I Like This Idea

Bill Arkin's idea is framed as a way to sustain the surge in Iraq (which is odd if you read Bill Arkin regularly), but he sold me when he even suggested getting out of Kosovo.

The military's Stars and Stripes newspapers report that National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers under the flag of the 35th Infantry Division are readying for a nine-month stint on active duty, beginning with 60 days of pre-deployment refresher training in Indiana before shipping out. These citizen soldiers, mostly from Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska, are forming Task Force Falcon, and while their lives are being terribly disrupted and they face hardships ahead, I'm sure that on some level they are also thanking their lucky stars: They are going to Kosovo.

This will be the ninth rotation of U.S. troops into Kosovo since 1999. The Army has shortened the rotation from a year to nine months to soften the impact on soldier's civilian lives, and 200 fewer troops are in Falcon 9 than previous Falcon deployments.

I'm all for peacekeeping, and I support self-determination and stability for the good people of Kosovo. Still, it's past time we turned this mission over to our good friends in Europe. I know the geopolitics here: America's strength and backing is needed, there are other threats, we have "commitments" and treaties, there should be no vacuums of power nor ungoverned spaces. So there we are still, in South Korea, on Okinawa, sprinkled throughout the Persian Gulf, in Djibouti and increasingly elsewhere in Africa, in the Sinai, all over Europe....

If there is a national interest for the United States in Kosovo, I don't see it, and outside of the compassion envelope I don't understand it. His idea will probably come to nothing, but at some point, the US needs to end its commitment there and let Europe deal with it.