(no subject)

I was writing a reply to an email I got from redactrice and thought I liked part of it enough I'd post it here as well. We were talking about travel, and she'd mentioned seeing a number of places we'd sung about in folks songs many times around the camp fire. ( Read more... )

oh, really?

The Washington bureau chief for Itar-Tass news agency today stated in a panel discussion on NPR that Russian forces, as peacekeepers, were "legally obligated" to intervene in the fighting in South Ossetia to defend whichever side violated agreed ceasefire terms.

I have worked in the field of operations other than war, to include peacekeeping, on a number of occasions, and I can't say that I have *ever* come across any such obligation, express or implied, in any peacekeeping charter.

I'm also quite unclear on whose authority, other than their own, the Russians are acting as "peacekeepers". Peacekeeping forces are generally invited by *both* sides and/or chartered either by the UN or another international political or security organisation. Despite my previous snarks on this subject, the war campaign in Kosovo was carried out by a NATO military force, in no way described as peacekeepers. There has been a UN administration and NATO peacekeeping mission there *since* the war, but that is a different matter.