Hi Raymond Duray; I see that none of your replies about mountain operations denies that they are possible, but instead discusses (1) whether they are easier than other operations, (2) whether the war they are a part of is moral, and (3) whether the US has imperial intentions. From that I'll take it that you've given up that line of reasoning, and agree that the US can, in fact, win a war against mountain guerillas, as it has done so many times in the past.
Re: "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."
I didn't see any such spin. Maybe I'm reading less fantastic sources. Certainly it's not one of my assumptions. I would assume that the Iranians may be willing to contribute occupation / rehabilitation troops, (after we're out of there).
Re: "The assistance that neighboring countries is begrudging and minimal. ... Again, our media plays it up like all of Afghanistan's neighbors are in our back pocket. " The neighbors of Taliban's section of Afghanistan are Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan.
The Iranians are supplying uniforms for the Northern Alliance. This dates to before our involvement. See #reply-16584719
Tajikistan and Uzbekistan have long been supporting the Norther Alliance:
time.com
Turkmenistan will probably follow Turkey's lead, and Turkey just agreed to send 90 special forces troops. To put this in perspective, we only have something like around 100 special forces on the ground in Afghanistan.
Pakistan is doing what it must, and is less likely to fall into fundamentalism than the press (who, after all, are mostly interested in selling papers) would have you believe. Read what a Pak (who still lives there) says about the situation:
Member 3771207
Re: "The coalition is very fragile ..." The Northern Alliance is 20 years old and is hardly fragile. It got along without us for decades. But with overt support from the US and Russia, and most of the rest of the developed world, now you think it's fragile?
Re: "... 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"."
The Islamic media is already playing into the Taliban game plan. Result: Every Islamic state is quietly sitting on its hands. Some of them have came out in support of us.
Re: "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." The fact is that you don't know what is going on in the circles of power in Moslem nations any better than I do. But the evidence suggests things aren't as bad as you suggest.
How many US embassies have burned down in the past month? How many US citizens have been taken hostage in Arab countries? Which Moslem nations have promised their undying support for the Taliban? Hell, which Moslem nations even have diplomatic relations with the Taliban? Where's the Moslem nation that has promised that they're going to send as much aid as possible across the border to the Taliban?
Perhaps you should consider how little you know about the relationship between the Moslem press and the Moslem people. You're limited, pretty much, to reading what our press reports about their press. In fact, let's reverse the situation. What would a Moslem reading the US press think of the current situation in this country? By perusing the headlines he'd probably get the following ideas:
(a) The American people are unable to get any work done because they're afraid of getting anthrax from their mail. No one is opening their letters. The government has ceased operations as the Senate, House, and Supreme Court closed for decontamination. Everybody's taking antibiotics that make you horribly sick as a prophylactic measure.
(b) Americans are no longer flying, and all the airline companies have gone bankrupt. There's armed guards everywhere in the country and they're giving body cavity searches to all Arab travellers. All Moslems have been placed in jail. Freedom is gone in the United States, they are under martial law now.
(c) With time freed up by neglecting their junk mail, Americans are driving around terrorizing Sikhs and Arabs. "Open season" has been declared on convenience store clerks, and it's no longer possible for the US government to keep their depraved citizenry under control. It's no longer possible for swarthy people to fly, the other passengers (and crew) refuse to board planes with them.
While all of the above have some little pieces of reality, they paint a completely inaccurate description of the actual situation in the United States. The fact is that we're playing the World Series and most of us are just getting on with life. The reason for this is simple. Our press doesn't file front page articles about the mother who didn't drown her kids so that she could get it on with her boyfriend. In other words, normal life is boring, so of course the Moslem media plays up the riots &c.
And what happens when the US press (with their strong tendency towards sensationalism) reports on the Moslem press (which also has a strong tendency towards sensationalism, and for exactly the same reasons)? That's right, you get a doubly distorted view of what is going on in Moslem countries. Admit it, you have no idea what day to day life is really like in Pakistan, for instance. So go read the posts by IQBAL, who lives there (link above).
As far as hard facts (as opposed to sensationalistic reporting) the fact is that the US is getting very good support in the Moslem nations. The Taliban is getting no real support. Zero.
I'm sorry that you don't see it this way. But it really doesn't get any better than this. The Moslem media hardly ever publishes an article praising the United States, what did you expect them to do? For that matter, the sensationalism (propaganda) runs both ways, articles in the United States tend to be inflammatory against Moslems, but it doesn't mean that our military is about to be ordered to kill as many civilians as possible. Yes, you can find articles in the United States indicating that not all citizens have already taken pot shots at 7-11s, but the vast majority of US reporting is sensationalistic.
You need to recognize that the "news" is about entertainment. It is not even intended to be an accurate description of the political conditions. News always exaggerates circumstances. This is true for all (non governmental) news sources in all countries and at all times. News is about attracting readers, not about accurately describing situations.
Re: "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."
Right now, Afghanis in the Northern Alliance are cheering the carpet bombing of the Taliban. I suppose you have a comparison of that to the British situation during the Blitz? Maybe you'd be better off comparing the Afghan situation to the German situation during our brutal bombing of them. And did we conquer Germany? Or did the Germans rally to defeat us?
