Foreign Troops

Re "Uncle Sam Wants Tu," Commentary, Feb. 24: Well, I guess Max Boot is at it again. Does he honestly think so little of his country and is he so dedicated to a long time of war that he would seriously consider this the answer to the problem of enlisting more troops in the United States Army and Marine Corps? Namely, to recruit foreigners from the four corners of the Earth? Does he really think the answer to this ill-fated war in Iraq, and expanding it to who knows where else, is to bring more and more people to this country and promise them U.S. citizenship to boot?

Yugoslav army troops launched a punishing ground and air assault on the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Monday in retaliation for an ambush by Muslim fighters in which 181 federal soldiers were captured. Renewed heavy fighting in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, already shattered by two months of warfare, prompted the leadership of Bosnia-Herzegovina to appeal for foreign military intervention to halt what it called "illegal aggression" by the Yugoslav state.

Heavy fighting erupted again Sunday in the Rwandan capital of Kigali as rebel forces tried for a decisive victory before the possible intervention of foreign troops. A U.N. spokesman said by phone that the dug-in government troops and the advancing Rwandan Patriotic Front rebels, who already control more than half the country, exchanged mortar, artillery and small-arms fire throughout much of the day. The continuing battles have turned Kigali into a virtual ghost town.

Fearing further violence in Zaire, the Bush Administration began efforts Wednesday to evacuate Americans from the troubled Central African nation, where two days of rioting has left the center of the capital in ruins and an estimated 30 people dead. Earlier in the day, the Pentagon announced that Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had authorized a U.S. loan of several C-141 military transport planes to France to ferry more soldiers, supplies and equipment to Zaire.

Western troops traveling through the capital of Afghanistan in a military convoy Thursday shot dead an Islamic cleric, apparently mistaking him for a would-be suicide bomber, officials and witnesses said. NATO acknowledged that its forces had fired on what appeared to be a "threatening vehicle," and expressed regret for the death. Afghan police said two of the cleric's children were in the car with him but were not hurt. The incident took place hours before Afghan President Hamid Karzai, speaking to a major security conference in London, urged that greater care be taken when foreign troops come in contact with civilians.

The Pentagon will withdraw about half the 66,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan over the coming year, a steep reduction that reflects President Obama's determination to end America's role in the 11-year-old conflict. In his State of the Union address, Obama said 34,000 Americans would be brought home over the next 12 months, and further reductions will continue through the end of 2014, when all U.S. and other foreign troops are scheduled to leave. "American troops will come home from Afghanistan," Obama said.

Amid calls for the Bush administration to reevaluate its handling of the Iraq occupation in the wake of Tuesday's deadly truck bombing in Baghdad, Pentagon officials stood by their position that they do not need more troops to ensure security. The shift in tactics by insurgents toward attacking "soft" targets such as foreign aid workers and Iraq's own infrastructure poses a new set of security challenges by significantly increasing the number of potential sites and victims, analysts said.

When Congolese President Laurent Kabila urged his people last August to take up arms and defend their country against an alliance of rebels and foreign troops, many residents of this capital city willingly complied.

The brazen and well-coordinated attacks by insurgents against four embassies and other key sites in the heart of Afghanistan's capital were aimed less at inflicting high numbers of casualties, analysts said, than at humiliating the government and its foreign allies as Afghan forces take increasing responsibility for protecting their own homeland. Taking positions on high-rise construction sites, attackers on Sunday rained down rocket-propelled grenades, bullets and fear on Kabul, targeting major symbols of Afghan and foreign power, including the U.S., British, German and Russian embassies and NATO headquarters.

The month began with a fatal roadside bombing and ended with word that an American had died of wounds suffered in a firefight. After nearly eight years of warfare in Afghanistan, July proved by far the deadliest month yet for U.S. troops and their foreign allies. Bombs and rocket attacks, ambushes and aviation accidents killed many of the 72 foreign troops, including 43 Americans, according to data at the website icasualties.org. Previously, the highest monthly U.S.