Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for April 04, 2015

Which war?

har!

Because the Republicans were cowards who wouldn’t have taken on the Nazis, the Communists, the North Koreans or the Huns themselves?.Well, okay, if you say so.

We lied about the WMDs?

Nice spotter!

Somebody has to bail out the Europeans.

Now boys, play nice. We’ve joined a few, we’ve started a few, and we’ve been forced into a few.“Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who.”

Funny thing about wars. They never determine who was right, simply who was stronger. And they get to declare themselves right.

“Ethnic cleansing” goes back to ancient history, if not prehistory. (Remember the Neanderthals?) It seems to be one of the sadder natural aspects of humanity — or Original Sin, which is as good an explanation.

The birder is being watched by a little blue bird in panel 1. I wonder if the bird got points for spotting a red bearded, bald, rust capped, nearsighted birder.

James Watts.What a blast from the past!

“by contrast, the Clinton administration worked through NATO, keeping its shaky coalition together in the Western alliance’s first war. Clinton’s war brought Europe and America closer together and invested NATO and trans-Atlantic relations with a renewed sense of purpose. That unity of purpose proved invaluable in post-war Kosovo, where U.S. and European troops secured the peace and U.N. administrators sponsored a difficult, but so far reasonably successful, transition to democracy.”.That’s part of it..There were other players involved, though..Our aggressive actions in the Balkans may well have convinced the people of Russia we were the imperialists they had grown up being brainwashed about..GWB had stepped in to easily drive an invader out of another country, then walked away, not taking anything for himself. This had shaken the belief that a dictatorship was needed to protect the Russian people from the Imperialist USA. That plus a Cessna landing in Red Square had shown the government wasn’t really able to protect them and that there may not have been anything to protect against..Along came President Clinton. He decided to impose democracy in Somalia where GWB had only tried to stop the starvation. Not only did this show the USA was a potential threat to other countries, but when we turned tail and ran, it indicated we could be stopped. (And the starvation resumed.).This was strengthened when we went into Haiti and quickly ran out. (They looked too much like Somalis?).Then as you point out, we took a treaty organization intended to defend members from attacks and President Clinton used it to attack people in the Balkans, Russia’s back door. A potential threat..Go forward and see the people submitting once again to an imperialist Putin and wonder if our intervention in the Balkans may have sparked all which followed..I’m not sure, but can well see how the Russians may have seen it. I can even see it leading people like Iran to believe they needed big weapons to scare the USA away — not just to kill Jews with..People mocked President GWB for his mentions of what would be prudent and what wouldn’t, They praised Presidents Clinton and GHWB for shows of strength.. I wish they had both been prudent.

@davidhuiegreenSome of the Neanderthals even post here from time to time :-)