused to Mitrovica to join the protest.
During the deployment 1-4 soldiers were manning Bradley fighting vehicles for the American-led Multinational Task Force East, according to 1st Lt. David Trinh, who leads 3rd Platoon, Company B, 1-4 soldiers in Kosovo.
"We provide KFOR with an armored capability should it be needed," Trinh said.
KFOR is made up of more than 1,000 U.S. active-duty, reserve and National Guard troops working with soldiers from other nations and the Kosovo Police Service to secure the breakaway nation’s border with Serbia.
There was sporadic violence after the independence declaration, but the situation is now calm, Trinh said.
"We work with the [KFOR] unit here by conducting patrols and when not patrolling, we train as if we were back home," he said.
It’s the second deployment for 1-4, which plays the Army’s opposing force, helping train Iraq and Afghanistan-bound units at Hohenfels’ Joint Multinational Readiness Center. The unit’s soldiers have also fought the Taliban in southern Afghanistan’s Zabul Province, a mission that’s been going on for several years.
Trinh’s platoon maintains a 24-hour presence in its area, talking to locals and reporting their problems to KFOR, he said. "Most of the time, we try to get intelligence we can report and act on. Luckily, our sector has remained quiet and safe for the most part," he said.
Cpl. Christapher Larson, 24, of Reno, Nev., a Bradley gunner who’s previously deployed to Afghanistan, said in an e-mail that Kosovo is a very different experience.
"In Afghanistan it is hard to know who you can trust. The locals could be hiding the enemy to help them attack you. Going on patrol here is like a Sunday drive compared to Afghanistan," Larson wrote. "It’s not to say we don’t take it seriously, because we take all patrols seriously, but… this is a lot less stressful."
Another 1-4 soldier, Staff Sgt. Muhammadun Abdallah, 28, of Naperville, Ill., a Bradley commander who has been to Iraq and Afghanistan, agreed.
"In Kosovo we try to make sure that KFOR is able to help as many people as we can. Some of the problems are domestic issues. It seems the people just want to get by. No one is trying to kill you," he said.
The troops do what they are told, I guess. But this is pretty sick, aiding and abetting our Muslim enemies and breaking accepted international law in the process, as well as working against our own national interests.
In this case, I think it's fair enough to say that it's "Bush's fault." It was clinton's fault, but now Bush deservedly takes the blame.
I thank Sgt. Abdallah for his service and I wipe my ass with “international law.”
bump
I’m not talking about UN-brand international law. I’m talking about a couple of thousand years of laws of just war.
Breaking up Yugoslavia and handing large chunks of it over to Muslim terrorists was not a brilliant idea. It not only violated the ancient accepted rules concerning sovereignty, it violated our own national interest.
If we had had pressing reasons for bombing civilians and tearing a sovereign country in two, that would have been one thing. But bringing Muslim terrorists into the Balkans is NOT in our national interest by any conceivable measure.
I’m not faulting the troops. I’m faulting their political masters.
How can you say that there were not "pressing reasons" for "bombing civilians" and "tearing a sovereign country in two".
I'll list three of them:
1. Impeachment
2. The Cox Report
3. Juanita Broaddrick
Of course, that assessment might relate as to whether you were part of the Clinton administration or not...
2. Debating the reasons for the war is beating a dead horse. What we need to debate now is not what we should have done, but what we should do. Is it in our national interests now to pull out of Kosovo? When is it ever in our national interests to cede territory we have seized in war? In my view, Kosovo is not a muslim foothold in Europe, it is an American foothold, occupied by American forces. We don't want to give up our big military base in Kosovo, and so we won't. This is in our own national interests, and without regard for the “sovereignty” of foreign countries like Serbia which we have no allegiance to. The only country who's sovereignty I defend is the USA. I will leave it to Serbs to defend Serbian sovereignty.
So your opinion really doesn't matter, and no American political party of any stripe is going to put your warped Balkan plank into their platform, are they?
About the only thing of interest you said is your insinuation that American forces perpetrated war crimes by bombing civilians during our military operations in the Balkans. Do you care to retract that, or are you willing to be man enough to come out in the open and make the accusation in plain english?
The most notorious—and deliberate—instance of bombing civilians was the bombing of the Belgrade TV station. It was planned ahead of time, because American reporters who had been given hospitality there were warned the day before to stay away.
Clinton bombed the TV station because their reports on the war were proving uncomfortable to him. Again, I don’t fault the pilots and crew involved in the bombing because I don’t know what they were told. They did their job.
Milosevitch was not a nice guy, but there was plenty of guilt to go around. In particular, with regard to Kosovo, he was responding to Albanian Muslim terrorists in Kosovo and waves of infiltrators who had come across the border.
Am I to understand, and let there be no room for misunderstanding here, that you are accusing American servicemen of carrying out a war crime during Operation Allied Force in 1999?
If the Turks had been good little boys and girls and simply surrendered early on, the Balkans would not now be a series of failed states composing mostly Greece and FYR. They'd be something else ~ maybe good, maybe bad ~ but different Fur Shur.
Somehow I can't imagine the Turks just "giving up" though.
GJ, Kosovo is a sh*+40|3 anyway. Serbia is a much nicer place for a base. At least the food is sanitary.
American support of the Jihadist state of Kosovo is a crime, Hopeless.
But you knew that already.
Where are those pancakes, by the way?
Having a “Hop-lite” was bad enough, but now we have a “tailgunner” on this forum. All we need now for the trifecta is a member named “IwearWomenzClothz”.
I wonder if Hoppy’s ever been to Chicago, if you catch my drift?
Just consider those two for what they are -- "comic relief" on an otherwise deadly serious subject.
Are the American servicemen who carried out the bombings in Cambodia e.g. Operation Breakfast guilty of a war crime??
In short, you're asking a rhetorical question.
No worries, you wouldn't be the first to display intellectual cowardice when asked to stand by their convictions on the matter at hand.
Try not to be such a jerk. I did.
Based upon your contributions to this thread your problems go much beyond being a simple jerk, Cicero.
Am I to assume, however, that your unwillingness to address the issue directly means you're taking the intellectual cowardice route and are backing away from your assertion with your tail between your legs?
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