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The Vietnam conflict was brought to the world each an every night on the televised news. For the first time we were experiencing real time, the horrors of a military conflict and we did not like what we saw. Russia learned this lesson and was careful to make sure that its people did not have a similar experience when it got itself trapped in Afghanistan. The people of the world demanded the war stop and stop it did. The result was conclusive for the North Vietnamese and confusing to the Americans, still is.
With no direct economic involvement, we have seen the United States pretend to act like Canada, by sending forces into the complex and absurd Somolian conflict and then after the UN forces were about to pack it in, in Bosnia where the US came in because the people of the United States were demanding, on behalf of humanity, that something be done.
Two ugly conflicts have been seething away for several decades and the people of the world, not the governments, want the fighting and killing to stop. The continuing struggle in the Middle East between the Israelis and the displaced Palestinians is unacceptable to the people of this planet and the incomprehensible violence in Northern Ireland is also well beyond what civilised people can tolerate and in both cases various world leaders and groups of nations have combined to demand resolution to these conflicts. It is only a matter of time until we people of the world turn our attention toward the Tamel situation in Southern India and Sira Lanka just as we already are upset about Indonesia’s behaviour in East Timor.