Hi Carl,
Ya caught me nappin'. I thought I might be able to sneak out of a discussion of mountain warfare, because, frankly speaking, it isn't a subject I've cared to delve into very deeply. You know me, Summer of Love. Peace and Harmony. Yada di yada.
I'll take a shot at a bit of a rejoinder, and then I got a real zinger, that I'm going to save for my next post, it's on the war to cut off the terrorists financing. I think you'll like it.
Anahoo, here goes on my reply to your very well done post. My stuff will not be nominated for a Pulizer.....
Re: Last I heard the Nazis were unable to hold onto the mountains of Italy
A reading of the history of the mountain campaign above Anzio would indicate that it was a foolish and difficult struggle, and the Americans would have been a lot smarter to follow the lowlands routes of Hannibal, Julius Caesar and just about anyone else with a brain who traveled up and down the spine. The mountain campaign was some general's really bad wet dream.
Re: Here are a few examples of the United States cleaning an enemy out of mountainous (or unconventional) territory.
(1) Native American Indians in 1800s.
Thanks for bringing that up. Have you come to terms with your conscience about how many treaties the U.S. government had to renege on in order to end up in these battles? Just how much compulsive cheating by frontiersman made these wars inevitable?
(3) The Philippines in 1898.
I can't recall, was it you who was arguing with me that the U.S. doesn't have imperial intentions? Or have we partitioned off the last 25 years and said that we're not the bad old aggressors we used to be?
Re: In other words, the Afghan defeat of the Soviets, like the Vietnamese defeat of the Americans, were just parts of great power struggles. The local inhabitants were used as pawns.
I find myself in complete agreeement with you here.
Re: The current situation is distinct because the neighboring countries are giving us assistance. Even the Iranians have offered help.
The Iranian offer to afford a possible place to land damaged aircraft has been spun into much more of an offer of help than it truly is by the Western media and by the U.S. government outlets. We have been led to believe that Iranians would intervene on Afghani territory. There was no such offer made. The assistance that neighboring countries is begrudging and minimal. There are no large U.S. ground troop concentrations anywhere in the region, nor are there likely to be. Again, our media plays it up like all of Afghanistan's neighbors are in our back pocket. Nothing could be further from the truth. The coalition is very fragile and there is quite a risk that if our bombing intensifies, and the Islamic media plays into the Taliban/ al-Qa'ida game plan, that there will be huge demonstrations in sympathy to the innocent Afghanis that we're slaugthering as "collateral damage". Don't discount the fact that what we see in the Western press is no where near to being accurate in its portrayal of the tensions within the border countries to Afghanistan. And be fully aware that as the brutality of the American assault increases, it will only serve to stiffen the resolve of the Afghanis to continue the struggle. They're no different from the Brits during the Blitz. They will not be broken in spirit by our carpet bombing campaigns. We should have learned this lesson in Viet Nam, but we have a bunch of lunatics in the Air Force who keep saying "but if we only really had a chance to do saturation bombing without one hand tied behind our backs". Well two things wrong with this. The first is the world's moral revulsion to genocide, and the second is that it will only serve to bring other enemies into the fray, as well as guaranteeing a reign of terror in the "Homeland" for the next century. We really ought to think about whether we want to involve ourselves in an endless cycle of revenge and retribution. Seems stupid to me. YMMV.
OK, the next is someone else's good rant.....
Salaams, Homey |
