OT war thoughts:
Governments in Islamic countries that are allied (or semi-allied) with us, are hoping this is a short war with few civilian casualties. This is almost certainly wishful thinking. It's going to be hard to find Bin Laden. Then, we still have the job of finding all the leadership of his organization. Then the job of finding all the independant small cells, which may number in the hundreds. Then, we need to do the same with all similar organizations. This is going to be a permanent war, like the Cold War. Which means that governments in places like Pakistan and Uzbekistan are going to have to get used to the permanent presence of U.S. war-planes in their skies, and troops landing here and there and everywhere, hunting and killing. This is going to cause steadily increasing pressures on their governments, to end cooperation with the U.S., because it represents a large and permanent loss of national sovereignity. The ColonialismByProxy model is losing it's "proxy" status. I expect our Moslem allies to try to finesse this issue, without success. And I expect some revolutions to replace some of our allies. In particular, the Saudi government is vulnerable.
IMO, we are going to find that the only way to stop terrorism, is to make all governments responsible for what happens in their territory. Any government that aids the terrorists, we make war on. Any government that cannot stop terrorists from operating on their soil, must allow us to come in and do the job for them. If they refuse, then we make war on them also. Going directly after the terrorists, trying to bypass the governments in those countries, that isn't going to work. |
