> ground troops. We seem to already have agreed that bombing without
> ground troops will end up worse than doing nothing would have. In case
> there is anyone out there who has missed the point, the Serbian
> government has stepped up it's murder rate, the number of refugees
> have increased drastically, and the NATO bombs are killing lots of
> people including Kosovar Albanians.
But the EU would argue (allow me to don the robes of Mephistopheles for a moment) that (1) the murder rate was spiraling out of control anyway, and that (2) a short, vicious armed conflict which results in an ethnic partition of Kosovo would save more lives than allowing the situation to fester. That's what happened in Bosnia, right? The West did nothing, and the slaughter just kept dragging on and on. The bombing would also (3) strengthen Milosevic against his frequently psychotic neonationalist rivals, thus improving the chances of a peace deal -- again, in contrast to Bosnia, where it wasn't clear who or what was precisely in charge.
-- Dennis