Regime change and friendly occupation

On the same day that Czechs welcomed home the remains of three fallen heroes, the New York Times wrote that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are failures without an end in sight. Czechs have been at war in Afghanistan for longer than any of their conflicts have lasted since the end of the Thirty Years' War in 1648, yet there is virtually no discussion of the merit of the sacrifice being made. "It is our Alliance obligation," is the most frequent explanation given. MEP Miroslav Poche, who is essentially running the Czech foreign ministry, even spoke yesterday in Právo about bringing about regime change in other countries as a way to halt the migration wave. Few Czech politicians over the past 17 years have acknowledged that the military action they support in Afghanistan isn't so different from the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. It too was a regime change, followed by a 21-year occupation by "friendly" armies. And it ended in failure for the occupying forces.