OK i'll play nice now
Don't care if it had to do with Poland. I happend to carry double citizenship and served in US military, if you want a list of things that sucks in Poland, i think i can hit the max character number allowed by this board
I do however believe in UN and its mission.
No, they can't be compared to regular US military or any military. They weren't intended as a strike force per se. They are intended as a policing force, what goes with that is - light handed tactics, doing things very differently then marshall law type of general would. Some would call it "being soft", other would say "winning hearts and minds". That's a separate debate.
You stated that Polish troops would have less hussle if they weren't part of "multinational" force. Well, i doubt it. From the get go they were intended as a police force, and having few thousand other troops to back them up and bail them out is always good news. They aren't obliged by any standards other then those set by US military command under which they serve.
Returning to issue of UN.
I will concede that UN troops aren't usually nearly as effective as regular military could be. Part of it is the way they are structured ( no heavy air support, naval support, special forces per se ), part of it is their mission.
However, UN troops can make a claim to being objective. Something that US troops, no matter how effective they are, can't do in current political climate.
If natives of the country being pacified see the troops are objective peacekeepers, they approach it differently then "occupying" forces.
So say in Iraq, if place happends to be guarded by UN troops from say Columbia, while nutcases will still take potshots at them, local population is very unlikely to see Columbians as occupying power.
If it is US troops, they are facing nutcases and likely resentment of large part of local population.
This is why UN was devised. It isn't perfect, it doesn't work every time, but it does work.
Is that clearer ?