This all gets back to the ancient myth of the peaceniks that "violence never solves anything". The actual observed fact of human relations is that violence works. What fails is insufficient amounts of violence. And the United States is very good at directing extreme amounts of violence very effectively. The actual amounts of violence that we will require in Afghanistan is quite small. To put the numbers in proportion, note that the Taliban is claiming that we have killed 1,500 civilians in the past months. But the total number of civilians killed in the ineffectual, misdirected and unprofessional violence over the past 25 years there is around 1,500,000. We'll only equal that total if it takes us another 83 years! By contrast, even according to our enemy, our bombing campaign is killing civilians at only 1/4 the average rate of the last 25 years. As territory is taken from the Taliban the civilian deaths will proportionately decrease. Total casualties should be acceptable.
Behind these numbers are blood and death. I'm sorry that I have to make these calculations. But refusing to face the numerical facts will only end up killing more people in the end. If our application of "infinite force" is sufficient to end the war in Afghanistan (and note that you've already given up the argument that their mountains are impregnable) then the end of our conflict there will reduce the death rate due to violence in the country.
Re: "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'."
No such "bunch of lunatics" exist in the Air Force. Go ahead and prove me wrong by citing a source in a US military document. (Search using "site:.mil" to get official military sites.) Sure, if you go to the old folks home or ask the guy buying beer next to you at the 7-11 (the one that gets shot fired through it daily by angry Americans) you can get an opinion to that effect, but it is not a part of US military doctrine. The actual fact is that during the Gulf War it was well known that ground operations would be required. And besides, no one is promoting "saturation bombing" in Afghanistan.
Re: "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, ..."
What we are doing (and will do) to Afghanistan pales in comparison to what we did to Germany and Japan during WW2. So why didn't the "century" long "reign of terror" start in 1945? Did Brazil, for instance, come into WW2 as an enemy of the US when they saw the unrestricted violence of saturation bombing of civilian targets in Germany? No! Heck, Franco's fascist state in Spain didn't even come to help when we bombed the bejesus out of Germany. So where's your evidence of the great depth of the world's compassion? I think you're imagining people as being a lot more caring and self sacrificing than they actually are. Moslems in Egypt, by and large, treat the reporting of the goings on in Afghanistan the same way we treated the reports of the Malvinas war: Entertainment.
Other Moslem nations aren't helping the Taliban because of the following:
(1) The Moslem nations (every single one of them) have a history of being far more brutal to each other (and to their own peoples) than we have been to Afghanistan. The Iran vs. Iraq war, and the massacre at [fill in name of favorite here] were not exceptions. People are a lot more brutal than you give them credit for.
(2) Half of the Moslem nations are already fighting against their own Islamic Fundamentalists. Half of the rest (Iran, for instance) have religious differences between themselves and the Taliban. The Islamic world is just nowhere near as united as you seem to think they are. They may all look the same to you, but to them, they are very distinct.
(3) While it would be satisfying (at least for some of the more hot headed of their citizens) to join a Jihad against the US, for most citizens the prospect of being bombed into the Stone Age by untouchable aircraft is distinctly unappealing.
Re: "... as well as guaranteeing a reign of terror in the "Homeland" for the next century."
From the above it's clear that Moslem nations aren't going to overtly support the Taliban, but what's to prevent them from covertly supporting terrorism in the United States? Well for one thing, if terrorism had been so easy a technique of diplomacy we'd already have seen a lot more of it. Unfortunately, it suffers from the following problem:
The United States has made it clear that it will hold countries that even covertly support terrorism to the same consequences that it holds the terrorists. Since the prospect of being bombed into the Stone Age by untouchable aircraft is distinctly unappealing, you can expect that countries will refrain from even covertly supporting terrorism against us.
Therefore it is clear that any Terrorism will have to be supported by individuals. But the US has made it clear that nations which even allow terrorists to operate inside their borders will suffer the same ... distinctly unappealing.
So it is clear that terrorists will have to operate without government assistance, but in fact, foreign governments will be held responsible for hunting them down. It's not like the US was going to let the Taliban off with the excuse "We don't know where Bin Laden is!" Instead, countries are going to be required to actually deliver the merchandise. If they don't, the consequences are distinctly unappealing. This is naked force in action.
Re: "We really ought to think about whether we want to involve ourselves in an endless cycle of revenge and retribution. Seems stupid to me." Cycles of retribution and revenge are not "endless". If they were, then every war that ever started on this planet would have either resulted in complete, total genocide, or would still be fought.
Our options are as follows:
(1) React the way we have.
(2) Accept things as they are. Increase security in US airports &c., but basically ignore ObL's requests.
(3) Submit to ObL's requests.
The problem with (2) is that the terrorist's success at the WTC will embolden them to continue to escalate until we submit to their requests.
The problem with (3) is that once they figure out how to press our button why should they stop with their current requests: (a) our handing Israel over to the Palestinians, (b) US pulling our armed forces out of the Middle East and (c) allowing Iraq to develop nuclear weapons and control the world's oil supply? And would allowing all these things to happen be an improvement in our security?
Do you really think that the results would be kinder and gentler for the planet as a whole? Have you carefully looked at what the terrorists are demanding? Have you worked out the obvious consequences of our agreeing to their demands?
Sometimes there are no pleasant alternatives.
-- Carl |
