http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/201 ... ali-anyway

Sounds like the French public is quite supportive of the invasion of Mali. This appears to be another effort in the GWOT. What does this mean and how does it end? I'm not aware of a related UN resolution, but then again for Americans this just kind of popped up in the news so to speak. Things tend to not exist if we aren't involved. I do understand we are technically involved on the sidelines with intelligence.

I thought this might be a good place to come for perspective from our European delegation.

I applaud the French, but you didn't ask me.

I applaud them too, but one wonders whether they have interests sufficient to justify a long-term stay and more than minimal casualties. Certainly given their history there their attempt to try and stabilize the country was the correct move. We'll just havr to wait and see if a short/term intervention is enough.

So far as I'm aware there is a UN resolution. The original plan was for African troops to go in there and try to stabilise things but events moved too quickly and the French felt they had to get involved to prevent the islamists from moving south. Apparently they were threatening the only airfield in Mali outside of the capital that's capable of handling mass transit of military material, which would have made any attempt to push north against them a logistical nightmare.

France will doubtless want to get out as soon as they can, but it's hard to see the Malian army being able to take up the slack and the African Union contingent is only meant to be about 2000 strong. Don't really see that being enough to retake the north. France could end up there for a lot longer than they thought.

This thread is being interrupted...

Freeman, please contact me for information on the RBL. We have a team for you. mpolcen at verizon dot net.

Now back to your global politics...

Is the private message feature out of order again?

Yes. The web guy just back with us.